Growing A Practice With Philosophy-Based Communication with Dr. Andy Gibson

You can affect the whole spine by moving one bone, the Atlas. That statement is the foundation of everything Dr. Andy Gibson has been working on. Laying face down in his own chiropractor’s office, asking details about the science of chiropractic care, he was asked the question that would forever change his life, “Andy, have you ever considered becoming a chiropractor?” His own chiropractor’s words sealed the deal that led him to go back to school to finally do the work he believes he was meant to do. He is now founder and clinic director at Gibson Upper Cervical Chiropractic and was named Blair Chiropractor of the Year in 2013 by the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Society for his unique philosophy-based communication style and passion for integrity within the profession. Dr. Gibson’s driving force has been learning to communicate and meeting people where they are at now.

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My guest is Dr. Andy Gibson. He is the Founder and Clinic Director of Gibson Upper Cervical in DuBois, Pennsylvania, serving central Pennsylvania in southwestern New York. Dr. Gibson was named Blair Chiropractor of the Year in 2013 by the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Society. With his unique philosophy-based communication style, which you’re going to learn about, and his passion for integrity within the profession, Dr. Gibson has established himself as a leader in the area of generating referrals. He’s a published author of multiple case reports and was awarded stage time to present his findings at the 2010 ACRA Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Listen to the podcast here:

Growing A Practice With Philosophy-Based Communication with Dr. Andy Gibson

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Gibson. I’m really excited about my guest. Andy, I am so thrilled to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking time out to be on my show.

Thanks for the honor and the invite.

I haven’t gotten to talk to you since Atlanta at the Blair Conference. I was heavy vetting you to get you to come and lead the students’ biz night and that was a great time.

I remember Dr. Charmaine was with me there and Dr. Tom was in the room. You were in the room. There was a bunch of good people in that room. It was fun.

It was a good time despite the fact that there was a hurricane happening a couple hundred miles to the east coast.

I almost didn’t make it in.

The weather will not stop us Blair doctors. I wanted to invite you on my show because you are doing an outstanding job taking care of people in Pennsylvania. I’ve always been a fan of you ever since I met you when you were about a year behind me at Palmer College. I want to get into your story. I want to know why you do what you do and who you are. Can you take me back to maybe even before you started going to chiropractic school, what you were up to?

I went to the University of Pennsylvania and I was an undecided major that ended up becoming an Elementary Ed Teacher Major by default. The irony of all this is when I first applied to the school, I applied very late and of course if you want to get to the school of your choice, you got to apply early, that’s the rule. I applied under a major that nobody chooses so that I could get accepted into the university that I wanted. I applied as what’s called a Natural Sciences Major and I chose randomly the pre-chiropractic track just to get accepted. Then I switched to Elementary Ed Major later on.

[Tweet “It was one small step after the next.”]

What in the world made you even think of that? Just because it was the easiest thing to get accepted to?

Because no one applies to natural sciences. I’m like, “I want to go to the school,” so I applied late. I’m like, “Lord, I’ve got to get in here,” so I chose that. Who knew what the Lord had been planning for me? I ended up graduating as an Elementary Ed with a Mathematics minor, but because I messed around for a year and a half, I had this huge science background that I thought was useless. I substitute taught for a couple years and it was fun. I took a couple of long-term jobs, they were fun but I never actually got hired because that wasn’t my calling. After a couple of years of being shut down and really frustrated by the nepotism that’s rampant in the school systems and everywhere else in life, I remember going back to my alma mater and I sat on a curb and no joke, I put my hands in front of me and I said, “Lord, what do you want to do with me?” It’s clear as I’m talking to you right now, I heard him say, “You’re going to work with your hands,” but I didn’t know what it meant. It was about a three year process between that revelation until I admitted at the Palmer. Between then, there are times I walked away from teaching and I took a little part time job just in retail sales. Ironically, I worked at a gun shop of all places and had a blast. It was fun working with the people. I was going to a chiropractor the whole time because I had been going to one since I was a junior in high school and this was about ten years later. I kept asking her a bunch of questions. She was a Palmer grad herself. There were nine chiropractors in the town I grew up in and they were all Palmer grads. Everybody displayed it on their billboard.

I’m talking to her and I kept asking her questions and off the cuff she says to me, “You’d make a great chiropractor, have you ever thought about doing this?”That was the seed right there, right on the spot. I go home and I’m thinking to myself, the gears are turning a little bit, and my wife and I had been praying the whole two years like, “What do you want to do with me?” I just laid it before God and literally, it was one small step after the next. It’s like, “I want you to apply to Palmer.” I’m like, “What? This doesn’t make sense.” I can write a book on all the things that happened between that point and where I’m at now. Long story short, I ended up at Palmer. Here we are almost thirteen years later.

You went to Palmer and you got into chiropractic school and you’re studying everything and you’re learning it. You grew up under full spine chiropractic and you’d been under care with these great Palmer grads. The Palmer brand is a thing. I got a new patient and I haven’t shared her story on my podcast, but I will. I got a patient because I had a Palmer degree. She didn’t care what I did. She just cared that I had gone to Palmer. Out here in southern California, that’s kind of a rare thing. We have three chiropractic colleges out here. We had two in the LA area for a long time. When she found out that I had gone to Palmer, she was like, “I’m in.” I was like, “Okay, that’s cool.”

I grew up a product of what we would joke about as flying sevens. I thought that’s what people did. I had no idea that there was anything else. I tried three different chiropractors in town. All three of them did the exact same thing.

When you were going to chiropractic, did you go because you had physical symptoms? Did you ever have the concept of wellness?

Absolutely not. In fact, I ended up at Palmer because I didn’t know until first day that there was another chiropractic school on the nation. I heard all these people talking about National and Logan and Sherman and Parker and Ellis like, “What are you guys talking about it?” They’re like, “I applied to this school and this school.” I felt this big because I thought, “There was only Palmer in my world.”

I love the fact that I went to Palmer. It’s a well-rounded education. It’s the fountain head, especially because you came to Palmer in Davenport, Iowa where chiropractic got started. It was an easy transition for me to choose to go to that school because that’s where I grew up.

I went to Palmer not knowing the full spine and that was it. You remember, we did trimesters. Every four months, you’re taking a ridiculous new set of classes. I’m in the first month of my first year trying to figure out what the heck happened to me because it comes so fast at you. Of course, I meet Dr. Lazar. When I say this story, I refer to him as the punk that changed my life. He looked at me one day and he challenged me and he said, “Did you know you can move the whole spine by moving one bone at the top of the neck?” I thought that is the most heretical thing I’ve ever heard because I didn’t experience it. That set me on a path to prove him wrong. I was trying to figure out why he was lying.

I think he graduated one tri before me, so we started together. I always was going to do twelve tris because I had a kid and I was working a couple jobs and things. I started school with him and we never had that conversation. That’s really interesting that he looked at you and he said that.

In fact, by my third trimester which is still infaixabancy by all standards, I was with him at the Buckhead in Atlanta at a NUCCA Conference. I was up to here and going, “What did I just get myself into?” Because I didn’t understand any of it. I didn’t even know the background of Anatomy to figure it all out.

At the end of the first year, you’re barely able to form coherent sentences with everything that you’re trying to digest. You’re at Palmer, you’re a year end. You have the seed planted about one bone. Did you know that one bone could change your health, your life? What was it again?

He said, “Do you know you can affect the whole spine by moving one bone?”

That one bone is otherwise known as the atlas, right?

Right.

You learned NUCCA, and how in the world did you go from that whole system to getting into Blair? Because I distinctly remember a conversation in the toggle room, I think you had come up to me after maybe one of the Blair weekend seminars that were offered. You said, “Tell me your story. I want to know how you got better from what you were struggling with.”

I knew about NUCCA, that’s for sure. I couldn’t grasp it. I tried rudimentary to settle into the thirteen steps of rolling in and duct replacement and foot placement and all that stuff. It was so mechanical and it’s not wrong, it just didn’t resonate with me. I had no idea. Then I was looking at the x-ray analysis and interpretation. At the time that I was taking toggle, I was learning that setup in that system, it made a little more sense. Then the whole Blair system came into view and we started looking at those protractive use. It took all the guess work immediately and all the assumptions and all of the calculations were gone. He said, “It either is or it’s not this.”

You strike me as a guy who really appreciates truth.

The black and white was instantaneous resonation with me because of my health issues that I was still struggling with because I was still getting, I hate to say subpar care, but I was getting student care. The Lord knows we took our blows as students. That’s a whole other story. It took me seven years to recover from all that. I thought, “If this is the truth of this system that we call Blair, then do it to me. I want to know what it does.” That’s when Dr. Newhouse and you came into the scene. He delivered a life changing medicine that I need right there on the spot. Life-changing adjustment right there.

You were in fourth trimester when you had your first correction?

That is correct.

I was in eighth tri and I was a year away from getting ready to graduate before my life got changed. I don’t even know if I would even be here right now talking to anybody if it weren’t for that correction that I received. I’m super stoked that you had that happen and effectively an entire year before I did in the end of education process.

I had been NUCCA adjusted. I had been adjusted toggle recoil many times prior to that with what I call eighteen-hour changes. I’d feel halfway decent for about eighteen hours and I was back right back in the grind again.

What do you think? Do you think it’s because it’s more specific and the Blair work is based on the asymmetry and the individual as opposed to like an orthogonal, head over neck kind of analysis?

It boils down to the age old question that Dr. Hubbard used to ask all the time, and he still asks. He says, “Would you rather have a perfectly articulated spine or a perfectly orthogonal straight spine?” Sometimes the answer is yes to both of them, but I have to largely argue because I’ve played in both those worlds in my own office. I have absolutely seen some people do very, very well with an orthogonal spine, and I’ve seen some people suffer tremendously from it. Here’s the kicker. I’ve seen everybody do well with the perfectly articulated Blair adjusted spine.

You experienced healing. Dr. Newhouse did your correction. He was a student, you were a student. What was the beautiful thing is that at Palmer, we have the ability to take the elective on campus and then as a student doctor practice Blair.

That was actually the tough part because I got it so early in my career. As a student, I was able to move right into my student adjusting term, knowing that I can do this, but the struggle was there wasn’t a staff doctor willing to support me in that. I thought, “How am I going to graduate on time and get my credits when I’m not adjusting somebody every single visit, and there’s nobody to watch over me?” What was awesome was God provided again another pathway and I had a doctor say, “As long as you know what you’re doing, I’m going to trust that you do. Just do it.” During that first year as a student, I got my very first patient, who had lupus, and we watched it resolve in eight months. The next patient had debilitating migraines where he would lose his vision. I was adjusting him for over a year. Then we saw pregnancies and we saw all kinds of crazy things happened.

Before we pop down to the actual interview, we were discussing mutual people that we now. One of my patients, who actually is the reason why I have a podcast, his best friend drives down from New York to see you because there isn’t anybody close. He drives four to five hours one way to get to you. I remember telling Tom in the conversation when he asked, “Who’s in Pennsylvania?” I said, “He has to see Dr. Gibson. I know that he is trained and qualified because I specifically myself taught him how to take the X-Ray.”

The beautiful thing about that entire meeting with George was that his life changed in an instant literally. To this day, I see him, I see his parents, I see his son, his daughter, his wife, and then I see his aunt and his uncle. On top of that, they have very close friends in the same town and that whole family consists of a husband, wife, their two kids, three great grandkids, three grandchildren, aunts and uncles. I mean there’s literally 30 to 40 people from this town that now drive down to hang out with us.

It’s like that quote that BJ Palmer says, “You never know how far reaching something you think, say or do will have an effect on your millions in the future.”Who knew that Jonathan Lazar saying that thing to you within your first year of being in chiropractic school would have an impact on 40 people in a community five hours from you?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The people I know in the communities they live in, it’s blown even bigger, to the point where the George’s family now is like my family. Every fall they invite us up to literally go deer hunting on their farm. When I go up, I’ll take my table and they call all their friends and say, “Dr. Andy’s come into town,” and they have this huge party. There’s like 40 to 50 people in this house. We’re having a big dinner party and I’m done checking everybody. They’re all telling their stories and swapping what happened and how chiropractic Blair change their life. It’s such a fun night.

[Tweet “It either is or it’s not this.”]

That is awesome. It’s like I get flown to different places all over the country because inevitably a patient will move away and there’s nobody near them and they can’t get back to orange county easily. For whatever reason they say, “Can you come to me?” “Sure. I’ll go on a mission trip.” I’ve gone to Canada, I’ve gone to Mexico, I’ve got to Oklahoma and I’ve gone to Arizona. It’s so incredible what you can do when you are living the call that is on your life and the mandate that you have. I want to talk to you about your experience as a doctor in your town, and then how you grew your practice. You came out school and like most students, we don’t have any money. It wasn’t like you could go to the bank and can get $300,000. You started small, and didn’t you hire your mom as your receptionist?

She was actually working as a receptionist for a medical doctor in the town that I’m currently living, but my office is twenty miles away from where I live. When I got out of school, her doctor that she was working for decided to retire and left town and she was high and dry without a job. It was that half-baked comment? I said, “Would you like to work for me?” She’s like, “Absolutely. As long as you don’t mind putting up with me.” The deal was sealed and I’ve said to people to this day, she is the number one reason that office is successful. A director her first impressions.

Who better to support you then your own mother?

When people call in on an emergency, they’ll come in and I’ll take care of them. They’ll say, “Thanks for getting me in.” I’ll say, “I just work here. You’ve got to thank the lady out front.”

You were probably approached by ten or fifteen different professionals in the industry who wanted to coach you and who wanted to help you grow your practice because when you get started, we are fresh out of school. We knew how to take boards and we did know how to do a Blair adjustment, but to grow a business and to have that impact, the thing that you did that was so outstanding in my mind was that you bucked the whole system and you used the innate understanding of who you were and what you were called to do. You use that education training that you had and you were able to educate people and really transform the idea of how to be a new doc in practice. Talk to me a little bit about that.

A couple of things I don’t like in life and that is I don’t like feeling suckered and being taken. If you’re being sleazy, you’re going to get called out on the carpet every day. I’d seen some of my classmates go through the ringer with some practice management companies, and how they were being groomed all along as students and then as soon as I graduated, they were hit with these ridiculous fees suddenly. “You’re a doctor. If you want to take us to the next level, you have to pay us next level prices.” I thought that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, why do you take advantage of people? That’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing all day long.

When I started practice, I made a commitment right then. I thought, “I’m going to tell the truth from day one, because it’s malpractice not to, and because that’s what we’re called to do.” I hated marketing. I didn’t like it. I’d done a couple of screening events as a student and I thought this is the sleaziest thing I’ve ever done. Not that it’s wrong, it’s just for me, I didn’t like it because I remember growing up thinking, “I don’t go to the farmer’s markets to find my next doctor. I’m in church talking to somebody who’s telling me their story, or I’m at a social club talking to somebody.” I was always talking to people and I don’t find things on a placemat at a restaurant. That’s not where I’m shopping for my next doctor.

It’s all about establishing relationships and building trust with people.

Absolutely. I thought, “How do we do this from day one?”I started thinking about how people learn and how do you make them want to talk. In other words, what’s the essence of a referral and where does it come from? How you make people go, “Whoa,” and then capitalize on that without being a used car salesman. For me, it was identifying what we have learned as an education major, and that is how do you tap into someone’s learning style?

There are basically four basic learning styles. There’s visual. People have to see it. That’s me. Then there’s auditory, you got to hear something. Those are the people who like to talk and listen to themselves and they learn through processing. Then there’s what’s called kinesthetic where they need to touch stuff to learn, and then there’s mixed, which could be multiple learning styles altogether. When people come into your office, you can listen to them during the consultation and they’ll tell you how they learn if you know what to listen for. That was really key for building the office from day one. The tactile kinesthetic learner, for an example, they’re going to walk up to you and they’re going to say, “Doc, I’ve got this thing right here,” and they’ll actually lean in and touch me or they’ll say, “Can you touch this right here? I want you to feel this.”They’re telling me, “I want you to touch because that’s how I learn.

Your training in the educational process of learning and your undergrad is what allowed you to have these concepts so that you could apply that to then being a good communicator?

That’s been the driving force, is learning to communicate with people and meeting them where they’re at. Does it happen 100% of the time? No, it absolutely doesn’t. When it doesn’t, you know right away if that’s not a good fit. It could either be my fault or it could be their fault or it could just be the way it is. That’s true for every office, sometimes you click and sometimes you don’t. I’ve found that more often than not, when you click and you and you meet that person where they learn and you’re communicating on their level, just like the five love languages. If you’re meeting that love language, life is beautiful and it blooms and they bring their friends in because they want to meet you. “I want to meet your friends.”

Then you become the family chiropractor. Not only are you the family chiropractor for this awesome town up in New York, but you probably are the family chiropractor for numerous households in the community that you live in.

Businesses are exploding big time. Every year it explodes a little more.

You’ve done so many good things. I don’t get to see you in person very often. I think we catch up every other year at the Blair Annual but obviously social media is a thing. I see what’s going on Facebook every now and again. You have had research papers published. You’ve been invited to go speak at research symposiums. You’ve been invited to speak at Lyceums for chiropractic colleges.

My very first patient that walked through the door was a research paper. That was not planned, but again, I think that was the boost of encouragement from the Lord he wanted to give me to say, “This is for real. I’m going to show you what we can do together.”

Tell that story. I want to hear that story because I want my listeners to know the power behind the Blair upper cervical correction.

It’s important for the students to know that you don’t have to have your ducks in order in order to save someone’s life. My office wasn’t even finished. There were lighting fixtures that needed done, I have walls halfway torn down, I had materials all over the floor, but it was a Monday morning, May the 10th, and my X-ray machine had just been installed and calibrated. My Lloyd upper cervical table just got dropped off and I literally just got on unpacking it. I had a computer and a Tytron scanner. I said to myself, “This is great.” I remember thinking I have all the materials I need to start adjusting people, but I had never actually developed my own X-ray. At Palmer, everything was digital by the time we graduated. I got this whole dark room going, “How the freak do I do this right?”

I had no marketing, I had no paperwork, I had nothing because I wasn’t scheduled to be open for two more weeks. I get a phone call, and this girl named Rebecca. In fact, I just saw her today. She’s still with me to this day. She’s doing great. She calls me and she’s telling me all this stuff. She’s got this massive radiculopathy. She was a classic crack your neck type girls 30 times a day. One time she did it too many and she gets numbness and tingling down her arms. She thinks she’s having a stroke. She calls in and she tells me, “Can you help me?” My first words to her were, “How did you find me?” Because I didn’t know anything out there. Then it dawned on me, I was playing around with this little business card and it was a picture. It was an old throwback to Michael Jordan days where it had a spotlight shining down on the back of his head. It was a black and white. He’s got his arms held out right. You’d only see his face, and I just thought that was a cool picture. I wrote, “Coming soon, upper cervical care.”

Literally, I took one business card and I put a tack through it on my sister’s coffee shop bulletin board. It was months prior to that, I never did anything else. She found that upper cervical business card and called and said, “I’m facing surgery, can you help?” I said, “Yeah, come on in.” I hung up the phone and I literally almost wet my pants because I realized what did I just commit to? I called my wife, I said, “You’re not going to believe this.” This was 10:30 in the morning and I told her to come at 3:00 because I didn’t know what else to tell her. I thought it’s going to take me six hours to figure out how to develop an X-ray. I get all my rudimentary paperwork together.

She walks in the door and sees this place in shambles. She’s like, “Honey, I don’t care what you got to do, just fix it.” I shoot my film. She’s got her MRI. She’s got this massive disk bulge at C6. She had a huge ASR atlas and a C4 ARS. I’m like, “All right, let’s fix this.” When we adjust her, it changes her life. I see her over the course of six months, and I said, “You’ve got to go get another MRI done.” We were pushing for it and finally they do it and the whole disc bulb sucked right back in. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

That is outstanding. Your very first patient. Talk about a divine appointment. How did you end up making this a research project? We had to do research. In school, and we had to prove that we were educated in how to do it. When you’re in practice and you’re learning how to make up a system and learn how to develop a film, how did you have the time to go ahead and then write this whole thing up?

I got to give props to Dr. Jim Countryman. I think he’s retired now. Dr. Tom Hubbard, who’s still at Palmer. There were some students on board as well. I basically called Todd up and I said, “Todd, you’re not going to believe this.”He was my mentor doctor in school, him and Dr. Forest were the two that led the charge. I said, “You’re not going to believe this. The very first patient I got. Check this out.” I sent him an email with the pre and post MRI results. He called me within seconds of ringing. It was in September and maybe the ACC rep conferences was the next month or something like that. Maybe it was August and September and I was only four weeks before the season. He says, “We’ve got to get this written up now.” He calls Countryman and he called some of the student interns and he says, “Gibson, I need you to provide this, and this will take care of everything else.” Instantaneously, we have research project. It gets submitted to the ACC rack and we got stage time and everything because they loved it. All I did was adjust this girl and provide the background data. Again, another divine appointment.

I wanted to highlight one of your success stories. That’s a huge one. Do you have any other really cool stories, just off the top of your head something that you were just like, “Wow, that was really awesome?”

Wait for the goosebumps and tears on this one. Every time I think about this, this is the one that really hits home. It’s a girl named Alyx. I met Alyx because her second grade teacher was a patient. This was seven years ago. I was barely six, six and a half, maybe eight months into practice. I’ve been in practice just under ten years now. Alyx’s second grade teacher calls me and says, “I have a referral for you. Her name is Alyx, and I think you can help her.” I said, “No problem. Tell her call the office.” Alyx’s mom, Carrie, calls the office one day and she says, “I’d like to get her scheduled.” I didn’t know anything other than that there was a second grade student coming to see me.

[Tweet “You never know how far reaching something you think, say or do will have an effect on your millions in the future.”]

When she comes into the office, she’s cute, she’s bubbly, and she’s kind of doing her thing. I sit down with the mom because I’m having to consult with the mom, I’m not going to sit down and talk with a seven year old. I’m talking to the mom. I said, “What’s the problem? What can we help with?”She says, “Alyx has a brain tumor and her teacher thinks you can help.” The skepticism is rolling off this lady’s face. I can specifically remember this day feeling like crap. Cancer, they didn’t prepare me for this. In the very same breath I also remember thinking, “If she has brainstem pressure, it doesn’t matter. Her immune system isn’t functioning.” Then I was like, “Back up. Slow down,” so I just did a regular consult. We find out that she had a little bit of rough birth process and she been having these of Trigeminal Schwannomas. She was having sensory issues on her face and she was having these crazy headaches. They gave her four weeks and they were going to take an MRI. They said, “We’re going to check you again in four weeks to see if it’s an aggressive type. If it is, then we’re going to go in and we’re going to basically open up your head. We’re going to take this little tumor off your trigeminal Ganglia. There’s a better than 75% chance that she wouldn’t be able to smile her whole life and or feel one whole side of her head.”

That was what we were working with. I told the mom, “I have no idea how long or how quick or if your daughter will heal from this, but I know that she has brainstem pressure. She will not have an opportunity to heal from it.” I was just relaying the facts of what I knew because I’m fairly new in practice. I said, “Let’s see what we have in four weeks. This is not a lot of time but let’s see what we have. I’ll do everything I can for her.” I x-ray her and I’m telling you, good Lord, she had a complete cervical kyphosis and her atlas instead of sitting in a nice, healthy 18 degrees to 30 degrees was at about 20 degrees inferior, just crushing her. I take the x-rays, I adjust her and I’m waiting for fireworks watching this tumor dropout of her ear. Nothing happens but she gets really instantly tired on the bench and she’s like, “Mom, I want to go to bed.” I said, “Cool, we’ll just let her go.”

Long story short, I saw her twice a week for four weeks. Her last visit, she was coming on a Friday and she was scheduled to be at the neurosurgeon’s office on the following Monday, three days later. I said to her, mom, “I want to take a follow up X-ray just to see where we’re at.” All I did was I shot a lateral and I wanted to compare the changes in four weeks. She had an absolutely gorgeous cervical curve in four weeks. I looked at the mom and I remember I’m trying to fight a tear, and I said, “We have a chance.” That’s all I said.

The mom calls me on Monday and she says, “Dr. Andy, do you have a minute?” I’m ready for the worst. I’m in the middle of my patient day. I never take phone calls, which is really strange. I take the phone call and I said, “Is everything okay, Carrie?” All she says in between tears is, “It’s gone.” That’s all she says. I’m broken down. I’m a balling slobbering fit, I’m laughing and I’m happy and I’m crying and I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m just beside myself. I collect my thoughts and I said, “What now?” She says, “They want to see her back in three months.” I said, “Great. We got three more months to work with her.” She goes back in three months, no shred of anything, no traces anything. Seven years later, she’s absolutely the most amazing dynamic middle school age kid you’ve ever met.

The moral of the story is if you want to see miracles, you need to go to central Pennsylvania.

I remember doing a lot of praying for that little girl, that’s for sure.

I’m in tears and I actually knew that story. When you hear things like that, it never gets old.

No, it doesn’t. When she was a student, when she came in to get her x-ray, she didn’t really sit still because seven year olds can’t be taught to sit down. I remember she had this little stuffed beanie baby that was a pig, and I couldn’t do anything to her until I did it to the pig. In order to get an X-ray of her, she’s like, “You’ve got to x-ray the pig, honey.” I’m like, “Perfect.” I sit this pig down in the chair and X-ray this pig. She’s still not sitting still, so I draw my best freehand. There’s a pregnancy paper on your X-ray thing that says, “If you’re pregnant, it’s a warning.” I drew this picture of a pig on the pregnancy sheet that to this day is still there. When patients sit down in the chair, they’re like, “Why do you have a pig on that?” I’m like, “Can I tell you an amazing story?” I tell them the story of Alyx. They’re in tears and they’re like, that’s amazing.

Talk about meeting people where they are. I have a little girl who has a pretty gnarly, sensory issue and she’s gotten outstanding results like most people do. She has a little Minnie Mouse because we’re out here in the land of the Disneyland. She always brings Minnie in and Minnie has to get checked before she gets checked. It’s so much fun to meet people where they are. It doesn’t matter if they’re two or if they’re 92,when you meet them at their level, they know they can trust you because you are invested in them and you’re invested in the things that they care about.

That’s a big message I communicate to people every day. I say, “I’ll work with you but I can’t work for you. You have to want to work with me.” Then if we were for a teammate, you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That’s what I want to go far.

I know that there are probably 150 more amazing miracle stories that you could tell, but I want people to know how they can find you. There’s going to be somebody listening to this podcast that maybe can’t come to Orange County, California, or maybe they want to come see the pig. Do you know what I’m saying?

I won’t quit my day job to be an artist, but it is a pretty darn fine pig. How can they find me? My website is GibsonUCC.com. I do have a Facebook page, Gibson Upper Cervical Chiropractic that may or may not be attended to you regularly. If they want to give us a call, 814-371-7412 and you can speak to my lovely secretary, Pam. She is my mom. Treat her nice or we won’t be friends. That’s the best way to get a hold of me.

Dr. Gibson, it is a pleasure to have you on my show, and it has been a pleasure to be a friend to you all these years. It’s just so cool to see when you are living the call that you have on your life and you are walking in the will of God for your life, the miracles that come from that and the impact that you can have. I bet you, Alyx is never not going to sing the praises of what Blair chiropractic can do.

It’s amazing to be the hands and feet for sure.

Thank you so much for taking some time out for me and sharing a little bit of the life you’re leading out there and the amazing stuff you’re doing. This won’t be a one and done kind of podcast. I want to have you come back on and we’ll do some more talking about some more amazing things.

I’ve been honored to be here and I’d be honored to be a guest in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Gibson.

About Dr. Andy Gibson

Andy Gibson is the founder and clinic director at Gibson Upper Cervical in DuBois, PA serving central PA and southwestern NY. Dr. Gibson was named Blair Chiropractor of the Year in 2013 by the Blair Chiropractic Society. With his unique philosophy-based communication style and passion for integrity within the profession, Dr. Gibson has established himself as a leader in the area of generating referrals. He is a published author of multiple case reports and was awarded stage time to present his findings at the 2010 ACC-RAC conference in Las Vegas, NV.

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