Dhru Purohit Show - #219: Is The Secret to Optimal Health in Your Spine? with Dr. Jeremy Brook

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

Is The Secret to Optimal Health in Your Spine? | This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and InsideTracker. Most people don’t realize how many problems throughout the body are directly related to spinal health. Because our nerves transmit signals from the brain to every other part of the body, when these signals are disrupted due to a subluxation in the spine the effects can go far beyond back pain. These subluxations, or misalignments of the vertebrae, can affect everything from your blood pressure to your digestive system and more.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Dr. Jeremy Brook, a chiropractor, yogi, and movement specialist. Dr. Brook is the founder of The Life Center Chiropractic—a unique healing center that incorporates the disciplines of chiropractic, spinal corrective protocols, yoga, and other movement art forms to make sure the spine, body, and mind are aligned. He is also the founder of The Yoga of Chiropractic Adjusting Seminars, the newest addition to the chiropractic training movement, and the author of The Spinechecker’s Manifesto: Drug-free Secrets to Pain-Free Living, More Energy, Anti-Aging, and Better Sleep.  In this episode, we dive into:    -What is structural integrity and why is it one of the key pillars of Functional Medicine (6:03)  -How misalignments in the spine can show up in different areas of the body (13:43)  -The brain-spine connection (15:30)  -How chiropractic care helped resolve an injury Dr. Brook sustained while playing rugby in college (17:06)  -The benefits of combining yoga and chiropractic care (25:02)  -The misconception that you should only go to the chiropractor when something is wrong (41:54)  -How to create the optimal sleep environment (1:01:02)  -Dr. Brook’s pillow recommendation (1:03:46)  -Dr. Brook’s shoe recommendation (1:10:06)  -The Wise Progressions Movement Sequence (1:16:23) For more on Dr. Jeremy Brook you can follow him on Instagram @spinechecker, on Facebook @thelifecenterchiropractic, on YouTube @drjeremybrook, and through his website https://thelifecenterchiropractic.com/. Get his book The Spinechecker’s Manifesto: Drug-free Secrets to Pain-Free Living, More Energy, Anti-Aging, and Better Sleep, at https://thelifecenterchiropractic.com/book/.  Also mentioned in this episode: -Human Touch Zero Gravity Chair - https://www.humantouch.com/perfect-chairs/  -The Birch Mattress by Helix - https://birchliving.com/products/birch-natural-organic-mattress -Vivo Barefoot Shoes - https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/ -The Wise Progressions Course -   https://thelifecenterchiropractic.com/spinechecker-university/ -Spotify Spinechecker Playlist - https://open.spotify.com/user/drjeremybrook/playlist/4Z3IIXPeUNUYCgsY5tkIQH?si=c3njgJRoSbyw9fvn1wiB_Q This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and InsideTracker. Right now, BiOptimizers is offering my community a few special bundles, just head over to https://magbreakthrough.com/dhru, with code DHRU10.    Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 25% off. Just go to https://www.insidetracker.com/DHRU. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

misalignments of the spine put pressure on the nervous system and that can interfere with you expressing your full maximum innate potential. Hi everyone, Drew Prode here on today's episode. We have my very own chiropractor Dr. Jeremy Brooke talking to us about the importance of structural integrity. How your spine is shaped and how it curves or doesn't curve can be the root cause of a whole host of ailments and chronic issues and even diseases. It's a fascinating conversation. Tune in to learn more. So if I had to pick one supplement that's made the biggest difference

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That's Inside Tracker, I-N-S-I-D-E, Tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R-com, back-slash-D-R-R-U, D-H-R-U for your 25% off. Dr. Jeremy Brooks, welcome to, now actually we've gone through a name change. It's the Drew Perot-Poit podcast. It's an honor to have you here. Thank you very much. Honor to be here.

Let's give people a little bit of background. You have been my go-to in the world of chiropractic, but not just mine. You have been taking care of two loved ones of mine, my dear fiancé, Yasmin. Shout out to her. Shout out. And also my future mother-in-law.

And Nilu, Nilifar. And they all adore you, by the way, as do I. And we've been talking about wanting to do this podcast for a while because for a little setup for the folks that are watching and listening here, I feel like chiropractic has been such a huge part of my overall health. And I feel like a big reason I have that understanding is that in the world of functional medicine, which is what we mostly talk about on this podcast over here, interviewing different experts, one of the key seven pillars inside of functional medicine is structural integrity. And the other ones are assimilation, biotransformation and elimination, defense and repair,

communication, energy, and transport. But structural integrity is so foundational. And I feel like a great way to help people understand why this is one of the key pillars is to explain what this concept is of vertebral subluxiation. Close. Sorry, correct me. Vertibral subluxation. Subluxation.

Yeah. What is it? Tell us. Vertibral subluxation would be an entity, a condition in which two vertebrae have lost their proper motion. They've lost their alignment and has actually created a state of, fixation. And it's very layered and we can go into many different directions. But basically, we'd have to start off with a couple important concepts. First of all, that the body is incredibly intelligent

and doesn't do anything unless it's stressed. Right. So we have to have this type of stress upon the body that the body can adapt to that specific stress. Now, here's the deal. You have a stresser. Could be a good stress, could be a bad stress. If your body's able to adapt, all good. Maybe if it's a good stress, you actually get stronger. But if that stress is a negative stress, if it's a harmful stress, if it's a stress that your body can't adapt to, tension's going to develop. Now, if you don't have tools and resources to deal with that tension, what happens in the spine is that tension is going to manifest in any one of these like 26 movable bones, right? So now we have a situation where the body couldn't adapt to that stress.

And now we've got this restriction on a segmental level, on a bone level. That actually creates a nerve irritation. Because we have nerves running through all of these different vertebra inside of our body. Got the whole body is really like booby-trapped with these specialized type of receptors called mechanoreceptors, right? And they actually sense position and alignment. So if something shifts out of space and why would something again shift out of space, it's because it's been bombarded with some type of stresses that it couldn't adapt to. Tension kicks in, can't adapt to that tension, and now we show up with this vertebral subluxation. There could be cranial subluxations, meaning,

and I could have just given you the simple answer straight away where we have a misalignment, creating nerve pressure, and that's pretty much what a subluxation is. So we could have cranial subluxations, vertebral subluxations, extremity subluxations, but the vertebral subluxations along with, let's say, a cranial and even a pelvic subluxation becomes more critical due to the software, or maybe even like the hardware, if you were in the soft electrical system, the nervous system. So a subluxation in its most simplified form is a segment, a bone that has shifted out of place or space that's causing nerve pressure. And it's ridiculous, just like a lot of people who are aware of like acupuncture and how different parts of the foot or the hand or the body represent different parts of, like you could have places on your feet that represent maybe tension in your fascia, in your neck, just making something up.

like one part of the body could have many representations. In that same way, the spine has many representations throughout the body. And I think a great story that I'd love you to tell or just expand on kind of like your treatment approach was, and I talked about this with my interview with Dr. Nicole La Pera, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago. And I was sharing with her that me and my fiancee came to see you. And I've been noticing this pattern that my fiancé, Beyonce every so often would have this trouble breathing.

And she wouldn't be able to take deep breaths. In fact, I noticed her, especially during the pandemic, she would be in situations where she would gasp for error. She would be sitting there all of a sudden and go, and it's like, okay, fine, once or twice a day. Maybe that might be just a normal pattern, process of releasing. But I'd notice it a little frequently. And then one week of just really bad,

we were traveling a bunch, we came back, really bad back pain. I had met you a couple, like a few months ago, maybe even a year ago. And I thought, you know what, we got to check this doctor out. And we brought her in. And when you were going through the assessment, and I told you about her challenges, breathing, and you did a physical examination on her, you went to this, like, switchboard that you have in your office. And you pointed to one of her vertebra. And you pressed a button on that switchboard. It's like an interactive button and you lit up a nerve and that nerve made it all the way and I'll let you take over from there like finish out what happened and then how you treated her. Yeah. Well, a couple things.

Number one, we actually don't even do any treatments in our office and that's just a changing of the vernacular that we like to use. Treatment just meaning we're trying to eradicate symptomatology. And in fact, what we're trying to do is just remove the interference from the body's internal innate healing mechanism. So, in essence, we're trying to correct the subluxation, the misalignment causing the nerve pressure to restore normal communication within the body. Now that we got that. So what do you refer to in short? Would you say alignment? I call it a realignment or a correction or when you come and get adjusted.

I call it a session. Session? A session. So she came in for a session. Exactly. Yeah, there's a magical spot in the neck and really like the top seven bones in the neck there. There's something special there. But what I actually found on her was the C3 and the C4 and the C5. But specifically, I want to say it might have been her C3 where I said, this is a bone that when misaligned puts pressure on a nerve called the frenic nerve. The frenic nerve consists of C3, C4, and C5. the third, the fourth, and the fifth nerve. And it just so happens that phrenic nerve loops around, goes straight to the diaphragm, and sends that diaphragm,

you know, it's nerve power. So oftentimes when someone has a subluxation in their neck in the C3, C5, you can bet that there's going to be some type of diaphragmatic irritation. Yeah, and for her, that showed up as like she couldn't do like deep belly breathing. For sure. And she always says, like, I have a lot of,

a flat stomach, but I feel like I have no ability for engaging my muscles in that region, like her abs. Right. And she's like, even to do a crunch is very difficult for me. And I think the thing about that story that I love is it's a perfect example. And people listening here might have their own version of that. Challenges in your spine as one area, right, can show up in so many different places inside of your body. It's not a one-to-one just because you have pain in your knee that may not be just the knee.

Right. It could start in the feet first. True. Just because you have trouble breathing or even sometimes bad digestion. In fact, I pulled this quote from your book in the beginning. He said, I adjust patients every day who are suffering from chronic back pain, fatigue, arthritis, insomnia, low sex drive, poor digestion, and so much more. How is it? How is it? How is it? How is that you? How is, that all those things mentioned there could be related to our structural health. Gotcha. Let me frame it this way. With regards to the nervous system, you have two major operating systems and some might actually

say there might even be like a third that serves as like an intermediary loop. So we have the sympathetic nervous system, which is your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight nervous system. And then we have the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest. your digest, your chill out. And oftentimes if we have misalignments in the spine due to high levels of stress and tension, which results in like a chronic contracted position, the physiology becomes contracted. The inflammation runs rampant. So if a body is in a contracted, stuck, inflamed state, well, we know that bodies aren't meant to be in like this super stressed out state for long

periods out of time. And over time, if a body is in this contracted state for an extended period of times, it causes a breakdown globally. Let's talk about the brain for a second. Yeah. Brain focus, you know, that whole category. This podcast started off as like a very brain topical podcast, right? That's where the term came from, broken brain. Our brains are not broken. What have you seen in your experience? and there's this intersection of this field that you've put together, which is chiropractic and yoga. We'll talk all about that.

What is an example for somebody of something that they might be dealing with that, sure, okay, yes, our diet, and you even write about that is important. Sleep is important. That's a key pillar item. But that if they're missing out, maybe on the structural side, they may not be making that connection.

So can you think about a common ailment that people go through that relates to the head or the brain that might be related to structural health they wouldn't have necessarily thought of. Let's just go with the Roman numeral number one. How about low energy? Yeah, again, because if the body is constantly in a state of fight or flight, it just drains all of your resources in the body.

So one of the main goals, if you will, of a chiropractic adjustment is to restore normal tone to the body. So if let's just... You don't want the body. body overcompensating. Yeah, otherwise you're going to be in a state of rigidity, fatigue, exhaustion. And again, over time, that just leads the body into like a downward spiral, if you will. Let's talk story. And then we'll come back with more specific areas and tips and other things like that. Tell us about how you got started in this. You have like a pretty amazing journey

of healing that you went through. Yeah, how I got into chiropractic specifically or, chiropractic plus yoga they both kind of like are going to intersect but let's intersect i've been on a crash course with chiropractic probably since i was born but uh really it wasn't uh until i was in college where i sustained a a massive injury while playing rugby which resulted in a separated shoulder a broken nose and skull um and a mangled neck within like a five minute span of events it was like an absolute mess. So, and I actually can remember running off the field with my nose, like, so shifted off my face. It was like blocking my vision and people on the sidelines just kind of like looking at me, like in complete horror. But anyways, we, after that massive collision that shifted my life,

go to the hospital. They realized there wasn't a whole lot that we could do with my face at the time. So I went to a physical therapist who sponsored our rugby team, an elite physical therapist. This is that, by the way, this is that UC Irvine, fantastic program there. Actually, I was there to get my pre-chiropractic school prerequisites done. I've wanted to be a chiropractor since I was eight years old. I'll circle back to that. But really, it was during this rugby injury that lit me up. I went to this physical therapist to get sorted out, but after like a year and a half of physical

therapy treatments, I still was in the same spot. I mean, from a movement standpoint, my neck was still mangled, I couldn't really move my shoulder, lost my physicality. I was pretty depressed because, you know, you identify with your body, especially as like a 21, 20-year-old young man. And so pretty much during this time period, I couldn't really, live my life the way that I had previously. So the next step since the PT wasn't working, went to an orthopedist who said that surgery was next up for me to repair my shoulder. And

they really didn't focus too much on my neck. It was pretty much just my shoulder. So basically he was given some nice strong painkillers and anti-inflammatories and just told to ride it out until like that summer when I'd be able to get the surgery. And thank God for the pain killers because it landed me in an emergency room where unfortunately, you know, how to get the drink a cocktail where, you know, you're eliminating that way and you're eliminating this way. But I had this like realization at that point. I'm like, you know what? I've wanted to become a chiropractor since I was eight. And during this PT period for that year and a half, I hadn't gone to a chiropractor or any of my home-based chiropractors because the PTs, let's just say,

most of them didn't speak too highly of chiropractic and I was very, you know, I was taken aback in a positive way with the whole physical therapy routine. I figured if the PT couldn't do it, there really wasn't any hope for me, chiropratically speaking. But I had like a light bulb that went off and said, you got to go back to your chiropractor. And so I called up my chiropractor from when I was eight years old. And I said, I've got to, I'm in a mess. I'm banged up. I can't move my shoulder.

I was boxing, playing rugby, you know, very physical at that time. And he took some x-rays, saw what was going on, you know, adjusted my neck, adjusted my, my, my T1, my first rib. And my shoulder was back, like 80% of my motion. and the pain relief was like gone in an instant. So pretty much in like one day I went from being in the emergency room to getting an adjustment to ultimately deciding, oh yeah, during this period of time, I actually love, you know, the physical therapist designed to set up the flow. It was a sports physical therapy clinic. So I was like, man, I'm going to PT school.

So I kind of had switched the chiropractic focus, was going towards P. PT and then that night I'm sitting down at the dinner table. I said to my dad, I said, yo, I'm not going to PT school. And he had a bit of a temper. He's a bit of a fire type. He slams his hand down on the kitchen table and says, you're going to you're going to PT school. Quit messing around. I said, nah, I'm going back to chiropractic school. So I had this like this crazy detour. I mean, it took like, you know, fractured skull and neck and a busted up shoulder to really jolt me. Because previously, you know, when I went to the Cairo, it's because my dad had a had a roughed up neck. And so we would go with the whole family to the chiropractor just for like general spinal, you know, neurospinal health.

I didn't have asthma or allergies or a lot of the other problems that young kids would have that would, you know, cause them to go to a chiropractor. And when your dad went, was it to the same guy? Yeah, same guy. And did he get better for what he was dealing with? Oh, yeah. I mean, he's good. I mean, he couldn't be happier with my decision also to go to the chiro, or to become a chiropractor because now he's got his own personal chiropractor to serve him whenever he snaps his finger.

But the beautiful thing is once I got adjusted and I started like regaining my strength, I could go back to the gym. I mean, it was like a good solid year and change where I couldn't even work out. So I'm going back to the gym. I noticed some people lined up for a yoga class. And again, it's just like one of those light bulbs that go off. And I'm like, I got to get in that line. So I'd just stop my workout, rolled up to the back of the class.

And there I was. And I discovered yoga for the first time. I'm like practicing yoga without a mat wearing sneakers in the back of the class. You know, and I was just like, this was incredible. It wasn't a power yoga. I mean, we're talking like 1996, 1995, 1996. So this is going back a bit. But super chill yoga class.

Like teacher just probably in his 70s. Just super slow classical postures. And that was like the first time where I actually, you know, breathing and moving and something just like a light bulb clicked. a year later and now I'm in chiropractic school obsessed with yoga like yoga took over my life like I would miss watching laker games to go to a yoga class like my parents thought I was like nuts and uh go to chiropractic school and I've I'm already synced up like super committed daily yoga practice and then it was during chiropractic school where I went to um like yoga works when I came home from chiropractic school and I went to like my very first like yoga studio,

legit yoga studio and where here I am and like a gym yoga class thinking I'm like, wow, this is this is incredible. Then I entered the next level. It's like I entered the major league of yoga and man, I was like I was hooked. So chiropractic plus yoga has been, you know, the story of my life. So you teach this thing now like all around the U.S. sometimes overseas too. And the title of the course is the yoga of chiropractic?

Oh, the yoga of chiropractic. Yeah. So if somebody was able to, you know, audit and they were sitting in, what would they see that you were teaching or bringing into the world? You know, these are your, this is your teaching other chiropractors. Yeah. This methodology that took you, you know, years to put together, right? Trial and error, like just two decades.

Just two decades. What would they see are the key pillars that you're teaching? these chiropractors were coming in. Yeah. What I did was I leveraged yoga's sacred step-by-step approach with its subtle energetic and alignment principles combined with like chiropractic's renowned, biomechanical, short lever adjustments. I created like this adjusting methodology to really help the chiropractor approach the adjustment,

prepare the adjustment with like a sense of awe with a sense of respect ultimately so that they deliver adjustments with like heightened concentration harness speed it's fluid it's fluid gets incredible results because it's biomechanically sound and most importantly it's sustainable for the chiropractor so that you know at the end of the day you know we see a lot of people at least we do it in our office in my office, you're not beaten up, you're not chewed up because this is a physical job. It's a highly technical skill. I want to interject there before coming to you, incredible, really sweet, awesome chiropractor, who I used to go to, give you a little background there.

And when I started working out a little bit more and then I injured my back, I just felt like what she was delivering and offering was good, but it maybe wasn't getting to the core of what I was dealing with. Yeah. And as I was transitioning and looking for all the options, which is how I connected with you and remembered us meeting

and then also took my fiancee to you, you know, she was going through a very, like, rough time just physically, right? She had some arthritis and other things like that. And it's just another reminder. She's awesome, have nothing but positive things to say about her. And she took great care of me when I originally went out to see her for sciatic pain, right?

Which a lot of people come into a chiropractor because of that. Sure. But just another reminder that all health care practitioners, but even chiropractors, can get really sort of beat up on the job. And then the question is, how can they, you know, take care of themselves to make sure that they're sustainable and they're able to practice and look as good as you are at your age? So it's just another reminder of the fact that people's bodies, even chiropractors do get really beat up in the process of trying to take care of and look out for other people. Absolutely.

I learned early on while I was in student clinic. We had a couple fantastic clinicians who were beaten up. I mean, like they weren't in private practice anymore because they had, you know, torn up shoulders, shoulder surgery, back surgery, hip surgery, knee surgery just because they weren't biomechanically sound as they're stepping into the adjusting realm and that's that's where yoga like made perfect sense to me in fact i mean i'm surprised it's not utilized more often in my profession i'm actually trying to change that where if you take a yoga pose which has incredible alignment which is energy rich which is powerful it's smooth, it's connected, and then you take all those components and you interject it into a

chiropractic adjustment. Now it's kind of like you're doing partnered yoga with the person, but at some point you then have to deliver a 0.2 second fast thrust force in a very specific amplitude into a person. And, you know, when you apply those yogic principles into the adjustment, it works good for the person and it works good for the chiropractor. So it's symbiotic. It's not like a cordycep situation where the the fungal spore takes over the the insects brain and nervous system. That's something else. Let's go back to the beginning of the podcast where you were sharing that, you know, really what you were saying the way that I heard it, correct me if I'm wrong, the body doesn't

really make mistakes. Everything it does, it does intentionally, right? There are maybe some rare genetic mistakes, things like that. I don't even want to say mistakes, but there's genetic sort of things like that. But for the most part, whatever the body's doing, it's always sort of stimulus and response. Then we place the label of negative or positive on it, right? But it's the body just trying to survive different sort of situations. Right.

And when people end up in your office and they're coming in for that initial sort of appointment and there's a whole host of things, what are some of the most common aspects of modern life that you see that are creating? that I'm just going to use it, the term you use, negative, right? Negative stressors that are not allowing their body to perform in the best way that it can and then end up with some of these chronic issues or factors. So takes through some of the core aspects of modern life that have us in this place that we're in. Yeah, that's a great topic to explore. I think number one would be a failure to adapt to the situation that they place themselves in as a big heading.

And then if we approach things more from like a structural standpoint and we just talk about the form and the posture, more people are sitting in front of a computer more than ever before and especially over the past year. Everybody's been on if they had an office job. They were on Zoom or other type of video type of community. The kids are on computers now. I would say it's like the sedentary posture coupled with, you know, people using their smartphones. And now we're in this kind of like shortened, contracted position, right?

So we have like a shortened contracted position in which like the soft tissue on the front side of the body is now in this like state of contraction, which affects our thinking, the way that we communicate, our digestion, the way that we breathe, our elimination, the way that we give and receive love as well. So this short and contracted position then creates the multitude of other issues. Because if a person goes from a shortened contracted position sitting in a chair for like eight hours a day and then wants to make a movement into, let's say, some more dynamic activities running, cross-fit, weightlifting, and even crazier, Olympic weightlifting,

power lifting, you know, something more explosive where you're lifting massive weights or heavy weights for speed. Or you like to go to your Barry's boot camp. Again, some of these type of activities have been minimized over the past year. But for the most part, you have a short and contracted person going straight into these explosive type of movements, power yoga, hot yoga, spinning classes, CrossFit classes. And just the fact is their bodies just can't handle those different type of stresses. So if we kind of like go from the head, if you will, the north pole of the spine down to the south pole, like the tailbone or even vice versa, what we have is from like a structural standpoint, the head might shift forward or the

the head's going to be stuck in this type of position, but for the most part, we have the neck stuck in flexion. And then we might even have another experience where now the person has to like look forward and then pivots their skull on the top, at the top area where the skull meets the first bone, which is a mat, you know, neurologically, structurally, energetically, it's a potent area. So that's going to mess with the blood flow. It's going to mess with the nerve flow. I mean, you've got the vagus nerve hanging out right up at the very, top part of the spine, couple with the external jugular vein and the carotid artery. So we're just dealing with like brain fog.

But not everybody comes in and goes, I got brain fog. They're like coming in. I've got headaches. I have migraines where I have trouble turning my head. Because of this domed mid-back experience, kind of like a person's rounding their back, giving themselves like a hunchback situation. You have not only like from a muscular standpoint, just incredible tightness in between. the shoulder blades, but for some incredible reason, creates subluxations right in that middle

part of the spine, T5, T6. And if we circle back up to the neck with the head being in this flex position, you lose that cervical curve. That neck curve should be about 40 degrees of a curvature. It shouldn't be straight, and it shouldn't be reversing the other direction. So we've changed the way that the forces are going through your spine, which causes a buildup of pressure and tension in the mid back. Again, can't deal with that tension. You don't have any tools to smooth that out in the mid back.

Bam, subluxation. What happens when you get a subluxation anywhere in that midback zone, T5, T6, heartburn, indigestion reflux. Now, people aren't going to come in for the heartburn and digestion reflux unless they heard from their friend that, all of a sudden, their heartburn, indigestion, and reflux got sorted out by getting adjusted. They actually came in because, you know, they're having some problems with their neck or their headaches. So as we descend into the low back from just that sedentary posture, in addition to just poor mobility, movement issues, now we're dealing with constipation. Now we're dealing with digestive issues. For the most part, constipation, digestion.

and it can switch to the other direction with regards to like loose stools, but for the most part, that's going to be more in the something funky going on with regards to how they're eating or what they're not eating. And then these days, right at the bottom part of the spine, like the coxics, a lot of people are getting hemorrhoids and like just urinary issues, if you will. That's because we're animals, you know, like, for the most part, people have made us believe that we're, or rather forgotten that we're part of the animal kingdom. And we need to move and behave and act like, like we're animals.

Now, if you've ever seen like a scared cat or a scared dog, when they're, when they're nervous, they tuck their tail, like their tail like curls underneath. I mean, this past year and, you know, year in a couple weeks has been just a, has been brutal. on the nervous system. And that's where again, now we're just seeing like these really tight, hardened people. So over the past year, we've seen a different type of person. And again, I've studied wellness physiology, stress physiology, stress science. So for me, I'm just kind of like looking at how like a person comes in, how they present, you know, how they're standing, how they're breathing. And then looking at the structural distortions, sometimes just their postural distortions can give you a clue as to you what's going on physiologically. But I mean, we can

run the gamut right now. We just talked about the bottom part of the spine, like at the tailbone and the hemorrhoids, the digestive issues. You go back up to the top, not just the migraines, but a lot of jaw problems because everybody's in a state of grip. I mean, today, for crying out loud, you know, I was wondering if we were going to even have our conversation because of, you know, the verdict and us being where we're at. I'm just wondering if, like, there were going to be crazy protests and riots and if it's going to be safe. My heart was beaten during that verdict. So, again, people are in just like this chronic, longstanding state of stress.

And they haven't really explored the people that come to us to you, but they haven't really explored the release valve to almost like dissipate some of that stress and tension and open it up. But on the, you know, just circling back, biomechanical components, joints that haven't had a chance to move through a full range of motion. If a joint can't move through a full range of motion, you're going to get muscular gripping. The muscular gripping is going to cause a diminishing of the flow of, let's say, circulatory fluids in the body. That causes a buildup. Infection, inflammation can run rampant. Joints begin to degenerate and over time, unfortunately, DK, it's just a process of not getting things flowing.

And then energetically, you're just dealing with like a run down, tight, stressed out person who's highly reactive and that's the person that's coming in right now. Yeah, and I think with that whole story that you just told of the type of people that come in to see you, there's this big category, which is like a lot of people find themselves in, which is subclinical. Subclinical, yeah. subclinical. There's not, a lot of people are aware of chiropractic. At least they are aware. And a lot of medical doctors himself, you know, get chiropractic. And for, I think for a long,

for modern, more modern history, let's say last like 50 years, chiropractic has often gotten a bad rap. We'll chat about that. A hundred years. A hundred years. Yeah. Even some chiropractors, I've learned in your book that were, you know, talking a certain way and, you know, presenting new information, other things got thrown in jail. We'll come back to that in a little bit. But this category of subclinical, the reason that I wanted to touch on it is that even though more people are aware of chiropractic and the fact that it can be super useful and targeted for what they're dealing with, generally, most of those topics still end up being very acute, specific

items. I got in a car accident. I need to now do some sort of recovery process. So let me go work with a chiropractor. I had some sort of structural impact. I had, you know, even now a lot of our audience, especially people that traumatic brain injuries, understanding that chiropractic can be a big role of that because we've had some really amazing doctor of chiropractics on the podcast talking about how they treat traumatic brain injury. But then there's this other category that doesn't get as much love, which is that subclinical, right? You can't exactly see exactly the area. It's not visible, at least in the beginning, just looking at a person, that the reason

that they're having this indigestion or the reason that they're often constipated is because they're dealing with some sort of compression on the spine, which leads to compression on the nerve. And I think that that's what I really wanted to have you on here is, to kind of give people a sense of hope in a way, that they haven't explored this whole other continent that's on the other side of the world that they haven't yet gone into it

and that a lot of the things that we deal with, so much so that in the Institute of Functional Medicine, they make structural integrity a key pillar could be, could be related in some way to what's happening there in the spine. True. And I want to see if you may, might be able to, just like I was sharing with, for my fiance, when you, when you, take us

through the process of kind of like how you examined her. Yeah. And, and then the process that you put in place for correcting kind of what she had or supporting her in the process of realignment that she went through. Totally. That's awesome. And I think if we, if we look at it, when most people go to a chiropractor, they actually think that they need to go to a chiropractor. only when something is wrong. Right, exactly. You know what I mean? And there's like this whole wellness optimization component that I think

chiropractic actually even excels in. I mean, it's great. If you're broken and you're beaten up, you know, glorious. And if you're subclinical, if you will, you haven't expressed any body signals. Well, what a better time than to clean it up and reorganize the system. And can I add in one more thing? So you have a glass of water that's sitting on the table. You know, a big analogy that they use in functional medicine is that, you know, we have a cup.

We're all a cup. And that cup through just the life that we live, bad food, environmental toxins, stresses that are there, emotional stress, lack of community, lack of love. It's drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. So there's different drips that we have in our life. And sometimes it's a big pour, and that cup gets filled up a little bit. But still it hasn't overflown. So we can't notice it yet. It hasn't overflown.

We don't notice that something is really. wrong. Then one day, you know, the cup has been building up, building up, building up, building up, then you get on a 13-hour flight to London, as I did when I originally had my first issue. You sit back-to-back, you know, two flights that are there. And all of a sudden, you have major nerve pain and you feel like your back is about to be thrown out, right? So now people look, when their back is about to be thrown out, if something's going on, they're like, what did I just do? Right. That led to this situation. For sure. And in fact, it might have been. the most recent thing in an extreme version, right?

But often it's that build up, build up, build up, build up of multiple inputs, multiple insults on the body, on the spine that all add up together. And that's how you can see, like, I can remember, you know, walking around and moving to New York the first time that I moved there and seeing, like, older people who had, like, you know, classic sort of like grew up in New York City, never left Manhattan, lived on. there, good thing is they walk a lot, but seeing some older people who are so hunched over that they literally can't even look straightforward and thinking like, how do I make sure that I don't end up that way?

And I feel for this person in addition to that. And so a lot of times you go to the chiropractor when you think something's wrong, but there's this whole other area where things are kind of happening to us all the time, especially when you're sitting like, you know, 12, 16 hours a day. Big time. Yeah, big time. That's where like the teaching comes into play. And the concept of epigenetics, how you have this understanding that the body is already

like incredibly intelligent and it's always responding to different forces or loads or inputs or signals and the shapes, right? And again, if those outside forces that you're interacting with are stressful. you get the buckle. Okay. So this is where you get to teach people on a physical, chemical, mental, emotional level. What are these forces that are creating the tension? And that's just, that's the game for me. It's almost like this filtration system where somebody comes in and says, X, Y and Z happened. And then it's like, okay, well, let's explore the physical realm. Let's explore the chemical realm, mental, emotional realm. Because oftentimes people just go straight to the physical

realm. It could be a visual experience that also can create that disruption on the inside, which is why when somebody comes to me, I just want to take them in. Sure, they fill out the paperwork and I get a nice little sneak peek, but oftentimes I don't even, I really don't even want to read what's on the paperwork, right? Although I do. But I want to receive the person. I want to stare at the person. I want to look at their eyes. I want to see her their eyes darting all over the place, can I actually like make a connection with one of their eyes? Are they plugged in? Or are they glazed over? I'm taking a look at their body language. Or are they closed off? Or are they open? Are they wild? Do they just look like they're squirming? Or they in like an antelgic type of position?

And then I'm also listening to the words, you know, some people are going to minimize, some people are going to exaggerate. Some people are just going to ramble and they're not going to make any sense. And maybe sometimes they're nervous. You know, you're in a health care practitioner's office and sitting across from a doctor might be a bit stressful. So I want to like read the person first and foremost before I even have like get my hands on them. And that being said, when they transition from, let's say, the chair onto the table, I want to take a look at their pro propeception. Like how do they move through space?

Is it where they're moving their body in a fluid manner? Does one area seem like it's blocked, embraced, and splinted and guarded, or is there like a nice fluid exchange? I'm taking a look at their posture, even just like as we're sitting here, I might be taking a look for, is their head tilted? Is there a high shoulder? Is there a shoulder that's rounding forward? And then when they get face down on the table, there's like a full postural assessment. You know, people only think about posture when a person's standing. But as a person's laying down, I'm looking for all.

all of the distortions, again, from the head to the shoulder, to the pelvis. I'm even looking at the clothing. The clothing gives some incredible clues as to, let's say, they don't have like tailored, tapered pants. And you can take a look at how their pant leg might be dragging on one side versus the other. You know, in our office, we go barefoot so I don't benefit from taking a look at a person's shoes. but if, you know, you really want to explore what a person's alignment looks like, take a look at their feet. How do they ground?

How do they root? How do they connect? So other than like a seated standing and then either laying face down or face up, just a visual observation, checking out the distortions, then comes like the hands-on assessment. And, you know, I'm classic. I'm a little old school in my chiropractic analysis where I like to actually like motion, the spine. I like to go on a segmental bone by bone exploration. How is each bone moving? Then I like to take a look at the region, how's like, let's say the neck region, the cervical spine

as a region behaving. And then there's the thoracic spine. And then there's the lumbar, sacrum, pelvis. And then there's the transitional's where some of these regions like the skull first vertebrae, gorgeous area, the cervical and the thoracic junction. the thoracic into the lumbars, the lumbars into the sacrum, and then the two pelvic bones, you know, forming the sacral, the border of the sacral triangle. You know, you check out the transitional junctions. You do a couple compression. You do some tension tests. And that that just gives a mountain of information from a motion standpoint, a structural standpoint, a segmental standpoint, a regional standpoint. And then once you get that information,

computerized range of motion test would follow. And then we take the x-rays so that we can see if we're looking at the spine holistically, how is the spine behaving as an entity as like one unit as one organ? Like the neuroscientists really look at the spine as a sensory organ. And there's some incredible phenomenal chiropractic neurologist. They can go deep into that area way better than I can. and like Dr. Monique Andrews, shout out to her. But, you know, we've got to take this like full picture.

So from the x-rays, the computerized test, the hands-on assessment, then we pretty much put together a beautiful map. The x-rays are going to, again, let us know if there's any degeneration, any curvature, any reverse curvature. And then we can put together a very specific care plan designed to bring a person back to an optimal state of being and circling back to you. There's some people that come in, or even with your fiance, some people come in, they have some issues. Let's clean up the issues and then just get you back on to more of like an optimization tract. Some people come in, they're post-surgical.

Some people come in, no surgery, no problems. I'm here for the super optimization adjustments package. So it just kind of like depends on what a person requires. But, when somebody comes in, they're going to go through a very specific, almost yogic, step-by-step type of approach so we can receive a person completely. And that being said, male, female, sometimes, you know, you have an intersex. I think some people say they're now 52 different type of variance. I'm not going to get into that. But there's different type of elements that we want to consider when a person comes in. You know, nobody's the same.

Everybody's got like the spine's got this unique, it's like a unique fingerprint or like a unique looking iris. It's all unique. That being said, there are some very specific patterns that we see in Homo sapiens, such as when you distort the body. And you don't really give the body what it normally requires for optimal function. And maybe not even just optimal. just like normal essential life function. Yeah, it's kind of like to interject, our life has changed so much

in the last few hundred years that we've gotten really a way. Like we used to do so much more, if you see like hunter-gather societies, you see them like squatting so much for it. They don't really have chairs. They'll sit on the ground. Right.

Right. And they'll make their beds out of all these like, you know, different things that they can find. but they're not sitting the way that we see it sit. Even as I'm talking, I'm being aware of the fact that, like, you know, we just have these like dinky office chairs over here that are not the most comfortable and encouraging all sorts of different, you know, bad posture as we're sitting.

I've got to upgrade my chairs. But yeah, our life has changed so much so that we don't really even know what is normal anymore. That's part of my mission. Part of my mission is to, again, remind people that they're part of the animal kingdom. Part two might be to have a new relationship with different shapes. You know, when you walk into our office, we don't have chairs in the reception area. We have, like, ball chairs and, like, these kind of ball stools. And, you know, I'm sitting in your probably nice, fancy Herman Miller chair.

I still haven't reclined back. So I always pretend when I'm sitting in a chair that the back. doesn't exist. So having this relationship with shapes and shortened positions and being able to maximize a full range of motion. Like some people can't even go from the floor to a standing position without using, you know, like a crutch or using their hands. That would actually be something quite powerful to play with is just spending more time on the floor and going from the floor to standing. It's going to take your body through a more elaborate range of motion.

Yeah. Yeah. And those can be exercises that people can do at home, right? Easy. Low-hanging-free. Just sitting on the couch, just sitting on the couch or sitting on a chair and then standing up without any sort of support or putting your hands on anything to help you up. Like that can be a small step.

Or get rid of your couch or keep your couch for the company that may use it. And you actually sit on the floor. Yeah, I was asking you, what do you guys do on the couch? Because we really hate our couch. And we were talking about how sometimes we sit on it. We don't feel great. Yeah. And you're like, I basically have gotten rid of mine. Yeah. Well, in our house, we have like two major rooms.

We have like the front room where there is like the classical couch for people who aren't weirdos like me and my wife, who's also a chiropractor. But in the kind of like the library, yogic room, reclining room, even where there's the TV, you know, we have just a nice big rug, throw a couple yoga mats, circuit. yoga mats on the floor, throw in, throw down a another rug on top of that. And now we have our reclining area. And that's, that's really important is that people might be doing everything awesome and just speaking in biomechanically, posthually, mechanically speaking. They might be doing it all right. But then they go lay on like a couch for like three hours to watch two episodes of Game of Thrones or something like that. And then they just, their joints are sagging and their discs are sagging and the muscles are bracing and splinting.

So that would be like a really important area to explore how, what postures you're assuming when you're in this like reclining, restorative recovery chill out state. Right, because we all need to chill out. The question is how do we do it in a way that is supportive for everything? Yes. So just going back to you, you had these circular. yoga mats. We'd love a link. I'd love to, you know, include in the show notes for like the type of mats that you like. Sure. You might throw some additional support on there, right, if needed.

Bonus. And your wife was pregnant at one point in time, right? You guys have a kid. Yeah, almost 17 months. And so would she even sit there when she was pregnant? Yeah, I mean, I also have a zero gravity recliner chair by Human Touch. Still waiting for my sponsorship for them but hasn't come as it hasn't come in yet but that's a that's phenomenal why do you like that can you just explain a little bit yeah i love it just because it actually reclines back where you get your legs over your heart so it creates that nice lymphatic uh drainage if you will allows the just the blood flow to to flow out of your legs i mean if you're on your feet or sitting all day long it's nice to just get your get into some type of inversion so i love it stick a stick a nice deep pillow

in there to give me a little extra lumbar support. And yeah, it's just a fantastic inversion apparatus, reclining apparatus. That being said, I also do have two inversion tables in my backyard, the classic one where you hang by your feet and you go almost like complete upside down, although I prefer more of like a 45 degree angle. It's a little less pressure on the ankles. And another one that hooks up behind the back of the knees and you're, You're supported by your thighs, not really giving it the best visual, but you're able to still drop your spine. And it gives you that gorgeous lombo sacral right at like the L5, right, where right above your butt crack for those people who don't know their anatomy super well. But it's a great decompression at a part of the spine that bears 75% of the weight of the upper body and is arguably the most common area in the spine that degenerates.

So I want to make sure that, look, you can't, you know, death is undefeated. You know, we're going to be at some point, we're going to somebody's going to be shoveling some dirt on our body. But maybe we can make the body last as long as humanly possible with as minimal accelerated aging and degeneration as possible. I'm in that camp. So going back to like the when you guys are like in chill out mode because I think a lot of people are curious about this. And if they're not, I am. So I'm just asked for me. Fire.

If you're watching TV, right? Like you're watching a movie or a show that you like. Where's the TV? Is it on the wall? Is it angle mat or anything else like that? Bam, angled up. It's a big screen TV on a bookcase. And if I'm on that zero gravity recliner, which isn't optimal for snuggling and cuddling with your loved one.

So you might have to negotiate with your partner. to get that in the actual TV room or the entertainment room unless you get two and then you can kind of like hold hands together it's not optimal for like the snuggling and the cuddling but yeah again we we just chill out on on the floor throw some pillows up prop it up and then we're we're actually looking up at the TV or we're hanging out I mean I'm on the floor doing specific like a yogic poses and all you have to do is take a look at what a A little kid is doing, like a 16-month-old kid, for example, and just looking at all of those different seated postures, you're opening up the hips, the body, the legs, the feet. And, again, you got to, if you don't have good feet, you don't have good ankles, you don't have good knees. I mean, come on, you're in trouble as time goes on.

So I'm just hanging out on the floor, spending as much time on the floor as possible. I found just hanging out on the couch just would wreck, would just wreck the situation. Yeah, I got to, we ended up getting a new couch and then we came to talk to you because you're like, what did you guys do this weekend? I was like, I think we got a new couch and you were like, well, good and this is what we do do, right? Like just sharing, right? Because I think I even asked you.

I asked you like, what do you guys do? Like what kind of couch do you have? Because we're always coming to you. We asked you what kind of pillow you use at night for sleep. We'll get in that next. Then I want to talk about shoes and a few other categories. And you said, this is our setup. You know, we do things a little bit differently.

And we, we, since that time in that conversation that we had, we've definitely been being more mindful. And we actually have a nice coffee table, low level. And we'll just sit on the floor. Yeah. Right? We enjoy watching, especially, you know, since the pandemic, we definitely have watched more TV at home. No, you know, totally fine with that. watching intentional stuff, stay away from the news.

And we'll put a cushion down, like a nice little cushion, not a yogic mac, but a nice little cushion down for my fiance. And I'll just usually end up sitting on the floor. I grew up sitting on the floor a lot. And then, and that'll be it, you know. If you want to cuddle, we can cuddle in bed. For sure. And that's kind of like our jam.

But I want to pivot over to sleep, actually, because I've asked you a lot about this topic over here. When you talk to your patience about sleep and sort of the optimal setup, what are some of the things that you have them try to keep in mind? That's a good question. It used to be almost like a, the first commandment, do not sleep on your stomach with your head turned, you know, to the side, how it can create a lot of havoc in the upper neck and in the, the, the low. neck and I feel like at some point for most people when you're when you get out of I don't know out of like your first couple years of life I think you can you can get away with it when you're a youngster like a little newborn I mean we actually put it some people say don't

ever let your your newborn sleep on their stomach and we thought it's great for for newborns and young children. Now, I don't know if it's just the way that life beats down on adults, but anytime somebody hangs out on their stomach, it creates like some type of impingement subluxation in the neck or in that cervical thoracic junction. And especially it gets worse if a person's laying face down with a pillow with their head turned to the side. Even more of an angle to push everything back.

Yeah. So it kind of like creates this crazy kink. in the neck. I like a if you if you can fall asleep on your back, golden. If you can fall asleep on your side, rock and roll. Some people say if you sleep on your left side, it's better for the digestive system. It's a better position. Some people say, you know, if you sleep on the right side, it can impact the heart in some capacity. I just say find a position where you could sleep because if you can't sleep you've got poor sleep then that's that's a massive issue and that actually is going to affect the nervous system that's going to translate into contraction of the muscular

system that's going to lead to fatigue and now we're having that conversation about sustained states of stress physiology yeah i'm i'm not giving you probably the best answer but you know the right answer which is like first and foremost make sure you sleep make sure you're right sleep. It's not ideal to be on your stomach. In fact, it could cause a lot of problems. True. And you were saying?

And I also like a pillow that has a nice contour. Yeah, we had a whole conversation. Yeah. So chat about that and what pillow you recommend. Yeah. So at the, I'm going to probably have to, you know, get into some fistfights about this recommendation after this podcast. But I like tempripetic.

And I know it's the Swedish polyurethane foam that that may not be the cleanest, you know, that may not the cleanest pillow on the planet. I've tried literally dozens of pillows and you can get into the latex, you can get into the buckwheat, you can get into all these different type of rubber options or other organic materials. I found the tempropedic supports things the best for me and for our patients. The only problem is they burn out after about six months so you need to get the new one. Well, I found that, you know, because I switched to a tempapedic, right, after you shared, because we asked you and you were like, I actually have like a closet full of temperedics and I just use that. And I was like, what do you think? Like the off gassing, this, that. And you're like,

look, I know they're not the cleanest, but they work. And I've tried a bunch. And I've gone through not as many pillows as you have, but I'm always trying different ones. And I found that one of the ones that I got, it was rated like number one on consumer reports. And it worked great for a while. And then the shape completely changed. Sure. And it's hard to tell because it doesn't have as solid of a contour shape as like a temporepetic. So I was sleeping great and then I wasn't. Yeah. That's the signal for buy a new pillow. Buy that pillow again. Buy that pillow again. Yeah. But this was pretty short. This was like I was sleeping great for like a month, two months. Yeah.

So I felt like something shifted there, right? At least with the temporepetic now and what you've kind of showed me, is like I can understand, you know, the contour starts losing shape a little bit. Or we have that reminder at six months to like switch up to a different pillow. But I felt better because I got, I got a, you know, organic mattress that doesn't off gas and didn't smell when it first came to my house. So I was like, you know what, if I have to, you know, for the safety of my neck and also I was talking about my fiance, I was like, we got to travel with these pillows because, you know, you go to a new hotel, you don't sleep well, then all of a sudden your vacation is just messed up.

Fits perfect in the carry-on. Fits perfect in the carry-on. So we ended up getting a temprietic as well. There you go. Not an ad. Just a recommendation from my chiropractor. There you go. You know a bed that I'm really excited about now is Keats's bed.

K-E-T-S-A-E-T-S-A. K-E-E-T-S-A. They have a place on Abak-K-K-E-K-E-E-T-S-A. And I like a firm bed. Like the bed that makes you feel like you're on a cloud where it just drops out, that's again rough on the body. But Keatsa has a really nice, clean, I don't know if it's fully organic, but it might be fully organic bed.

So for the listeners, check out Keatsas. Amazing. Super firm bed. I'll look them up as well. The one that I was mentioning is called the birch mattress. by Helix. They were super kind. And actually they reached out

and they said, hey, we'd love to sponsor the podcast. And I was like, I don't even know you. And it looks great, but I haven't used it. They're like, let me, we want to send you one.

I was like, uh, if you send it, you have to be prepared for the fact that I'm going to send it back. Because if I don't like it and I've gone through a bunch of mattresses, not as many as pillows,

but I've gone through a bunch. And I'm going to bring a very critical eye. And, uh, Initially, I was a little concerned because they have, it's a combination of, I think it's made out of like four materials. Spring, wood, wool, and organic cotton. Those are the four items.

And great, doesn't have a lot of chemicals, isn't sprayed with like fire retardant and all that stuff. Those ingredients, I guess you would call them, are naturally fire retardant. But I was worried because spring, I typically would stay away from spring and I'd go just memory foam, but like you were saying,

I would notice at a period of time, that memory phone starts sinking in, and now all of a sudden, you have some sort of issue. Right. So a lot of mattresses, you've seen this a lot with even like Casper and other places. They've kind of started going back to adding in spring partially to do the memory foam. I don't know how you feel about that. And feel free to be honest, you know, at the end of day, we're discussing it all. But it just gave me a little bit more of a firmer mattress that didn't end up sagging.

Now, it's only two months in. I'm sleeping well. We'll see how things pan out over a period of time. But thoughts on that. Yeah. Personally, when somebody says, hey, I got the new avocado or the purple mattress, what are your thoughts? And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't given it the taste test yet.

So I have to go go check out the place and take a little power nap and bring a book and bring my, you know, snuggle in with the pillow and, you know, say, I mean, let me take a quick power nap and I'll check it out and I'll let you know what I think. But, you know, you got to see how it fits for you. But I think for the most part, more like the Japanese style futon, firmer mattress is just more supportive. I'm not really like a mattress salesman and I haven't really exhausted all of the different mattresses out there. But I like to go.

Firm is better. cleaner materials is better and then of course how long is that mattress gonna last for and is it what's the warranty like is it you have a three year warranty and like just so you know most most mattresses maybe they'll give you the 10 year warranty but you need to probably switch it out out after about five years or six years otherwise you're just hanging out in like a saggy nest and just creating again havoc on on your discs let's switch topics and chat about shoes while i have you over here what's your thoughts and commentary on shoes yeah again just like pillows i've i've tried them all and uh i like the the minimis the minimal uh concept i played around with those five finger

shoes those vivo um the vibrams i mean those are just horrible to uh to look at and public, you know, so you almost have to, uh, you just, if you wore those, you, you just have to deal with the, the kind of like weird looks, but, you know, I like, I like the fact that it separates, separates your toes. Gives your, gives your toes room to, like, breathe and be in their natural state. Yeah. I mean, I think those, those shoes are, are spectacular. And if we really wanted to play, do you own a pair? Uh, it's been years since I, but, you know, like I said, we go barefoot in the office. Years ago, I actually used to wear those shoes in the office. Those are my in-office shoes. I owed a pair when they first came out. And I was super excited.

I was all about the sort of barefoot minimal. And I know they've made modifications. I haven't tried the recent version. But I did notice, like, because I was so proud about those shoes, I would wear them to go, like, play basketball. Right. And they really weren't designed for, like, jumping and concrete and that sort of thing. And I had, you know, my feet would get red. And I would get wrecked after that. I remember emailing a little bit with the company and they were like, just hang tight. You know, we're going to be coming out with some new stuff in the future. But I wore them for a period of time and I thought, okay, let me switch off a little bit.

I recently switched to Vivo, Vero Bearfoot. I'm wearing them as we speak too. Yeah, I love those. Just describe a little bit about those. Again, not an ad. We're just talking about what we like. Totally. Again, if you go back with the general idea of give the body.

what it needs for maximum expression. And a foot needs to be able to move, just like the hand. It would be insane if we stuck like a catcher's glove on the hand and went through life or at least eight hours a day wearing a catcher's glove and trying to interact with each other wearing a baseball glove on your hand. Your hands would be like all deformed. Same thing goes with the feet if you choose a shoe

that doesn't allow for the foot to move. through a basic range of motion, then you're going to be limited. And the fact is going back to this concept of, and this can even tie back into like the whole picture as I kind of like went off in like a little bit abstract journey when we started with the whole body being booby trapped with specialized receptors that if you move these specialized receptors by moving the body, you're pinging the nervous system. You're pinging the brain, right? So if we put these sensory deprivation devices, chambers, if you will, on our feet, we're not getting that appropriate sensory stimulation that's sending signals back up to the brain.

And then again, your feet just turn into kind of like a clawed. You know, it's like like a hoof, if you will. So the thing that I like about the Vivo barefoot design is it actually designed shoes. for feet. It's got a nice big toe box. It's flexible. Yeah, for people who are watching on YouTube on the camera, you can see that the top portion of the shoe

is wider. It's like the widest part. Here we go. And compared to normal shoes is they're super narrow. They're narrow in the front. And so your feet are all scrunched up. Right. Which can, going back to your line of work,

what can that lead to? Like if you're walking around all day like this with your feet, your toes all sort of squinched up. What are some of the things that people might see that pressure turn into? Well, you know, it translates into the whole body. The whole body is like this nice, is this kinematic chain. So again, if you're doing everything right in your body,

but you're neglecting your feet, it translates into the ankles. You lose out on some appropriate dorsi flexion. Your knees become rigid. It just translates up from the feet. And that's what happened to me. I only started wearing the vivo barefoot shoes about seven months ago, even though shout out to my buddy Dr. Rung and Chatterjee,

who does a lot of work with them, was like, dude, you got to switch over to these shoes, you got to switch over. Then finally, I ordered them on Amazon because it was taking forever on their website. And after like two weeks of wearing them, this chronic knee pain that I have, anytime I go walking around the block, right? wearing these like new balanced shoes that I also didn't replace in a while,

that chronic knee pain just went away. Yeah. It's kind of like yoga. You know, if you look, the yoga pose is composed of many different ingredients. So if you're placing dots throughout the body and all of these dots are connecting to one another and forming lines like these energetic lines that if one of these dots is just dysfunctional, then you're going to interfere with the appropriate lines of energy flowing through your body. So it just creates a mess in the movement plane, diminishes the proper sensory exchange in the body,

and then leads to, again, that breakdown component. So, yeah, starting with the feet, setting the foundation, critical, essential. You know, when I rave about you and just like how great it's been to have you, you in sort of my wellness squad, my wellness posse, which thank you again for, you know, taking good care of me and my loved ones. It's an honor. Naturally, I run up against people who have very little experience with chiropractors. And it's like, you know, man, I really just don't like chiropractors.

They just like keep you coming to them, you know, that whole sort of narrative, right? You've probably heard that since the beginning of time. I was like, you know, one thing, you know, not to like fight back with them, but I was like, One thing that I really do appreciate about the setup, if somebody would drop in and they would look inside of your clinic, besides the fact that you just have a whole different way of practicing, is that you, first appointment that I had with you, you basically sat down and said like, cool,

like a part of this process is like, I'm gonna teach you this movement series, right? And that movement series is what you're gonna do in the morning and you're gonna do it at night. And then you're also gonna do it after, adjustment and that's a crucial part of this success because I don't want to see you all the time right for maintenance you know you might come in or if you're dealing with a particular issue but this movement series is like really a major part

of this kind of continuing on what is this moving series how did you come up with it and could you describe it a little bit for those that are listening yeah well this goes back to back in the day when I started integrating my yogic movements or rather even like my yoga practice with the chiropractic adjustment. And then what because as I was like new to yoga, my and my knowledge was forming, I was still taking it more on like a global perspective. So I was giving people more like the classical yogic postures to do after their adjustment. And then I started realizing that we need to get a little bit.

it more specific. So I designed a movement system going from the skull all the way down to the sacrum, the tailbone, the pelvis, and then even just taking like a quick detour into like the gateways to the spine, like the pelvic girdle and the hips and then the shoulders. So I wanted to free up, free up those areas with the main intention of lubricating all of the joints in the spine, increasing blood flow and oxygen to the area. But the big part for me was to help people become more attuned and more sensitive to the build up of tension within their body. And when it's appropriate to, you know, ramp it up and go for it or when it's appropriate,

you know, I'm feeling a little bit tight. I'm feeling a bit congested. And you need to kind of like take more of a slower route. So part of the process was after an adjustment to make sure that people are lubricating the areas, creating like a new organic internal alignment, and then also have an ability to scan for tension. And then over time, this goes back into the, again, stressor tension develops. Do you have a tool to smooth out that tension in the body? And if you have like the ability on your own to smooth out the manifestation of that tension

before it turns into a chronic contracted position, then less work for me. You know what I'm saying? So the purpose ultimately is if you have some type of problem or some issue, let's clean it up. And then let's get it like get you stabilized. And then from there we can talk about like supporting you at that stage. And then after that, it's like, you're good, you know, barring any significant trauma or event that shifts your physiology, your neurology. And now we have to kind of like circle back, clean it up, and then you're back. So that's the dance.

Hopefully you go through life with minimal trials and tribulations and traumas. And you're golden. But the movement system originally took going back to like my linear. from yoga where I had this opportunity to train with Chuck Miller and Eric Schiffman and Marty Foster, Saul David Ray, just to honor my lineage. Now I've been doing yoga for like 27 years. So this yogic accents weighed heavily on my life. But I learned from a couple of these people, Eric Schiffman, where I would design, he would design these vinyasa patterns, these yogic patterns, movement patterns linked with breath. And then I was like, how can I take this and make it a segmental

conversation? So I just basically take the neck through a full range of motion, every single direction, various combinations, six different progressive levels. We've got the mid-back, we've got the low back. And you link it with breath, and that's the game for me. So this is the movement system that I put together is almost like the pre-yogic practice. And from there, if you want to take it to the next level, then come the sun salutations after that, and then come the other deeper postures. But I just like to take a yoga posture, dissect it. And that's also early on in my chiropractic career. I took care of all the yogis.

Like right after we finished in a Stanga yoga class within an hour of it finishing all the yogi like 20 plus yogis would come in to get their adjustment. I mean, half of my morning shift was filled with yogis. And you interviewed an incredible yogi, Eddie Stern. And so he's, he's a contemporary of Chuck Miller. So Chuck Miller was my Estanga teacher, beautiful teacher, master, master of the game. And a lot of the estongis were busted up. They had some issues. And then ultimately I was able to be an assistant for Chuck and I would cruise around this. What were there issues? Sorry to jump in.

What was going on? You know, you'd think like, okay, they're practicing yoga. Like what was going on? Low back. Low back. You know, it is like they went a little too far. That style of yoga, Stanga yoga, it's a, it's a fiery practice. It's like a cross fit of yoga.

Yeah, it can't, it can be. But that's where like the practice is a beautiful practice. It's a strong practice. These postures are no joke. And the practitioner, if they approached the practice with great respect and they're not like a rhinoceros plowing through a rose garden, you reap the benefits of the practice. But because the practice was very fiery, very invigorating, it was pretty much the precursor to your power yoga and your flow yoga and the Vinyasa yoga all came from. a stonga yoga, which also has its roots in like British gymnastics and some athletic

calisthenics and even some, they said even some like Indian bodybuilding going back into the early 1900s. But for the most part, it's like it's like yoga plus gymnastics. And yeah, if you go into that style of practice with aggression and force, you get. You get. crushed. So now I'm dealing with, now I'm having to deal with yogis, psychologically speaking, and I'm a philosopher. I'm not a psychologist. But this is part of the game where, again, this game is not all, it's not just a mechanical conversation. Again, most people think chiropractic is just about bones, joints, and injuries. But really, again, chiropractic is beautiful. It's based on this concept that, again, going back to the intelligence,

how are you interacting with your environment? How are you interacting with this posture? Are you interacting with this posture like it's medicine for the body or it's like poison? So this is where we get to approach life in different type of situations with how are you approaching life? And the posture or the pose is just a tool for observation in terms of maybe how you even approach life. So if a person has like a certain movement profile, like what do you like to do to strengthen your body? And they're like, I do powerlifting, CrossFit, Olympic waylifting, and then I do Barry's boot camp. And then I do hot yoga.

And I'm also going to run an ultramarathon on Thursday. It's like, all right. Well, it sounds like it's not like the most balanced movement design that you could come up with. So if they're experiencing stress, if they're experiencing stress, if they're experiencing trauma, if they're experiencing dysfunction, then we need to adapt that. However, if it's working great for them and they're accelerating at a high level, then fantastic. But again, from like an internal markers, how's the inflammation, how are the sleep? If you wear a certain type of technology that can measure your physiological variables and it's shown that, yo, things aren't

working that great. Then maybe you need to adjust it. So I know it kind of went on a little. little bit of no no it's all good I do want to come back to the to the postures yeah and sorry the sequence true does it have a name I call it the wise progressions the wise progressions yeah it's the the father of modern yoga his name is um or was christian macharya and he he I mean legend master many of like the top yoga masters come from his lineage I mean yoga is that there's many different paths and many different traditions, but if we're talking about Ayngar and Patabi Joyce and Desi Kachar, to name just a couple, these people pretty much launched an entire wave of yoga into the consciousness

of humanity. Of course, you have a kundalini and there's bickram and other different type of lineages. But for me, I wanted to honor my yogic lineage and because yoga really has done a number on my brain and my body. And Christian Machari, being the father of modern

yoga, had a system called Vinyasa Krama. And it was like the wise progression. So I gave it you know, like it's the wise progressions. Yeah, I love it. Can you, for like the people that are watching right on the link on the YouTube, can you show us like a few of the

the movements that are there? For sure. So as far as like I think the highlight, the incredible offering has to do with the neck, the neck sequence. And there's six different levels to the neck movements. So like six different levels. So we have the basic. This is the gliding the skull on the first bone.

And again, if you can sense any tension or glide, grinding or crepitous that's occurring where the skull docks on top of the first bone. And this is a powerful area because there's no disc at the area where the skull hits the first bone. And there's also no disc between the first bone and the second bone. So it's a highly movable area that's also booby-trapped with tremendous amount of proporeoceptors and mechanoreceptors, propioceptors being the specialized, nerve receptors that get fired with good motion, good alignment. All right, so I'll quit talking and I'll show you some of the movements.

Here's the funky chicken. This polishes the rotational plane. 50% of the motion occurs at the level of your first two bones. And for people that are listening, so the first one, you're kind of like moving your head back and forth. Funky chicken. Funky chicken, kind of poking back and forth. There you go. The second one, you're kind of going from.

Looking over your shoulders. Yep. Looking over your shoulders. shoulder, then moving all the way over to your right shoulder. Gotcha. And kind of moving back and forth on that side. And for the people on, you know, tuning in on the podcast versus maybe on video, the next one would be chin to the chest and then chin to the sky.

And then the next one would be a head tilt. So we can just break that down and call it the funky chicken where you're bringing your chin forward and back, looking over the shoulders. That's the no motion. Then we have the yes motion. And then we have a maybe motion. And then we combine those movements into combining two motions to make one motion, and then we take it into three and then to four and then to five. And that the fifth set of movements brings the neck into a gorgeous, biomechanically sound, respectful of the joints, neck circle.

Oftentimes people start doing different motions with the neck, swinging their neck. and it doesn't. Especially if they've been like out of the computer all day, they're feeling a little bit tense. They just do this neck roll and it could be better. You know, it could be more biomechanical. Show us a better version of that. All right.

So it's going to involve the funky chicken plus the flexion plus a rotation. And then that's a diagonal extension and then a rotation and then a diagonal flexion and a rotation. So this is what it looks like. So it looks like you're kind of making like a square box. with your head. Yeah. It doesn't involve like the head tilting to the side. Now if you want to do the head tilt to the side, it actually tilts to the side and then

you rotate towards the shoulder that you're tilting your head towards and then you're back to the other side. Yeah, that's the safe way to not cause pain. Yeah. People have tension in their neck and the way that they go after relieving the tension is either they grab a hold of their chin, give it a good, you know, they'll get a hold of their chin, give it a good yank, they'll pull on the top of their head, crank it to the side, or they'll move their neck in several other obnoxious positions that drive me nuts.

Well, drives you nuts because you know that one, it may not be helping, it could be hurting. Yeah. Well, actually, that's one and the only. It might be, they think it's helping, but it could be end up hurting long term, even if they get a nice little crack out of it, which a lot of people like to hear. It's not a good process. They love the crack. Yeah.

something like when you hear the crack you think something good just happened yeah you think you unlocked something indeed so when you do these movements with the neck and I think actually you also have like a course that walks people all through this the wise progressions yep the wise progressions so we'll link to that and show notes anybody wants to do that because not everybody's here in los angeles obviously can fly in they can come and get a chance to see you but there's a lot of stuff that people can do at home you know in addition all the tips that we talked about sleep shoes you know all that stuff. This,

would you say that this wise progression and, and kind of following that program is a good process where people can start at their house? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. It's the precursor. It's the building block to having healthy movement in your body. Again, if you want to do more complex activities, you just have to make sure you have the prerequisites to perform those movements.

And oftentimes people don't have those basic movements in their, and their movement vocabulary. So this program actually gives you that vocabulary. So you can form beautiful words, sentences, and then ultimately write poetry with your movement. And how often in a day, like should people do it twice a day? Yeah. At least first thing in the morning.

First thing in the morning is like the best time. I love. Even if their body isn't necessarily warmed up or anything like that. Best time to do it. These are not like massive, gross movements that are, you know, these are like, it's like, do you brush your teeth first thing in the morning? You know, maybe some people will go, no, I only do it at night.

But this is an awakening your spine, awakening your body sequence. I do more than the wise progressions on my own, but I start every day off. And it's just a way of checking in with every single segment in your spine. Then you have the regional conversation. Then you have a global. then you have a functional, then you have an energetic. And by the way, once you remove some of the built-up tension, now you've just removed some of that sympathetic stress.

Maybe you've dropped into more of a parasympathetic state of being because you've linked movement plus breath and game on. Yeah, it's amazing how the smallest of little shifts can be things that could address challenges we've been dealing with forever, right? And just being more relaxed, however people get there, like it could be through like some sort of therapeutic, right? Or like therapy, right? Some people get it through therapy,

a good buddy of mind was saying that his digestion finally improved after, you know, like four or five therapy sessions that he had where he was kind of going back into like, how is he walking in the world not feeling like sort of safe, right? Like secure in his own body. And we have so many different, terms for this, like even the idea of like regular shoes

that push your toes closer, it's almost like you're ungrounded. Well, we have an analogy, right? Like if somebody's ungrounded, we think of that. They don't have a deep sense of roots, they're not connected, they don't know where their center of gravity is. And so when we are not in that rest, digest, safe sort of space for our own body and life and mind, that shows up in all sorts of things that we do.

with. Well said. Yeah. What else you want to talk about, brother? Anything else that we didn't get a chance to get into? You know, I think what might be nice to address is this common assumption that you need to have pain or a problem to experience an adjustment. Yeah. Like, you don't. But if you have this understanding that structure equals function and that relationship is going to change your overall expression in life, then why wouldn't you want to explore that? It's like the ultimate easiest biohack and that maybe the most common disruptor to the full expression of your innate potential. You know, it's right up here, like right at the top part of your neck. And like from, I just want

people to have this new relationship with maybe you go to a chiropractor not just from like a mechanical standpoint and by the way it's great to break up fibrodic adhesions like it's great to have phenomenal range of motion but if you just took into consideration that's just like right at the very top part of your spine where your your brain and your spinal cord make love there's just like a powerful universe of neurology that's just waiting to get like unplugged and maybe even like activated and you know right now like the vagus nerve is getting a lot of activity so i would say yo if you want to make sure that you're shifting into like an optimal parasympathetic state you need to go to a chiropractor to get checked to see if you have subluxation at the top part

misalignment of the top bone in your neck can actually disrupt blood flow uh to your brain You can mess with the vagus nerve, which sends a, it's a chief, it's both a motor and sensory nerve, but it's a heavy hitter in the sensory universe. So you get that top bone, the Atlas adjusted, it can minimize the stress on the vagus nerve, sending a beautiful wave of parasympathetic activity to the entire body. You drop down one level, you're in that C2, C3 junction. There's a nerve that comes out there. It's called the spinal accessory nerve.

That nerve goes to your trapezius muscle. If you take out an anatomy book and you see that, oh, my God, this trapezius muscle is, it takes up a lot of real estate on the backside of your body. I mean, it goes from your skull all the way down to almost like your upper mid back. Then you get into that C3, C4, C5. Now we're talking about like your fiancé's, Yasmin's zone, where now you're starting to affect the, The diaphragm, which changes how you breathe, changes how much oxygen you get into the system. So, like, straight away from like a neurological standpoint, boom, you get adjusted. You shift into a parasympathetic state, relaxing the musculature that's able to hold you up powerfully.

That enables you to kind of, like, fill out your frame. And then you got a couple other segments that enables you to breathe majestically. So I just would like people to consider that misalignments of the spine put pressure on the nervous system, and that can interfere with you expressing your full maximum innate potential. I think that would be a beautiful takeaway message. Yeah, I love that. And the conversation can go even deeper. I'm just given more of like contracted highlights.

No, that highlight is good. And I think off of that, a lot of people have the question of like, okay, great, I'm not an L. I may not be able to come to you at the moment. Yeah. And for those that can, we have like all your data and everything like that, your website, you know, contact information inside of the show notes and we'll remind people at the end of the podcast too. But in every field, there's going to be people that are amazing and every field there's going to be people that are not as good. Some people more experienced, some people, small percentage that may not even have the right heart or the right intention. That's going to be everything, right?

Teachers, doctors, everything, everything, podcast host. How do people find somebody good around them? What's the best way? What's your suggestion or their industry databases is the best thing to reach out to your office and say, hey, I'm in Chicago and do you have anybody here? There's always a question that comes up for people. 100%.

Sometimes getting a referral from somebody who's had a great experience is oftentimes like is a good is a good route. That way you have already some trust that's already been established. But yeah, hit me up. You can reach out to me through various methods, various outlets, and I'll hook you up with a great. I mean, I'm connected. I've got tentacles.

I've got tentacles. Wanted to make sure I said tentacles instead of something else. But yeah, I'm connected all over. all over the world. So from the Middle East to Europe to South America to Asia, I got you covered. Now, how do you know? There's a lot of different flavors in chiropractic. And from a skill level standpoint, there are stages to this game. I mean, this is ultimately, I look at this. This is the the holy grail of the hands-on maneuvers, if you will. I mean, This is a highly skilled maneuver.

So you got to find somebody who's got some skills. And fortunately, I've been able to train chiropractors and chiropractic school students. So I know who are the elite adjusters in the profession. You can have an incredible social media following. Can be like an incredible influencer. But can you put a highly refined 100 mile per hour thrust? into a human being that doesn't leave that person. I'm not going to say I haven't experienced any,

I don't know anybody who's wounded people. You hear about it anecdotically, but it's definitely a high-level skill maneuver that you want to make sure you find the right person. I wish there were like certain organizations or databases where you can say, go here and here are your people. but you know it's going to be hit or miss there. Maybe that's something that we get started in the chiropractic world, you know, some sort

of filtering. I will say that I know that the Institute of Functional Medicine on their website, you know, they have there is this person IFM certified? And generally speaking, I find that if people are east, it doesn't have to mean that they'd be certified, but if they're aware of functional medicine, like you and I came in and, you know, you knew Dr. Hyman and the whole methodology and obviously the way you eat, the way you live, That is one filter for me. That's just somebody knows about that

because obviously going back to where we started the conversation, there's seven pillars. One of them is structural. And just like you write about in your book, you know, our diet, that can, you know, the wrong type of diet, quote unquote wrong, can gum up our fascia, which can take all sorts of impact on our body.

You know, the wrong community in our life can lead to emotional stressors like that. Super popular book about back pain, you know, saying that basically, I forgot the name of the title, but how back pain is really, you know, an emotional problem in your life. Dr. Sarno, I want to say. I think so. I think so. Yeah. And so it's nice to know that somebody's aware of other components that are there. And so that's one thing that I look at. But that doesn't mean just because they know about that, about functional medicine, that they're necessarily a great adjuster. That's where the referrals come in. Yeah. The beautiful thing about functional medicine is like this, this, that movement in medicine for the most part. I mean, it's a fairly new concept. Correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, very new. Like maybe a couple decades. But the beautiful thing is it's so in line with a vitalistic, holistic, lifestyle. And that's the game. It is a lifestyle. So you have to hit all of the, all of those seven pillars big time. Yeah, in it being a lifestyle for longevity, you know, we're still young man over here. Peter Attia, if you're familiar with him, he has a podcast called The Drive.

He has an episode that he did with my business partner, Dr. Hyman, where he called it this, like he went into his version of what he calls the Centenary Olympics, right? He's like, basic summary is that I want to be 100 and I want to be able to do these things. because people forget that separate from chronic disease and these are a link, but one of the major killers is just falls. Like people fall and break a hip bone. Now they're bedridden and they start to severely decline.

For sure. They fall and they hit their head and they bleed out as unfortunate as it is that's happened to a few family members of mine that have passed away that way. And it's super sad and you just, you know, Everything else is going good, but they never really had movement in their life. They never had that structural integrity even if they ate healthy. For sure.

So falls, fractures, your knees giving out, all this stuff. This all plays into a role of longevity. So going back to Peter Attia, one of the things that he was talking about in this episode was, these are all the things that I want to do at 100, which means if I want to do that 100, I have to be able to do this at 90, which means I have to be able to do this at 80. I can't remember what age it was, but let's just call it, 90 years old. He's like 90 years old, I want to be able to take, I'm boarding an airplane, I'm getting my carry-on bag that I brought on myself, and I want to lift it above my shoulders

at maximum weight of that carry-on bag and put it in the overhead compartment completely on my own. Right. And not have any issues and then be able to sit down. And then be able to get up, take it when the flight lands, pull it off, and pull it down. Right. So when you start thinking about all these things that we want to be able to do, even if your version is I want to play with my grandkids, I want to do that. We can work backwards and we can think, like, how do we support ourselves with both movement, yoga, exercise,

other stuff? We've done some great episodes on those. But then also the integrity around our spine, our joints, our body that create the sort of infrastructure that the rest of that movement sits on. And that's when I start to feel like the game gets really interesting. Right? That's basically what I did.

I was inspired by his podcast that he talked about. And every so often in life you get an eviction notice. And I got an eviction notice, which is I had this pain in my arm just from working out and then one day, boom. You know, I got this back shoulder pain which, you know, you've helped me a ton with and not having that pain persistently show up, which, interesting enough, I actually think it was also connected with my shoes a little bit in addition to, you know, I didn't even know how to describe what was going on back there. But in addition to, I think it was my shoulder was pushing up against a rib. Is that accurate, if you remember?

That is accurate. Okay, yeah, so somehow I had my right- Costo vertebral junction. Got it, got it. And the scapula wasn't able to glide properly. Right, just on my right side. And it would be not crazy, the pain wasn't ridiculous, but it would show up every so often.

I'd go to sleep and it'd be worse. And definitely my mattress actually helped too, since having changed my mattress, I don't feel like before where I came to you, I think I told you it was like a persistent like two. Now it's like a persistent point five. It's still there. After my car park, my adjustments, my alignments,

I really don't notice that, I don't feel it there. But I don't want that thing to be in the back of my head, you know, in the future. I wanna be able to show up the best way that I can for all the things that I care. You know, health is really having the ability to give love and attention to all the things,

in your life that you care about and not it getting in the way of it. It's been a great conversation, man. I enjoyed it. I appreciate you coming into the office and us getting a chance to chat about it. Tell everybody a little bit more about the center where they can find you guys online, the whole deal. Yeah, we're in West Los Angeles, and our space is called the Life Center, Chiropractic. It's a human performance enhancement center movement and a line. in school in an old-fashioned chiropractic wellness center.

So spinechecker.com is a great way to connect with us there. And you're also on Instagram as well? Spine Checker on Instagram. And we got to talk about the Spotify playlist. Oh, yeah. Spine Checker jams. And tell them about it. 2,600 songs and growing.

So you'll... What kind of vibe is a setup if people are going to play the house? I mean, it's got for the most part. It's going to be more like a down tempo. classical electronic, vibey playlist, if you will. So it's got a nice beat, but it's not going to go crazy. But I mean, it's going to take you from maybe like world music to classical to electronic, maybe some other type of instruments.

But they all match. It's just, I want people when they come in, like our space is not your typical doctor's office. I mean, this space is lit. But I want people's senses to be activated as soon as they walk in through the front door from the visionary artwork of many different artists that are on our walls to the colors. Alex Gray, Cameron Gray, Michael, Divine, to just name a couple, mirror one. But yeah, I like to, I like... Yeah, the central oils.

Central oil, you know, the office mills. good when you come in. We want to hit the senses. You know, yeah. And then I finish it, I finish it off with the, with the touch. No, it all makes a difference. And then I put it back onto you. And then, you know, the space after, you know, it's not just your classical, boom, you get your, just a glorious chiropractic adjustment. Then you have that post-adjustment movement system. Then you do some cervical traction to mold the curves. You do some low back traction to mold the low back curves, a couple other specialized equipment to pump your sacrum and your pelvis and your hips to get that cerebrospinal fluid going. So by the time you

leave our space, you're standing up tall, you're connected to the seven centers in your spine, if you will, you're breathing deeper, your muscles are softer and maybe just feel more loving in your heart and you feel lighter in your step. And if that happens, and mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. Dr. Brooks, pleasure to have you on the podcast. And by the way, shout out to your staff. Really amazing people.

Shout out. They take good care of everybody. And thanks for coming on the podcast. And just the thing that we were talking about is that there's two categories. We have the subclinical. We have the optimization. And really, I want my audience to know. And I feel like my audience is more aware than most because we've had some really

incredible chiropractors on the podcast. Shout out to Shalini. and Titus Chew, and they've shared so many aspects, but I want people to understand that if you can find a chiropractor who can be part of your wellness team and can help you see, especially with x-rays and the power of x-rays like your degeneration, and both the good and bad,

like if you don't do anything, kind of what direction you'll be heading in, and if you do do some work, the possibility of how much your spine can get a chance to improve, which is why I really loved the x-ray, and I got to see how much progress I made. So find that person for your team. And if you don't know somebody, reach out to Dr. Brooke and his team will get you set up.

So Dr. Brooke, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I appreciate your brother.