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Hey, welcome back to the Cruise Elite podcast. Today I'm going to have a conversation with Adam, one of our very own students and members. He's actually a very active member inside our community. Adam is a manual massage therapist, but not only. He actually does a lot of cool things, as you'll learn in this episode. And I wanted to talk to Adam because he's somebody that has done a great job integrating the skills that he's learning from our courses into his practice. In this conversation, we talk about some of the obstacles that he's come up against, and he shares some really fun stories with some of the victories that he's had using applied neurology with his client base. So if you're a manual massage therapist that is integrating applied neuro into the work you're doing or somebody that's on the fence and you're not quite sure if applied neuro could be used with your current manual skills, well, this will be a great episode for you to listen to. I think you're gonna like it. Here we go. Adam, what's up, Not much, how are you? Good, good. So I've been looking forward to getting you on the podcast and... It was actually easy, so thank you. It was easy to schedule. Yeah, it was easy to schedule and I know you're a busy guy. I wanted to get you on the podcast because, well, for a couple reasons, I think it would be super helpful for people inside the community to hear from you because you're a, well, would you call yourself a manual therapist? What is your title? I'll say myotherapist, which just is muscle therapist. have a license in massage and physical therapy assistant. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. So I think it would be really useful for people within our community, especially the ones that are using manual tools, to hear from you and your journey with integrating applied neuro into your practice. So I'm excited to learn more because I only know so much about you. But yeah, you've been a really important part of our community. One of the reasons why I wanted to get you on the podcast is because you've been so engaged. You've engaged the process as one of our students, having gone through our courses, and you're an active community member, so you're always helping people out inside the community. You're asking questions. You're just one of our core. You're one of our core people, and so I really appreciate that and the hard work that you've been putting into learning something that is very difficult. and is a paradigm shift if you allow it to be, but comes with a lot of challenges, right? And we'll talk about some of those challenges today for sure. And hopefully some victories too that you've had as you've been integrating applied neuro into your work. So why don't we just start with just kind of a little background with you, how you got into the profession that, you know, your profession and how you got started and the type of work or the type of person that you are typically working with. Okay. So I guess we'll go back to high school. Growing up, I'm one of five kids. My parents would always say I was the best at giving like shoulder rubs. I always thought they were just blowing smoke. But get to high school, we had to do the silly warm up in choir where we would just do like a one minute shoulder rub to the person sitting next to you and then you turn and do the same thing for another minute. And the people that sat by me, we had assigned seats, they were always just like ranting and raving about my shoulder rub. So I thought, okay, mom and dad are right. I guess I'm good at this. So that's kind of what got me to looking into getting into massage therapy. I found at a college fair, a college that was more, it was like a, a nursing school. and they were adding a massage program in, but only if they could make it an associates and make it more medical. So I was like, all right, you know, that's more my, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to health science and anatomy and all that. So let's look into this. Got my license over a two year period. And then I went out into the massage workforce and it was slow going. it's kind of tough to build a clientele in that world, especially as a male therapist when you're talking about undressing. Guys and girls alike are like, I don't know. And then some prefer guys because they can offer deeper pressure, but a lot of male therapists experience adverse reactions to either sex's undressing for treatment. So it took a while, but one of the jobs I had during that time was in an ancillary service for a hospital system where they did their physical therapy work. And I would do workers comp patients because workers comp insurance will pay for massage. So I'd have like two massages in a day, like bookended on my day. And in the meantime, I would watch the PTs do their thing. And I said, maybe I could look into this for more of a steady income. And so four years after getting my massage license, went into the physical therapy assistant program at Marion Technical College. Another associate degree, got that, worked out in the field in a hospital system, outpatient physical therapy for a year, realized I missed the manual skills. And so I started to do that a lot in my PT treatments. Then there became the issue where anytime a PTA was on vacation, and I saw their patients, I would throw in a 10 minute manual therapy session. And then that PTA is coming back from vacation. Hey, my patient really loved what you did. What the heck did you do? So it became like an unexpected problem. And after four years of working in that dynamic, I decided to go off and do my own thing. That was about eight years ago. that I've had my own business. And last May of 25, I saw this guy pop up on Instagram doing these really weird neuro drills. And I'm like, what the heck is this stuff? And so a over a year later, here we are. That's awesome. Yeah. you've been with us in our community for a little over a year now. That's... Yeah. Yeah. Man, it seems longer than that. It seems longer than that. You've When you're studying neuro, it seems like a long time. Yeah, yeah. And you've really had your head down in the material and that's awesome. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. Well, that's the thing. You are, we all are, right? There's so much there. It's really a journey, that's for sure. So, okay. So you found me through Instagram. You were intrigued. Maybe you thought, I wonder if I could add any of this to the work I'm doing, type of thing? Yeah, cool. Cool, and then you dove in, you got started with our courses. Before we even get into starting to apply that material or learn that material, what is a typical session look like for you right now with the type of client base that you're helping? just what I currently do or do you wanna talk about the neuro? Well, like, so I realize it's probably different for each person a little bit that you're working with, like, what does your session typically look like in terms of how you're applying your skills, manual or some of the neuro stuff? Like, what does that look like and who are you helping with that? Oh, I've worked on like age range, I've worked on a nine day old. I've worked on a 99 year old. So age group wise, it's all over the map. I'd say the biggest demographic for me is middle-aged people. They're the ones that are still trying to do things. I haven't focused my sights on an athletic population per se, but that's what I would like to get to because they seem to be the most motivated. So right now, It's really hard to pinpoint. I, my demographic is all over. Um, but they would just fill out an intake form, um, online, um, that I send them. And then I go over that with them when they come in I sit down, go over that. And they always have, like you've mentioned in, in previous podcasts and stuff, people always have different things to say in person once they're there rather than what they put on the intake. So I'll get like a verbal history. And then typically. in the past, it would be I would step out, they would get undressed under the covers, get ready on the table, then I'd come in and the whole session would be hands on. Now I'm starting to, and this is where it's becoming a challenge to figure out how much and when to fully engage that intake process that the applied neurology requires. a lot of these clients that I've had for years and they're used to the one way I do things. This is exactly where I'm trying to go to because I'm trying to learn right now from you if your situation and story is similar to what I hear from other manual therapists and so far is sounding similar. So yeah, keep going. And you and Alicia did a podcast recently together and you honed in on this towards the end of that episode. And it was like, you were speaking to me and I was like, okay, I, cause you said that the starting off with just maybe something before and after the session and then, and then building your way into it and not to give up the manual therapy skills. And that's what I needed to hear. Um, because I was, I was one of those, like you had described, like, uh, all right, I think I'm all in on the neuro stuff here. I've been doing hands on work for 21 years and I'm starting to wear out. physically a little bit. Some of my joints are letting me know that they don't like the repetitive massaging, you know. So, but I needed to hear that because I do value the hands-on work, the manual work, but it will become less of my treatment as I go on. I'd like to see it to be maybe one day a week I'll do a traditional. treatment like my clients are used to. But the rest of them I'm like, want to get to build out into the neuro more and more as I go. That's cool. Yeah. And these folks that are finding you, are they finding you typically because they have a pain issue or some kind of problem that they're trying to solve? Okay. If you don't mind, I'll do another little background on training. I took three years in the midst of my 21 year career. I took three years back in 2015 to 2018 and got licensed and certified in Eric Dalton's Myoskeletal Alignment Technique. And that is what got me from being like a good massage therapist with more medical training and doing focused deep tissue work, trigger point work to doing more of an orthopedic. lens like a a like a DO and that's what got me to pretty much every massage client that I see is coming to me for a pain issue. I probably have two people a year that come in and say I just want to relax. So I'm getting referrals from chiropractors from the two orthopedic centers here in town. Pain management physicians send people my way like It's actually been very humbling to see all the medical professionals in the town I've practiced in start sending referrals to me. Some I haven't met. So far in my experience, rare. Yeah, it is rare. Massage as an occupation, as a field, it's not a long career typically. Like five to 10 years is the average license career. It's dominated by females and you don't have a lot of advanced tier manual therapists. I find it becoming more popular because there's so many people seeking pain management and they don't want the drugs and surgery. But it's dominated, the massage field is dominated by that spa thought or aesthetic. Do you find that it's challenging? in some ways that that stereotypical view of manual massage therapy sort of, I always feel like the general population when they find someone like you, they are expecting to lay on the table and get a massage and they aren't necessarily expecting the practitioner to do anything else different from that. Is that something that you run into? Yes, the table dilemma is huge for me. Because you're in a unique place as a manual therapist because you are nerdy and you're like really trying to go above and beyond and use other skill sets, which you've been learning a lot of those with applied neuro. But this is the problem I hear a lot about from manual therapists that are starting to integrate the work that they're learning from us into their practice is because their clientele is already expecting things to go one way and not everybody wants to get off the table and do a weird neuro drill and so I imagine this is challenging because there's a lot that goes into this, right? It's how do you want to use your skills and work them into your session but is your client willing to do that and yeah, what are they expecting? And I feel like it's when you are like a specialist with, you and your clients think that you do one thing, which you don't. Right? Yeah, so that's a hard thing, because it requires you to have the courage to not only apply something different, but also maybe change your business model a little bit. All right, is that kind of what you've been thinking about? Yeah, actually, I'm... changing my logo, I'm changing my business name. I found that that might be one of the few ways I can get more of a big shift in a short amount of time. Because doing it gradually with my existing clientele is gonna be tough. I have it, I know people like to crap on the boomer generation, but those are the ones though that they grew up. at the height of the Western medicine pharma, just the doctors and the medicines and the surgeries are what take care of me. Like they're, they don't know where the surgeries they've had. don't know what at level the spine it was at. And I'm thinking, how can you have a spinal surgery? And you don't remember what two vertebrae refused. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. But I find people are getting shifting back to more like the wellness approach, the alternative medicine, which is encouraging. yeah, that demographic in my clientele base that wants me to fix them or work on them. And when I give them exercises suggesting that at the end and they just outright laugh and say, yeah, like I'm going to do that. And it's just like, that makes me want to pull my hair out because I'm trying, I know it's like, this is all I'm going to go so far. right off the bat. So totally Alicia and I went through all all the same stuff early on and we had, you know, gone through different, you know, using different methodologies and even being over devoted to this one and that one and building our entire business around one kind of skill set. Right. And it just never, it never really worked. But, but I think it never really worked for us sort of ethically because like you, we knew that there was pieces missing to what we were doing. We knew that results were only gonna stick for so long if we were only using one methodology. I think at that point, early on intuitively, we knew everybody was different and required somewhat different solutions, right? But yeah, at that point we hadn't yet had enough education to really understand how we were going to meet that diversity and you know, each unique individual. These are all like the challenges that they don't really, these are the things that don't get talked about enough. yeah, so here you are starting to change your practice, change your business, change everything really. And I'm glad you kind of heard me say you wanna stay devoted to what you're already good at. Because your manual skills are incredibly powerful. And then as you slowly start to learn how to use them through a new lens, what you are already good at just gets better, right? It just gets better. And so I'm really glad you kind of heard that piece because the tendency with applied neuro because it is so exciting, interesting, powerful, delivers fast results. The tendency is to want to go all in. And it's good to go all in because it takes so much time to learn it and to get confident in applying it. But yeah, you wanna make sure that you stay true to the skills you already have. And then naturally, what I found personally, and Alicia, is that you sort of end up arriving at a place where you circle back to things that might be more basic and you start looking at them differently and using them again. but you're using them with more precision, maybe getting better results. And then naturally you sort of end up sifting through things and kind of discarding certain things that you realize, oh, I don't need this anymore because I have this, or this doesn't make sense anymore because of what I've learned, but it's never, or it shouldn't be like a total, I'm done with this entirely. especially if you have the type of skillset that you have. So that's awesome. Let's talk about integrating neuro into your practice. when, okay, so I wanna know when was the very first moment where you were like, oh crap, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. You were giving a client a drill and you were, there's fear involved in this. At least there was for me because you're doing something, you don't know if it's gonna help, you don't know how they're gonna. respond, you don't know if they're gonna be open to it, you don't know what the result's gonna be, you don't know if you're doing the test correctly or teaching the drill correctly. Let's go back to that moment. All right, I'm gonna say it was last August, about a year ago, I had taken the foundations course, hadn't quite started the advanced stuff, I think that was in September, but I had a long time client. I've worked on her for like 10 years. Um, she had a doctor that like just destroyed her knees. Like they actually sued him. Like she, she wasn't 18 yet. And he just butchered her knees because of a dislocating patella. And, uh, she's had knee issues for the 10 years she's been seeing me. Um, she's had them since she was 18, but I was like, you know, you've been a client of mine for a long time. Do you care if I do some stuff I'm learning? Uh, like be a guinea pig. And she said, sure. So she was having right knee pain when she came in that day. And I said, let's, let's start something before we get you on the table. So I had her do, uh, left elbow top circles and, and smelled a menthol stick in her right nostril with her eyes closed and had her tell me what scent that was. And she, she was kind of weirded out. She, but she's one of those that will go with the flow. And. I said, all right, you can open your eyes. I said, yeah, you got it right. So I said, okay, you can stop. And she said, now what? I said, well, walk, know, tell me what your knee feels like. And she walked a couple paces and her jaw dropped to the floor. And she's like, well, I guess I don't need my massage now. she's like, I guess I can leave. So her knee pain was gone when she did those fat. And I just was like, okay, I'm all in. Like how fast can I get this? But I've realized it's so complex. I want to just know it all and zoom ahead to that point, but I know it's a process. That's so fun. that like, when you have an experience like that with a client that you know really well, they're like a friend at this point. And then you do something for them that helps them so much. Like that's always such a cool feeling. Oh yeah. Let me walk our listeners through that neurology real quick. Cause there's going to be folks that listen to this, that maybe are just getting involved with our stuff and they're like, okay, why, why the elbow circle? Why the smelling? So that was really great. So, opposing joint theory, I think, is what you were thinking there, right? So, and you said it was her right knee. Her right knee. Yeah, so to oppose the right knee, we'd go to the left elbow, and then, as Adam was mentioning, the elbow top circle is an exercise that we teach that mobilizes the elbow joint. So we got the opposing joint theory going on. Excuse me, and when you move the left elbow, you're gonna activate the left cerebellum, you're also gonna activate the right cortex and right. PMRF, which is the right side of the brain stem, which can be useful for, let's just say, of changing muscle tone on the right side of the body, but also inhibiting pain that might be happening on the right side of the body. And then the smelling on the right side, you said, right, is an ipsilateral activation for the cortex. So what Adam did was, by combining the opposing joint movement, which was the left elbow top circle, with smelling something through the right nostril, it became a stronger right-sided cortical activation. And so when you put drills together like this, it's called stacking. And it makes the stimulus stronger, which sometimes is more useful for an individual. So that was a really awesome little stack. And then people who have been listening to the podcast know we test and retest every input that we apply. So... when Adam asked her to walk, that's the retest, right? It's better, same or worse. And there could have been other retests too. It depends on what your goals are. But that's a fun little stack. so she was blown away. She's, what is this weird stuff? And so at that point is she like, okay, I'll do whatever else you wanna do that's like this. Yeah, she's always been. up for me trying anything. And she knows, she trusts me. She knows that I'm always looking for like whatever techniques or whatever continuing it I can find to further my skills, to further help my clients. Like that's what drives me and motivates me is to just help my clients the best I can. And I want them to come, since they're not wanting surgery or medication when they're seeking out alternative healthcare. I want them to find someone that's just as competent at helping their pain as like those pain meds would be as quick as I can within a session or two to show them enough pain relief that they're like, okay, this isn't just a spa. This is, you know, something that's really gonna help me and it's not surgery or pills. So then that's the buy-in for them. That's awesome. Those moments are so fun. And I'll be honest, they don't, it doesn't get old like, I still have those moments, you know, with a drill that hits a home run and the person's so happy and you see, you see kind of this, you witness what I think is probably one of the most important things with helping a client get out of chronic pain is you witness this, this thing where they feel empowered because you gave them an exercise that they can reproduce on their own where now they don't have to feel depressed. dependent on a therapy or, well, seeing you for a very specific type of skill that they really can't do on their own, right? So I feel like that combined with this sort of moment where they acknowledge the fact that they were able to have their pain reduced and they were they felt their movement improve and they gained confidence in the moment with an issue that previously was a nightmare, right? Lots of pain, lots of surgery. And when you show a person that that's possible, you we always say the goal is one pain-free repetition because one pain-free repetition can equal two and two can equal three. And this is the process of really just convincing the brain what's possible. Cause we kind of get into these. patterns of being better at feeling chronic pain. It sounds weird, but you can actually be better at feeling chronic pain. So when we break or help our clients break out of that cycle, it's huge. It's huge. So what I also wanted to hear from you about, Adam, is like the obstacles, right? Because you had a client who was really open-minded and was willing to do those drills, but like what sort of obstacles kind of come with getting involved in this work, especially as a manual therapist, because I mean, you made the most courageous thing that you did with that story is you, as a manual therapist, you were willing to try something before getting into the manual work. And I feel like anybody who's willing to make that switch right away is gonna do awesome with this work. But was there ever a moment where You wanted to do that, but maybe you didn't? Or is there anything that comes to mind as far as those obstacles initially? Oh yeah, obviously the obstacles. I wanted to obviously do the drills on people, but I wasn't gonna try initially. I was like, I'm not gonna try it on a new person, because I don't want this person to be like, this guy's a whack job, I'm not coming back here. What I have found, Just as a side note, what I have found is I think it will be easier the more confident I get. It'll be easier to introduce the new clients to this stuff as opposed to my long-term clients. But one of the most obvious obstacles was, you know, I'm learning these skills. I don't have the intake, the neuro intake laid out yet to do the the cerebellar work and like the Rams and all that. So I'm just doing these party trick neuro exercises to see what hits and what misses so when something doesn't work. So you're not doing the initial testing as much yet, but you're basically using theory to create a drill and then you're testing and retesting to see if it's helpful. That's cool. I think that's a place to start. And the roadblock is when something doesn't work, then I'm like, shoot, okay, we can do this next. That didn't work, okay, shoot, I got one more in my brain right now. That didn't work. crap, okay, let's lay on the table and start. And that's okay. That's okay. You revert back to your confidence spot. I used to do the same thing. I used to do the same thing where, and I still do in some instances where it's like, their nervous system's not really receiving this the way that I had hoped. We gotta just change things the way that we're approaching this. And I think that's totally fine. I think that's actually totally fine in the way that you're, that you're using the theory to create drills to help with pain issues. I still do that myself. then, because testing takes time, right? That's the hard part, right? And I guess that's where I would be nudging you and just sort of encouraging you over time to start to find ways to build it in. Yeah, yeah, but it's okay. The way you're doing it is good. Yeah, and I think it's that's another thing since you mentioned it is the time it takes. I worry is this client one of those clock watchers. It's like, OK, I'm not going to get an hour of hands on therapy. I don't think with him doing all these things. I think that's what's held me back a little bit from trying to get to in the weeds with an assessment. But I know that's key for advancing this neuro work is to get the assessments. Right, right. You probably could get to a point where You know, we always talk about basic cerebellar testing tells you a lot and that would help you build your drills combined with theory. I bet if you could, your first step, I bet if you could just get in like a basic Rams assessment, even if it was only elbow Rams and foot Rams, at least you would understand some cerebellar patterning. And then you could kind of like use that to help you with, you know, build drills and stuff that were a little bit more targeted. But here's the thing. You can do so much based off history, like your story there with your client that had the knee issues. You already knew the pain issue. You already knew where the tone issues were, because you had done all this hands-on work with them. You can do a lot based on history. One thing that just popped into my mind that I wanted to ask you was, have you ever assessed the manual work that you're doing on somebody in some way? Like have you ever... decided, Hey, you know what, I'm going to use some of my sort of neuro assessments, whether it's range of motion or gait or something like that, to see how this stimulus is being perceived by their brain. The stimulus being what you're doing with the hands-on work. have, I suppose I've done it unknowingly before I even got involved in the neuro work. I haven't, I guess, necessarily done a test and retest. before and after my manual work consistently since integrating the neuro as far as thinking of it in the neuro lens. But I mean, it of happens naturally a lot. Like people will come out and I say, how you feeling? Like, way better. I can touch my toes. know, like they're always getting their check in when they're getting dressed. Like, did that do anything? And you know, they're in the room, like seeing if... the massage did anything before they could get dressed, you know, so. Right, right. I bet if you start to go that direction a little bit, even if you're running your assessments while they're on the table, I bet that could help you sort of keep moving things towards more of the neuro approach because you might, well, not might, you'll find that there's different outcomes to different things that you're doing, different, whether it's locations on the body or types of, you know, pressure that you're providing, like it's all testable, you know? And I bet that would be another way to help you. Cause I feel like the manual therapist has so many, almost has an advantage. Like you almost have an advantage compared to someone else who doesn't have that experience or licensure to do things like that. Because the manual techniques are going to be such a strong sensory stimulus. I bet with your open-minded clients, you could start to assess more of the individual inputs that you're providing manually, that might, yeah, that might help you feel like, all right, I'm starting to look through what I'm already doing in a little bit different lens. That might be a cool way to approach it. I do have a client, I was kind of assessing neuro while I was doing manual, so I wasn't doing a retest on my manual. technique, but I had a client sideline. I was doing one of the Eric Dalton techniques where I had my thumb in between the spinous and transverse processes on the splenius groove of muscles on the back side of the neck. And I was doing what's called a corkscrew method where you turn the head towards the side of the muscles, your thumbs on and you push down, you're slack in the muscle so you can get deeper in there. And I was feeling a tight band of muscle. And I was again, a long term client, said, I'm gonna try something here. So I put her head back to neutral, her open her eyes, had her follow my finger and did a smooth pursuit. And I literally under my thumb felt that tight band of muscle melt away. And I was like, I'm just imagining that except for at the same time she verbally confirmed, oh wow, that tension in my neck just went away. And I was just like, holy crap. And I went back into the rotation. and the range of motion was full with no resistance, that type band was gone. And I was like, all right, I think I'm tapping into something new here. So, yeah, it was cool. Yeah, what a moment. What a moment. And it makes perfect sense, right? Using the visual system to deal with tone issues in the neck. Neurologically, it makes perfect sense as far as what we know with pathways. But to experience that and then to have your manual skills give you the feedback that tone had changed. And that's so cool. And that's such a, that was a great idea. Man, that's such a, I hope manual therapists in our community listen to this and hear that because the combination of vision vestibular work with working on the midline of the body, like anywhere along the spine, so valuable. So valuable. That's a cool one. What other story do you have about, what's another cool little success story that you've had using either a combination of what you're doing or just neuro? Another success story was, and I think I posted this in the community a while back that I had gotten called David Blaine for the first time. I did a, was before I did the, the, the neuro drill while my hands were on. Um, it was a couple of months before that. I, worked on the guy's neck and did, did my bread and butter when I'm comfortable with. then I said, I'm going to show him some drills afterwards. So we got done. asked him how he felt. Um, said he felt like 80 % better. And I did a, uh, he said that the rotation in his neck was still tight. So his was tight. on the right side, but it was, he felt the tightness when he was going to the left. I decided to do a smooth pursuit to the right because the right side was what felt tight. I actually did pencil pushups first and he checked his rotation and it was about the same. And he said, it's still about 80%. So then I did the smooth pursuit to the right, had him rotate to the left. And again, his jaw dropped open and he's like, what are you David Blaine? full rotation returned with no pain. And that was a pretty cool one. Just a lot of those, like a lot of those post massage, like, here's something I want to give you to try at home, but we need to see if it works yet, or first. And yeah, just a lot of those that they're seeing colored lenses, like athletes and and getting the feedback or the buy-in like you have said where are you using colored lenses? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, nice. Tried a few colored lenses on athletes and everyone has a color, know, so they, some of them, like you've said in the past, like I'm just doing a forward bend over and over course I'm getting looser. And I was like, now let's go back to the one that didn't help you at all. And then they can't go down. And that's when they're like, what is this? So yeah. That's fun to show them how you can regress them. And that's where the buy-in is. It's just so anti-intuitive to think that the regressing them is what causes their buy-in. Oh gosh, all the time. Yeah. I find that pretty funny. It is funny, especially with more athletic people. I find that they only really buy-in officially when you make them worse, because they're like, I don't want to be worse. What happened? But then when you make them better, they're like, yeah, I'm just getting warmed up. thinks they're just getting warmed up. No one wants to believe that something can be this impactful. So it's that bias they have. a lot of people online too, kind of, I found you because of Instagram. So, and I liked your videos. So I've been doing stuff. I've been trying to add some of my manual. skills on videos to make it a little different, but people get on the videos and comment like, holy crap, that just helped my neck, like what the heck? And I'm like, well, shoot, hope they don't ask me to explain that because I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. So. It's funny you said that. I didn't even think about that prepping for this, but that is a very big obstacle for anybody learning applied neuro, especially. people like yourself who operate your own business and you're getting into this work, explaining it and slash marketing it is actually incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard. And some people aren't really interested in the details of applied neuro and they're just a client and they'll do the drill and if it helps them, great. But we're similar in the fact that I wanna be able to explain to some degree what we're doing and how it's affecting people. I feel like that's big part of the education too. And for anyone learning this material, and especially our manual therapists, being able to explain the basics. All this stuff we're always talking about. Educationally, I feel like the more education that you give people, the more open-minded they are, the more... buy in you get and then the more compliance you get with the whole process. But it's good that you brought that up. That comes with time. And then you're constantly refining it. Like Alicia and I are still learning how to present the material in a simple enough way, especially initially for like people like you when you back when you first found us, we're sort of leaving breadcrumbs and and we know we're leaving out most of the context to the work. And that's good for people like you who are open-minded and are like, there's something to that. You were able to see that there probably was missing context and gather up those breadcrumbs and see where it led you. And then there's another group of people that without the context, they either can't see it or it triggers them. least context video that I've posted was a recent one a couple of weeks ago and it got the most hate comments, but the most engagement overall and people have been exposed to it that no applied neuro are arguing with the people in my comments like defending me. But just ad homonyms like because I didn't give any context to what I was doing. It's like this is Instagram, there is no context. It's short form content. mean, it is what it is. Yeah. Right. That's I didn't have a prompt, you know, and that triggered some people. Yeah, it's just the way it is, but that's fine. Typically the way social media goes in my experience is there's so many people that do value what you're putting on social media and you're never gonna hear from them. And then you have this other group of people like the trolls. who they wanna make sure you hear from them. So then all of a sudden it seems like the people you are speaking to are dominated by the ones that are negative commenters, haters, trolls, whatever you wanna call them. But it's really never the case. It's actually a small percentage compared to people who like what you, but it's hard to deal with that. But that's the thing, you can't teach applied neuro on Instagram. You just can't, right? Because it's so deep. people that come into our, like you probably came into our courses with like an idea of what it was gonna be like, but I'm sure like most other people, all of a sudden you were just like, whoa, this is vast. Yeah, oh yeah. And I knew through massage school and PTA school, Neuro was like, in both educations was like, let's get through this so that I don't have to open this book ever again. And now it's cool. Like it's come full circle. Like I will not stop studying the nervous system until I know everything there is to know about it. And it's just been, it's been cool. Um, the, the learning, the neurology and the people that don't know anything about the nervous system, uh, they, they think like, uh, you know, you're, you're describing rocket science and it's like, you know, it's just, it's the learning all the pathways and all that stuff that I never thought I'd be delving back into. That's where I feel like now there's application. Yeah, now there's application. thing. Yeah, it's like people who have had previous education in neurology, they didn't learn how to do anything with it. Right. Right? So it was just grazed over. And it's so crazy to me because people view me, people who don't know me, these are people not in our community, but just maybe let's say on social media. Some people will think it's my method that I'm teaching and I made this up and it's this, know, I'm an innovator, I'm none of that. What this is, and the coolest thing, this is my most favorite part about what we're doing, is that we're not teaching a method, right? It's a thinking model. Yeah, it's not a protocol. That's right, and it has my interpretation on it, right? But it's not a method. And Alicia too, like Alicia and I are coming together as we build our curriculum and it's our interpretation of things and using our experience, but it's all based off of actual neuroanatomy and we didn't make anything up, right? Smooth pursuits, that exercise you did with your client's eyes, that tracking exercise, we did not make that up. That comes from clinical functional neurology. And so my favorite thing about the material is that it's not actually a method, it's a thinking model. So then when you understand that, someone like you who already has previous skills can start to adopt a thinking model, eventually make it your own and keep studying. And you can go as far as you want with this because it goes beyond what we even... are teaching people in the courses if you want it to. Right. I mean, I've done over a thousand hours of CEUs before I came across your guys' education platform. So I can't get enough of the courses and since COVID, you know, a lot of it's online. So I was bought in going in, but when you guys, when you started going through the neuroanatomy and not just these applied neuro concepts, I was like, okay, this guy knows this stuff. Like when you're talking about mesencephalon and all these technical terms with the neuroanatomy, was like, okay, I need to get to this level with the anatomy first. Yeah. And it's interesting because when you came to us and started getting involved in the courses, that was actually around the time where we started making that plunge. Initially, when we were teaching our courses, things were super basic when we first were getting started. And that was fine. But then we just, it didn't... It didn't sit well with us eventually because there was too much missing. And so then we started gradually. Uh, was almost like I was in the same shoes. You are as a practitioner where you are with your learning and starting to, know, how much, how much of this should I integrate? I actually was now re-experiencing that challenge, but as an instructor where I'm saying to myself, how much neuroanatomy do I actually want to in our courses? How far into the weeds do I wanna go? Because I still wanna make sure that it's applicable, right? There's a line to be drawn with neurology that I've found anyway, where if you accidentally go too deep, all of a sudden what you know no longer has application the same way it used to. So we're constantly trying to figure out where do we draw that line? And that line is changing here a little bit. And you wanna know what's driving us? people like you who are, you're studying hard, you're coming into this, you already know a lot, you're smart, you're a lifelong student, and now you guys are pushing us to bring in more of the heavier material, which actually is helping, right? It's helping people connect the dots and inspiring them, hopefully, to keep learning and showing people what's really out there for information. And, you know, we're trying to make it as easy to apply as possible, but it's definitely a journey, right? It's... Oh yeah. It's challenging. It's for everybody. One thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap this up was for anybody out there who either, maybe either a manual therapist in... Well, let's start there. For a manual therapist in our community, who can relate to what you're saying about the challenges with starting to integrate Neuro into their practice and their business. What kind of advice, maybe one thing, two things come to mind that you could help them with? Yeah, I would say it's easier to start with clients that you've seen for a while that trust you. Makes sense. Just to... Talk to them, you know, that you're learning something new. I started, I think, talking during their massage session. And then I say, you know, if it's okay with you, if we stop five, 10 minutes short so that I can show you some of this stuff, because I think it'll really help you. And that was kind of how I started working that into the end of the sessions. And now I'm doing more trying to get some neuro assessment beforehand. Like I said, that's where I need to really ramp that up. But yeah, don't be afraid to try it. If you don't try it, you know, maybe start on friends and family if you're too nervous to start with a client. But if you don't try this, if you don't start implementing these skills that you're learning, you're never gonna get to implement it. And that wall is gonna seem higher and higher for breaking through. So. I love that. And if I can add something to that for those folks that are listening. The approach that Adam took I think is a really good one where before he started getting into all the like in-depth neuro testing, because he's still working that, starting to work that in now, he wasn't afraid to take the plunge with just trying a drill to see what the outcome was. And I feel like that is an important risk to take because a lot of people have a tendency to just overwhelm themselves and they feel like, well, if I can't, do it the exact way I'm learning it and respect the testing, then I can't do it at all. And that's actually not the case. There's nothing wrong with just starting to try some drills and look for people's high payoff drills. That's a great way to go. And that's how I started too. And then that will, little by little, you'll build your confidence, you'll figure out how to structure your sessions in a way that things are more time efficient where you can start to to work in the, maybe the testing if you want to. And I've actually, we've had students that really never work in the testing. Like the only test that they work in is the assess, reassess after a drill. And even that works for certain people that don't have the time, right? And I think that's absolutely fine. Last question for the person who has not yet taken the plunge into learning applied neuro, with our courses and maybe they're in the same shoes you were where they're just discovering us on Instagram. They're not really sure who this guy is and if this stuff would be useful for them, but they can, they're sensing the value, right? They're sensing the value. What advice would you give them? Go through the course, sign up. You're not gonna know until you sign up and see. I can vouch for Taylor and Alicia that, They've done this stuff for over a decade, decade and a half, right? Close to, and they're body nerds, just like all of you body nerds out there that you're only stumbling upon this stuff because that's your algorithm, because you're a body nerd. So take the plunge, sign up for the course. You won't regret that you did it. Thank you, man. Hey, this was awesome. I'm so glad we got to chat like this. Yeah. I really appreciate your time. And as I said, when we were getting started, I also really appreciate the work that you're putting into this because it's not easy. It takes a lot of courage. You have to take risks. You have to be willing to be wrong, all that good stuff. And you're doing an amazing job. You've learned a ton really quickly. and you've applied a lot really quickly. And Alicia and I wanna thank you for being such an active member in our community. It's been great and we're really enjoying seeing that grow. And it's cool to see how people within the community like yourself are like, they have relationships with each other now. And our core group is always nerding out and talking with one another and asking questions and. You've been big part of that. You've been driving that. So thank you so much because in the end that really just, that just helps all of us. Well, I appreciate it, Taylor. And I'm excited to keep going. And I love the weekly Thursday, you know, people sign up for the membership too, because that is where I found continued value is I can go back and watch that. Yeah, yeah, that's how you become a ninja. I can watch the lessons over and over. to integrate that, but then the real world application I find being more is what we're discussing in the membership on Thursdays and that's huge, that's valuable, very valuable. Yeah, that's been, I've been excited about that too, how that's starting to come together and you guys have been helping us figure out like what the kind of content of the membership should really be, so thank you for your feedback. All right, man, we'll keep up the great work and maybe we'll have to do this again at some point. Oh yeah. And yeah, we'll be able to chat about the next steps that you've taken to improving your skills and your practice. For sure. Awesome, Adam. Thanks a lot, No problem. Thank you.
