magical. And so that was my first encounter with cranial sacral therapy. And it was literally life changing because of that treatment, I decided to become craniosacral therapist myself.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 04:34
Well, it’s a very compelling experience. It speaks for itself, the huge transformation. So, can you explain a little bit more what that condition is? Because I think it’s actually a lot of people have it and it’s misdiagnosed or misunderstood. What were you experiencing before what were the symptoms and tie it in afterwards, what does the vagal nerve do that could, by releasing it have massive changes like that?
Nawale Ayar 05:11
I love that you asked about this, because it’s not a condition that a lot of people talk about, and or are aware of, and you know, you can just faint in the morning or once in your life, and you get on with your life without even paying attention to it. But to some people, it can happen too many times in their lifetime, the reasons aren’t really perfectly documented. In my case, because I had to become the investigator of my own crime scene. So, I discovered that things like gluten and dairy would precipitate an episode. And so, since I quit, that, it became a little less frequent. And then cranial sacral therapy with the vagus nerve work, sort of put a stop to that. But in a few words, everybody’s different, of course, but I’ll just explain my situation. It usually happens early in the morning, it’s not something that would happen to me randomly during the day, or in the middle of the night. So, it’s when my blood pressure is really, really low. And I think I’m also it’s also mixed with a bit of dehydration. And what happened is that I used to feel really weak and really feeling really hot, and really cold at the same time, with a sad feeling of impending doom. And then you could, I could hardly walk, and if I’m standing, I have to lay down, but my vagus nerve anyway, would tell my nervous system, that it’s time for me to be in a horizontal position to keep me alive. And to have my blood, you know, floating from my toes to my head, you know, at the same level, so I would have to sort of…I’m one of the lucky ones who have enough time to sit down and lay down on the floor, I don’t, I use not to collapse. And so, yes, so and these are all the steps before completely losing conscious and technically fainting. In my case, which is, I don’t know, if it’s positive or negative, it just is what it is. I don’t fully lose conscious, I used to just be completely conscious of everything that was happening. And so, it’s, it’s an extreme weakness, something that you cannot control. And unfortunately, it has an effect on the way you breathe as well. That’s not something you entirely control, it’s like something else is taken care of the way it wants you to breathe slowly or fast or not. And in my case, it felt like hours, and it can be a few seconds, a few minutes. And yeah, you just can’t do anything anymore until it passes.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 08:11
Because like the vagus nerve innervates also the diaphragm, the lungs, it’s the longest nerve. And, also people who, like it’s from what I’ve understood, I’m not a specialist in it, I just by doing some trauma work, I know that it’s often triggered, and if it’s trapped in any way can have real impacts in exaggerating the sympathetic response and less calming down…
Nawale Ayar 08:45
Absolutely.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 08:45
…that you would have, you know, or in your case, it was like you’re in, it’s not really parasympathetic mode, you’re just you’re in, like in a suppressed stage, right? You’re not functioning with a normal balance of the autonomic nervous system, because it is not firing how it should, right?
Nawale Ayar 09:08
Absolutely. What happened is sort of a little bit of a complex in between the sympathetic, the fight or flight system that usually people know it this way, and the parasympathetic, the rest and digest, and it feels like an alarm is set on inside the body. And then to respond to that the parasympathetic wants to calm down things really, really quickly. But both of them they clash, because it’s like, trying to go really fast with your car and pressing the brakes at the same time. So, the only solution for the body is, you know, to collapse and to lay down on the floor. It’s too extreme. It’s too much and it happens in the blink of an eye. So, this is what happens in those situations.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 09:58
Very interesting. Yeah. So well, why don’t we go? I mean, maybe what is the thing? Because you actually studied the vagus nerve for an entire year? What is…what are you most surprised at or amazed at the power of the vagus nerve? What is that?
Nawale Ayar 10:18
Yes, the apart from the fact that yes, it is the longest it’s called the vagabond. And it goes, you know, from the top of the head until you know, your abdominal region. I’m really surprised that not everybody is somehow certified, you know, in the health field, in this nerve, because it’s so important. What fascinates me is the mood change how somebody could think that they are depressed for the rest of their life and some vagus nerve manipulation, could change their mood to happiness, and everything would be lifted off, lifted off really quickly. This is shockingly impressive to me. These are the things that the vagus nerve can do. And on a physical, more physical and psychological level, I’ve experienced it myself from feeling sluggish, and you know, lacking energy to feeling like you can conquer the world then want to run a marathon the next day. It is this powerful.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 11:30
So, when you do cranial sacral, and because I know in osteopathy, but actually when I went to France, because I was teaching Bowen therapy there to osteopaths, there was a wide spectrum of osteopath that only use the cranial others use the entire body. And so, I’m just wondering if you could speak a little bit to what I think cranial sacral is your, main skill, right? So maybe if you could explain to how, it works a little bit what, what it’s like how it differs from your understanding of osteopathy and, and I’ll chip in with Bowen as well. So, people can easily you know, because they’re all kind of physical, and they all have massive other impact. And they’re a little different, right.
Nawale Ayar 12:22
I’ve actually heard of Bowen therapy a few years back, and I would actually love to know a little more. So that’s really interesting that we meeting today about both our fields. So just to clarify cranial sacral therapy, and I’m going to explain a little bit more about it stems from osteopathy. However, that does not make me an osteopath. I am not I was trained by one for one year at the College of cranial sacral therapy and cranial sacral therapist, but I’m not although that interesting. I’m not an osteopath. So cranial sacral, sacral therapy is a portmanteau term cranial is for the cranium, the skull sacral, the sacrum, the tailbone. So, your cranial sacral system is whatever happens between these two poles. And this therapy was invented by the father of osteopathy and his student back in the late 1800s. And so, they were like a lot of osteopath, fascinated by the craniums, and the bones of the skull. And so, they noticed that there was some grooves around the edges of the bones where they would articulate or touch each other. And so, they were wondering how come these grooves would be there. And so, after many experiments, then understood that there is another rhythm in the body that helps these bones move. So, it’s another rhythm. Aside from your cardiac rhythm or the circadian rhythm, there is another rhythm that is like a breath, it has an expansion and contraction, it’s also called the primary…
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 14:11
Or secondary story, or something like that.
Nawale Ayar 14:17
Something along those lines. And so, this is in every living thing, it’s in everybody. And so, when you are when you engage with that rhythm on a very subtle level, that’s why cranial sacral therapy is so gentle, it’s hands on, light touch, and it’s the touch should be the weight of a butterfly. So, it’s really gentle, really light. So, when you engage with that rhythm, you engage with the person’s health on a very subtle level. If you wanted to engage with this person’s muscle, you would just grab their muscle and so to be able to engage with the healing abilities that are natural to the body, you would have to engage thanks to cranial sacral therapy at that subtle and fundamental level. So, we are trained to put our hand just very gently on the person’s body. And when we feel that rhythm, we can feel that it’s vitality, we it’s like a diagnosis, it gives us a diagnosis about this person’s health, but it’s holistic. So, it’s about this person’s entire life and experiences and injuries and traumas and shocks and emotional blocks, from the day they were born to the day they came to see you for a treatment. So, when we engage with those forces with those rhythmic motions inside the body, we can see where they are blocked, where, you know, they’re weaker, what have what’s happening inside the system, and just by the fact of engaging the body, you know, starts to heal itself by itself through its own natural power.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 16:03
So, I mean, from what I’ve received some treatments, so I have, I’ve experienced it. And it’s definitely very subtle, I would say even more subtle than the osteopathic work I’ve had, and more subtle than Bowen therapy. So, it’s, I think, as gentle, but we work on different body parts. In other words, with cranial sacral, I mean, the work was done mostly in my mouth. And also, to it was to put my sphenoid back in, in balance, because apparently, my peal gland was being crammed. So, you know, I can’t tell, but they seem to be able to know this. And, and it was, it was very interesting experience. And I could really feel like Whoa, my world was really, I could, I could tell that there is an energy that I’m aware of, but that I don’t have easy access to, you know, so it was a very interesting experience. And that was quite a few years back, maybe 20 years back. So, but I remembered as a significant one. But I do think, well, let me go back to with Bowen and we do it, we’re super gentle, we work with the fascia. And we go, you know, counter the layout of the muscle, so it’s sort of on an angle to, to the way muscles generally lay in the body. So, it’s like a cross fiber manipulation. We also have the same fundamental understanding or belief, that, well, belief, practice, I guess that we noticed that when we give the body information, it knows how to heal. So, we’re just giving the information and allowing the body to rectify and do what it needs to do. But we do touch most of the body. And I think when we look at the way your experience was your first one that is a very common, you know, we have patients they get off a table going. I’m supposed to pay for this, you know. I think we share, we share the same disbelief, but at the same time, because the body is so amazing. You give it what it needs. And then people have unbelievable as it’s unbelievable, because in our so called modern day pharmaceutically driven society, there’s no expectation to heal, right.
Commercial Break 19:06
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Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 20:08
Right? We’re just managing symptoms and drugging more and more and, you know, habituating ourselves to, you know, to management, I think it’s what it is, you know, which obviously, these therapies are completely different.
Nawale Ayar 20:25
You turn away from the natural, very powerful healing abilities that our body has, and was born with. Yeah, too, to just comment, a couple of things on what you just said, that is really fascinating. The fact that he has people don’t really think this is going to be life changing. And yes, they surprised that they would have to pay for this, but it takes them sometimes a week or two or three, to realize, oh, everything has changed. And the only thing that was different in my life was that treatment, right? So, and also, because this is a holistic approach, it can it works on the entire body. Somebody, I’m just going to give a very basic example, somebody can come and see you for an elbow pain, and then suddenly, they don’t have any digestive issues after the treatment, and they will never connect the dots that this was thanks to that holistic, natural approach. This is the first thing I wanted to add. And the second thing is that I was really lucky to be trained in the culture of cranial sacral therapy with Thomas Attlee himself, I’m really, really lucky that me and him are in the same lifetime. Because his approach is actually specifically called cranial sacral integration. And what he does, I’m going to talk about it really roughly is that there, technically two sort of schools in cranial sacral therapy, the biodynamic, which is the, the one that I do, and we explained, and then the biomechanical, which is more structural, and it sounds a little more words, you just explain about your therapy.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 22:13
Well, actually, yeah, you know, I’m going to stop you right here because I, so the therapy, Bowen therapy was named after a fellow called Tom Bowen from Australia. And it was very mechanical, he was not, he was not, but no one understood what he was doing. People who observed him, which were mostly chiropractors, he had one osteopath. And he had one massage therapist. And they, it’s almost like the lenses the perception, which they had, on his work, made it seem like it was mechanical. And so, when I opened up my school, and so I was trained in the mechanical, but my experience was not mechanical. And because of my background as a naturopathic physician, and also as a, like, working with trauma, and I went, okay, whoa, this is a deep interim great of work. So, then I started creating the consciousness of understanding the integration that actually takes place. So now when students come to learn this, they’re looking sure at the body, but they’re understanding that the fascia holds our subconscious. And all of this comes out to manifest in a certain order. And so, they’re becoming very attuned to a deeper healing than when you looking at the world mechanically. And so, I feel like there’s actually a separation which I felt necessary. Because I think for me, the other side, it’s just, it’s my experience in life, you know, there’s nothing wrong. You can’t remove the lenses from which you see and observe the world and pretend that you don’t see what you see.
Nawale Ayar 22:13
Absolutely. Was it? Was it Andrew Steele, who said that the soul of man seems to dwell in the fascia?
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 24:30
Probably, I should have that in my book. That’s a great quote.
Nawale Ayar 24:35
It’s really good one yes. Because we were we were trained in the fascia this much so we, we knew how important it was. And so what I do as well is this fascia and winding which would be a little less light, then, you know, the cranial sacral work that I just described, then, you know, we would, you know, either see some spontaneous or help trigger stimulate some fascia windy and you know, people would have these memories and suddenly the body starts to move all by itself. And it’s all magical and beautiful and impressive. In those cases, they actually realize something did happen during the treatment.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 25:19
Yeah, and I think it’s the context to you know, how, I don’t know if you find that because I mean, the podcast is about discussions on health and healing, and, you know, our everyday realities, but I think people come in how they are. And as long as you resonate, and you become a very good facilitator, I think you can see where they go where they want. And so, I know, you know, I’m not going to be sexist here. But, you know, a lot of guys, they just like, I’m in pain, get me out of pain, and that’s it. But you have other people, and you have other guys, of course, that are, you know, are seeing the world quite differently. And they want, you know that there’s, there’s trauma, there’s more, they didn’t just get a frozen shoulder for no reason. There’s more going on, or they’re clenching because there’s stuff going on. They’re not, it’s not just, it’s not only a physical manifestation, right? And so, yeah, to those people, it’s like, connecting the two for them allows, in my experience, you know, it’s like, you’re, you’re allowing them to liberate something larger, if you can be the, what’s the word in English? Like the, if you can hold the space?
Nawale Ayar 26:48
Absolutely
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 26:49
That’s all it is, if you can hold the space.
Nawale Ayar 26:53
Only in space, can we heal only in this safe space. I fully 100% agree with you. And of course, with these natural therapies, it’s quite challenging to see any conversion in people’s mind. It’s, the beauty of humanity, you know, it takes them the time they need to. And to give you an example, this is something that obviously I saw in, in some clients, because they want to be cured, then in there, you know, they made the effort to come, you know, to something that they absolutely don’t believe in. So, you know, the, actually, the results should be spectacular. And it takes more than a session, sometimes magical things like for me, it could happen on the first session, but sometimes it just, you know, takes a little longer, because we’re all different, we have all the different history. And on a professional level, I was looking to rent a space in, in a different clinic in a couple of different clinics recently. And I had a chat with someone who may be a physiotherapist, I don’t really remember, but they wanted to explain what they wanted me to explain to them what cranial sacral therapy was, and also, so I could feel that they didn’t believe in it. 100%, but they wanted me to give them numbers, how many treatments for such and such condition. So, this is not something that we can put a number on. And I think whether it’s the clients or even some professionals in the health field, it’s really still, you know, early stages for people to believe in a different way of healing, that is just different from a number of fields, a number of sessions, results, you know, black and white realities.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 29:04
Being highly exemplified right now, as well, you know, it’s like, right, yeah, we’re really in, in this, you know, black and white, the ugliest faces of that paradigm are showing up now, you know, and, and everyone’s to be treated the same and everyone’s immune system has to go through this no matter what their own immune system does. And no matter even the research that shows you know that if our immune system is good, then and then and, and possibly that we’ve had, you know, whatever these things we can’t discuss that we’re much more likely to even get sick. So again, it’s kind of like the black and white, put it all together and this is how we need to be and we’re a bunch of idiots do this or whatever, you know, and, and I think, you know, we have to take personal responsibility as practitioners for our attitudes that keep reflecting that paradigm. You know, and I’m thinking like the, you know, in the physiotherapist in general, I mean, there’s nothing wrong at all the science, there’s nothing wrong with data. But of course not, you know, and you can retro actively go, Huh? Well, that person also had a hip problem, which also got better and also had a TMJ problem, it also got better. So, but the thing is, that’s not how people come in to heal. They…a true healing exposes everything that needs to heal.
Nawale Ayar 30:47
It’s holistic.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 30:48
And it’s holistic. There is no way of, you know, you don’t come in with a laundry list. I mean, some people have things that are wrong. But the thing is, if you know, we heal, and it’s such an extra ordinary and beautiful way. That it yeah. Can it be measured? Yes, I suppose it can be. But it’s not our primary focus. And I would say the truth is, most people, they just want to get better.
Nawale Ayar 31:18
Absolutely. Exactly. 200%. That’s all no matter how. And no matter how long it takes, or what it takes, as long as they get better, this is the most beautiful end result. And yes, it is absolutely impossible to give a number to put a number on humans, no matter what the reason. And the example of I don’t know, a sciatica issue on a 14 years old is not going to take the same number of session. And then someone who’s 85 years old, everyone is different. Everyone has a different history of injuries and emotional situations, you know, that we bring along all of us. And so yes, I understand how this is showing during the situation that we are experiencing at the moment. And as you know, I’m from France, and I live in DC. So, I have a plethora observations possible colorful observations.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 32:34
I wanted to say here, because most people don’t know this, right? What’s happening in BC, which is so positive. And this is, again, whether you are the word we can’t say, or the un… the word we can’t really talk about is, there’s an all a real parallel medical system that is based on healing that is starting, and it’s pockets all over BC now, were nurses that are sick and tired of, you know, having gone through already, the pandemic, and now even though they have immunity, or being forced to do things that scientifically makes no sense, you know, that it’s not a stupid positioning, it just doesn’t hold water. And, you know, there’s people who don’t want to because they don’t want to, and then there’s people who can’t, and there’s, the whole point is we’re humans, we have all our different reasons. And some people have looked at it and share the opinion with some of the leading experts that say that it’s possibly dangerous. So, there’s a real large group of people that, you know, we’re not just one and we don’t all see the universe the same way. We don’t all have that experience. But what this group of people are doing, they’re joining with all kinds of healers of different modalities, and giving anyone who is interested, an alternate system because as this black and white system is happening, people who have not done their thing or not complied to mandates and mandates are not law, right. They’re just mandates. They become law when you comply. Because that’s an agreement that you’re saying yes, I will agree with the system. But if you don’t agree they’re not they’re not law yet they’re just mandates, and it gives people who are not being treated properly because of their choice. And you know, I know lots of people who did it and will not give the information to others, whether they did it or they didn’t on principle, that it’s our private choice, you know, and I really honor all of those people, it doesn’t matter, your personal choice, that’s the whole point. But what these clinics are doing is they’re attracting people who believe in medical ethics who believe in, you know, having the privacy of one’s own life kept to ourselves. So, I’m seeing, like, I’m seeing the positive side of what is truly a deeply corrupted medical system. You know, which is, yeah, that’s enough for my lecture.
Nawale Ayar 35:47
You know, when, when all of this started, I had a feeling that somehow, it’s gonna shed light on alternative, you know, healing modalities. Isn’t it strange when, you know, everything is about you know, receiving a certain type of medical approaches at the moment, and it’s absolutely universal? And at the same time, I was feeling, you know, everything happens for a reason.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 36:21
Yes.
Nawale Ayar 36:21
And, and yes, it is actually shedding light on complementary health approaches, you know, because we can work hand in hand absolutely. We always have. And so, in the darkest of the darkest, there is always some beautiful light shining through.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*) 36:43
I think we’re gonna end right here. Thank you for those beautiful last words and thank you very much for being on the show.
Nawale Ayar 36:52
Thank you for having me.
Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND (retired*)
Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to DrManonBolliger.com.
