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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am a practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights into the fields I practice.

In Episode 5 of Season 2, I am interviewing a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Maria DeFranco. Maria and I met in 2005 working together in a café in Taos, New Mexico. She was just beginning her practice as a licensed massage therapist. We ended up starting a new spa at the Taos Ski Valley together. Dr. Maria left to Portland to attend chiropractic school. I love seeing how Dr. Maria has developed and grown her OM3 BODY practice that offers excellence in bodywork.  Dr. Maria has creatively combined chiropractic and massage therapy, offering a wide range of holistic boutique treatments in Fullshear, Texas, and Portland, Oregon. Some of her specialties include holistic pelvic care and TMJ care. Which she describes in her podcast with Dr. Julia Ward’s podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-functional-edge-with-dr-julia-ward/id1794557606?i=1000720918959.

Topics we cover a wide and varied in this episode. We discuss pelvic diaphragm work, self-care for the practitioner, how we approach our work, Bali, and integrating our neurodivergence and how we became aware that we are both neurodivergent. I am very excited to share our love for how we listen and practice embodied presence within our work.

Dr. Maria’s website is www.om3body.com/, and now for the conversation with Dr. Maria.

Somatic Touch © 2023 by Kirstie Segarra is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery

Season 2 Episode 4

With Dr. Kirstie Segarra

October 17th, 2025

Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am a practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights into the fields I practice.

The Fall Equinox happened with a myriad of eclipses and full moon in Pisces, and more. It seemed like a challenging time in Taos as the weather was still presenting warm days as we moved into October. As I rode my bicycle, I watched the brown and tan tarantulas migrating across the high desert. Finding myself upset every time someone sped by in their car, oblivious as they killed another tarantula. Something about walking and cycling keeps the pace slow and more kindred to the connection to the land. This relationship supports a form of embodiment that is relational within presence. Through my years of study and work, I have found myself always returning to the land in which I cultivate and live. It looks over the mountains of Taos, where the land belongs to the Red Willow people of Taos Pueblo. Making offerings is a daily ritual. I have altars throughout my home and practice space as well as bones I have collected throughout my garden landscape. The bones remind me of the finite existence we embody as well as the vitality that runs through all living systems. I have a large quartz crystal buried by my front door that faces east, to anchor in healing of my biological family. It has been there for several years. I placed it during a period of estrangement for two years from my parents and sibling. I will never forget the level of grief I had to endure on my own without support. It is the ritual that held me. To this day, I separate my biological family from the quiescence of my inner life to protect me from the enduring abuse I grew up with. I do not believe there will be a reconciliation now that my mother has developed dementia along with other terminal illnesses, and my father passed away in 2019. So I return to the land as an opportunity to heal in my home here in Taos.

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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am a practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights into the fields I practice.

As you may have heard in the previous podcast with Lauren Christman, I have some musings around changing how we talk about anatomy and physiology. Primarily, this is influenced by my study in embryology—the motion of form and function. There is a felt sense and somatic response that happens within me when anatomy is taught from a reductionistic lens—and I am guilty of this too. It is challenging to find new language to describe the relationship between structures and how they were formed. What do I mean by this? For example, my latest obsession is the continued deep dive into neurobiology in the trauma field. If I begin describing the parts of the anatomy, I speak about the vagus nerve, amygdala, nucleus tractus solitarius, periaqueductal gray, and nucleus ambiguous. However, they all grow in relationship and formation to the whole system in the first few weeks of life in utero. When I wear the lens of embryology, the distinction between these processes is more relational. In this podcast, my hope is to unpack the relational lens of anatomy along some recent experiences that invited me to explore this further.

Two recent experiences invited me to think within this lens. The first I experienced was with an anatomy teacher at the Fascia Research Congress, where they were quite combative in how they spoke and challenged the group. I am not sure if this is how they teach in their normal settings, as I haven’t experienced it. I had a visceral response to feeling quite uninvited to engage with the person. I tried to stay present, and I realized after an hour of feeling like the group was being berated, I did speak up in the group to invite a reframe, and the invitation was not received.

The second experience was when I heard another anatomy teacher speaking about the body as if the muscles, insertions, and origins have a certainty to them. It really struck me that we as teachers are not helping move the field forward in a more holistic and embryological model of understanding. I have deeply pondered this, and I am challenging myself as a teacher to find more fluid and holistic models of teaching in my upcoming courses.

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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am a practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights into the fields I practice.

In Season 2 Episode 1, I am interviewing Lauren Christman, MFA LMT CCST CBSI ATSI, who is a long-time practitioner and teacher in the field of bodywork in Seattle, Washington. Lauren and I share many parallels with a love of craniosacral, visceral, and structural integration through the lens of osteopathy. I particularly appreciate Lauren’s thoughtfulness in how she languages and speaks about the work we do. You can learn more about Lauren’s courses at craftedtouch.com. In this episode, we share a deep conversation beginning with Lauren’s foyer into touch work in hospice care centered around supporting folks with AIDS. Exploring the idea of “touch without violence”. Exploring teaching anatomy that speaks to relationship from an embryological lens with clarity without being reductive. Exploring the idea of the work we do as a “living body of work”.

Now for the interview with Lauren.

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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights in the fields I practice.

This episode is the first for Season 2 of Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery. My hope is to do a deeper dive in the next few podcasts in how we may work with a Somatic Touch lens in working with clients as well as going down some rabbit holes in craniosacral therapy. In Episode 1 of Season 2, I am getting on my soapbox about how neurodivergent bodies experience trauma release work and why common methodologies do not work for them. We will explore neurogenic tremors a.k.a. shaking and trauma release and weaving back to embryology as a more appropriate model for understanding Somatic Touch and supporting healing.

 As a person who is gifted and definitively has overlaps with Asperger’s now considered autism spectrum disorder (ASD), I have learned through my own experience how different types of somatic release in the trauma field did not seem to be effective with how my sensory experience processes. It is well known that folks that are ASD do not have the same level of pruning neurons in growth—this means the individual is prone to hypersensitivity in processing. Giftedness is often paired with overexcitabilities (OE), which maybe expressed in a variety of ways as sensitivity and responses to internal and external stimuli in 5 domains both psychological and physiological. Another way of saying this is our bodies/brains are different and as such experiencing sensing the world differently.

I am heading to the Fascia Research Congress (FRC) in a week to present my research and learn from other researchers and clinicians. Stephen Porges, MD is a keynote speaker on his Polyvagal theory at the FRC.  He just did a podcast interview on the Thinking Practitioner (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thinking-practitioner/id1492004207?i=1000718653827). I spent the time to listen to the podcast and one before it to see if they would address the embryological model as well as the neurobiology model I use in my work—they did not. What I continue to question is the use of the phylogenetic explanations by Dr. Porges as his why/how Polyvagal works. He states that the anatomical structures below the diaphragm have a different processing mechanism compared to structures above the diaphragm due to phylogenetics. Whereas phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary relationships among organisms. My reasoning is due to embryological development of the nervous system with the precursor of the diaphragm—transversus septum as well as how the vagus nerve grows. The vagus nerve does not have a front, back, top nor bottom in embryological growth. I have been harping on this for several years in many different papers and writings. I was starting to think maybe I am missing something, why are folks not talking about this more? Thus, I went over to ChatGPT and asked what it thought about what I have been saying.

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In Episode 19, I am concluding Season 1 of Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery. Season 2 will start back in August of 2025. In this episode I will be sharing a range of information from Dr. Still, the impacts of the Vietnam War, fascia, dementia, cancer and gravity. 

The last few months of my personal life has involved moving my mom to independent care after her health changed dramatically after receiving the flu and covid booster in the end of January. Her system was not able to integrate the vaccines, and she fell sick, and symptoms of dementia arrived with a screeching halt. She was no longer able to navigate simple tasks on her own. An MRI confirmed small vascular disease, which is one of the 5 different types of dementia. This has been a fast-track experience to integrating my own understandings of dementia and navigating some complex systems of “care” for the elderly. Fortunately, I was already aware of resources locally and able to navigate a new place for her to live, in home and medical support with nurses and PT. Then I searched online for tools to simplify daily tasks, such as a memory loss phone, tv clicker, radio, schedule charts and automatic medication dispensers. All of which were to help support her navigating these now confusing daily tasks. Because of how Medicare is structured they do not pay for on-going care and support of elders who have over $2,000 in assets. Thus, all care is out-of-pocket for the provider and/or patient. So, we are preparing my mom’s house to sell to pay for her care. Now if you live outside the United States, you may be shocked by this. Unfortunately, this is how our system is set up because we do not have social medicine. It is a tragedy and as a direct effect on future generations with loss of income, inheritance, financial growth and ultimately the true care of the aging.

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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights in the fields I practice.

In Episode 18, I am interviewing Jeffrey Burch, Rolfer and author of Assessment and Treatment Methods for Manual Therapists: The Most Effective and Efficient Treatment Every Time by Handspring Publishing. Jeffrey has an in-depth background training and teaching with Jean-Pierre Barral, DO. He has a Master’s Degree in in mental health where he focused on psychosomatic conditions. Jeffrey began his training Structural Integration training with Peter Melchoir back in the mid 1970s. He has developed several functional method trainings as well a course in the lungs, pulmonary and thorax. He has served with several SI institutions.

In our conversation, I ask Jeffrey what is the difference between Structural Integration and Osteopathy? We also talk about fascia, adhesions, Vagus nerve and what Dr. Ida Rolf intended with SI trainings. I hope you enjoy the in-depth conversation with Jeffrey Burch.

To learn more about training in somatic touch go to drkirstie.com

See you next time on Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.

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In Episode 17, I am interviewing Dr. Rebecca Pratt, professor of anatomy located in Rochester, Michigan and president of the Fascia Research Society. Dr. Pratt is a gross anatomist who has been training medical students and has worked training American osteopaths over the last 23 years. Dr. Pratt is also editor of the Journal of Bodywork and Movement by Elsevier, which is a pivotal journal for research in the fields of fascia and manual therapies. She is about to make some big changes in her career pathway, which I am excited about, and we discuss in the interview. In this interview I ask Rebecca “How you came to work with “fascia”? What is important for us to know about fascia from a gross anatomy perspective?” and we then discuss “I would love to deep dive into around how fascia is formed in embryology and how that may shift our perspective in how we understand what we see in the experience of dissection (I do have my own thoughts on this).”

Furthermore, the Fascial Research Congress is happening in New Orleans August 10-14 and Rebecca, and I will be presenting as well as many others. To learn more, go to https://www.frscongress.org/. 

Finally, regardless of what hat you wear when you work in the field of fascia it is important to understand we are still learning about the mysteries of fascia and how to define it within our fields. Dr. Pratt co-authored with many other leaders from Carla Stecco, Robert Schleip and more and abstract entitled Towards a comprehensive definition of the human fascial system (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39814456/). The abstract begins with “The absence of a clear consensus on the definition and significance of fascia and the indiscriminate use of the term throughout the clinical and scientific literature has led to skepticism regarding its importance in the human body.”

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Welcome back to Episode 16, where I will be discussing Valentines Day, Red Women Moon Cycles and The Click.

Today is Valentines Day, which seems to represent love, relationship and more in current culture. It was originally a fertility festival in honor of St. Valentine. We just went through the Leo full moon that carried a powerful energy force as it rose above the Sangre De Cristos here in Taos, New Mexico. I remember when I was younger that the full moon had much more charge on my soma, and I would struggle with sleep. Over the years this minimized and seem to be linked with my menses cycles or moon cycles as we like to call them. I learned in my twenties that there is a white moon and red moon pattern. Each pattern had a different emotional and energetic quality to it. White moon represented women who ovulated with the full moon as well as the quality of the maiden in the trinity of maiden, mother and crone. The experience is more around fertility, lightness, youthfulness and beauty. Whereas the red moon meant entering into the bleeding period of the menses cycle. The energy of women in this cycle was more depth, inquiry, emotional and exploring the artistic depths of culture liken to the crone phase. Every woman carries all three cycles of maiden, mother and crone in some form and may experience the different levels of energy within. In the culture I was raised men have lunar cycles too that are over 90 days with similar tidal patterns.

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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights in the fields I practice.

 Today I have the honor of interviewing Cole Cottin (they/she), Structural Integrator trained Hellerwork, teacher of SI, craniosacral and somatic practitioner. You can learn more about Cole at colecottin.com. Cole shares her journey coming into SI from waffles to humble pie. We have several discussions from being a Midwest Mom, Esalen, finding their way to SI, the High Five of Hellerwork, how we weave the feminine into the work of Structural Integration. 

To learn more about training in somatic touch and advanced trainings in SI go to drkirstie.com

See you next time on Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.