As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a special interest
in human performance. Growing up, the
way that I would make new friends at school was on the sports field.
Competition has a way of bringing people together and allowing them to share
common experiences. Sports were always a place for me to meet new classmates, especially
when I moved to the Conejo Valley in 10th grade with my family.
As I went into high school and people began to specialize in
the sports they played, the one activity that I naturally gravitated to was
karate. Karate was much more than just a competition; it was a physical
discipline that required focus, concentration, and mental awareness far beyond
that of most other physical activities. I loved the sport and competed in many
martial arts competitions throughout high school and beyond, continuing to
practice and advance my skills. I then opened my own dojo, which I happily owned for five
years. But in 1996, everything changed when I severely injured my back.
Just like most patients I see in my clinic, I first went to an
orthopedic surgeon to talk about my injury. The surgeon indicated that the best
treatment option was to operate on my bulging disc by performing a
micro-discectomy surgery. To make a long story short, this “corrective” surgery
left me in even worse shape than before, and within three months I could barely
walk. When I went in to see my surgeon again, I found out that the disc had
“re-bulged.” The solution presented by my orthopedic surgeon was the same surgery
I’d unsuccessfully already had.
This was not an option for me. It seemed like I’d started
down a slippery path and just as Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”
My search for alternative approaches brought me to the
counsel of a chiropractor.
Within a week, after a series of daily adjustments, the pain
in my legs and back began to disappear.
I could walk and carry on my usual daily activities for the first time
in months. Through continued adjustments, I regained much of my pre-surgery
range of motion…but my enjoyment and level of karate was never the same after my
micro-discectomy surgery.
Since I could no longer perform at the same expert level as
pre-bulging disc, I decided to pursue other opportunities. It was during this
time that the world of fitness was surging, particularly with routines
incorporating techniques from the martial arts, so I decided to take my
background in human physical performance from the karate studio and combine it
with nutrition expertise and develop my own customized fitness programs.
Coaching and motivating so many individuals to achieve their fitness goals was
incredibly rewarding.
Over the next few years, I worked very actively as a trainer
at a number of gyms and with clients one-on-one in the Conjeo Valley. As a
trainer, I slowly became more and more interested in learning the scientific
approach to studying human movement, or kinetics. I wanted my clients to
achieve a very high level of strength and conditioning, so I learned techniques
for optimizing exercises and various movement regimens. This also included
research on the methods of physical rehabilitation and sports exercise so that
my clients who were athletes could maintain top form.
What struck me profoundly was how often I’d work with
clients who needed rehabilitation for a nagging injury that prevented them from
fully pushing themselves in our workouts. Quickly I gained techniques for rehabilitating
a body’s structural deficiencies in order to affect the resultant function. I
gained an increased understanding of the physiological and mechanical workings
of the body. Soon it became apparent to me, based on the success of
rehabilitation, that the underlying mechanisms of changing the musculoskeletal
structure could have a tremendous effect on the function.
When I combined this knowledge with my own personal history,
it became clear that the best way to maintain, rehabilitate, and enhance
movement, performance and function in the areas of sport, recreation, work,
exercise, and general activities of daily living was chiropractic! Clearly
chiropractic held some key for understanding performance and function of the
human body not offered through conventional western medicinal practices. I
wanted to help others through the powerful techniques of adjusting the body’s
positioning, just as I had been helped, so I enrolled in Life Chiropractic
College West in the Bay Area to achieve my own goal of becoming a chiropractor.
For the past nine years, I’ve owned Living Well Family
Chiropractic in Thousand Oaks and have never been more passionate about
improving people’s health. My personal and professional background includes the
study areas of martial arts, fitness, nutrition, and wellness. I still leverage
the best practices of each work experience in my practice today, but everything
is fully grounded in my chiropractic education and training, and specifically
with a focus on Chiropractic BioPhysics – an advanced form of chiropractic
care.
What I am going to share over the next seven blog entries
are what I personally believe to be seven of the most essential principles of
living well. All seven are vital to life and, if realized, will lead to optimal
health and wellness. I learned a few of these principles before becoming a
chiropractor, but as a chiropractor for the past nine years, it is very
apparent to me now that all are deeply embedded in the chiropractic philosophy.
They range across aspects of nutrition, exercise, anatomy,
physical functioning, and holistic integration centering around the principle
that the systems of the body are related, and the spine serves as our basic
human scaffolding.
An understanding of these seven principles will provide you with
a clear distinction between the philosophies of health inherent in chiropractic
care (holistic) vs. the traditional western model of medicine (specific).
The seven lessons of my Chiropractic Philosophy:
1. Awareness of posture is essential to optimal
biomechanical functioning.
2. Our natural state of being is a healthy system of mental,
physical, and spiritual balance. Toxins and trauma cause the balance of each of
these areas to shift out of equilibrium.
3. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
4. Nutrition: Not all calories are created equal.
5. Hydration: Oxygen is essential. Avoid non-water liquids.
6. Structure determines function.
7. Your body has an innate healing wisdom.
Stay tuned for an in-depth explanation of each of these principles in the coming blogs.
