Chezla Hagood

• A few years ago Chezla was a young mom suffering from really bad neck pain, headaches, and a burning pain between her shoulder blades caused by a bulging disc in her neck. During this same time period, she was diagnosed with Lupus. She struggled with daily activities and caring for her young child. She had gone to the doctor several different times and wasn't getting any relief, and it just kept getting worse. She hadn’t had any specific accident or injury that caused this to happen but was an athlete growing up, so there were multiple sports injuries throughout the years. She had tried muscle relaxers, pain medicines, and eventually physical therapy.

•  Chezla’s husband, Brandon, met Ruth Elder through a business referral group. By this time, she had suffered from the pain for 3 or 4 years and had had her second child. She called and set up a screening appointment at the Blair Chiropractic Clinic, where Dr. Elder ran a few tests and determined that he could help her.  A few days later, she had her first adjustment and wondered if the doctor had done anything since she could barely feel the adjustment and didn’t feel immediate relief. Within the first week or two, she started noticing small changes. The headaches were subsiding, and the stiffness was improving. Now, four years later, Chezla is feeling great and very seldom has any issues with her neck. In fact, she has only had one neck adjustment in those four years.

• Chezla’s 14-year-old daughter, Kinzie, is now a patient after suffering a concussion at school two years ago after being hit in the head. She had a headache for the first several days that wouldn’t go away. Chezla waited three days to take Kinzie to the doctor, thinking it wasn’t serious because Kinzie hadn’t lost consciousness or anything. Chezla wishes she had known to get Kinzie into upper cervical care when it first happened. Kinzie did have a misalignment. Her recovery since the first adjustment has been more accelerated than Chezla’s, mostly due to her being younger.

• Chezla also started bringing her son, Luke, in to get checked. He had some issues as a baby with his hips popping in and out. He hasn’t had to have any adjustments but loves coming into the office and playing in the kid's area before he gets checked.

•  Chezla’s mom had been having all kinds of issues for a while. She actually had fallen and hurt her neck. She's had fibromyalgia pain, all sorts of injuries and pain, so then she started seeing Dr. Elder. Now, she's doing a whole lot better too.

• Chezla now works as a Chiropractic Assistant at the Blair Chiropractic Clinic. She enjoys seeing the changes in people as they heal. She has this advice for other moms in her situation, “ I would probably say if you have any kind of problems like I had, a neck pain, back pain, anything like bulging disc like I had, anything to do with the neck that's bothering you, definitely get help sooner rather than later because I didn't know any better. I had been dealing with it for years. I wish I had known sooner. I would've gotten help. Then also, as far as your kids go, I wish I had known to get the kids checked sooner.”

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams

•  Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams practices in Spokane, Washington at Clear Chiropractic. They have two locations, and right now, she’s at the South Hill location.

• BACKGROUND:
• Dr. Ellis Williams has wanted to be a doctor since she was five years old because she wanted to help people who were sick and suffering. Her mom suffered from migraines. She also wanted to be a teacher, and the true definition of a doctor is to be an educator. She wanted to educate people on how they could live better life. She studied biology in undergrad but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. When she graduated, she decided to take a year off and study for the MCAT.. She got a job as a nanny for a chiropractor and also worked in his office 2 days a week. 

•  HER OWN HEALTH JOURNEY:
• She had dealt with back pain since middle school. Yoga helped to relieve pain. Every doctor she’d ever been to just said, "Oh, you'll grow out of it, don't worry about it." Now that she knows, she should have been under chiropractic care right away. Kids with pain become adults with pain. She had her first adjustment when she woke up with a kink in her neck one day and couldn’t move it. The chiropractor she worked for made an adjustment, and later that day, the kink was gone. Later, with X-rays, she found out that she has an extra vertebra in her lumbar spine. They had been adjusting her and making it worse because she had had this anomaly that no one had known about before. She tried a lot of different things,  then once she got under upper cervical care and had her neck adjusted, her back pain went away.

• CAREER JOURNEY:
• After working at the chiropractic office for just a few months and volunteering in an ICU, she decided not to go to medical school but instead go to chiropractic school. She started school at Life Chiropractic College West in the Bay Area, California. There are over 200 different techniques, and they teach 12 of those there. That’s where she found upper cervical.

• WHY UPPER CERVICAL AND DCCJP:
• Dr. Ellis-Williams says this about upper cervical care,” There are so many different things that happen when you get your neck adjusted. Better posture, the neurology that happens, the pain receptors, there's just a myriad of things that happen in the body when we get our head on straight. Your body is so, so keen to know exactly where your head is in space. If we can make sure that that connection is happening, we can increase or decrease all of the, basically the alarm signals that are going off. When your head isn't on straight, there are alarm signals going off everywhere, and wherever is taking on stress, that area is where you're going to hurt. One analogy for that I had in chiropractic school that I really like is when you step on a cat's tail; it's not the tail that screams.”

You can find Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams, DCCJP here : South Hill

2503 E. 27th Ave.

Spokane, WA 99223

(509) 315-8166

Contact Dr. Ellis Williams

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

Peggy Coffey

• Peggy grew up in the Littlefield and Lubbock areas in West Texas. Her dad was a farmer, and they had a hard life, but they managed and were a close-knit family. He retired, and they went into the insurance business. She went to work for a company named Texas Instruments and worked there for about 26 years. Then they closed the plant down, and she went to work for a few other places and ended up with the police department in the property room, bringing in evidence from crime scenes and storing it.

• In her 20s, Peggy went to work for a company called American Cotton Growers. She had to stand up all the time and started to struggle with that. It progressively got worse. She was experiencing extreme pain in her lower back and was bent over to her left side, and could not stand up straight at all. She was having sinus issues. She had been on all kinds of drugs, pain pills, muscle relaxers, and steroid shots. She was told she would have to have surgery and have rods put in her back.

•  Peggy’s mother had a friend who recommended Doctor Blair, and so they made an appointment. She didn’t think it would work. The doctor took x rays, and she found out that her back pain actually stemmed from her neck. When she had her first adjustment, it did not hurt; it didn’t even feel like he had done anything.  It took a while, but she slowly started seeing improvement. She could finally stand up straight and do things she hadn’t been able to. 

• Peggy has been coming to the Blair Chiropractic Clinic for 46 years now and has seen three different doctors run the clinic in that time. She keeps coming back because she knows it helps her, and if she loses her adjustment and it’s caught in time, then she won’t be in any kind of pain.

• Peggy says, when pertaining to the Blair Technique, “Well, there's nothing scary about the technique they use at the Blair Clinic and everything, and it's just a wonderful thing. I really don't know what to say about it. I can put my praise to it and let me say that also that it's not only for back pain, but it can also be for asthma, it can be for headaches, it can be for kidney problems, it can be for other things.”

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

Valerie Kumkov Hill

•  Valerie has lived in Lubbock since 1969. Her father came here initially to teach mathematics at Texas Tech. She ended up going to Texas Tech University and has been there ever since. She majored in Art and had a second degree in Dance. She taught in the public school system for 24 years. She has always been mindful of health and nutrition. Currently, in retirement, Valerie teaches yoga to seniors.

• Valerie’s husband was the first one to come to the Blair Chiropractic Clinic after doing some research. He'd been having some major neck problems even before they were married. It must've been sometime in the late '70s; Doctor Blair was there at the time. Her husband, as a child, had had some surgeries and physical problems that actually resulted from a childhood case of polio.

• While working at a bookstore, Valerie started noticing she was getting stiff and tense in her neck and shoulders. She then started seeing Doctor Blair herself. She started seeing results herself, and after their children were born, they became patients of the clinic as well. By then, Doctor Addington had taken over. He checked the kids out over the years, and they had minor adjustments. Then their son was involved in a car accident as a passenger in high school, and they got him in right away. No one was hurt badly, but their son seemed to recover much more quickly from that. The same happened with her daughter, as an adult, when she was t-boned by a drunk driver in her truck. They immediately brought her in again and had her checked out. She'd had some hip problems because of the way the seatbelt jerked her, and she had some adjustments done in her lower back and pelvis as well.

• Valerie has noticed as she’s gotten older that you often don't feel better right away or for a few days after getting an adjustment. When you come back a week later, things have smoothed out, and it was just her body reacting to being aligned again and the muscles having to pull slightly.  The first line of care is to run a graph on the cervical vertebra and see how things are doing. Then if there's a problem, take care of it as quickly as possible so that it doesn't become a chronic problem. She has noticed that over the years, She’s had fewer and fewer adjustments. She can't even remember the last time she had her neck adjusted because it has been maintained so well.
• While teaching yoga at the community center, Valerie adjusts poses that need to be adjusted for age, and they work on things like getting down and up from a chair or the floor. Taking a long time to warm up, the first thing they do after breathing is to start gently moving their neck muscles, the very top of the spine, and then gradually warming the spine up. Her mission is to let people get over that fear of yoga and not be intimidated.

• Valerie wrote a children’s book during Covid called
•  Clive the Lonely Llama.
• It was published by  Wild Lark Books, a bookstore in Downtown Lubbock.

Here is Valerie’s teaching schedule:

Yoga classes: M, T, TH  9:30 at Maxey Community Center

Seated Yoga: T, TH 10:45

Fitness/light aerobics: Wed. 9:45

To see more of Valerie’s work or to purchase her art:

Shop

View art

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

• Dr. Elder is a California native. He grew up fairly healthy and saw an upper cervical chiropractor, starting at about the age of 10, for sinus infections that were probably a long-term effect of a car accident that he and his mom had when he was four. His mom had gone to a chiropractor for some time and then was referred to an upper cervical chiropractor, Dr. Muncy (a neck specialist), by a friend. She found that she actually seemed to be starting to get better. It wasn't just relief. It wasn't instant. It wasn't quick. Slowly things were improving.

• Dr. Elder didn't want to be a chiropractor. He had no interest in healthcare at all until he met his wife, Ruth while doing mission work in Norway, and she needed this healthcare. Ruth was not healthy, it took her an extra two years to finish high school. She was having a rough patch with a lot of pain and obstacles. During her whole childhood and teenage years, she just had one thing after another. There was never a time she was well. She had infections, pain,  and weird symptoms. Her vision went on for a period of time, she had tendonitis and back pain since she was six years old. At age 11, she had a really acute situation where her whole upper back and neck were locked up, and she couldn't move it. From that time on, she always had a headache. It lasted more than 20 years.

• Getting Married changed everything. After getting married and moving to Lancaster, CA, Dr. Elder’s hometown, he took Ruth to see Dr. Muncy. He ran some tests and pointed to the spot where she had been feeling nerve pressure in her neck, but other doctors had told her that it wasn’t possible. Dr. Muncy said, "You have a bone out of alignment, and it's putting pressure on your nerves right here". He pointed to it, and Ruth’s eyes welled up with tears. She thought, "Finally, for the first time in my life, somebody found something wrong." She slowly started to see improvements.

• Ruth got a job with Dr. R. Weldon Muncy, a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor. She would come home and tell Dr. Elder stories of patients' healing. Dr. Elder was in college, planning to get a master's in international business. They decided that he should become an Upper Cervical Chiropractor because he was good with his hands. Also, Ruth would need this kind of care for the rest of her life, and if he was able to take care of her himself, they could live anywhere in the world they wanted!

• Dr. Muncy asked them to stay in California and eventually take over his practice. While still in chiropractic college, Gordon followed Dr. Muncy in his practice as often as he could to learn from him. Dr. Harkins, who had been trained by Dr. Blair himself and Dr. David Toppping, also became his mentors. Eventually, Dr . Elder became more interested in what Dr. Blair had done in case management. This led to a friendship with  Dr. E.A. Addington, whom Dr. Blair had recruited to take over his practice in Lubbock, TX.

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

Dianne Madison

• Dianne’s father is Dr. William G. Blair, the founder of the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Technique. Not only did he see as many patients every day as he could, but he would also stay at night studying x-rays, and doing research. He even went to a medical museum to see a spine and wrote a book about that.
• Dianne says about her Dad, “ He was such a good person, and he worked so hard. In fact, he practically worked himself to death because he was such an intelligent man and just studied, and studied, and studied because he wanted to help people. He had asthma from day one, and he wanted to help them, and he knew that this did.”
•  Dianne’s mother, Dottie, introduced him to an upper cervical chiropractor.  She not only got him interested in it, but she took him to an upper cervical doctor that adjusted him, and it helped pull him out of an asthma attack. 
• Her mother always wanted a family member present at the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Society Annual Convention.  The Blair Society was founded after her father, Dr. Blair, died in order to make sure that there was continuity and quality over the Blair Technique that he started and developed and taught and researched, making sure it continued in that form and didn't just disappear. Dianne’s Mother, Dottie Blair,  Dr. E.A. Addington, and Dr. R. W.  Muncy founded the Blair Society.
• Her own health journey: She got an adjustment pretty early when she was really young. Probably the day after she was born. She was checked very often. She has always had really good health. She had adult-onset asthma, which has always been under control because of being in alignment. She is now 67 and has stayed in alignment for the last five years or longer.
• Most people don't realize how much upper cervical care helps because when you first get under chiropractic care, and you've got issues, it took years for those issues to get where they’re at. It's going to take some time to correct itself. When you get adjusted, the nerve supply is able to go freely to your body, and that's how the body heals itself. It's very important. The neck is where it all starts.

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

• Kim says she can’t remember the first day she came to the Blair Chiropractic Clinic. That's probably a good indication of how poorly she was feeling that day. She would describe her state back then as being in a tunnel. If you've ever suffered from many illnesses or prolonged pain, she would say, you end up getting your peripheral vision shut down where you really feel like you're only able to pay attention to so many things at once. That's a hard place to live.

• She was diagnosed with mild scoliosis in grade school and started having headaches at 15 years old and on through her 20s. Also had uneven hips and what some people describe as a short leg syndrome. Her hips were not level. Later she developed vertigo and balance issues. 

• For many years Kim was a full-time horse trainer. She rode horses all day long, every day, six days a week, for a good portion of her life. Over the years, she had seen lots of different practitioners and, had lots of body work done, been to a lot of doctors trying to get help with some of her other health problems. She had cranial sacral work done. She had tried a lift in the shoe, been to reiki practitioners, and myofascial release experts, and traveled around the country seeking help.

• When talking about her first adjustment, Kim says, “I just remember how gentle it was. It really was such a subtle move. I'd been to chiropractors for 20 years or so before I came to seek some treatment from Dr. Elder, and that was definitely just the most subtle and easiest one I'd ever experienced. Since it was up high, there was a little part of me that was really curious about how that would feel.

• The healing process: Kim says, “Well, I was so much better within 30 days. Stunningly better in 30 days. I had a full-time job, an office job that was pretty low demanding, but I would spend so many of my lunches napping in my car on my lunch breaks and then sleeping after I got home or laying down as soon as I got home. After my adjustment, not only did vertigo go away, I got really solid on my feet again. It felt good to move again. I had ambition. I had the desire to get out and about again instead of just laying around hoping that I would feel good enough to even get my house chores done. I started having some vigor and some vitality again. That was huge for me, so huge. There were a couple of shocking things that happened. Around 2017 or so, I noticed that my left foot was starting to migrate away from my midline. After my adjustment, much to my surprise and delight, my left foot and ankle migrated back underneath my left hip and left knee. My leg was straight again.
• 
  
•  If the brainstem comes all the way down into C1 and C2, and it's the largest fattest part of the spinal cord right through those first two vertebrae, and if your atlas and axis are not in alignment, whatever in alignment is for your own anatomy, then that's a huge problem. All the neurological issues that come about because of that spot being messed up. The brainstem is the first part of our brain that starts to function when we're in our mother's womb, and it's the last thing that goes when we go out. It's essential for our life.

• Kim had gotten to a point where she thought she would have to live with serious limitations for the rest of her life. Her message is “ No, you don't have to live like this. Not only do you not have to go to 14 specialists trying to figure out what's going wrong with you. You can literally just come and have Dr. Elder check your neck. It's my understanding that he's pretty good at just figuring out if he can help you or not by some of those basic eval tests that he did on me.”

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

We hope you will consider sharing this episode to give hope to someone who is suffering from Migraines, Vertigo, or Scoliosis.

In this episode, Dr. Drew Hall, a leader within the Upper Cervical Chiropractic profession, tells stories of how he used his own fight against chronic pain and his naturally driven personality to help thousands with their health. He has built three successful Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic practices in Los Angeles and Sarasota and led the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Society in its vision of “Blair to the World”. He talks about working with mentors and shares some of his favorite recovery stories that he has personally seen in his practice.

• At the age of 17, he was wrestling with a friend and was dropped on his head. He heard a crack. After a few months, he started having headaches and comprehension issues, and a lot of other chronic problems such as depression and anxiety, etc. All of this went on for 2.5 years.In college, at age 19, he started having suicidal thoughts. He then found a Homeopathic Doctor who recommended a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor named Dr. Tom Forest. 
• He was scared of what he thought “normal” chiropractors do (popping and cracking), but the Dr. Forest explained how Blair Chiropractic is different. He decided to go give it a try and got his first adjustment, and began healing.
• Now he’s a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor! "I definitely wasn't an empathetic person before. Having had been sick and had that happen to me, yes, it made me really empathetic and realize that people don't feel bad because it's just all in their head. If it was just all in their head, they would be able to get themselves out of it." Dr. Hall tells his patients that in order to be a doctor, a prerequisite should be have to be sick yourself first because you'll have a different perspective with these types of cases.
• Dr. Hall calls himself the last-ditch doctor. His patients, generally speaking, have had chronic conditions for the long term, and they've been from doctor to doctor, and no one's been able to help them. He especially loves taking care of babies and children.

To Contact Dr. Drew Hall in Sarasota: :https://sarasotauppercervical.com/contact

If you want to look for a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor near you, go to https://www.blairchiropractic.com/locate-upper-cervical-blair-chiropractic-doctor/

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

We hope you will consider sharing this episode to give hope to someone who is suffering from Chronic Pain.

Kyle Forster was born and raised in Lubbock, Texas. He graduated from Coronado High School back in the early '90s, then went to Texas Tech. His father started Forester Construction back in '85, and he had gotten sick right before Kyle graduated college. Kyle was about to go to law school but instead helped out at Forster Construction, which he owns today.

In this episode he will tell us about:

• He had low back pain. His back would pop out, and he tore a muscle across his back at 18 years old. He has had a lot of pain on an ongoing basis since then.
• 2 years before meeting Ruth, Kyle started having jaw pain that moved to his eyes, which he thought was from previously being hit in the jaw by a golf ball. He went to a chiropractor and got popped. The pain got worse so he started going to a bunch of different doctors.
• Kyle was diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia.  It was pure hell. There's no other word for it. It's pure hell. Three hours of sleep at night.
•  doctors that there are very few options. You can solder the nerves in your face where your face will droop, and that'll help ease the pain. Or you can do Botox for temporary relief. Then the other was heavy medication. None of those options seemed acceptable to Kyle.
• Kyle and Ruth met at a Referral Networking group called Referral Hub in Lubbock, TX. Kyle had been praying the night before to show me a sign. Ruth shared with the group that Blair Chiropractic Clinic helps people who suffer from Trigeminal Neuralgia and headaches. Kyle decided to talk to her, and he put it across that he wanted to try this. He was desperate and was willing to try anything at this point.
• At his first appointment with Dr Elder, he got an adjustment that didn’t feel like anything had happened. 4 days later, he slept through the night for the first time in 2 ½ years. Pain decreased over the next couple of months. Not only did the Trigeminal Neuralgia get better, but his low back pain and sciatica, with the pain and numbness going down the leg, also improved.
• Because of the great results, Kyle has referred lots of family members and friends for Upper Cervical Care at the Blair Chiropractic Clinic in Lubbock.
• Kyle Forster and his brother-in-law own Forster Construction. It's been around since 1985. They do residential and commercial roofing. They’re not a jack of all trades. They concentrate on just roofing and take good care of their clients. They offer the best warranties on the residential side and on the commercial side. They have superintendents on both. It's not just some crew coming out, throwing on some shingles, or throwing on a flat product. They take good care of our people. There's a reason they have had an 87% retention rate since 1985. They take good care of our people. Kyle says: “Well, it's West Texas. All you have is your name, and everything in West Texas is about respect, and that's why it should stay.”

Contact information for Forster Construction: https://forsterconstruction.com/contact-2/

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

We hope you will consider sharing this episode to give hope to someone who is suffering from Trigeminal Neuralgia.

Dr. Elizabeth Hoefer, DCCJP, tells the story of how her anxiety and suicidal thoughts left her in an instant. Now she is devoting her life to multiplying the kind of help she herself received by being a leader within the Upper Cervical Chiropractic Profession, where she has obtained the highest level of specialty in head and neck issues in order to continually be able to help even the most severe, chronic and complicated conditions.

In this episode, we talk about the following:

• Suicidal thoughts. Looking at where she is right now as a successful doctor in private practice you can draw the conclusion that the beginning doesn't dictate the ending. Your choices every day are what make the difference. Dr. Hoefer always had a resolute determination to be successful. It didn't necessarily mean financial; it just meant that she was going to get up every day and survive. Education was a pathway to success.
• Getting off medication, she started feeling a little better, but it didn't take away that suicidal ideology, which is that overwhelming perseverating thought of just wanting to die every day. 
• A friend recommended Blair Upper Cervical. She didn’t believe it would help because she had been under chiropractic care her whole life.
• It was determined that she had a tiny posterior inferior left misalignment of the atlas vertebrae. The reason it's called the atlas is that they named it after that Greek God that held the world up on his shoulders. This little two-ounce bone holds up this big bowling ball of a brain and a skull. The implications of that being misaligned and literally choking off communication between your brain and your body and your body and your brain is massive.
•  Kevin Leach, a student, gave the correction. Instantaneously, her mind was healed. Dr. Hoefer had hope for the first time in her life and had never experienced that kind of peace.
• Dr. Hofer says God healed her so that she can heal others. This is the motivation that has driven her to continue to pursue education to get to the top of the profession in order to understand healing better and to help more people.

You can find Dr. Elizabeth Hoefer at Well Connected Chiropractic in Mission Viejo in Southern California.

[email protected]

To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com

[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/rutelin

We hope you will consider sharing this episode to share hope with someone who is struggling with mental health issues.