Belgium, Czech Republic, Nepal, Portugal: Suzanne Vanden Schrieck, Cranial Sacral Therapist [Ep 35]

My guest in this episode is Belgian, Suzanne Vanden Schrieck. I met Suzanne the summer of 2015 at a social gathering of international women in Lisbon and I was curious to learn that she’d trained as an osteopath in Belgium, ultimately practicing cranial sacral therapy. Around the time of her 30th birthday, she relocated to Portugal from Kathmandu in Nepal, where she’d been volunteering as a cranial sacral therapist, working with traumatized exploited women, orphaned street children, and young performers with Circus Kathmandu. Prior to Nepal, Suzanne and her Dutch boyfriend were living in the Czech Republic, very close to the Polish border. However, there she had trouble attracting clients because Suzanne was practicing an unfamiliar therapy that people were not open to receiving from a foreigner. Now, after eight years living in Portugal, she has a thriving private practice treating both internationals and Portuguese, and for Suzanne, the logistics of setting up her business was a relatively bureaucratic-free and simple exercise.