The Blair Movement with Dr. Drew Hall

 

Dr. Drew Hall talks about his own story on how he discovered Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic, and how it literally changed his life. He also shares some cases of patients that he saw where Blair Upper Cervical really brought about true healing to people who had already given up because they weren’t able to find the right care, until Blair Upper Cervical. This is why he is such an advocate for the Blair Movement.

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Blair Movement with Dr. Drew Hall

Hey, everybody. This is Dr. Liz Hoefer with Is Your Head On Straight. I’m really excited about my guest today. He is a man that I respect greatly in the Blair Movement and he has a lot of phenomenal information that I want to talk to him about today. Let’s get started. My guest is Dr. Drew Hall. He is the president of The Blair Chiropractic Society. Welcome, Dr. Hall.

Thanks, Dr. Hoefer. I’m excited to be on the show with you.

Me too.

You’re quite a firecracker in the Upper Cervical Movement. I’m looking forward to the interview and see what you’re going to ask me.

I appreciate that. I think that we both can relate to the fact that when you’re life gets healed and when your life gets changed through this work, it makes you so passionate. You’ll stop at nothing to make sure that every single person on the planet knows about it.

That’s absolutely true. Like being in the restaurant, over hearing someone in the booth behind you talking about how they suffer from migraine headaches and then going over there and saying, “Ma’am, I couldn’t help but over hear it. Are you talking about yourself right now? I’ve got to tell you some information.” Is that what you’re talking about?

Pretty much. Or when you’re walking down the street and you see somebody bent over sideways and you just know that you know that you know that you can help them, and you go up to them and tell them, “Here’s my card. You need to call me.”

I don’t want to get this too far off track, but there’s this, I believe he’s homeless. You see him walking down the sidewalk. I see him probably once a week. He literally, his head is horizontal to the ground and he’s looking straight down, his thoracic spine is completely bend over. The rest of the world says, “I’m not sure how that happened, why that guy is like that.” But when you do upper thoracic work, you know how that happened.

I know exactly what you’re talking about. I want to start with the most recent thing that we have been discussing, which is this incredible picture that you posted on Facebook the other day with an atlas that was literally facing the wrong direction, the tip of her posterior arch was basically touching her skull. Tell me about that case and tell me about what happened after you gave her a Blair Upper Cervical Correction in your office.

Actually that patient was referred in by two students from Life Chiropractic College West. It’s a friend of theirs. Anyway, this poor girl is 26. She’s been basically suicidal and has amazingly large swings emotionally, up and down. Anyway, we do what we always do in the office, both of us. We ran her through a bunch of tests and determined she had interference at the cord level. We took a series of X-rays, and her lateral X-ray, for those of you who are visual, there should be a somewhat equidistant space between the first cervical vertebra in the fore of the skull and the C2. Her atlas was literally, the back part of the atlas was jammed against the fore of the skull.

When I saw that X-ray, literally my heart broke a little bit because I know what that gal was probably been through her whole life. We do what we can do. We put her on the table and we got her adjusted and in fact I just got a text from her this morning. She said her mental fog has lifted for the first time in quite some while. But generally when you see these really severe chronic cases, they’re a little bit reluctant in rejoicing because they’ve been let down so many times. She’s already noticing all sorts of things for the positive. My prediction is in two years, she’ll be in chiropractic school.

That’s amazing. I completely agree. She will be in chiropractic school because when something like that happens and your mind is healed, and nothing that you’ve ever tried or done has been able to help you until something like a Blair Upper Cervical Correction, you have to do that for the rest of your life. That is exactly what my story was. When you texted me and you said, “This girl was you 15 years ago,” I was so excited. The only thing that I kept thinking was when we look at an X-ray, when a Blair Upper Cervical doctor looks at an X-ray and we see something like that, we know exactly what to do to fix it. That is part of the reason why I’m sharing these testimonies and sharing these stories. So that the students can get excited to understand that when you study this work and you learn it, you won’t have any question about what you’re going to do. You know what you’re going to do.

Absolutely. I couldn’t imagine making corrections in the upper spine without knowing exactly what’s going on there. When you understand the gravity of how important the brain stem is to overall body function. To follow up on, I didn’t finish the entirety of your question. Just because I was curious, she literally came back 24 hours later and I decided to take a post lateral X-ray on her just because I was curious if after one correction that there was a shift in the position of the atlas. Sure enough, literally 24 hours later, there was space between the back part of her head and her atlas, which is just proof that we actually are moving a vertebra that’s locked out of position and putting it back into motion. Of course now, it’s her body’s job to unwind and heal and repair all the damage that’s been done over the entirety of her life due to that problem.

That’s absolutely outstanding. That thing that you were just referring to, her body’s job, we call that innate intelligence. That is what we understand to be the ability for our bodies to heal from the inside out. That is simply what we’re unlocking whenever we do a Blair Upper Cervical Correction.

I remember many times going to chiropractic colleges and saying, when you do something so simple and so light and so precise as we do and you see such profound changes happens to so many people, a lot of times if you’re not careful you can start to take credit for, “Oh, I healed this person. Oh, I’m great,” and blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, as you just mentioned, it’s that inborn wisdom that exists inside the body that does the healing. Really all that we’re doing is we’re moving, putting the vertebra back into motion where it should be and allowing what’s already there to do what it’s supposed to do. That’s the power of what we do.

It’s so simple. above, down, inside, out. I want to know, how did you get into becoming a chiropractor? What is your personal story leading you to being the president of the Blair Society and, I think you’ve told me, I think it’s over 9,000 patients that you’ve processed in your years of practice. Can you take me back to the beginning and tell me what was going on?

Absolutely. But you said this is going to be twenty minutes. I’m not so sure. Here’s my upper cervical story. My whole reason for being in this lifetime. I was seventeen. I was a junior in high school. I was on the varsity baseball team. After practice, I got in a little wrestling match with a buddy of mine, like boys do. I was losing and he literally had me upside down above the pitcher’s mound, lost his grip on me and dropped me flat on my head. I’ve been dropped on my head before like most boys. But this drop, I was completely upside down. When I landed, I literally bounced off my head. Upon impact, I heard a big tight motion, noise, right at the base of my skull.

Of course, first thing that flash through my mind was I hope I’m not paralyzed. I rolled over and I stood up and I wasn’t paralyzed. I didn’t have any pain and I figured nothing happened. I didn’t have the information that we have or our kids have. First thing someone would have done that had the awareness of the importance of the upper neck and what happened at that moment of time would have literally gone to their car and driven straight to their upper cervical chiropractor. But because I didn’t have the awareness, and side note, that’s our whole goal of the Blair Upper Cervical Society, is to get this information and the awareness out to the public over the next decade or two.

Anyway, I went through the rest of the day. I went to bed. Pretty much forgot about it. Slowly over about a six month period, I developed headaches and I started having problems cognitively. I started having trouble with reading comprehension and recall and testing. My energy overtime decrease. Because this was slow and it was episodic, I never connected the dots, again, because I didn’t have the awareness. As I was spiraling down health wise, obviously I knew there was a problem but I didn’t tell anyone and I didn’t know why it was happening because it was slow and episodic. I pretty much every day told myself, “Oh, they’ll essentially go away.”

A year later, I found myself with depression and I ached from head to toe throughout my body. I had nausea every day for the next year and a half, and heart palpitations, numbness down my left arm. I developed carpal tunnel in both of my wrist. No, I didn’t type at the computer all day. That’s half the story. It’s one thing when you feel bad off and on. You have time to recover. But I was, for the better part of a year and a half, where every single moment I was awake I felt like absolute garbage. When I went to bed at night, I knew exactly what the next day was going to bring. That tends to wear on you. I tell patients an analogy. It’s like laying on your back and someone’s stacking bricks on you and they keep getting heavier and heavier and no one’s taking them off. That’s where I was at. I start having suicidal thoughts.

I’ve never obviously experienced that in my life. But when that starts to happen, you know you’re in trouble. That was really the impetus to me saying something to my parents. I told my mom, I said, “Ma, I don’t know what the heck is going on. But I’m having suicidal thoughts and this is how I felt for the last year and a half.” If you saw me at that time, I looked the picture of health. I didn’t look sick. Of course, my mom was a little in shock, but obviously she was supportive. So we did what most Americans would do. We went from doctor to doctor to doctor. Some of them were good people but they didn’t know what was going on. Some of them were complete jerks. Basically one of them told me that everything I was dealing with was all on my head because all of the testing showed nothing was wrong. That parlays into, I might as well just briefly talk about this, medicine is really good at dealing with acute situations. But when it comes to chronic health conditions ,there’s not much that can be done.

Instead of being told, “Drew, we’ve ran all these medical test and we really don’t know what’s wrong with you and we’ve done all that we can do and maybe you should go to an alternative type of health paradigm and seek out a different practitioner to try and help.” No, I was told that it was all in my head and go see a psychiatrist. Which obviously pissed me off. Pissed me off. I was pissed. Here I was, I was eighteen and a half, nineteen, and I felt like a truck ran over. I’m at the low point of my life. I basically get told by someone that all my problems are psychosomatic.

At that point, I basically said, “The hell of medicine.” We got to a homeopath and acupuncturist. Awesome people. Helped lots of people. But my case really didn’t do much. But thank God, instead of telling me, “There’s nothing that can be done about this. We’ve done a homeopathy and acupuncture.” They said, “You need to go see an upper cervical chiropractor.” The homeopath sent me to Dr. Tom Forest in the San Francisco Bay Area. To be honest, I was a little reluctant just because of the common notion that’s held out there about chiropractic. “Am I going to get stroke? Am I going to get paralyzed?” I was a little freaked out because of what I knew of chiropractic was someone   takes your head and twists it left and right.

But I was at the end of my road and I was willing to try anything. I drove 30 minutes down to Dr. Forest’s office. I remember sitting in the chair and him explaining upper cervical chiropractic to me and me thinking, “Oh, my God. That makes so much sense. How come no one else has told me this?” But then in the back of my head was, “This sounds too good to be true. Prove it to me.” Dr. Forest ran me through a battery of tests, took some pictures. In my particular case, he put me left side up and made a correction on my axis which was up and forward to the left and atlas which was also up and forward to the left. It was so quick and all I heard was a big loud noise in my ear. After he made the correction, I’m like, “Really, that’s it? How the hell is that going to do anything?” But again, I was hopeful because the rationale and the reasoning behind the upper cervical work made sense.

He put me in the rest area for about 25 minutes. I laid there, was done and got my car, drove home. I remember thinking, “I don’t feel anything. I feel absolutely no different than I did before I was adjusted. But I got to continue with this because it made sense.” I went to bed that night. For me, I go to bed at 10:00. If I fell asleep at one, for two years, it was a good night. It was also a good night if I slept for two hours at the time. It was also a good night if one of those hours I actually felt like I slept. Basically for two years, I laid in bed for eight to nine hours a night and never got to that deep restful sleep. I went to bed that night. It was the first night in over two and a half years I actually slept. Not only that I sleep straight through the night, when I woke up I realized that I didn’t remember falling asleep.

Of course, if something’s going to get your attention, that sure as hell will. I had hope. I think that’s one of the most powerful things about Upper Cervical Blair work, is it has such a broad reaching and far reaching effects on the system that when someone walks in your office, it doesn’t matter what they come in with because when you affect the central nervous system you’re affecting the whole system. When people that have been chronically ill, like myself for two and a half years, you get that first window of, “Oh, my God. I think maybe I can get better.” That changes everything. It wasn’t an easy road, as you know, when you’ve been chronically ill. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. I went through all sorts of ups and downs in my recovery process. But I’m here to tell you that Upper Cervical Blair Chiropractic and Dr. Tom Forest completely and radically changed my life. That’s my mission until I take my last breath.

It’s absolutely incredible to hear your story. I remember when I was a student at Palmer College of Chiropractic. I saw a video of your testimony when I was halfway through my education. I remember looking at that and thinking that is too good to be true. It went in one ear and it went out another ear. It wasn’t until a year and a half later that I was at my wits end that I also had an upper cervical experience that radically changed my life. That is why I also am a warrior in this with you, to be able to bring the truth to people who are suffering, needlessly suffering. When was it that you decided you wanted to go to chiropractic college?

That’s an interesting story. You would think after having that recovery you would have no other choice but, and this sounds completely insane now that I look back, what kept me from wanting to go to chiropractor school is I go, “My God, I don’t want to go through three and a half more years of school.” I was at UC Davis as a Geology undergraduate major. But to make a really long story short, I was six months from graduating, and of course I thought about doing it the whole time.

I was in Dr. Forest’s office and they asked me to write a testimony. I wrote this two and a half page testimony, three quarters of which they probably didn’t even know had transpired inside of me, like we don’t. How often do we have patients that come in, they’ve been a patient for nine months and we’re like, “How come you keep coming in here?” Then they just download all the stuff and you’re like, “Oh, my God. I had no idea.” I was in Dr. Forest’s office and his wife, Kris, said, “You know, Drew. Have you ever thought about being a chiropractor?” I say, “Of course I thought about it. It changed my whole life.” That was about as far as the conversation went.

I go back to UC Davis. I just registered for all my classes. It was probably five days after that brief conversation, I was walking home from school and all I can tell you is I had an epiphany. It was like I got hit from above and down and it was, “No, you’re going to chiropractor school.” “No, I don’t want to go to chiropractor school. I don’t want to be in school three and a half more years.” “No, you’re going to chiropractor school.” Literally, it was such a strong experience. I don’t want to get too off the deep end here for you listeners. But literally when I got home, I got on and cancelled all my classes and signed up for Biology, Anatomy, Organic Chemistry. Six months later I was in Chiropractic College. Much to my parents’ dismay because college isn’t cheap and I was four classes from getting my BS degree. But it was one of those forks on the road where I knew this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing and I didn’t want to waste six more months. Boom, I went for it.

That’s absolutely incredible. I just read a proverb the other day. One of my buddies wrote this incredible book, Timeless Truth. The proverb basically said, “If you want to find your purpose in life, you have to look at your wounds.” That has been so true in my life where all of the dysfunction and all of the pain and all of the heartache and trauma that I’ve lived through has been the very thing that has made me a better chiropractor, because I can relate. I know that that sense of purpose that you got walking home from college that day was the destiny that you have in your life to do this thing called Blair Upper Cervical. Now, fast forward, you’ve been in practice sixteen years?

Let’s see. August 2001. Yes, fifteen years.

Fifteen years, it’s coming up to sixteen years.

Mind blowing for me.

That’s amazing. It goes so quick. I’ve been in practice eight years now and I don’t even understand how that’s possible because I feel like I just graduated college and I just got to Southern California. Anyways, you have taken on 9,000 new patients. What is the thing that keeps driving you to get up every day and to go tell that story again and again, what is it?

Of course, we’re not God. It’s not the cure all for everything. But it’s those cases, like we opened up this podcast with. It’s the people out there that are about ready to stick a gun in their mouth, that are chronically ill and suffering. In many of those cases, there’s only one thing that’s going to turn that case around. I think, and you probably had these thoughts before, it’s kind of overwhelming to think about all the people on this planet Earth that are in that situation that will never actually find the answer.

I often think about what would’ve happen to me if I didn’t get my atlas and axis corrected by Dr. Forest. My life would be one 50^th, if it would exist at this point, of what it was. There are lots of people out there who are out of alignment that would benefit from what we do, and of course we want to correct them. But there are also a percentage out there who are not living at all. They’re living in hell and it’s because their atlas has been knocked out of position. It’s locked under their skull and it’s hanging them slowly. There’s only thing on planet Earth that will get those people back to where they should be. That’s what drives me.

That’s awesome. Because of that, you have taken on the role as president of the Blair Chiropractic Society.

I’m not so sure I took on that role. It was forced upon me.

No matter how you inherited the role, you’ve run with it. In the last few years, the organization has gotten a lot more focused, a lot more efficient. I know that the Blair Society mission vision is to have a Blair Chiropractor in every community of the world. The way that we’re going to go about doing that is by educating students that they can practice this, take it to their community and sell truth and hope. What do you want listeners to hear about the Blair Chiropractic Society to help them understand that if they have questions, if they need to have some hope, what do you want them to know about the Blair Society?

The whole purpose of the Blair Society was multipronged. The Blair Society was set up in the early ‘80s by a couple of very dedicated Blair Upper Cervical doctors, which at that time, I believe in the State of California, there were something like less than ten people practicing the work. Their whole goal in setting the society up was they’re going to die, they wanted the work to live on. Dr. Muncy, Dr. Forest, Dr. Harkinson, Dr. Topping, Dr. Addington and some of the old time doctors put together the society so it would outlive us. I look at you and I and some of the other people at the board as the third tier of people. We’re going to die too. It’s good to see the Blair Society growing.

Our main purpose and vision of Blair is to protect the technique and to evolve the technique when it’s prudent, to do research and to raise public awareness. We have 99.8% of the globe that doesn’t even know what upper cervical chiropractic is. That’s one of our main mission, is to raise public awareness of the stories that we told you, our own personal ones and the ones we’ve seen in our office, so that at least the people and the public that are suffering, they’ll have information and then it’s their job to make the decision what they want to do with it.

But as of now, there isn’t even awareness. That’s our whole driving force. Of course, we’re non-profit. We grow by donation of time and donation of money. We don’t want to get into this too much, but we have a scoliosis study going in McGill University right now. Our long term vision, I’d like to see a Blair Upper Cervical School on every continent. I’d like to see research centers. One of the biggest things that we see people say, “If what you do so great, how come there’s no research?” We don’t get millions of dollars of funding through NIH and government entities.

Largely, the way that we grow is through donation money from doctors, from outside sources. At the end of the day, money is what drives growth. I think from a Blair Society standpoint, we’ve got a lot of good dedicated people on the board. We’ve got an amazing person running the society that we’ve hired. We’re at the first inning of a nine inning game. Before I die and you died, Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor will be known in this world. Period.

I hundred percent agree with you, Dr. Hall. I’m so excited that you were on my podcast today. For those of you listening who want more information about the Blair Society, you can go to www.BlairChiropractic.com. If you have any questions, you can go there, locate a doctor. If you’re wondering if there’s a Blair doctor near you, you can locate a doctor and find out how close there is somebody. If you have questions or you’d like to donate, you can do that through the website. We’re excited that you have interest in this because literally this is going to change the world.

Dr, Hall, your story is absolutely incredible. I am inspired daily by you passion, by your dedication. For the last ten years I’ve been inspired. I’m just going to keep working hard to grow this thing we call Blair Chiropractic, because we both know that it changes people’s lives and it’s literally going to heal the world one atlas at a time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. This is Dr. Liz Hoefer with Is Your Head on Straight.

I hope you guys were having a great day and we’ll talk soon.

Thanks lot.

 

About Dr. Drew Hall

Dr. Drew Hall and Upper Cervical Chiropractic Health Care welcomes you to our website. We have two locations in the Los Angeles Area. Specialty Doctors in both Los Angeles – and Carson work with you to improve specific problem areas, nerve functions, and overall health. The Blair technique, a specialty within Upper Cervical Chiropractic, is what we practice. This technique removes impediments to normal neurological function by correcting spinal misalignments at the cranio-cervical junction (CCJ- head- skull). A specific and non-invasive correction, done after x-rays and a series of tests, precisely corrects misalignments of the neck and upper spine. Muscle strain, neck pain, migraine headaches, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia, Ménière’s disease, insomnia, chronic pain, carpal tunnel, pain due to injury or muscle strain, and chronic back pain are among the ailments that can be improved or eliminated through this type of care. Our chiropractic team is ready to meet with you to discuss your needs. We will help to design a program that is specific for you. We look forward to meeting you.

Important Links

• Dr. Drew Hall
• The Blair Chiropractic Society
• Dr. Tom Forest
• www.BlairChiropractic.com

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