ABOUT JACKSON PENFIELD-CYR

My name is Jackson Penfield-Cyr, owner and clinician of Upper Valley Integration Therapy.
As a licensed bodywork therapist, I provide manual and movement therapy and health coaching, with special expertise in pain education, breath training, and the autoimmune protocol.
My mission is to invite you into a whole new relationship with your body and mind – one empowered by scientific principles that help you make informed choices and changes in your habits, health, and well-being.
There’s a lot of health care modalities out there. I know it’s a challenge to navigate the modern health care field, a vast spectrum of industrialized medicine and alternative interventions, full of various traditions and diverse techniques. In fact, it’s overwhelming – especially when you’re in pain.
In my own healing journey, I wanted one thing: Empowerment.
I wanted knowledge and experiences that gave me the information and developed skills to use intelligently in my work to resolve my chronic pain and autoimmune conditions.
This led me to avoid services and products based upon doctrine and dogma, in my search to discover the fundamental principles of human health and well-being.
Today, research in the field of neurobiology serves as the foundation of my practice.
The therapeutic services I offer give you the unique opportunity to experience an education in mindful embodiment, to learn about your physical existence in our physical world, and to empower you to embrace true ownership of your health care.
Thank you for your consideration of your healing, health, and well-being.
I look forward to working with you soon.
With gratitude,
Jackson

MY STORY
Movement Toward A Grateful Life
My life has been one extraordinary education in healing, health, and well-being.
As far back as I can remember, all I’ve ever wanted is peace of mind and balance in body – a feeling of being whole - because I didn't feel that way.
“The Beginning Is The Most Important Part Of The Work”
The origins of this desire probably began when I was about 1.5 years old, when a traumatic accident altered the course of my physical development. I received eight stitches in my right eyebrow, which had been split open from a fall into a coffee table. The injury itself wasn’t traumatic – the application of the stitches, however, left a heavy emotional scar.
Essentially, my pediatrician administered the stiches, while my mother and her best friend assisted him by pinning me down on my belly with my head turned rightward and my left cheek pressed into the table. This position allowed for unimpeded access to my right eyebrow, preventing me from any significant resistance.
As a toddler, it represented a moment of overwhelming stress. The emotional dissonance of being subjected to a painful experience by the people you trust the most, who are supposed to protect you from harm, left a near-indelible mark upon my developing brain and caused an internal imprint of physical inhibition.
While I have no explicit memory of the event, the experience gave me what is called an implicit emotional memory – causing my brain and body to grow around a contorted position of forced paralysis for the subsequent three decades of my life.
“As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree”
In spite of this trauma (or because of it) I grew up fiercely competitive, an avid athlete, with a chip on my shoulder – actually, a literal kink in my neck. As my body grew, I developed impressive compensation patterns around my neuromusculoskeletal malalignment, until it couldn’t compensate any longer. I know this truth well: You can only bend so far before you break.
The initial trauma led to other accidental traumas. Over three decades, I experienced accumulative physical, mental, and emotional distress. From youth to adulthood, I suffered ankle sprains, tendonitis, meniscal tears, autoimmune conditions, a decade of chronic Lyme Disease, disordered eating, gastrointestinal dysbiosis, a ventral abdominal hernia, anxiety and depression, not to mention many sensational symptoms that confounded medical professionals.
If there is one thing that industrialized medicine doesn’t do well, it’s trauma – including the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases and chronic pain. I know this, intimately; because the implementation of so-called “conventional wisdom” in healthcare seemingly did not apply to me, and healthcare professionals couldn’t figure out why.
“Hardship Often Prepares Ordinary People For An Extraordinary Destiny.”
So, I took matters into my own hands, figuratively and, eventually, as a manual therapist, literally.
After a near-death experience, I surrendered to this foundational belief:
“Healing is what the body does best – when it has the right resources.”
I placed all my faith in this proposition. I stopped studying the world beyond me and started studying the world within me, learning about the human body and its resources.
This education led to another foundational belief:
“Human health is simple.”
Significantly, this doesn’t mean being healthy is easy. In today’s world, it’s quite the contrary.
Essentially, it means that human needs are simple – air, water, food, activity, rest, safety, and social interaction. These seven ‘resources’ are the basis of health. I call them the “Seven Resources for Resilience” – because when your relationship with each of these resources is balanced, you exist in a state of health.
My synthesis of these seven resources was inspired by my fascination with the biology of stress (i.e. how our resources become out of balance).
In physics, stress is defined as “internal resistance within a body to external pressure”. So, for living beings, stress is an internal interpretation of circumstance: a feeling – and feelings are a product of your mind.
This is where my passion for neuroscience began.
Consider this: Everything you experience – sense, perceive, feel, think, believe – is a product of your nervous system – or as I call it “your mind.”
As a student of health, I wished to know how to influence my feelings for the purpose of healing. And as I studied, I realized this truth: the reason we have Feelings is for Healing.
“Persistent Pain Is An Invitation For Self-Transformation”
So, I figured, if this is true, and I feel “out of alignment” then most likely I am.
And so, naively, at the age of 25, I reckoned: “If I realign my spine, my health will follow.”
Well, my naiveté turned out to be wisdom – however, at the time, I had no concept for how far down the proverbial ‘rabbit hole’ of my psyche I’d need to travel before my brain would allow for alignment. In essence, I needed to unearth my initial trauma (which, as aforementioned, I was oblivious to).
Recently, I came across these relevant statements from Dr. Andrew Huberman, PhD, which summarize the process of my healing journey:
“If you’re older than 25, your brain will not change unless there’s a selective shift in your attention or selective shift in your experience that tells your brain ‘It’s time to change.’
“If you want something to change, you must bring an immense amount of attention to whatever it is you want to change.
“It all starts with an awareness.”
Looking back now, I had the awareness of my physical condition (i.e. out of alignment), and as a result, I became fanatical about using life experiences to tell my mind “It’s time to change” – because I wanted it, more than anything.
“Education Is the Best Medicine”
My efforts led me to intentional study of Yoga, Rolfing® Structural Integration, and DermoNeuroModulation – each of these studies elucidating practices and, more importantly, principles of healing, health, and well-being.
I observed how traditions and techniques shed light on principles (a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning), and how principles invite enlightenment for health and well-being. This revelation also led to the realization that while healthcare is inundated with traditions, techniques, tools, and the dogma people attach to their applications, I would rather study to refine my understanding of the principles of neurobiology in order to incorporate them practically when working with my clients and, first and foremost, in experimentation with myself.
My journey has been a challenge beyond the imaginations of most people, likely because my trauma was so early in my development. I know pain better than most anyone.
The silver lining, however, is that because of the unfathomable work I’ve done to remove decades of neuromusculoskeletal inhibition, I learned this universal truth:
Health is work: it’s not an entitlement.
And to that end, your body isn’t an impediment of accomplishment, it’s your implement of attainment.
And it begins with your nervous system – your mind – from skin cell to sense of self.
“Enlightenment Is Cortical Integration”
I'm delighted to share that at 31 years or age, my brain resolved that infant trauma, expressing its resolution through an incredible somatic emotional release, which involved an otherworldly eruption of sobbing and shaking.
[Notably, it was only after this release that my mother disclosed the details of the accident in my infancy. If it were not for her, I would never have known the cause of this outburst.]
What happened post-release is beyond description. After three decades of severe inhibition, my brain, now liberated, began shaking my musculoskeletal system back into alignment.
The past several years have been an excruciatingly magical, miserable, mind-bending journey of neurological integration and spinal realignment. If I wasn’t an expert in manual and movement therapy, I wouldn’t have the skills and perspective to confront the overwhelming efforts of my mind to perform, what I call, “cortical reintegration.”
Specifically, it is my reinterpretation of the Rolfing® 10-Series as a 10-step process for teaching postural alignment and my reinterpretation of the Yoga Sutras in the light of neurobiological principles that serve me to this day as a means for manifesting the balance my brain seeks for my nervous system as a whole.
Overall, my healing journey has taught me, intimately, that conditions of disease are not exclusively physical or mental or emotional, but all of the above – driven by an innate biological drive to self-regulate toward a state of health.
“It Is In The Act Of Giving That We Receive.”
I share my story because I care about you, and I care about our world.
It is impossible to share the scope of my healing journey in words. It’s true: Experience transcends expression. Maybe someday I’ll give it a shot and write a book.
More importantly, however, what I can do is share how you can heal yourself and achieve your best health. This is the focus of my career.
Today, my clinical work centers upon using and teaching universal principles of neurobiology to integrate the sensorimotor (nonconscious) and cognitive (conscious) behaviors of your being, in order to assist self-motivated people in their efforts to achieve self-transformation.
My mission is this:
To invite you into a whole new relationship with your body and mind – one empowered by scientific principles that help you make informed choices and changes in your habits, health, and well-being.
Thank you for your consideration of my story and my work. Hopefully, it’s given you some insight, maybe some inspiration.
I wish you all the best in your healing, health, and well-being.
Have a grateful day,
Jackson