26. What holistic chiropractic work looks like

In this episode of the Heal with Grace podcast, guest host Liana, a holistic therapist, interviews Dr. Chandler Collins, a holistic chiropractor.

Dr. Collins shares his journey to becoming a chiropractor, motivated by a persistent injury. He explains his unique approach to holistic chiropractic care that integrates muscle testing, addressing emotional traumas, and coordinating various aspects of the body’s functionality.

 Liana and Dr. Collins delve into how emotions and chronic conditions impact the body, the complexity of human adaptation, and the integration of brain and body in holistic healing.

Dr. Collins offers insights on the importance of consistent, thorough care for achieving deeper wellness and reflects on the shared goal of practitioners helping patients to uncover the root causes of their problems.

About Dr. Chandler Collins:
Dr. Collins has over two decades of in-depth study of health, physiology, nutrition, and healing.  As part of this journey, he has created a boutique healthcare practice that distinguishes itself by extensive one-on-one work tailored to the individual needs of each patient, in order to address the complete structural, chemical, and psychological health of each person.  Advanced testing techniques allow the treatment session to be guided by the highest priority revealed by that person’s body, in that moment.  With every session focused on finding the root cause of each ailment, a more self-sustaining lifestyle of health and wellness is achieved.

www.CollinsDC.com

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Grace: Hello, and welcome back to the heal with grace podcast. So, this recording is going to be a little bit different this episode is, and I actually think it turned out exactly how it was supposed to turn out. But at the time of this recording, because I truly value authenticity and transparency, I was having a very difficult week.

Everything just ended up hitting me at 1, and I had to really take a step back from everything that I was doing, which included podcast recording client sessions. That pretty much anything in my life, I just really had to take care of myself. And 1 way of doing that was. It's either rescheduling or canceling or asking for help.

And so what I actually did was I asked Liana for help and this episode because Dr. Chandler Collins who we're interviewing is actually someone who she wanted to bring on who she's worked with before. And so I realized actually this would be a really great episode for her to host on her own. And I'm actually really glad it happened that way because it would not be the same if I was on there.

I hope you enjoy. Without further ado, here is the episode with Liana and Dr. Collins, and I hope you enjoy.

[00:01:21] Liana: Hello. I am Leanna. I'm a holistic therapist here with Elevate Therapy and Wellness here in Austin and also a therapist with the MindBody Healing Method. I'm here today with Chandler Collins, a holistic chiropractor here Here in Austin, and I'm so excited to chat with you today in Chandler and I have known each other for many, many years.

I'm excited to. Dig in and learn a little bit more about, , like, the background of your approach because I, of course, have worked with you. And so I know experientially about it. , but let's just dive in. Yeah, I'd love to. 

I would love to hear like, Okay. If you'd like to just tell us a little bit about yourself and what led to you pursuing a career as a holistic chiropractor. 

[00:02:10] Dr Collins: Yeah, so I've been in practice now for, I guess, almost 18 years doing this sort of work, you know, body work of some sort, or being interested in it, or studying it actively for over 20 years.

and I, my path to becoming a chiropractor was, was, not a direct 1 and came out of my own history, my own health history, my own interest history. Right? So, my, I'm sort of considered when I was much younger, say, in my teens and early 20s about going into the health field, but, honestly, it didn't really appeal to me.

My experiences with, The practitioners that I had been around, and that was medical doctors, physical therapists, massage therapists, things like that on the whole with with a couple of notable exceptions didn't it wasn't something it wasn't that they were negative, but it wasn't something that excited me.

It didn't turn me on. I didn't feel like, oh, yes, this is definitely something I want to do.but. In retrospect, I realized I had always been interested in the body, how the body works and, in physiology, you know, sort of our internal workings of our body in the brain, how the brain works. I'd always been interested in that, but it never pushed me towards a career as a chiropractor or in any kind of health profession, just because it never, never created a spark in me.

And, then I. Essentially, I had an injury that wouldn't go away. This was in my early 20s, early to mid 20s, and I had an injury that wouldn't go away. And it was an injury in my hamstring. I'd stepped out to run 1 day. I was living in Chicago at the time and I felt a pain in my hamstring. So, the back of my leg on the left side, and that pain didn't go away for at least 2 years.

I went to all sorts of people to help me with it because being active exercising, even competing was, was a big part of my life at that time. And, so it was, it was sort of identity shaking for me to not Be able to exercise, not be able to compete, not be able to do all the things that I love, not be able to do the things that really honestly helped calm my own brain chemistry.

And so I looked all over trying to find people to help. I went to medical doctors. I went to physical therapist. I went to massage therapist. Nobody could really figure it out. And I'd even when I was in college earlier before this injury had some experience with chiropractors as well. It wasn't again, like I was saying before, it wasn't a negative experience, but it wasn't.

Yeah. It was an earth shattering for me didn't make me say, oh, yes, I want to do this. And so I tried lots of different practitioners to get it better.during the course of that time, I moved down to Austin and I got introduced and sort of a roundabout way to a chiropractor who did work very differently from anything I had experienced.

and. He again, we can delve into this if you want, but the short story is, he eventually became my mentor and I really determined over a period of time. This was the kind of work I wanted to do. And it's the kind of work that I do now. And it was a type of approach to health and health care. That was.

You know, generically today, we might call it holistic at that time. My experience with that doctor was that he knew more about physiology and how the body works than anyone I had ever experienced that the things he was telling me made sense. The testing he was doing was very. Applied it wasn't a, it wasn't just a test.

Sometimes we go to medical doctors when we get tests done and they feel very nebulous. We don't really know what the results mean. We don't really know where it's going to lead us. The test, the testing that this doctor was doing was very much hands on felt very directly related to the problem that I had.

And it led to a very obvious and distinct outcome, which was positive. Right? So, within about 5 minutes, he knew what was going on 5 minutes of our 1st visit. He had an idea of okay. I know what's going on here from the testing. He did. And within 6 weeks, I was better and the pain was gone. So that really opened my eyes to a different way to.

Work with patients and a different way, honestly, to be in healthcare period. And that led to me deciding, okay, this is work. I really want to do. I'm fascinated by it. I love the work. It has fantastic results, not just with me, but others I came in contact with and that's how I went down the path to become a chiropractor.

[00:06:57] Liana: Amazing Thank you so much for sharing that. I, I really resonate with your story because. My background is similar in that in my experience of like doctors and kind of like going around and searching for answers and I often struggle to find. Many people who I felt like could actually like, really directly help me and like you say, like, run tests and like, directly impacted the way that we were going to approach my health.

And that was like, 1 of the things that I really appreciated and finding, you know, and why I've worked with you for so many years, because it is like, very immediately. experienced and you work, on so many. Levels, which is like, very, very different from like the traditional chiropractor. And so like, and I, I struggle with that when I tell people about you, because a lot of people have had, you know, negative experiences and working with chiropractors.

And so I would love to hear from you, like, how do you see the way that you approach this work? Different than the traditional chiropractor. 

[00:08:11] Dr Collins: Yeah, you know, your, your difficulty and explaining it to others is honestly, it's my difficulty too. It's hard to understand to sort of tell you're in it, but I'll do my best.

I think that if we sort of start at a broad view. A lot of times when we think of even a holistic approach to care. The traditionally, and this is changing now, thank goodness, but traditionally, people look at holistic care as you go to someone for your structural problem, you go to another person for your psychological problem.

You do someone else for your chemical problem and people become very specialized and we, and. You know, that's, that's the idea of holistic cares. Oh, yes, I have somebody looking at each piece, but it's not common that we have somebody looking at all the pieces together, which is not to say that whoever does that has all of the expertise as a specialist.

But you need someone to kind of be a, I don't know, a conductor, so to speak, to look at it and be able to integrate some of what's happening with a person. You know, to answer your question about how is the work I do different from a regular chiropractor? Well, it's, it's not different than if we just look at it from a, just that idea of specialization, right?

Your, your average chiropractor tends to be very focused and they tend to be very focused on mobilizing joints is really the way I think of it. it's what. What many people just refer to as alignment, if I'm being, you know, think of for being more complete or more accurate in our description, what chiropractors do isn't just about alignment.

It isn't necessarily just about putting one vertebra, for example, on top of another in the right place. A lot of times it's much more about mobilization, being able to have the joints in the body moving in the way we want them to move. Sometimes that's about alignment. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes things are just sort of stuck in a position.

And if we looked at their alignment, they might look perfect. But that doesn't mean they're moving appropriately. So a standard chiropractor would probably just be focused on that on that alignment piece. And honestly, I don't know what the data is, but I suspect. That, the average chiropractor probably spends less than about 5 to 10 minutes with each patient because that's what they're focused on.

And, you know, your visit to an average chiropractor might take longer because they might have you with someone else doing massage therapy. And it might have you someone else doing hot or cold therapy, or you name it any number of adjunctive. Treatments or therapies with your visit, but what the doctor of chiropractic is actually doing during that time is very focused and very short.

So what I'm doing with my patients is not unlike what I described with my 1st visit to my mentor. In that that I'm doing a lot of testing, both conventional testing as simple as say, a blood pressure check to a very specific and what I would call advanced muscle testing to try and determined what problem someone has in a.

In any given area, or given whatever problem is, we're trying to approach at that time. I'll sidetrack just for a 2nd and say that. You know, trying to explain something about muscle testing, because I think when I use the words muscle testing, there are a lot of people who have strong conceptions about what that is.

And so. What I'm not talking about when I say muscle testing is just something that someone might hear about and say, I don't know. I don't want to disparage anyone because sometimes I think these things, these tests are really interesting and sometimes useful, but sometimes in a very crude muscle test, someone might use it in a health food store to try and tell someone whether they need a nutrient.

That is a crude muscle test. Another very basic muscle test is something that you might see in a neurologist office where they are testing your ability to pull your foot up just to see if a muscles working there. Right? So we have 2 things on very opposite ends of the spectrum. Something that's very alternative.

Something that's very conventional. They're both called muscle tests, but there's a whole spectrum of tests that get, they can get very specific and, What's the word I'm looking for focused on the problem that we're trying to evaluate. So, the type of testing I'm doing there. Is more along that focus variety, so it's, it's takes much more, A much more particular technique than a sort of a gross muscle test. You might see in a neurologist office. When I say gross, I don't mean disgusting. I mean, something that's very generic. So, it's much more specialized than that and we're using that to try and evaluate. whatever problem we have. So, and the problem, of course, can be really varied.

It can be something as simple as a shoulder injury where I'm evaluating a lot of specific muscles around the shoulder, or it can be something much more complex. like a, you know, someone who has just had a more,a concussion, for example, where, larger parts of the nervous system are, are affected.

in a much more broad based pattern. And so, in addition to conventional tests, like balance tests, like I said, blood pressure tests, Sarah Beller tests, where we're evaluating more particular ways that we move, we're also evaluating a large number of muscles in a very specific and focused way to try and see if we can discern patterns.

About what that patient is presenting with at any given time, because as patients, we're always on display, right? We always have some variants variants of of how we display to any given doctor. And that can be. All of our muscles are sort of locked up just to use a loose term to we're very weak all over to we're holding a particular pattern.

You know, you name it and we can dive more into that. But that's more generally what I'm looking for when I'm working with a patient. So I take the results of those tests,And I piece those together to try and help me in addition to the patient history, of course, to try and come up with a diagnosis for that patient.

And once we have a diagnosis and sort of a direction to where we're going, and I talk that through with the patient, then we move into treatment. So. And I can keep going, of course, but, but the, the, the treatment is very similar. The description of that is not dissimilar to what I said about essentially what I've what I brought you up to through now, which is essentially the exam.

Right? And when someone comes into the office, they present with a problem. We examine the patient. We try and figure out what direction to go. Once we know what direction to go, that really determines what the treatment looks like. So, to use my examples, you know, for the shoulder injury, we may do a lot of work on the muscles around the shoulder.

In addition to regular chiropractic work, where we're mobilizing joints, we may have, have other Muscles that need to be evaluated, we may find from the muscles that we find that are having trouble. And when I say having trouble, you're usually weak relative to the others when we find those muscles that are weak.

That other parts of the body that maybe you wouldn't think are related to the shoulder also need to be treated in order to get those muscles functioning. And that's 1 of the beauty of of the sort of accurate, more accurate and more specialized muscle tests. Is that they give you a before and after picture.

To see if your treatment is effective, because if I do a treatment to a patient, and it doesn't change any of these things that are sort of on display a lot of these muscle tests, for example, then I've got a pretty good idea that my treatment wasn't effective. And that's another way in which the, the treatment that I do with people is different from a lot of standard.

Chiropractors, because when you don't have something like that, that you're really evaluating as a before and after. Measurement, it can be hard to really know if you've done anything. So. That really helps guide my examination and the treatment. 

[00:16:32] Liana: That makes so much sense. Thank you for explaining all of that.

yeah, I. I've been to traditional chiropractors before, and I've, I've had, like, some interesting reactions to it. And I think because it's not considering, like, you say, like, the entire picture and. I love the way that you describe, like, being a conductor and kind of, like, integrating. All of the parts, because you do and, I think 1 of the things that I've always really loved about the way that you work also is.

You know, there's been times I've like come in to see you and, and maybe it's because you, you approach it physically and then it doesn't hold or something, but then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, there's actually an emotional piece here. There's trauma or, you know, you'll find these different things that my body is holding on to that's impacting my body.

And so I'm curious, like, how do you, how do you know to get to that? How do you know that that's impacting somebody's body in that way? That's And and I, and I guess, like, how then, yeah, do you like, approach that and help that person clear that in their body? 

[00:17:44] Dr Collins: Sure. So so that to understand that requires a little bit of history of this kind of work.

So, essentially, you know, muscle testing and how it got to, to this body of work came about originally because, there was a, I believe they were physical therapist. I should have looked this up. These were an old pair of physical therapist. They might have been medical doctors, but I'm pretty sure they were physical therapist named Kendall and Kendall.

They were husband and wife pair. And they came up with sort of these original 40 or so muscle tests, because they were evaluating polio victims. This is back before polio vaccine. And so they were trying to evaluate. how, you know, the level of nerve damage to a polio victim, and so they develop these muscle tests because nurse corresponds to different muscles that they supply.

And so, again, they were using the muscles as essentially a display to use that term again, a display in the patient of how much damage. So, those that list of muscle tests got to a chiropractor, a guy named George Goodhart, and he was, you know, working as more as a, as a sort of more, more, more conventional chiropractor at that time, but he found those muscle tests and using those and he started evaluating his, his patients.

And found that they were his ability to discern what was happening with the patient and to be able to affect change in the patient was really improved because he had these tests. He could do before and after tests on he could use the test to evaluate different areas. The 1st, 1st patient he ever evaluated was a janitor in his office.

You had a wing scapula and who gave him a hard time over the years because he could never fix his wings wing scapula. And then when he got these muscle tests.he was coming through the office 1 day at the end. He said, yeah, you're a pretty great chiropractor. You still won't be able to fix the scapula of mine.

And he said, well, come over here because he just gotten those muscle tests. He looked up in the book about what muscle would correspond to that. He tested the muscle. He found that was weak. And then he started rubbing on the muscle, and he found these little nodules in it that were really restricted and the janitor was yelling out in pain because, oh, my God, what are you doing to me?

And he's and, you know, and he stopped and the janitor got up from the table and the schedule went right back in and was no longer winged. So that was sort of the aha moment. Long story short, that group, that list of tests eventually filtered out to other doctors and what happens. And this happens, I'm sure in all sorts of techniques, but what happened was, you would get people started evaluating.

The doctor started evaluating their patients with these muscle tests. And let's say, for example, that you're evaluating a muscle. And for example, this, this, janitor, you find a particular muscle on the shoulder. It's not working and you rub it out with your hands, just like. George good heart did that 1st time.

and let's say this new patient, you've evaluated the same muscle. You did the same thing he did, but this time it doesn't have an effect. It doesn't help. So, what happens with any sort of inquisitive doctors, they start trying other things. 

[00:21:08] Liana: And 

[00:21:09] Dr Collins: the body of work slowly grows, then you get the doctors come together.

They talk about it. Well, what did you try for this? What did you try for that? Over time? This body of work got more formalized. We have more formula, more formal meetings associations. We start talking about work, you start publishing research papers. And the body of work grows and grows and grows, and the patterns that you can discern become more and more sophisticated and the ways we test thing become a little more sophisticated.

And we start incorporating things like acupuncture points, postural tests, movement tests. Test of different fields of what we call cardinal fields of gaze. Like, if you go to the eye doctor and they tell you to look up down the sides and they're getting you to follow their finger. And we're using those against the muscle test to see what changes the test.

And if you are a good enough. Muscle tester, which takes, honestly, it takes about five years to learn. Then you start to be, to get really consistent and you get what we call a good inter examine or reliability between two doctors, which means that if I test 10 muscles on a patient and I find three that are off, and another doctor comes in who has no idea what I've done, and they test the same 10 muscles, they're likely the same.

They're likely to find the same three that are off. Right? Okay. So when you have that good inter examiner reliability. Then you can trust your testing when you can trust your testing that allows you to try all sorts of different things to see what patterns are consistent that allows the body of work to grow.

So, to circle back to your question, you came in with an emotional. Emotional problem, how did, you know, well. The broad answer to that is, because that body of work has grown so much over the last, what is it now? 50 plus years, we get pretty good at discerning patterns. And when we see these patterns, we test them against, for example, especially a lot of emotional work will come up against.

the involvement of different acupuncture points, which when we involve those acupuncture points, we stimulate those points. We'll see different muscles change from strong to weak or weak to strong. So, when we see that, that gives us a clue that, oh, this here's a pattern. We know it's consistent or we have a good.

Confidence that it's consistent based upon lots of different doctors seeming seeing lots of different or seeing the same pattern over and over again. And then we test it. We see if stimulating those points are doing the protocol to try and address that. If it changes the outcome. Obviously, we want to know if it changes a group of muscle tests that we see, but more importantly, we want to know, does it change the outcome with the patient?

And that allows us to gain some confidence in what we do when you say, okay, yeah, patients responding positively. We're getting good effects from this. It's, it's moving people forward. So, when you came in, you show a certain pattern. I tested against different points like that and then I say, look, there's a, there's a possibility here that we have an emotional.

Involvement or emotional component of this problem. That does not make me a psychotherapist doesn't mean I try to be, but like, I was talking about sort of being the conductor. We want to let the patient know that we've got a multi factored problem and that's not at all in common because our nervous systems really do a good job of weaving these different aspects into Of our existence, honestly, together, right?

We don't exist. We don't experience things only on a structural basis alone. And then we go out, we go 10 minutes later, and then we're experiencing them on an emotional basis. And then 10 minutes later, we're experiencing them on a chemical basis. Those things are constantly blended together. And so. We have to be able to see that and evaluate it because they're going to come up together frequently to as we're working through it.

[00:25:04] Liana: That makes so, so much sense. Thank you for explaining that. So, well, this is kind of a broad question, but I'm curious, is there like, a general population that your patients tend to make up or like, who typically comes to see you? 

[00:25:21] Dr Collins: People that haven't gotten help elsewhere if I were to, if I were to nail it down, you know, aside from.

You know, the, the truth, of course, is that chiropractors see a lot of structural problems. And so certainly I've got plenty of patients who come to me to just sort of standard, structural things, back pain, neck pain, extremity problems, shoulder problems, ankle sprains, things like that. I work on a lot of that stuff.

That's probably half my patience. The other half Are people that have been to to others for trying to get problem solved, or trying to get get them addressed and they haven't had help. And so they come looking for a different approach. And so that would be sort of the other half of my practice. Okay, are they, you know, but there are all ages.

My youngest, well, my youngest patient, I don't have any have any infants in my patient in my practice right now, but certainly worked on plenty infants. And my oldest patient, I think, is 96. and so oh, my gosh. 

[00:26:19] Liana: Wow. 

[00:26:20] Dr Collins: So, really broad range of people. 

[00:26:23] Liana: Yeah. Amazing. And when you see pain as chronic, so maybe somebody, you know, keeps coming in with the same issue over and over or has been dealing with the pain for many years.

How do you does that change how you address it? Or how do you approach that? 

[00:26:43] Dr Collins: It doesn't necessarily change what I, how I address it. I try to be pretty consistent with that. It does change what I consider. Right. So it's that's just about diagnosis, really about trying to understand where the patient's coming from, what might be driving their problem, et cetera.

So, so for chronic problems, there are a handful of things that tend to be common, because by their very nature, right? It's something that's chronic. That means that the problem is either. Well, the problem is persistent in some way, right? That a standard therapy hasn't addressed. So we have to look at,What might be driving that kind of persistent problem with 1 significant exception, which is that there's a class of problems that are more that can be persistent because, If I were to speak generically, because our nervous systems haven't found a good way to reset, right? So if we look at it, the analogy I use with people all the time is the circuit breaker analogy.

And that is, you know, we have circuit breakers in our house for people that don't mess with that. Right? That's the big breaker box in our house that has the big, big switches on it. And if you are, say, in the kitchen, and you plug in too many items, or you plug in an item that has a short, it can blow the circuit in the kitchen and the lights will go out in the kitchen and none of the other appliances will work.

Right? We lose electricity to the kitchen. That's the circuit breaker blowing right? Has a very important function, which keeps you from burning the house down. right? So, but let's start to break that apart a little bit. Right? So, if we have a circuit, the circuit has blown because there was an overload.

And ideally, what we want to do is we want to get the lights back on in the kitchen, or we want to get things back working again. So, the lights being off, for example, is like our symptom. It's how we know something's wrong. Oh, it's dark the circuit blue. Okay. Well, so when when that's happened, we tend to generally ask ourselves 2 questions.

1 is. What caused the circuit to blow right? What what overloaded it? What was there something in the short, or did I just plug in too many things? What did it? And the next question we ask is, how do I get the lights back on? Right? And usually it's like, okay, where is the circuit breaker? So I can go flip flip that little switch to get the lights back on.

So, when we have a problem, then. There are 2 things we have to do to address it. We have to remove whatever it was that blew the circuit. Right in this case maybe we unplugged this toaster with a bet with a short in it and then we also have to go and flip the switch on the circuit breaker. If we only do one or the other, we'll still have the problem.

So if we only remove the bad toaster that has a short in it, the lights still aren't gonna come back on on the kitchen 'cause we haven't flipped the switch on the circuit breaker. If we only flip the switch on the circuit breaker, if we're lucky, the might the light might go on. Flicker back on, but if the short the toaster with the short end is still plugged in, they'll go right back off.

So, you might get function for a 2nd, it'll go right back off bodies are very much the same way. So, if whatever the cause, the problem is still there, especially over years, we call that a chronic problem. The only that's why I call it sort of the exception. The exception is when whatever caused the problem has gone away, but our nervous system is still stuck in this state of essentially, like, the circuit is blown and the function has not restored for whatever the problem is, because our nervous system is still stuck there when that happens.

Sometimes there are things we can do ways of stimulating the nervous system or ways of retraining it that causes things to come right back on. As if we just flipped a switch on a circuit breaker and functions restored, these are usually the stories you hear about from friends and family who say, or maybe a doctor tells you about it.

These are the miracle stories, right? Where? Oh, I went in and I've had this problem for 20 years. He does 1 thing. And now I'm all better. Yes, that's a problem where whatever caused it is gone and it just required sort of a circuit flipping type of action that got things to come back on. And therefore, then things were better again.

So, to circle back around, what, what, what do I see differently about people with chronic problems with that exception out of the way with the things that have sort of. That where there's a problem, and it was just a 1 time thing, and we just needed to do something to stimulate the nervous system. The other half of those are where.

You know, to use our analogy, the toaster still plugged in, right? Whatever caused the problem is still there for chronic problems. Emotion problems with an emotional component to it, if not an emotional cause are really high on the list.I would say, God, you know, with with someone who has a chronic problem, the odds of there at least being an emotional component are better than 95 percent that's not necessarily because all emotional problems cause all chronic problems.

Transcribed by https: otter. ai But because our emotions get so easily woven into our day to day experience, especially our experience with our pain, our discomfort, or whatever may be causing an issue. Certainly our trauma. Of course. Right? So, emotions really get woven into our day to day experience. So it's really hard to just evaluate someone in that way, especially with a chronic problem and say, oh, no, there's no emotional component of this.

No, it's there's almost always an emotional component. And if we're lucky as we work on those things, they sort of unwind. And also, if we're lucky, they're seeing an experienced therapist, like yourself to help them work through that. but, yeah, emotional components are very, very commonly involved outside of that.

There are probably 4 other main things that I see drive a lot of chronic problems. for those, I would say, Yeah. Broad categories would be things like food allergies, chronic infections that could be viral or bacterial

and toxic chemicals. So, and really, if we put emotional, big, emotional stresses, for example, on that list, and those are probably the 5 things that can drive a lot of chronic issues. They certainly drive a lot of. Autoimmunity for those that don't know that that's where your immune system tends to attack your own tissue.

Things like diabetes, arthritis,

psoriasis, things like eczema. Those are all those all typically have autoimmune components. If they're not outright autoimmune and those types of problems tend to be driven by those. 5 things, so toxic metals, toxic chemicals, chronic infections, food allergies and big emotion stresses. The emotional piece is sort of its extra layer because, as I mentioned, it tends to get woven into everything just because it's part of our day to day experience.

[00:34:06] Liana: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I love the analogy of. Using that. Blowing the circuit for the nervous system, you do not break her in the house. It's like. Such an easy way for people to understand. What happens to their nervous system and how it does get overloaded and when it gets overloaded, like you say, like, the lights turn out.

that's a really helpful explanation. 

[00:34:30] Dr Collins: So the analogy of. The circuit breaker is a great 1, although bodies can be way more complex than that. Right?

So a body is way more complex than your average building, which means our circuits are more complex, which means that unlike just going outside and flipping a switch on the circuit breaker. With a body, sometimes, you know, you've got to do 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 things to really get that circuit, so to speak to come back online.

And so it would be more like in your house. If instead of just flipping the switch, you had to flip the switch. You had to close the bedroom door. You had to move the couch across the hall. Right? And do all these things to finally get the circuit to come back online. That's really, you know, it gets much more involved.

[00:35:16] Liana: Yeah. No, that makes so much sense. For patients like that, do you ever give them tools to help themselves work on resetting their nervous system, regulating a nervous system on their own? Yeah.I see you nodding. Yeah, 

[00:35:33] Dr Collins: yeah, yeah, I do. I do. it really, and it really just depends on what the problem is. Yeah. So it just depends on what we're evaluating. So I'm trying to think of examples in my head. you know, can be something as, as direct and obvious as exercises for a muscle that's not working well or, or it needs some extra stimulation. Okay. to, sort of brain-based exercises to try and work on balance.

For example, to, emotional simulation or tapping techniques, for example, to work, try and desensitize to different things. It really just depends on what the problem is and what we're trying to address. Yeah, 

[00:36:13] Liana: that makes sense. And so, when you see emotions or trauma. Impacting somebody, how do you approach that specifically?

[00:36:30] Dr Collins: Yeah, it's it's I don't know if tricky is the right word, but it requires some delicacy.and a lot of that. Honestly, I'm thankful that, you know, I have a few years experience now working with people because how you. How I think not just me, but any doctor approaches, working with someone with trauma, especially, you know, from the 1st minute, you meet them to how you explain things to them to how you introduce them to the types of therapies.

You're going to do really matters. Trust trust really matters and their comfort really matters because, you know, the last thing you want, Is for someone who's in that place to feel like, you know, they can't comfortably work through it with you. And again, I'm not a psychotherapist. I don't try to be. I don't try to take on that role with my patients, but that doesn't mean that these things don't come up when we're in the middle of.

Working on problem, even if even if they've only come to me and they've told me really, I just want you to help. I want your help with the structural parts of this. You know, I look at myself a little bit like a buffet and that way people can come to me and they can, they can choose pick and choose what they want.

They want to communicate that with me that this is this is the level of work. I'd like to do with you and say, okay. I see other things, I'll let them know about that, but I don't break that boundary without their permission. 

so, if it comes up, then I try and work that through with them. If they're more open to talking through things, and we talk about it as they come up, because sometimes, like, for example, even if I'm doing structural work, just being open to talking about it as we're doing the work.

Can help a lot to move through whatever's happening 

[00:38:20] Liana: or whatever we 

[00:38:21] Dr Collins: need to, in order to get them better. but it also, you know, depending upon the, the.sort of the desires of the patient and the openness of the patient, we can try other techniques to help clear, or reduce sensitivity to some of the, say, the emotional aspects.

but it just, it really depends on the patient and and.their level of comfort 

[00:38:46] Liana: that makes so much sense. Yeah, and you do such a great job of creating a safe space. I know I've cried many times with you over the years in session and felt like very held in that space, like, in, like, in that it was very safe, but also.

Like, you helped me move through it and process it, which has, you know, another layer that I just always thought was very amazing about what you do. 

[00:39:15] Dr Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's, it's fascinating to me because I look, you know, I was talking earlier about how emotional problems get woven together with our other experiences.

And the analogy I always use with patients is. it's like. Smelling a smell or hearing a song on the radio and it bringing up a memory or not just a memory. Sometimes it can bring up a bodily reaction, especially if that memory is tied to something that is strong or traumatic or what have you. Right?

The, the smell or the song you heard or whatever it was, as a stimulus. Wasn't necessarily a thing that caused the event. That you're associating with, they just got woven together in our nervous system. Right? Well, if we look at that sort of in reverse, like, say, you had this song that you listen to all the time when you're going through a bad breakup and now, every time you hear the song, it just brings on these horrible emotions.

Well, I think what most people tell you about how you get over that was your friends will tell you. Well, just go listen to the song and lots of other different contexts. And in happy context, different context, and a lot of times that can help you make a new association, right? So that you no longer associate that song with just that experience.

Essentially, what happens is your, your brain and your nervous system are forming new pathways with that stimulus and okay, I'm no longer just associating it with that sort of well worn path in my nervous system and I can disassociate the 2 and it doesn't have that effect on me. That can be a lot harder to do that sort of disassociation with something.

For example, if it were physical trauma, or another very strong emotional trauma, it can be really hard to do. Or if the way your body is holding it itself is associated with that kind of stimulus. So, just having the ability to let that emotional experience, or the memory of that emotional experience come up in a safe space.

As we're doing other types of therapies, we don't even have to talk about it if if there's safety and allowing that to arise, it allows it can really help you change. Let your body let go of different patterns. So much better. Just having that openness 

[00:41:34] Liana: that makes so much sense. A lot of sense. So you may have kind of already answered this.

but I, to get like, very specific, like, do you see trauma impacting the body in a specific way? 

[00:41:54] Dr Collins: Yes.I do. and that goes back to this. This idea of these sort of patterns or muscle patterns that I was talking about before, you know, when I was saying how muscle testing evolved in that way, and we got a lot more sophisticated about what kind of patterns we saw and how we test for them trauma.

And this is this is due to, in large part to the work of my mentor, John Bandy. He's done a lot of work on this. Trauma really predisposes our body to display via muscles.in a very specific way, And I think the easiest way to describe that is, for example, some concepts that most of us have heard of and 1 is, is that that sort of fight or flight idea.

Right, so that in the face of trauma, or in the face of a scary situation, maybe a lot of times our nervous systems respond and either this fight or flight response turns out as we study that it's more complex than that. We actually have fight flight or freeze among other things. But if we just look at it simply, let's just just for the sake of argument.

Now, let's just say it's fight or flight. Well, the. When we want to fight our nervous system tends to send stimulation to the flexors in our body, especially on the front of our body. So these are muscles like our packs that bring our shoulders together. Our biceps that bring our hands and fists up ready to fight our quads.

We're ready to crouch. We're ready to move. Right? So, when we move into that fight. Response are flexors really fire. What will happen at the same time when those flexors fire is that the muscles on the back of our body, our extensors will tend to relax, right? So you think of this as what we call reciprocal inhibition.

So simple example example is I pick up a barbell in my left hand and I'm going to do like a biceps curl. I'm going to bring that little, that barbell, that dumbbell. Up towards my shoulder. When I do that, my bicep has to fire, right? It has to to to contract strongly so I can bring that up towards my shoulder.

In order for that to happen, my tricep, the muscle on the back of my arm has to relax. Yeah, if it doesn't relax, then my arm just stays in that sort of frozen position, so that is reciprocal inhibition the bicep fi fires. It reciprocally inhibits, meaning reduces the activity of your tricep. Same thing happens in this fight response.

In a fight response, our flexors fire, you know, our shoulders come together, our fists come up, and our extensors relax. Conversely, in a flight response, we see the opposite response in a flight response. You can imagine if you're gonna run these extensors, fire your hands, go back, your body recoils back as if it's ready to run away, right?

And you'll probably run, and eventually what will happen is you'll turn and start running. Right? But you recoil. That's, that's the flight response. Well, that's where your extensors fire and your flexors will relax. So. We can actually test that and what's interesting from testing trauma is that your that response, especially for someone with a chronic problem, that response to some extent can sort of get stuck in your nervous system to where if I have a patient on my table and their body was in that flight response, right?

Where their extensors muscles on the back of your body. Are firing strongly. Your flexors have relaxed because of that.I can then test flexors and these big group muscles say that raise your legs as if you were doing a leg lift and an exercise class or something. And we can find a lot with someone who's in that trauma response.

We'll see that kind of gross weakness among these big muscle groups, these big flexors, your hip flexors in this example. And that pattern is really common common with someone. Who's had a traumatic response. We'll also see the opposite where they're in. They're sort of stuck in a fight response where their extensors will test more weak.

Right? So we see these broad. patterns, whereas, for example, if someone had. Just an injury to their right hip or an injury to their right knee. We might find a single muscle weakness in that right quadricep or in that right hip flexor, but we wouldn't see a broad based weakness across all these flexors in their body.

That's the difference in these patterns that we see. So, with a trauma response, we see more of these broad based patterns that we can then test and try and then help resolve in that way and get them out of that pattern. 

[00:46:55] Liana: That makes so much sense and is. So fascinating, and so, like, if. Is that like, when someone first comes to see you and you see that, is that basically like your indicator then?

Like, okay, I think there's trauma here and we need to address it. Address the issues kind of from that standpoint. 

[00:47:14] Dr Collins: Sure. Sure. Not not that by itself. Right? We have to use all of the components of the examinations to try and make that determination. Right? Most importantly, from the patient history. Right.

And listen what they have to say and what their experience is and why they're there. There are certainly other reasons why someone might not have their hip flexors firing properly. back injuries, for example, or pain due to, I had a woman in my office today actually, who, had, had come to see me a couple months after a hysterectomy.

Right well, her hip flexors, we're not firing and that way, and they were sort of shut down and which is very common and makes a lot of sense. Right? You go in through someone's abdomen. It's tends to affect the muscles around that area and your ability to engage those. So, there are other reasons why those muscles can be off and that's how that's when we're using other, Other parts of the examination to help us determine what really the cause of it is. 

[00:48:14] Liana: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Of course. So, in the way that you view this work, how would you say the brain and body work together? 

[00:48:27] Dr Collins: I'd say they work together as an integrated whole. Right you know, I've been using words throughout our talk that I think are really illustrate how I look at it.

Right? The, the idea of display, I think, is a really important 1 and, and we have to look at. A lot of our symptoms, what we feel, what we notice in our bodies and a lot of our signs, like the way muscles function and fire, which can lead to other symptoms about how we feel. We have to look at those as a way that.

The body is displaying what is happening in our nervous system in our brains, but not just in our brains and how it travels through the rest of our body. So, really good way to say it is something my mentor always said to me is that when a patient lies down on the table, they don't present with their they don't typically present with their problem.

They present with their adaptation to their problem. 

[00:49:26] Liana: Right? 

[00:49:26] Dr Collins: Which is to say, they display how they've adapted to their problem and our adaptations are happening all the time. Right? So. structural examples tend to be the simplest because we can sort of wrap our minds around them. A really easily example is if someone sprains an ankle and they roll their ankle to the outside and they really hurt that muscle on the outside of their ankle and they can't really put a lot of weight onto the outside of that foot and ankle.

So, that's the problem, right? That's the initial problem. They turned it, they stepped on a rock and they really hurt it. Well, adaptation is happening all the time and almost instantaneously. Many people, if not most will start putting more weight on the inside of their foot or weight towards the inside of their knee to adapt around that problem, just to be able to function and then maybe over weeks or months, if they didn't do anything about the ankle, and it didn't really heal up.

Well, then all of a sudden, the inside of their knee starts to hurt, right? This is a hypothetical. But I do see this, this kind of thing in the office, so the inside of their knee starts to hurt. And then over the course of another couple of weeks or a couple of months, they, they sort of start putting more weight on the outside of their hip because the inside of their knee is hurting.

Now, maybe the ankles calm down a little bit, so they can do that a little more since the inside of the knee was hurting. Now, they're putting more weight on the outside of the hip, or they're rotating their body through their pelvis because of this injury. And the next thing, you know, their hips hurting on that side.

And by that point, their body sort of wound up into this pattern so much that they don't have anywhere else to go. And this hip pain won't go away. And then I come into my office, they laid on the table and they say, doc, my hip hurts. Well, what we would say is what's displaying is the pain in the hip.

That's not necessarily the real problem. That's not what's driving the whole pattern. 

[00:51:24] Liana: Yeah, 

[00:51:25] Dr Collins: our bodies are always adapting and so, you know, in order to fix that problem, we don't just have to adjust. Address the hip, we have to just the hip and the knee and then the ankle. And once we do that, we'll get out of the pattern.

So, to circle back to your question, how did the brain and the body work together? Right? Your brain is in charge of that show. It is the conductor. Right? And so it is always getting us to adapt around whatever issue we have. And that goes with psychological issues. It goes with chemical issues and certainly structural ones.

And we are displaying our adaptation around those things constantly. And so part of the trick of the work I do is, is trying to figure out how much of this is really the real problem and how much of this is just their adaptation to their problem. Right? Going back to what my mentor says to me, right?

Look at how they're adapting to their problem. And let's see if we can clear out the adaptations to get down to the actual thing that's driving it. Right, the root cause is what a lot of people would say. So, I look at the brain and the body together as in that way. Most of the time I'm thinking about the body and what we see in the symptoms that we have as a display of what might be happening certainly in the body.

But sometimes. More focused in the brain, right? We can have lots of ways that our body can adapt around a problem, certainly structurally, but also chemically and obviously psychologically to adapt around a psychological issue that can affect us very profoundly. And, you know, that's why I think it's really valuable to really work with practitioners like yourself and encourage my patients to do so so that, you know, we are addressing all of the components of what's driving whatever it is they're experiencing so that we can address them all together.

And, you know, I can sort of sort of help in, just being a. Relay or a communicator of what I see in that regard, because the fun and sort of the beauty of the work I do is that I get to through some of the testing. We do get to see that display in a very unique way that some other practitioners don't get to experience.

[00:53:43] Liana: Yeah, absolutely. That was an amazing explanation. Thank you. I, I mean, we see that so much in what we do, right? Like, people. Will come to us and, you know, their adaptation, right, is, you know, things like migraines, fibromyalgia, IBS, and, but that's the problem isn't really, you know, something with their head or their stomach or their whole body.

It's it's actually these chronic stressors or trauma or. Something in their life that's currently going on that needs to be addressed that once we begin to address that. Those symptoms, the presentation, Begins to go away. 

[00:54:24] Dr Collins: Absolutely. A lot of those problems. I really feel like are have to do with sort of our, our well worn paths in our nervous system.

If you really look at what happens in the brain, the analogy I like is looking at it, like, trails through forest. Where, you know, you might have the trail that you're trying to get from from where you are now to this town, you're trying to go through and 1 path takes you directly to the town. And it's the easiest path.

The other path takes you over a mountain, you know, through the fire swamp, you know. Over the river, and then back around to the town, but that path, the 1 over the mountain is really well worn. The 1 that happens to go to the town is a little bit overgrown. And so you get to that fork where the trails are, and your nervous system goes well, I know this 1.

I know I can go that way. So it tends to go that way every time, even though it's painful and long and inconvenient. If we have some help, we can just take out a machete and. Beat that path down that goes straight to the town and actually get there and have much less trauma along the way, but it requires some work.

[00:55:35] Liana: Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I love these metaphors that you're using. it's so, so true. Like, when we have. Somebody to help us, or learn the tools and skills to. Yeah, I have through all of that and take a straight path that ultimately is much easier. It's symptom free, right? It's absolutely, but it, it takes, it takes practice to help our brain to be able to follow that path easily.

[00:56:03] Dr Collins: Absolutely 

[00:56:07] Liana: well, thank you so much for all of this. I mean, you're such a wealth of information. I love everything we've talked about. It's a pleasure. 

[00:56:15] Dr Collins: Thank you. 

[00:56:16] Liana: Yeah, is there anything else that you would want. People to know about your work, 

[00:56:24] Dr Collins: I think we've covered a lot. Yeah. So what frequently happens is what gets communicated to a patient about whatever issue they're happening, whether issue they're experiencing, especially for someone with a chronic.

Problem can be very limiting, right? It's, it's very, very easy to think that I have no options and, more often than not with a little digging, we can find someone who can help us through that or help us to find the right person who can really help us make progress. It requires persistence. It requires some effort, but most of the time you can start that ball rolling just by starting to ask the one practitioner, hopefully you've got at least one that you do trust, even if that practitioner isn't helping you, right?

If it's someone you trust and you can have that conversation to look, I love what you do. I love working with you, but I'm still having trouble. Is there someone else you think is really good? I might need to talk to might help me figure this out. Yeah. That alone can sometimes get the ball rolling to try and find someone who can help you and you start going down a good rabbit hole towards some, some help and some relief.

So, you know, that's not something specific to know about me, but it's something I encounter a lot and that's how people end up in my office is they just haven't gotten help. And sometimes it's a painful story. To hear, because they've had to go through so much and I wish it wasn't that way, not just get to me to get to any kind of help.

So that's something I really encourage people to do. 

[00:58:06] Liana: Yeah, that's such a great recommendation because you're right. It can take a lot of time and it's discouraging. that's a great, great recommendation as long as if you trust someone, even if they're not helping, they can likely. Give that a good referral.

[00:58:23] Dr Collins: Absolutely. 

[00:58:25] Liana: Well, where can our listeners find you? 

[00:58:29] Dr Collins: Probably the best place to find me is on my website. It's, collins dc.com. C-O-L-L-I-N-S dc.com. I don't do much in the way of social media. That's not really my thing, . So, but you know, if someone wants to ask me questions or have a phone call or send me email, best place is just to start at my website and, and you can contact me through there and then we can sort of talk that way.

but, yeah, love to talk to anybody and happy to help any way I can. 

[00:58:56] Liana: Great. Thank you. Well, we'll link that. We'll link your website in the show notes below. Great. and then one last question we like to ask everybody who comes on the podcast. What are you loving right now on your wellness journey?

[00:59:10] Dr Collins: In my personal wellness journey or in my work with my patients? 

[00:59:14] Liana: In your personal on this journey, 

[00:59:16] Dr Collins: my personal journey, I am really low. I'm actually, I really value.and I think this is true and good advice for anybody. I really value consistent, thorough work.and that's true of anything, whether you're working with a psychotherapist, if you're working with a massage therapist, you're working with a chiropractor, a physical therapist.

If you are really consistent about doing work with someone and pushing past, or moving through any hopefully brief plateaus, I think the level you can achieve, and the gains you can make are so much better, even just a level of personal. Understanding is so much better, so I'm really loving I'm working with a colleague of mine who does similar work to me, but we've been able to figure out how we can get together and sort of trade work on each other on a regular basis.

And I'm really loving that. I'm loving mostly the consistency and the thoroughness. It's just. It just takes you to a whole deeper level that I really appreciate. So I'm really grateful for that right now because I've got my own problems. I've got my own chronic things to work through. And, you know, our practitioners are certainly not faultless or not without our own issues.

And so we've got to work it through just like anybody else and find people to help us because I can't work on myself. Yeah. So I'm, I'm really, appreciative of that. 

[01:00:50] Liana: Ah, I'm so glad you have that. Well, thank you so, so much for joining us. I always love chatting with you and really enjoyed getting to Deep Dive more into your work.

So Absolutely. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so 

[01:01:04] Dr Collins: much for having me. I really appreciate it, and I love the, the direction that, you guys take with this podcast. 

[01:01:10] Liana: Aw, thank you so much. Mm-Hmm. .