Dr. Doreste: Hi, this is Dr. Doreste with the Cranial Release Technique®. I’m here with my good friend Dr. Louis Angulo, a chiropractor from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Louis, good afternoon.
Dr. Angulo: Good afternoon, Bill. How’s everything?
Dr. Doreste: All is well. Great to see you. Great to see you too. Too bad you’re not in Florida, but that’s a whole other discussion. Maybe we’ll talk about that.
Dr. Angulo: Still here, it’s getting cool now, right? Starting to fall, it’s in the air.
Dr. Doreste: Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re waiting for it here. We’re going to be 94 today.
Dr. Angulo: Wow, wow, no. We’re a nice cool 65 right now.
Dr. Doreste: Nice, alright, it’s coming, they say it’s coming by Halloween, so we’ll see what happens. Anyway.
Dr. Angulo: Okay.
Dr. Doreste: So Louis, we met a while ago, and then we met also during some cranial work many years ago. You were with me from the very beginning, really.
Dr. Angulo: Yes.
Dr. Doreste: And then you went on for other training. I know you do ART, Active Release Technique, I guess, and correct me if I’m wrong, I guess most of your practice is geared more towards athletes and musculoskeletal issues for the most part?
Dr. Angulo: Yes, let’s call it about 85% of my practice is that.
Dr. Doreste: Right. And you yourself, you’re an athlete. You’re always working out, you’re running, you’re biking, you’re doing triathlons, you’re doing everything.
Dr. Angulo: Yes, doing my good old Spartan races.
Dr. Doreste: Spartan races, good, good. So, I like to interview people for a few reasons. One, so that practitioners understand why is it that if someone comes in with a back issue, and maybe we’ll talk about one of the first testimonials on my YouTube channel, one of the first testimonials from anybody was from you, if you remember, way back when, when you injured your back. I think you were doing some kind of heavy chain exercise, pushing or pulling something. And you came in sort of antalgic, bent over. Instead of adjusting your spine, I went to your head, and you kind of weren’t really connecting the dots in your head back then. Do you recall that story?
Dr. Angulo: Yes. Yes.
Dr. Doreste: From what you remember, do you mind sharing that?
Dr. Angulo: Yeah, so I was doing this strongman type of workout. It was 30 minutes of just high-intensity type of work uh yeah it was either picking up the spear ball and placing it on top of a shelf or was pulling the the heavy chains and I tweaked my back and basically, I strained it.
I went to you, as always, to get adjusted. But then you were doing this newer technique, and then you performed it, and then it didn’t make sense to me then, which makes total sense to me now. But it really helped out, phenomenally.
Dr. Doreste: Then if I recall, from that testimonial, a day or two later, you went out to cut the grass. It was springtime, and normally, you’d have almost like a gas mask on because of allergies, right?
Dr. Angulo: Oh, my God, you’re bringing back all these great memories.
Dr. Doreste: And I think you told me that since the cranial release, you didn’t need, you didn’t have an allergic reaction to the pollen or the grass.
Dr. Angulo: Yeah, that was really fascinating to me because the physiological improvement that the cranial release did for me was just unbelievable. And that’s when I believe I really wanted to learn more about it and learn from you.
Dr. Doreste: If I recall, the third part of the story was the exertional asthma went away.
Dr. Angulo: Yes, yes.
Dr. Doreste: I’m going back on memory lane. That’s got to be 20 years.
Dr. Angulo: Oh, my God. Yeah, good memory, Bill.
Dr. Doreste: Thank God I get these cranial releases. Thankful my wife’s a practitioner, so I get work done, right?
Dr. Angulo: It’s showing me I need to find somebody.
Dr. Doreste: That’s it. That’s it. So now you’re involved in a whole new project. You’re in practice, you’re in private practice, but you’re also sort of back in school, is that right?
Dr. Angulo: Yes, I am.
Dr. Doreste: And what’s that all about?
Dr. Angulo: Well, I decided because of COVID, it kind of put a stop on my ability to go out and work. So I decided to uh, uh, do something that I kind of enjoy. So, I’m earning my master’s in anatomy and physiology. I figured that I always have a backup plan. Then, if anything, God forbid, would happen again, like what happened with the pandemic, I can continue working, earning a buck or two. And also, I just enjoy it. I just enjoy learning and teaching.
Dr. Doreste: I mean, I remember from when we first met, you were always very inquisitive and always wanted to know and dive a little deeper.
Dr. Angulo: Yes.
Dr. Doreste: So with the program you’re in now, are you going much deeper than we did in chiropractic school?
Dr. Angulo: Uh, not really. We’re pretty much, um, because what I’m learning now is to teach undergraduates. So it’s up to a level. We learn a little bit more in-depth. It’s a refresher course.
Dr. Doreste: Got it, got it. So one of the things I always sort of remind the students about is the cranial connection. I mean, just from our little story, how is it that, you know, I explained to them, how is it that the cranium, and a distorted cranium, someone comes in with a back problem, you do this cranial release thing, and they’d say, “Gee, my back is feeling better,” or, “I’m not getting the allergies that I used to have,” or, “I’m breathing better when I exert myself,” which doesn’t make any sense unless you really understand the anatomy and the physiology and the connections between just optimizing central nervous system function, which then optimizes function throughout the body.
And then we have the other aspects, we have the dura, we have the fascia, we have the Epineurium. We have all these other mechanical connections that, because of a distorted cranium, probably from the birth process and from all the things we’ve been through, that, you know, when you put a patient on the table, I was just on the… I just did an interview with another practitioner, Chris Akey. I don’t know if you know Chris, but it’s the same story.
You know, the patient will say, “Well, I have this problem,” and that, we’ll write it down, and then we’ll do the cranial release. And then after a few visits, they’ll come back and say, “Could what you do have anything to do with the fact that I’m sleeping better now, or that my digestion is better, or that my skin is clearing up?” And all these things that they never even told us about because they don’t think when they hear chiropractor, they don’t think sleep and skin and immune function and digestion and pulmonary.
So do you discuss any of this with your patients up front, or do you kind of… how… how do you educate people? Do you just kind of gently get into it and you drop little breadcrumbs one at a time, or do you kind of sit down and say, “This is… this can really affect everything.” How do you do it?
Dr. Angulo: I breadcrumb it. Because when people come in, they come in basically for physical ailments, right? And then when people are in pain, they really don’t pay too much attention to anything that you’re going to say. So as they’re progressively getting better, then I start explaining that, you know, pretty much chiropractic or even, you know, with the cranial release, on how it can start affecting the body in a physiological manner as well.
So, it’s always breadcrumbs because through experience, I’ve noticed that people, when they basically come in for their physical pain, they’re not really going to pay attention.
Dr. Doreste: So, right. I agree. I agree. When they come in and they can’t even move, they don’t want to have a three-hour lecture about how the brain works, and you know, that, “Can you help me, doc? How long’s it going to take? What’s it going to cost?” That’s kind of the bottom line.
Dr. Angulo: Yes.
Dr. Doreste: In addition to cranial release, I know you’ve done a lot over the years with Active Release Technique, correct? And I’m assuming you’re still using that?
Dr. Angulo: Yes, yes.
Dr. Doreste: How do you find the two? Do they work together well? Should they be done together? Should it be two separate… should it be two separate events? How does that work?
Dr. Angulo: I use it 90% of the time together, right? Uh, and um, I think they work beautifully together. As far as… So, for example…I do the cranial release first. And what that helps with the rest of the body is to relax the muscles, relax the fascia, I’m finding. And then that way, it enables me to perform the Active Release Technique at a much deeper level, and I really feel people are getting a much better outcome after combining both.
Because the whole premise…
Dr. Doreste: You and I just used the word fascia. Now, for people who don’t understand what fascia is, how would you describe what is fascia?
Dr. Angulo: Sure. Uh, fascia is a connective tissue that’s continuous from the head all the way down to the feet, toes. And, um, it envelops the muscles, the organs, the bones, everything in the body. And, um, the way I like to explain it is, imagine yourself covered in Saran Wrap, right? And, um, so your whole body, now you’re in Saran Wrap, and then one area, because of injury or some type of improper posture…”
Some part of the Saran wrap starts to crinkle up, gets tight. So then, uh, or I grab somebody’s clothes and I wrinkle that, and then they feel a pull in another part of the body. It shows how the fascia when it’s tight on one area of the body, it can affect pretty much the rest of the body.
Dr. Doreste: Right. So, and then the cranial release, in your experience, kind of releases or takes the tension out of the fascia, and then you go in with the active release. And for those who don’t know what active release is, in layman’s terms, what’s Active Release Technique?
Dr. Angulo: It’s a soft tissue therapy using the body movement of the patient right in order to directly get at a specific muscle from the way it pretty much moves.
Okay, so, and to help break up any type of scar tissue in order to relieve pain and improve on movements as well.
Dr. Doreste: Great. Anything else, if you were a practitioner out there, you’re a chiropractor, massage therapist, acupuncturist, physical therapist, physiatrist, trainer, someone that’s got his hands on people all day long every day, what’s your opinion about them investigating Cranial Release Technique®?
Dr. Angulo: I think it would really help these practitioners because, again, when I work on somebody and just use the Active Release Technique, you know, they get good results. But I noticed that when I actually use the cranial release along with the ART, their outcomes become better.
So what do I mean by outcomes? They recover faster from the injury that they came in with, and also, it seems like when I work on them, the recovery or the improvement lasts longer than if I was just to do the Active Release by itself.
Using both, I mean, it really does wonders on the body.
Dr. Doreste: Okay. So, I guess the takeaway is you do the cranial release first, the CRT, then you do the Active Release, the ART, and then you go to lunch and have a BLT, right? Is that it?
Dr. Angulo: Yep, yep. That’s pretty much it.
Dr. Doreste: I had to throw something in there.
Dr. Angulo: I know, with all these abbreviations, right?
Dr. Doreste: Right, right. Very good, very good. And again, so if you’re a practitioner, and you’re out there, or if you’re a patient, or if you’re a potential patient, go visit the website cranialrelease.com. If you’re anywhere in the New York City area, Louis, I mentioned you’re in the Upper East Side. Where exactly are you?
Dr. Angulo: Sorry. It’s the Upper West Side, West 72nd Street and Broadway.
Dr. Doreste: Okay and do you have a website?
Dr. Angulo: Yes it’s – https://manhattanbackpain.com/
Dr. Doreste: And Louis is on the website. If you are a patient, or you are a potential patient and you want to experience cranial release, combined with active release, Louis is your man. In Manhattan in the New York City area.
The website, of course, is cranialrelease.com. If you are a practitioner and you’d like to learn more about how to learn the Cranial Release Technique®, again, go to cranialrelease.com. There’s a button there that says Online Training, and you can learn everything there is to know about the Cranial Release Technique® in the comfort of your home or office.
And then if you’d like to come and join us for a live event, we’re doing a live event in December, and I’ll probably do some others next year as well. And that’s the Mastery Review. So, we’d love to have you there as well.
Louis, anything else you want to cover before we say adios?
Dr. Angulo: No, I think that’s pretty much it, Bill. Thank you so much for having me here.
Dr. Doreste: You’re welcome. Pleasure, pleasure. Thanks, everybody, thanks for watching. Thank you, Louis. I wish you all the best, and send some of that cool weather down south, please.
Dr. Angulo: Actually, I like your weather better.
Dr. Doreste: We could switch. I would, but my…Okay, everybody asked why am I in Florida? The simple reason why am I in Florida? Because my wife likes the warm weather, that’s why I’m in Florida. I’m a smart man.
Dr. Angulo: Me too, but… Oh, well. My wife only likes the cold, so there you go.
Dr. Doreste: Oh, there you go. Well, we’ll have another… About that, another time.
Dr. Angulo: All right. Yes, yes.
Dr. Doreste: Thank you, Louis. Thank you, everybody, for watching. Have a good day, everybody. Thank you. Take care.