Dr. Barber-Hancock specializes in pain relief, joint mobilization, and pediatric problems. Exploring patients’ treatment responses, she developed new concepts and techniques in the late 1990s, creating her Facilitated Pathways Intervention® (FPI) therapy. This treatment uses small, gentle massage-type techniques performed on the head, face, and neck. The treatment area is always related to a specific location of pain or dysfunction in the muscles or joints of the body or head.
Dr. Barber-Hancock has been an LMT in private practice since 1998. She offers workshops in Facilitated Pathways Intervention® and other CranioSomatic therapies to healthcare professionals in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Costa Rica, through Hancock CranioSomatic Institute.
Her first career was twenty years of practical experience with special needs individuals – providing hands-on personal care and working as a teacher and as a workshop supervisor. Those years of service allowed Dr. Barber-Hancock to develop understanding and insights into the needs of people with structural, functional, emotional, and neurological challenges. She was immediately drawn to working with these kinds of problems in a more physically therapeutic way when the opportunity to join Dr. Dallas Hancock in his clinical practice became available in 1993. She began as a clinic aide, and developed from there into workshop assistant, and fellow clinician, and then into an international instructor with her own strengths and therapeutic skills. Dr. Dallas Hancock and Flo Barber married in 2001, continuing their successful joint practice in Tampa, Florida.
Publications
CranioSomatic Therapy: A New Paradigm. Flo Barber-Hancock & G. Dallas Hancock.
February 2018 in “Fizjoterapia Funkcjonalna”. Vol. 2 (11) 2543-9545
Facilitated Pathways Intervention (Workshop text) – 2012
Hancock, G. D., & Barber, F. (2000). CranioSomatics: Compensatory relationships. AMTA Florida Journal, 13(Spring), 8-9.
Academic / Clinical Education
Doctor of Philosophy: Specialization: “Neurosensory Rehabilitation” Union Institute & University / Cincinnati, OH
Masters of Science: National-Louis University / Wheeling, IL
Bachelor of Education: University of South Florida / Tampa, FL
Massage Therapy: Suncoast School of Massage / Tampa, FL
Workshop Presentations on Cranial Techniques
1998 – present
Dr. Barber-Hancock has personally conducted CranioSomatic and Facilitated Pathways series in several cities in the eastern half of the United States. International locations have been in Canada, Austria, and Costa Rica

Dr. Florence ‘Flo’ Barber-Hancock is the Co-Developer of CranioSomatic Therapy. She also developed a unique cranial therapy – Facilitated Pathways Intervention® (FPI). Dr. Barber-Hancock’s FPI concepts and treatment findings were the topic of her Ph.D. dissertation, and this amazing therapy is the cornerstone of her clinical practice in neuromusculoskeletal disorders and neurosensory rehabilitation.
Credentials
- Licensed Massage Therapist:
FL- #MA 25843,
NC- LMBT #15471 - Ph.D., Neurosensory Rehabilitation
Memberships
FSMTA: Florida State Massage Therapy Association
AMTA: American Massage Therapy Association
IASK: International Association of Specialized Kinesiologists