My hairdresser brings me to an isolated room. On the sparsely decorated walls, a framed drawing of the head meridians and a yin-yang symbol representing the Chinese body clock, in which different organs are claimed to be at their peak activity at different times of the day.
He tells me that this little room, much quieter than the rest of the salon, is used by a hairdresser who now offers 鈥渆nergetic haircuts.鈥� I wonder if he means someone with manic energy who just needs to dance while they cut your hair. He tells me that, no, this is a new service that requires training in France. And it costs a pretty penny to receive.
Hairdressers in France are聽, it seems. Their industry is not growing as fast as it used to; more and more clients want at-home services; and two-thirds of hairdressers are exhausted. The pandemic didn鈥檛 help. Thus, one Frenchwoman figured out a new way forward: transforming the lowly hairdresser into an alternative medicine practitioner.
And it may be coming to a salon near you.
Much like bookstores that now sell bathrobes and interior decorations, hair salons have expanded their services, dipping a pedicured toe into the rich waters of wellness. An online search for 鈥渆nergetic haircut鈥� reveals a number of salons offering some version of this relatively new creation. One of them聽聽to use 鈥渢he power of energy healing, adaptogens, aromatherapy, and visuals.鈥�
You can find articles about聽聽and hairdressers who use specific essential oils in their shampoo聽. One hairdresser uses a razor to vibrate the hair and聽, 鈥渞eaching up to memories from seven generations on both your mother and father sides.鈥� We鈥檙e now doing past-life regressions while a professional holds a blade to your scalp.
But all of these methods are pastiches of the original energetic haircut, much like the imitation purses you can buy on the streets of New York City.聽
If you really want to know about energetic haircuts, we need to talk about Jill Andrieu.
Once an ambassador for L鈥橭r茅al International and an artistic director for Wella France, Andrieu states in聽聽that she was thirsty for more. She left France to learn about cognitive psychology and to discover the link between hair and emotions. I鈥檓 not sure where she went to train in psychology, but she did not come back with a license to practice it. Instead, she returned to France and created 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测.
This practice, with a spelling that embraces both French and English, should not be confused with the Trichotherapy line of products by Philip Kingsley, nor with trichologists, who are non-medical professionals who study diseases of the hair and scalp. Trichoth茅rapy is instead a 鈥渞evolutionary trend,鈥� Andrieu claims on聽, in the world of 鈥渋ntegrative hairstyling.鈥� That鈥檚 right. We鈥檝e had聽integrative medicine, which fuses conventional medicine with esoteric practices that contradict human biology; now, we have integrative hairstyling, where a haircut becomes a wellness intervention.
The 90-minute session of 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 is divided into three steps. First, a head massage meant to tap into craniosacral therapy. Then, a haircut with a Japanese dagger known as a聽迟补苍迟艒, once used by samurais. (With the recent success of the聽厂丑艒驳耻苍听television show, we are experiencing perfect marketing synergy.) Finally, a razor is used to close the scales on the hair. No shampoo, no scissors; but your cut hair is offered to you in an envelope for you to process in a ritual of your choice.
Trichoth茅rapy is the perfect example of a CAM buffet. 鈥淐AM鈥� stands for complementary and alternative medicine, a suite of healing philosophies that all claim to have figured out the one true cause of all diseases. In chiropractic, it is traditionally the alleged chiropractic subluxation in the spine preventing the flow of divine energy. In acupuncture, it is the blockage of qi. In Reiki, it鈥檚 a lack of healing energy. Despite the fact that each system promises a cure-all and is independent from the next practice, people have been mixing them up like they are picking food at a buffet: some chakras over here, a bit of dry-needling there, and a side of craniosacral therapy. Trichoth茅rapy bundles up philosophies, interventions, and beliefs and dispenses them all sequentially.
We鈥檝e got the meridians of acupuncture, which have never been shown to exist and were probably imagined as a聽reflection of the rivers聽of the natural world; the craniosacral therapy, which claims our cerebrospinal fluid pulses at a specific frequency even though its practitioners聽can鈥檛 even agree聽on this pulse; the desecration of physics鈥� idea of聽vibrations聽to explain ill health; the exoticism of the samurai blade; the mention of detox so prevalent in wellness circles; and of course the crown jewel of alternative medicine: the constant use of the word聽鈥渆苍别谤驳测.鈥�
Trichoth茅rapy is said to 鈥渞elease hair toxins,鈥� to 鈥渟timulate the cranial meridians,鈥� to 鈥渆nergize vital energy,鈥� and of course to restore shine and volume to your hair! The聽迟补苍迟艒聽is used because, we are told, scissors don鈥檛 vibrate. The Japanese blade does, apparently, and that healing vibration (why is it healing? we are never told) is transmitted from the cuticle of the hair to its bulb, resonating in the cranium, shaking our cerebrospinal fluid, which transmits this vibration to our entire body. At this point, we might as well throw in astrology for good measure, and sure enough, one practitioner tells his prospective clients to privilege聽聽for 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测: the full moon or maybe聽, which is the point where the moon is furthest to our planet and which came about when an astrologer claimed to have discovered a second moon around the Earth about a century ago.
I sent Jill Andrieu鈥檚 academy a few questions. They mention that the first step of a 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 session is equivalent to two hours of sleep. How do they know this? How was it measured? They also claim the intervention alleviates eye stress and tensions in the jaw. Again, where are the studies? And the claim that the聽迟补苍迟艒聽vibrates and that it spreads to the rest of the body, how do we know this? I have yet to receive an answer, a week and a half later.
Is there any truth behind any of the claims made by 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测, you may wonder? Hair can indeed contain molecules that are found in the blood, and so a contaminant that was picked up from the environment and ends up circulating in the blood can be found in your hair. Hair thus has the possibility to act as a biomonitor, meaning that a sample of it can in theory tell us things that are happening inside the body. A聽聽published in 1966, for example, showed that you could measure zinc deficiency by testing the hair, and giving zinc supplements to these people would increase the presence of zinc in their hair.聽
But hair analysis in general is聽. For example, the concentration measured in the hair is not necessarily a reflection of its concentration in the blood. Hair analysis has specific applications, such as in forensic toxicology, but the kinds of vague toxins said to be shed through the hair during a 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 session are not based in facts: they are the same ill-defined bugaboos that are blamed on modern living and are seen as one of many true causes of all ills. Unless we鈥檝e been poisoned, we don鈥檛 need to detoxify, and we certainly can鈥檛 detox by getting our hair cut.
Women鈥檚 magazines in France are covering this relatively new technique credulously the way every wellness practice is treated by reporters: as either fashion, human interest, or as a new business opportunity primed to shake up the economy. Its claims are rarely scrutinized through a scientific lens; instead, we are meant to be in awe of a trailblazer simply聽颈苍苍辞惫补迟颈苍驳.听And given the ways in which women are stressed out and are typically treated by the medical establishment, we will never run out of wellness interventions that promise them calm, beauty, and control.
So what if women want to pay a premium to their hairdresser to have their hair cut with an ancient Japanese knife? The dark side of 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 is right there in the second half of that name: therapy. I don鈥檛 want to downplay the psychological role played by hairdressers and barbers. They often act as confidantes and sounding boards. In the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black barbershops became the focus of public health efforts: their tight link with the community at large perfectly placed them to address vaccine hesitancy in their neighbourhoods. But they are not licensed therapists.
Multiple write-ups of 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 describe what is little more than cold reading on the part of its trained hairdressers: when the聽迟补苍迟艒聽blade experiences resistance at the front right side of the head, one journalist is told by her hairdresser that this area聽. The right side is masculine, the left is feminine, and where the blade doesn鈥檛 flow well reveals trauma.
Do we want hairdressers to no longer simply listen to whatever trauma their client wants to bring up, but to essentially diagnose them with traumas based on pseudoscience?
People often complain that psychotherapy is expensive. Trichoth茅rapy sessions are not cheap. I have seen prices online that vary from CAD 150 to 621 depending on the location. (Trichoth茅rapy, for now, is聽聽to France, London, Montreal, and a few islands.) And all those exhausted hairdressers looking to unleash their creativity and become hair healers, how much do聽they聽have to pay to get trained in this? For a聽, the bill comes up to EUR 1,500 (CAD 2,250). But of course, the in-person workshops that take place in Paris over the course of six weekends are best, with an eye-watering price of EUR 3,990 (nearly CAD 6,000). And that鈥檚 excluding the cost of going to France and the聽迟补苍迟艒聽and razor kit, which you can purchase for EUR 350 (CAD 525).
If you suffer from work exhaustion, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder and were tempted to pay for 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 either as a client in need of a haircut or as a hairdresser, you would do well to spend the money instead on a psychotherapist. Because from a scientific perspective, 迟谤颈肠丑辞迟丑茅谤补辫测 simply doesn鈥檛 make the cut.
Take-home message:
- Trichoth茅rapy, also known as energetic haircuts, is a made-up technique that claims that having your hair cut with a Japanese blade once used by samurais will release toxins and trauma
- It is an attempt to turn hairdressers into alternative health practitioners
- None of its claims are based in good science
