The Power of Human Touch and Oxytocin in Your Practice with Craniosacral Therapist Etienne Peirsman: Episode 249

Dr. Danielle:
Welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners podcast. I am your host, Dr. Danielle Angela. In this show, I and my guest experts will talk about everything from getting your practice started to developing your clinical skills, growing your practice your way, and of course, dealing with the real stuff like burnout and work-life balance. Whether you've been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you'll find something here for you. So take a deep breath and enjoy the show.

Dr. Danielle:
Welcome everyone to a new episode of the Health and Wellness Practitioners podcast. I am here today with Etienne Peirsman, and we are going to be talking about craniosacral therapy, the role of stem cells, and also simulating oxytocin through touch. Okay. So before we dive into those topics, Etienne, you get to answer the rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Etienne Peirsman:
Oh, yeah, sure. Go ahead.

Dr. Danielle:
Okay, so first things first, when there's so many career paths available in the health and wellness industry, why did you choose the path that you're on now?

Etienne Peirsman:
It's just not my choice. It's life choice. It's the way I lived my life that I came to to craniosacral. And you know, this is a rapid question, but the answer can take a long time. Yeah. I came cranial sacral and into the healing arts. Not because I wanted to heal people, but because I healed myself. And that automatically led me to a certain knowledge about my own body and what to do to heal oneself, coming from a near death experience, that the body is almost ready to give up, and then coming back to life with that experience and the, yeah, this is strange, but the easiness and quietness, that death brings the peace of mind that death brings and feeling the, the, the body going through these stages of death and then coming out of that whole ordeal into life again, gave me a whole different perspective on bodies and on life and how to deal with bodies and make them better.

Etienne Peirsman:
That's basically where I come from, not out of a need to heal people that came later, you know, as a, as a, a byproduct of knowing how to go in a, a no mind space, a space where the mind is not directing what you're doing, but it comes from a, yeah. There's no other way to say this. It comes from a higher authority that energy. And yeah, I'm lucky enough to connect to that very easily, and that's also what I can connect my students with so easily to connect to that other energy that they have.

Dr. Danielle:
Mm-Hmm. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's probably just like a little snippet of your story and your journey.

Etienne Peirsman:
Oh yes, Yes, yes. We could go home for boys, actually.

Dr. Danielle:
Oh my goodness. Okay. As a hands-on practitioner, it can be very draining. It can, it can be obviously fulfilling. Right. But a also very draining to take care of people, especially when we're, we're putting our hands on them. We can feel not just their physical tension, but also their mental and emotional tension. So, as a practitioner, with the length of time that you've had in your career, what do you do that resources you or that fills you up to be able to continue taking care of people in that way?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, I can look at my career as two different things. One is dealing with patients in class, I mean, in a, in a private practice. And I never called them patience actually, but clients, yeah. In a private practice. And then I switched to teaching. And the funny thing is, I teach from nine o'clock in the morning till six at night. So that's a long day, four days in a row. And after those, every evening, after four days, I'm so energized. I'm so back to, yeah. Being almost like a little kid. You're not playing, playing all the time. And that's, you know, the secret actually, if you know how to get out of the mind and let the energy come through the body, just letting the energy flow then you get energized. Not the opposite. You don't get drained, but you get energized.

Dr. Danielle:
Yes. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. Third question for you in this rapid fire segment is, what do you like the least about either running a business or being a solo practitioner?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, I've never been a, so yeah, I've been a solo practitioner, but what I don't like about is, is all the paperwork

Dr. Danielle:
<Laugh>, Cause we can all relate to that <laugh>.

Etienne Peirsman:
Of course. You know, but that's the part that I hate and I'm not good at, I had to do it for 20 years on my own. But you know, lately going more and more into that no mind space myself, you know, it becomes more and more of the total opposite. You have to go back in your mind to do the papers efficiently. And that's why I have a fantastic administration. You know, I have two people that we are in a business with four people. Me and my partner are doing the teaching, and then I have I wouldn't call her a secretary, but the person that does all the other work, and she excels at it. She's also a cranial practitioner, but she excels at it, you know, promoting the business, promoting whatever it is that we need to do to bring the word out in the world.

Etienne Peirsman:
And that's a day job. Just like my job is a day job. So, yes, that's what I don't like. I wouldn't say I hate it. That's such a deep word. But I don't like that. But luckily, I have a person that excels at that. Michelle you probably connected with her, and her partner is used to be in the movie business. So with lightning and, and audio, that's his expertise. And that's part of what we do, is we bring out the craniosacral teaching in in, in online classes. And that's part of what we do.

Dr. Danielle:
All right. Question number four. What I think I might know the answer to this question already. What book do you think every person should read?

Etienne Peirsman:
Should read?

Dr. Danielle:
Yes.

Etienne Peirsman:
They shouldn't be reading but they should, you know, go into meditation. That's basically what they should do. Reading is books. That's words from somebody else. The answers are always inside. So yeah. If you don't like to meditate, go out in nature. You know, let nature be your teacher. Go out in nature, in silence. And that's, that's so refreshing. You know? And if you wanna read a book, well, yeah. Read my baby book <laugh>, and that baby book is written not for the words, but for the pictures. There is about 40 pictures of me treating babies. And every picture has an emotional response, gives you an emotion to look at how a baby reacts, to touch to being touched, and to feel the oxytocin running. That's what touch is all about. So if you absolutely wanna read a book, it's called Peirsman Craniosacral Therapy for Babies and Small Children.

Dr. Danielle:
Wonderful. Okay. Last of the rapid fire questions. Are you familiar with the term crunchy? It's sort of like what used to be referred to as granola or hippie. What else describes Crunchy Living a an all natural lifestyle?

Etienne Peirsman:
I love it.

Dr. Danielle:
The question is, on a scale of zero to 10, how crunchy are you?

Etienne Peirsman:
Oh up and down

Etienne Peirsman:
Up and down. You know, I just, we just came back from a teaching spree in in Europe. We were in Prague, in Amsterdam, and in France. And especially in France. You know, you can't not look at the bakeries in all the pastries. So yeah, I've been feasting on pastry the last few days. But, you know, my my life partner is very, very oriented into natural things and organic stuff and bio stuff. And since I met her, you know, I switched my whole lifestyle to to yeah, more healthy. And the more healthy you can be, the better. Yeah.

Dr. Danielle:
So what changed for you as you changed your lifestyle under her influence?

Etienne Peirsman:
What was the question?

Dr. Danielle:
What changed for you in regards to objective? Like objective things, things you could see as a result of her, her influence, your partner's influence on your own lifestyle?

Etienne Peirsman:
So many, but, you know the main thing that changed is change itself, you know, and taking change as a natural thing as maybe the most natural thing that there is in this lifestyle. You know, change as, okay, that's what life is all about. It is ever changing. And nowadays even changing more and more. And for me, when I met her, I was 10 years almost solitary. So meaning that for 10 years being in meditation almost every day, you know, the whole day almost. And my lack of social skills Yeah. Is something that came out meeting her. And, you know, having to be on the same level with a person, being honest, being you name it, you know, not not just looking at myself, but yeah. Being in a relationship. And that has been a fantastic schooling for me. You know, I'm not the youngest anymore, you could say I'm in the last quart of my life. And yeah. In this very last phase, the main thing for me is change everything. My food, my social skills. Yeah.

HUMAN TOUCH AND STIMULATING OXYTOCIN

Dr. Danielle:
Your your comments, your, your remarks about your relationship with your partner actually ties into the topic for our conversation today, which is around human touch and simulating oxytocin. As a hands-on practitioner, I don't think this is a, is something that we talk enough about. And I know, like through my, through my training as a chiropractor, it was relatively mechanistic. And allopathic even that being said, you know, there's nothing that's woo about stimulating oxytocin and the role that oxytocin plays in our overall health and our outcomes. That being said, I think that sometimes, especially when it comes to the endocrine system, it's so complicated. It's such a dance that we, first of all, it's hard to understand. It's hard to conceptualize. It, it can feel a bit esoteric or hard to measure. So I would love for you to share more from your perspective about just kind of like the overview of, as a hands-on practitioner, what is our role in simulating oxytocin, even if that's not necessarily our intended outcome with the care that we provide?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, well, well, yes. It depends. It all depends, you know, and the craniosacral practice and just how that works. We don't talk about touch anymore.

Dr. Danielle:
Yeah.

Etienne Peirsman:
We talk about conscious touch, and that's one of the things that in the first day of the first class students are being subjected to, what is it? What is touch all about? And there you have two things that come together. And conscious touch is so simple, you know, there is I wouldn't say there is an esoteric aspect. There is an aspect of understanding the chemistry of the body. And conscious touch is, you know, it's very simple. I can show it to you. This is an arm. And the first thing a client will do, or a practitioner will do to a client is of course they need to touch. Now touch, if I do it this way, the first thing you need to learn when you touch this way is what is every finger touching? What is your pinky feeling? What is the ring finger, the middle finger, the index finger, the thumb, the hand palm one after the other?

Etienne Peirsman:
You take your time to feel what is it exactly that you're feeling? And at that moment, when you're touching for about a minute, and you cannot escape that, you can escape it if you go different places. But if you stay one place the chemistry of the body, hypothalamus, produces, oxytocin that is stored in pituitary. And the moment your touch is like this, about 40 seconds in your touch, maybe 50, maybe a minute, your pituitary starts to flood the body with oxytocin, you cannot escape it. And that is not just in the client. The beauty is the practitioner also gets flooded with oxytocin. That's one part. Then the second part of conscious touch is, because you are trying to feel, and the effect of oxytocin is it produces oneness between two people. We have a word for it. It's called love, but love is such a, you know so many things about love that is not in the touch yet the sexual aspect isn't there at all.

Etienne Peirsman:
But the aspect of a mom and a baby that love Yeah. Is oxytocin. Without the oxytocin, mom cannot, she cannot love the baby. The love Yeah, is the amount of oxytocin. If that is flooding, then mom and baby are a unit that a love that cannot be broken. So in our cranial work, we replicate that. Yeah. There is this flooding of oxytocin that happens. So instead of two people, you get one unit of energy practitioner and the client, they become one ocean of energy where there is this Yeah. Amazing flow of energy going through two bodies. That's one thing that happens, but also the consciousness of your touch brings instant mindfulness, instant, your mind will stop, and the experience takes over. Feeling takes over. So you just drop out of the mind into that other world. Yeah. The world that is bigger than yet the mind really cannot talk about it because mind is limited, but it's, we call it going through the eye of the needle.

Etienne Peirsman:
And on the other side is existence itself, is that experience of life. And then there is a third trick on top of that, we just relax our jaw, and that also brings the mind to a standstill immediately. So there is a whole bunch of tricks to get into pure feeling and of course pure feeling with the oxytocin levels that are just skyrocketing. Yeah. That is, yeah. A connection to something that we usually forget to talk about when we are doing body work. You get into your bliss body, and that's the body where oxytocin is just, just, just everywhere. Yeah. That's pure bliss. That's like a baby and mom, you know, in the beginning it's just, wow.

LEARNING TO BE STILL

Dr. Danielle:
Well, so many thoughts. As a, as a chiropractor, you know, we are typically trained to move quickly and and the traditional model of success in our profession is to see as many patients as possible, which requires very little interaction with each patient as you go. There's just purely not time. So it's very, it's very interesting for me to consider as you're talking about sustained touch and, and not moving. Like touching the part that you're touching and staying there for a minute or longer is not something in a, a chiropractor's vocabulary, but not the, not the typical chiropractor at least. But even for a massage therapist, you know, the massage therapy approach is like, they're, they're constantly moving.

Etienne Peirsman:
Yes, yes, yes. Well, you know, for us, the most difficult thing in teaching craniosacral we work with the, the skull with all the bones in the skull, the spine, the sacrum. So we were basically with giving space to the brain and the, the nerve system. But you know, what we discovered is when you don't move, absolutely don't move. Like for instance, we connect to frontal bone and if you don't move, and that's the front of all of it, the body will tell you what to do. You don't even have to think. And sometimes, you know, I remember sitting just feeling a client's brain, the movement of the brain inside of the skull, sitting there for 40 minutes without moving, just feeling the motion of the brain. And the brain will use that energy to reorganize itself and go places where with motion it was impossible to go.

Etienne Peirsman:
So you could say, you know, that we are just the opposite of seeing as much clients as possible, as moving from one spot to the, to the other. Yeah. I used to do two or three or three techniques in a whole hour. My sessions would be an hour. My life partner sometimes has sessions that last three to four hours. And she doesn't do much either. You know, it, it is just the opposite. When you give space and time to the body, it'll start rearranging itself. And there is even a branch in our work, it's called Biodynamic Craniosacral, where people just, just hold the space for the body to unravel itself and well, yeah. That brings us to midline and to stem cells and the organization, how that works. How a body is created. We with not touching or not, not moving, just waiting, waiting, waiting. We go back to the actual organization, how the body is made, how that happened, and the body will rearrange itself because it remembers, it remembers how that happened. And by the way, when the body was created, there was no mind present to do that. It all happened. Yeah. That energy, it comes from somewhere. Yeah. It's the creation of nature. It all happened without anybody telling now this, now that na now. So, so that's one of the nice things about this work. We are able to connect to that energy, to that force.

Dr. Danielle:
I can imagine as an instructor that you come across students who are wanting to learn the technique that you're teaching who struggle to slow down.

Etienne Peirsman:
That's the most, yeah. That's the biggest problem.

Dr. Danielle:
<Laugh>. Right. So what, what advice do you give them when they're feeling like they have to move or they, they have such a low tolerance to staying still that long themselves?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, yeah. There is almost nobody that can stay that still for a long time. So yeah. It, it starts out with the doing aspect of learning and technique is one side of the nerve system. Yeah. You know very well our nerve system is two aspects, two little nerves that come out of the spinal cord. One is sensory, the other is motoric. Yeah. So doing, you satisfy theen, the motoric part of the nerve system. The other part, the sensory has to feel what happens when these techniques are done to me. And that's, you know, the aspect of the felt sense being on the table and feeling what it does to you. Yeah. That is so important to learn. Just doing alone, that will not work. Yeah. The student needs to experience. Oh, okay. And of course, in the beginning, they will have to move.

Etienne Peirsman:
Yeah. It is the way that we brought up in school. Yeah. If you don't do anything, you're lazy. You don't get the marks. You, that competition is in every one of us. So going to the opposite. Yeah. It takes, it takes usually a few classes before people start to really, before all people start to get into it. Yeah. In, I guarantee in the first four days, the first class people get the sense of, okay, if I don't do anything, things start to happen. And, you know, to make that clear or a bit clearer, it's not magic at all. You know, because we know that space of not doing, we all go one third if it's okay. You know, one third of your life you spend in deep sleep. If everything goes, if you don't have a whole bunch of kids running around one third of your day, you spend in deep sleep.

Etienne Peirsman:
And that's exactly what we replicate. So every person on this planet knows what it is to go in deep sleep. So what we do is, well, we have a few tricks to help the client to go into deep sleep, to go in that space that they, they know so well because everybody loves deep sleep. Yeah. That's where you feel Yeah. There is no burden, no money issues, nothing anymore. Yeah. You, and that's where the body heals itself. So yeah. When we do our work, we have a few tricks to bring the client there, but on top of that, the body healing itself is not alone at that point. In deep sleep, you are alone, but when you are, somebody touches you consciously in different spots. Yeah. And that added energy of the other person, that's what makes the therapy. So yeah. Magical. That amount of energy that's available for the body to do its own thing. It's not that we do something. No. We add energy for the body to do its own thing.

HOW TO INCORPORATE CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY INTO YOUR PRACTICE

Dr. Danielle:
We have a few practitioners who are craniosacral therapists that listen to the podcast. I would say the majority are not certified in craniosacral therapy. So for people that are interested in incorporating this modality into their practice, what are some things that you would want them to know about entering into this modality?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, a few things they need to know. First of all, you know, the interest needs to come from the person themselves. It's not something that you can force somebody to go into. Yeah. And what I see is my, most of my students, they are, I call them the new hippies. Yeah. They're ready to go a different way than society points them. Yeah. And most of them also did a lot of mushrooms, a lot of ayahuasca, you know, they have explored something else than what they learn at school. And then of course, you know, and once you open your mind a little bit, you want more and this, this craniosacral brings you, brings you to places. It's basically a pure meditation technique. And it's even better than meditation because what I just said, the added energy of the practitioner. And the nice thing as a craniosacral therapist, you don't do anything for an hour. You just sit there and you're part of the energy. What happens to the client, happens to the practitioner also, and you don't do anything. You go into no mind. And the beauty of it all is after no an hour of being in that meditative space, you get paid to be in that space. <Laugh>.

Dr. Danielle:
Oh my goodness. That brings up such a deep topic for so many people in our audience around their worthiness and deservingness to be paid for a service. And whether it's, you know, trusting that the chiropractic adjustment that you did in two or three minutes is enough to be paid for, or sitting with someone in a dark room, seemingly not doing anything because you're just holding a part of the body for a long time, they often feel unworthy of, of being paid for that service. So instead of seeing it as the actual magical thing that it is that they're able to facilitate with their clients, they question, is this good enough? Did I do a good enough job?

Etienne Peirsman:
Of course it does. You know, and it all depends on their own experiences. Yeah. I am a hundred percent sure, and I've seen it so often, we just save lives without people knowing it. Yeah. there is so much stuff that, that, that happens without actually doing something. But one of the most important things is not just sitting in silence in a dark room. That's just the beginning part. At a certain moment, the client comes into contact with their emotion, with unsolved mental stuff, whatever it is that you could call trauma. They connect with it. It's unavoidable because that deep space, that healing space pushes what is in the way of healing to the surface. So the client starts to become restless in a certain way. And then it's the practitioner's job, my job, another person's job to start asking questions about that. What is happening?

Etienne Peirsman:
Yeah. And so on and so on. So we go then into basically, yeah. Solving whatever is happening. You could say it's like psychology, but while you are not in your mind, when you're sitting in front of a psychologist, you talk, but as the mind talking, yes, you are touched at the same time. It's the body talking, yet the organs are voicing whatever they need to tell you, the person. And of course, a liver has no voice, but the client has a voice. So we invite the client, can you lent your voice to your liver or to your heart? And then the heart starts talking. And these voices that come out, they're just a little different. You hear, it's not the mind talking, it's part of the body talking. So if you ask a client, how is your heart doing? They're gonna look up and give you a safe answer. But if you ask the client directly, if you ask the heart, what do you need to say to your person, oh, that's, that's real. You know? And that's also part of, of what we are doing.

Dr. Danielle:
Yeah. Yeah. Etienne, I have done over 250 podcast episodes since 2015. Actually, it's been closer to 300 now. Oh. This has been one of my absolute favorite conversations in the last eight years on this podcast. I think that there's just so much that I can say, and I know you, you also have a lot more to share with people as well. But in the interest of time, we'll wrap it up. If someone is interested in connecting with you, learning more about what you do and your services, where is the best place for them to go or to find you?

Etienne Peirsman:
Well, we have a special website where they can come to our website actually, and it's craniorocks.com, rocks, like in rock and roll, craniorocks.com. And then they're guided, you know, into our website and what it is we are doing. And everybody's welcome to yeah, to look and look me up.

Dr. Danielle:
So amazing. I don't know how someone from your team found my podcast, but I'm really glad that they did because this was an episode that I'll refer back to many times over the next few years. So thank you so much.

Etienne Peirsman:
All right. If you need my voice again, just connect to us, craniorocks.com.

Dr. Danielle:
Wonderful.

Dr. Danielle:
Hey, thanks so much for joining me for today's episode. If you love this podcast, and be sure to join our free community, the Health and Wellness Practitioners Group over on Facebook, where you can continue the discussion and get to know other people in the community as well. We're a group of chiropractors, natural paths, acupuncturists, midwives, doulas, massage therapists, mental health therapists, counselors, nutritionists, and a list goes on. So come join us, get to know other people, build some personal and professional relationships. You can find the group by heading to DrDaniellAngela.com/community and request to join the group. I will see you inside from there.