Access Bars: The Unexpected Doorway That Changed Everything
- Kirsten Bonanza
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
I didn’t go looking for enlightenment.I was looking for relief.
From the looping thoughts. From the tight chest. From the way trauma and anxiety seemed to run the show no matter how much therapy, alternative modalities, effort, or “doing the work” I put in.
Then I found Access Bars.
Or maybe—it pulled me in.
What Is Access Bars, Anyway?
Access Bars is a gentle, hands-on modality where 32 specific points on the head—called “Bars”—are lightly touched. Each Bar is said to correspond with different aspects of life: things like control, creativity, money, healing, joy, communication, and more.
The idea is simple: when these points are activated, the electromagnetic charge of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and patterns we’ve stored over time can begin to release.
No effort. No talking required. No reliving the trauma.
You lie down.Someone holds your head. And your nervous system gets a chance to exhale.
My Experience: Why I Call It the Gateway Drug to Consciousness (With Love)
I’ll be honest—Access Bars was the crack that got me to dive headfirst into consciousness.
And I mean that affectionately.
It didn’t demand that I understand anything first. It didn’t require me to “fix” myself. It bypassed my overthinking mind and met me directly in my body—where trauma actually lives.
For the first time in a long time, my system felt safe enough to soften.
Not “everything is magically healed” safe. But “oh… I can breathe again”.
That shift—subtle at first—opened a door.
Trauma, Anxiety, and the Body’s Memory
If you’ve lived with PTSD or chronic anxiety, you know this already: insight alone isn’t always enough. You can know why you feel the way you feel and still be hijacked by your nervous system.
What Access Bars gave me was space.
Space between stimulus and response.
Space between thought and spiral.
Space to notice that maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t broken.
I was had fixed points of view that I'd created and that then contributed to creating my reality.
Fortunately, fixed points of view can be changed, let go, and cleared.
What Happens in a Bars Session?
Every session is different, but people often report:
Deep relaxation or falling asleep
A sense of mental quiet or clarity
Emotional release (sometimes immediate, sometimes days later)
Feeling lighter, calmer, or more present
Subtle shifts that ripple out over time
For me, it felt like everything just got quiet and then I began to laugh. Truly laugh like I hadn't remembered experiencing in years. The internal chaos just wasn't there for that time.
Not silencing it. Just making letting it go bit by bit until the trauma anniversary day (9/11) that I forgot what the day signified to me personally. It was like, why are all these people calling me today? It wasn't until the 12th that I realized...
This Isn’t About Belief
You don’t have to believe in Access Bars for it to work. I didn’t know what would happen when I got on the table. My nervous system didn’t care what my mind thought. That’s part of what made it so accessible (pun fully intended). It met me where I was—exhausted from living, spun out, and desperate for something that would sustain the hope that it would get better.
Spoiler alert: It gets better.
A Beginning, Not a Destination
Access Bars didn’t “fix” me.
What it did was open a door to curiosity instead of fear, possibility instead of contraction. From there, consciousness work became less about surviving and more about choosing.
Choosing how I respond.
Choosing what I hold onto.
Choosing who I become next.
And for someone who once lived in constant fight-or-flight, that choice is everything.
If You’re Curious…
If you’re carrying trauma, anxiety, or just the weight of being human in a loud world, Access Bars might be an invitation worth exploring—not as a cure, but as a conversation with your own body and awareness.
You don’t have to dive in headfirst.
But if you do? You might be surprised what’s waiting on the other side of quiet.
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