Richard Harty has been a physical therapist since 1981. He began his professional career at a rehabilitation center working with children and adults recovering from brain trauma. During an internship in his last year of physical therapy school, Richard designed a computerized hardware and software solution that streamlined human performance testing. This steered him toward a career in sports medicine, working with professional athletes and eventually sharing his software with universities, the National Institute of Health, and clinics around the country. While this technical achievement aided in diagnosing the factors creating limitations in performance, Richard was more interested in how to heal the underlying causes. He had begun to notice that many of the interventions used in a typical physical therapy practice didn’t always get the results he was hoping for—nor did improvement always last.
After exposure to the techniques and principles of myofascial release as taught by John F. Barnes, PT, Richard noticed his clients were getting more consistent and lasting results. He began to study and find out how this worked from a scientific perspective. At first, there was very little research on the fascial system and its influence on the body. As more information became available and he came to understand the complexity of the fascial system, Richard realized he could not apply myofascial release with a purely analytical approach.
Even though Richard didn’t have a complete understanding of the mechanisms of myofascial release, he still noticed remarkable results in his patients’ progress. By feeling what was happening under his hands and using his intuition as a guide, his hands would spontaneously move toward solutions customized to each individual. It dawned on him that it might be useful to approach this process as an art—an expression of creativity, intuition, and emotion. For the past ten years, Richard has been writing down his thoughts on developing an artistic approach to healing. Over the previous three years, he has been forming these impressions into a narrative he hopes will inform, inspire, and invite therapists and clients to engage more deeply in this therapeutic art. The book titled The Music of Consciousness and The Art of Myofascial Release is the result.