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If you're experiencing upper body pains, headaches, sleeping trouble, or even depression, you might want to look into that, as your body could be misaligned. A lot of times, upper cervical care is exactly what you need to live a happy life. Dr. Kevin Pecca is joined by Dr. Drew Hall, the owner of Hall Upper Cervical Chiropractic. Learn how upper cervical care saved his life and that's why he pursued chiropractic. Discover how this can lead to a more happy and healthy life. Start taking care of your body so you can live a life that you love.
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How Upper Cervical Care Saves Lives With Dr. Drew Hall
For weekly episodes, be sure to hit that subscribe button. You can also find me on Instagram, @DrKevinPecca, YouTube @DrKevinPecca, and TikTok, @DrKevinPecca and Facebook, @MontclairUpperCervical. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can email me at DrKevinPecca@gmail.com. On the show, we have a very special guest. We have Dr. Drew Hall. For those who have been avid readers of the blog, you'll know Dr. Drew Hall completely saved my life through Blair Upper Cervical Care. It has been years since I've been under care.
Before I met him, my life quality was gone. I had poor vision, dizziness, headaches, anxiety, and depression all from an ice hockey concussion. My symptoms lasted for five years. They weren't going away. I walked into Dr. Hall's office and he saved my life. I owe him everything. I don't know what quality of life I would have right now if it wasn't for him. I get a little emotional talking about it. He is one of the best Blair Upper Cervical doctors I've ever met. He is incredible at what he does. He is passionate. He cares for his patients and gets sick people well.
The show is named basically because I walked into his office and there was a huge “Expect Miracles” written on the door. It's an honor to have him on the show. He is moving to Sarasota, Florida. There's going to be a Blair Upper Cervical doctor in that area if you are looking for care. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Without further ado, please welcome Dr. Drew Hall.
We have a very special guest, Dr. Drew Hall. He is the upper cervical doctor that saved my life and gave me my life back. I honestly don't know what I would be doing now if I never had that upper cervical correction. I probably would have not gotten through chiropractic school. My life completely turned around. I owe him everything. It's an honor to have him on the show. Drew, how are you doing?
Dr. Kevin Pecca, I'm fantastic.
Thank you for coming on. I know you are doing a bunch of big changes throughout your life. For those who haven't read your first episode, I believe you were episode seven. Feel free to go back and give that a read. What is your story? Where are you from? How did you get into Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
I'm originally born in Walnut Creek, which is in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a sister and two parents. Thank God they're still alive. My story of upper cervical started when I was seventeen. I got dropped on my head wrestling. I didn't realize at that moment how that would be a left-hand turn in my life for worse and then better. The reason I say worse is for two and a half years, I suffered with chronic headaches, depression and sleeping trouble. My sinuses swollen shut, anxiety, depression, muscle pains and all the muscles on my body, and carpal tunnel in both wrists. That was before computers, so that's how old I am. For two and a half years after I got dropped on my head in wrestling injury and all of those issues ensued, there was a slow onset so I never told anyone.
It was eight months until you didn't know what was going on. That's why you couldn't connect the dots from the head injury until then.
I would say 6 to 9 months in was when I started picking up things that were interfering with my life. It was a year and a half in where I was like, "This is not good." It was an episodic thing and then it became constant every second of every day with a headache. To anyone who is reading and living through that knows how much fun that is. They also may know how much fun it is to go to five different doctors, spend $20,000 and get test after test. If they can't find anything to be told that it's all in your head, "Go see a psychiatrist."
That was the fork in the road. When I got told that, I was like, "The hell with you, people? I'm out of here." Google wasn't around. I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore doing research and trying to figure out what the cause of my problem was because all I was told was to swallow a bunch of drugs, never ask any question, or what the underlying cause may be. I got a hold of the book that was titled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia. In the back of the book, there was a support group and I gave that number a ring. Thank God, on the other end was someone who understood where I was at and what I was in because she suffered with similar issues.
She referred me to a homeopathic doctor, which I knew nothing about, but I was at that place in my life where I was willing to do anything. She gave me a number. I gave a call, set up an appointment, and went down. I saw Dr. Stratford, a homeopath in San Francisco Bay Area. In the consultation, she asked me 50 questions. I told her my whole story. At the end of everything, she handed me a business card. On the front of it said, "Tom Forest, chiropractor." I was like, "Hell no. I'm not going to a chiropractor." You'll hear this from your patients. They're a little bit scared because what I knew of chiropractic was someone was going to take my head and twist it to the left and the right.
I got that card and said, "Dr. Stratford, I'm willing to do anything, but I don't want anyone twisting my neck left and right." She said, "Drew, what you think of as chiropractic isn't what Dr. Forest does. He is the best in the San Francisco Bay Area. He doesn't twist, top, or pull the neck. It takes precise imaging that looks at the joints and the adjustment. It is very noninvasive and you'll think you didn't do anything." I was like, "She acts like he is Jesus. He doesn't twist, pop, and pull my neck. What the hell do I have to lose?" I still had low expectations. I went down there. He took all the X-rays and explained to me what he did.
After he explained the nuts and bolts of the upper cervical, any sane person that hears the story of upper cervical explained properly that sick will beat down the door to start care because it just makes sense, but I was still like, "This makes sense. Prove it to me." He took a bunch of X-rays, put me on the table, and adjusted me. I didn't feel a damn thing like Dr. Stratford said, but I started some skepticism. Within the first week, I started sleeping through the night. I was a complete insomniac. I got days that I had a headache. My suicidal-type depression lifted and I had hope again. I won't lie. It wasn't an overnight process, but over months and a couple of years, it completely and totally transformed my whole life. Here I am on the miracles show with Dr. Kevin Pecca.
Did Dr. Forest give you that adjustment the first day or send you home and have you come back?
He sent me home and he had me come back. Here's the irony. I've seen 10,000 patients. I don't prescribe that anyone else should follow my lead, but I remember being told to come back for the adjustment. I was so let down because I was so excited about what I heard. When I decided to be an upper cervical chiropractor, I was like, "I will adjust everything for sure on the first day." I've stuck and I know that it's a fly in the ointment to all chiropractic management systems, but I don't care. I've never followed the rules.
I do the same thing strictly because of that first day in your office. You had to be so fired up to get through chiro like, "Let's do this right now." If you did send me home, it would have taken the wind out of my sails. Everybody that I talked to says, "You adjust people on the first day," it's baffling to them.
I have an interesting story. It's a totally left-hand turn here. I was at Dr. Kuhn's office and doesn't practice for two years. A patient who is still with me referred me and her grandmother. It was getting late in the day. It was a busy day and I didn't own the office. I took the X-rays and I didn't adjust her that day. On the car ride home, she had a stroke. Guess who would have got blamed for that? Sometimes there's divine intervention.
Did she pass away?
No, she did okay and came out of it. We got her back under care and she did all right.
That's a wild story.
I got lots of wild stories, but they're all in the back of my head. They’ve got to come to the front of the head when you say certain things.
After you got your neck corrected and started healing up, what was next for you?
For any of you out there reading who are under upper cervical care, a bit scared or just started, every case is different. Usually, when people have post-concussion syndrome or deep chronic issues, it's not a cakewalk. The first thing I would like to say to those that are entertaining or under care, it's a process that doesn't happen overnight. While I had windows of relief very quickly, it was a long-drawn-out, up-and-down battle.
You know this, Dr. Pecca. When patients go through all sorts of twists and turns and when you get correct, that irritation at the brain stem level are going through. When you truly get it corrected, that body is going to start going through an unwinding and healing process, which has beautiful and very tough periods. At the end of the road, if you go through the process, you'll come out the other end. I reached a level of health and emotional well-being that I didn't know existed.
To piggyback on that, I remember eight weeks into care. I was having periods where I was happy for no good reason. It's like in a state of calm. Everything was right in the world, even though I had a lot of different symptoms, but on an emotional level, I was very serene and plastered. I guess that would be the best way to say it, which is not how I was prior. I went into Dr. Forest and I was like, "Dr. Forest, what the hell did you do to me? I've never felt like this in my whole life."
The first thing he said was, "You've probably been out of alignment since birth. I want you to go ask your mom what your birth process was like. "What do you mean?" He said, "Sometimes they use forceps or it's a very difficult delivery. You're misaligned at the base of the skull at birth." I went home after that and asked my mom. I was a forceps delivery.
For those of you reading who have had kids or know people that were born of forceps or vacuum extraction, there are about 80 to 120 pounds of force that happens to that little baby getting them out. Sometimes it's necessary to save their life, but that kid needs to get checked immediately so they don't go through all sorts of health issues down the road. Anyway, what was your question? You asked me, "Where did that lead?"
Where did that go?
When you want to do yourself in because you feel like crap and then you get a second lease on life that exceeds your expectations by about 5,000 fold, I had no other option but to practice upper cervical. I initially went to UC Davis. After UC Davis, I went to a chiropractic school down in Los Angeles and have been down here since 1998. That's about to end because I'm no longer willing to live in California and have sold my house. I bought a house in Siesta Key, Sarasota, Florida. Both of my practices are being transacted. One thing I'm thankful for is two of my patients too then went on to become upper cervical doctors. They're buying both the practices. The legacy will continue.
That is a full circle. One of the reasons I stuck with care is because I had that one miracle first adjustment, but it was a roller coaster ride back to health and you mapped it out for me. You were like, "It's going to take 6 to 8 months for you to get back to where you were." I remember when you told me that, I was like, "I don't have that much time. What do you mean it's going to take that long?" Every couple of weeks, it started getting better. I did get my life back eventually.
You kept mentioning these moments of clarity that would happen where I would wake up some days and cry tears of joy. It was the most connected I've ever felt in my entire life. I remember specifically talking to you about this. You were like, "I never got that clarity back." I was like, "What the hell does this guy did? I was in it. It's just going to stay like this." There were brief periods of that first two years where I've never felt more connected to anything in my entire life. What the hell do you think that is?
I could go down a couple of roads here. The majority of the population to some degree, more or less, is walking around in a fog. BJ Palmer, who developed upper cervical and brought it out into the public, talked about the brain and spinal cord. He called it radio station God. I don't want to get too philosophical here. If you think about it, your brain is an energy source that sends neurological impulses into the brain stem, which is right where you see 1 or 2 is. You can look at the brainstem as a switch station. It has all the nuclei, the short little brains, that run your heart, internal organs, blood pressure, thermoregulation, heat balance, posture, muscle tone, and a bunch of other stuff.
What I'm getting at is if your central nervous system is the seat of control for blood flow, blood pressure, and everything in your whole body. If your atlas is you've had an injury, has dislodged off the floor of the skull, has torn the soft tissue, and then all of the muscles of the base of the skull have gone into spasticity, you're kinking off. One of my favorite papers was written by Dr. Mike Flanagan. He calls it the choke point. In the atlas or axis, it's choking off the life from your brain to your body.
In reverse, it's backing up CSF fluid into the brain and probably a venous pressure. There are lots of research out there on this. BJ Palmer called it body starvation below and brain congestion above. What was that? You were working at 50% of your capacity. When you got cleared out, your body starts healing and repairing. You just start perceiving reality in a more clear way because you were working right. That's the way I would put it.
What I love most about you too is you are very direct with your patients. You don't use a lot of fancy jargon. I remember going to all these medical specialists. They're using all these big words and I didn't even understand them. They weren't even helping me.
You want to know what that is. It's a call to cover for being not knowing what the hell you're doing and not helping a patient talking like you know what the hell you're doing. The patient is like, "What are you even talking about? I get crap that I was get better." The only damn thing that any patient that gets into any doctor's office want is to get better. That's the fun part about upper cervical. We don't have all the answers, but if you can find me something that works 10% as good as upper cervical and get sick people better, I want to know about it.
Do you think there's an overeducating aspect that gets in the way of healing sometimes?
Professional athletes, basketball players, golfers, and the ones that are in the top of their game will talk about a zone that they get in. You touched on it with that clarity. You get into this mental space of just knowing. We live in a very mechanistic Newtonian world that what we see, we think that's what exists. We've been trained that outside of physical reality, that there's not a lot. We aren't educated on that. Maybe the most simple way I can put this. Remember I was in Physics and they have the electromagnetic spectrum and the visible spectrum which is what we perceive through our eyes. It rises from 400 nanometers to 800. That's the visible spectrum.
On either end of that, you have far-infrared. There's a large energy spectrum that we, as humans, are only perceiving maybe 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum. What I'm getting at is that what we're perceiving isn't reality. It's 1% of it. As we continue forward here, there's a lot of quantum mechanics. There's this notion that we've been living in this Newtonian world, but that's not the whole picture. Upper cervical chiropractic is not just a physical thing. You're correcting a structural thing. This will all be borne-out of Science and some of it is. They've shown that when people resonate with their patients and want to get them better and it's not just money, that plays a role in their healing.
Getting back to your question, if you are everything you learned in your book, that's your whole reality and what's in front of you. BJ Palmer talked about that there's this infinite wisdom in the universe that connects all matters our philosophy. At the end of the day, it's not just that mechanical motion. We're unlocking that life force that BJ talked about. It flows from above, down, and inside out. He believed that the life force and the Eastern thought talks about this isn't located inside of you. It flows through you.
I know a lot of the Eastern thought talks about the flow and energy of life that enters in the back part of the medulla oblongata and flows through the nervous system. In chiropractic, what are we talking about? We talked about above, down, and inside out that there's a flow of life that starts from above the nervous system out the body. That's what runs the show.
How long have you been in practice?
I can't believe it. It's many years.
Are you just as fired up as ever from when you began? What is it like practicing for many years? Is your energy still the same?
It feels a little different scene. There are 50 or 60 people a day than it did when I was 28. You know this. How long have you been in practice?
Four years.
What? You've only been in practice for four years.
I got my license in 2017.
I don't give a damn if you've been in practice 4, 20, or 58 years. It never gets old. Same sick people get better. Now, my life is a little different. I got a wife, two kids, and other responsibilities. When I was where you're at, all I thought about was upper cervical. I'm almost compulsively consumed by it. As life evolves and you get a wife and kids, become the President of Blair Society, and do all these different things, there are different areas that pull at you. I'll never stop doing upper cervical as long as I'm able to do it because the reward is you can get on the inside from knowing what it feels like to be sick yourself and get better. You get to relive that through all those patients every day.
With all the bullshit going on in California, you are picking up and going to Florida. There are so many reasons going through your mind to say, "Don't do that. That's a bad idea. You're starting over."
All the reasons went through my head for seven years, but it got to a point where I don't give a damn if I lose $500,000 in the transition. I can't live in California anymore because of what's going on. That's the bottom line. Some patients don't sit where I sit politically. They've been like, "Why are you leaving?" I was like, "I want you to think about something carefully. I had 1/3 of an acre house, overlooking Malibu all the way to Catalina I didn't owe much money on. I have a million-dollar gross of cash of upper cervical practice on Easy Street. I'm selling all of it to start all over. That should tell you about how I feel about this state."
What has 2020 been like for you out there?
The best way I can put is I feel like I'm living around a bunch of people who don't think like I do. I have a governor who should be in the CCP who is probably backed by. We have a bunch of insane narratives that are being trumpeted and this isn't just California through the whole mainstream media. We're being led down a path where a certain percent of the population thinks their government is trying to protect some things, but I don't think that's what's happening. Americans, wake up and realize that this is not a virus. This is about a totalitarian takeover.
Another thing I wanted to touch on was how you made that move happen because I took your advice on writing things down and being very clear on what you want. Before I knew it, I had an associate lined up that I didn't even know was a possibility for me. How do you manifest things into reality?
I would look at this more of fleeing from a state that I can't stand more than my own self-creation. What happened, and I don't want to get into the details, there have been things that happened in the state. I've kept my wife and I together like, "It's going to stop and everything will be fine. I've gotten around this and that." It got to a place where as soon as I dealt with one thing that I didn't like, then another thing would crop up. I wasn't willing to pay a state $20,000 to $30,000 in state taxes for them to take away all my freedom from it. It's pretty much worse. It got to a point where I was like, "F this. I'm out of here. I don't care. I'm leaving."
Where are you going?
By October 1st, 2021, we should be live in Sarasota, Florida, which is about an hour South of Tampa. I couldn't be happier. It's an amazing state. I love the governor. I'm in the county where people think like me and where the people that I'm leaving if they were there would be the odd people out and not me.
Did BJ Palmer have any poll on your decision to go to Sarasota?
No. When we had settled on Florida, that was the place I called Dr. Julie Mayer Hunt, who is in Clearwater that does upper cervical. I said, "Julie, you've been a lifelong Floridian. I think a 2nd or 3rd-generation. If you have one place that you were out of the state and you're going to move your family to in Florida, where would it be?" She said immediately, "Sarasota." We flew out there in December 2020 around Christmas. We canceled our trip to Mexico, bought flights to Sarasota, and looked from North of Tampa all the way South to Punta Gorda, which is about an hour and a half South of Sarasota. She was right. Sarasota was it and then we settled on a little island in Sarasota called Siesta Key, which there's a TV show about.
I've been there. Is that where you're going exactly in Siesta Key?
My family has been there. We bought the house.
That's beautiful. I see you going fishing off at the back dock there. That's unbelievable.
I should have an office address. We have a website live already in Sarasota, SarasotaUpperCervical.com. We will be there and I can't wait to bring Blair upper cervical to that community.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think there are any Blair doctors in South Florida.
There is someone South of me, Fort Myers.
There are not too many.
Do you know Dr. Zabawa in Sarasota? He is a great guy I met. He is there and Julie is up. You got Dr. Pearson up in the Tampa Area.
I know there's upper cervical, but if you go on the Blair website and click Locate a Doctor, there are not too many options for the Blair work. I get a lot of requests from Miami which is a little far, but it's still driving distance. A lot of people are going to be very thankful that you're there.
I'm excited to get the hell out of here and start new.
At the end of every episode, I like to ask all my guests what is one piece of advice that has resonated with you throughout the years that you would like to give the audience? It could be absolutely anything.
The number one is honesty and integrity. If you don't have honesty and integrity in your life and business, you ain't got nothing. That's the foundation. If you're going to build a business, relationship, or whatever, it has got to be built on that. If you do what's right in your life, not what's expedient, but do what's right and you always choose right, you're going to have a good life. That would be mine.
Where can people find you online, your locations, and making appointments?
You can go to YouTube and search Dr. Drew Hall. There are about 150 videos there. If you're in the Sarasota area, we will be there live on October 1st, 2021. That website is SarasotaUpperCervical.com. You can also go to my main website, which is DrDrewHall.com. You can schedule right from that website.
Drew, thank you so much for coming on. Best of luck too with the move and getting out of California. You're obviously going to crush it. I'm excited to have some Blair care down there.
You can come down. It's only about a two-hour flight and gets on my boat. Let's go fishing.
Drew, thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon.
Dr. Pecca, thanks for having me on here. I'm stoked to hear you crushing it out there in New Jersey. It makes my heart sing.
Thank you.
Important Links
- @DrKevinPecca
- @DrKevinPecca
- @DrKevinPecca
- @MontclairUpperCervical.
- DrKevinPecca@Gmail.com
- Dr. Drew Hall
- Choke Point
- YouTube
- DrDrewHall.com
About Dr. Drew Hall
Based in Sarasota, Florida Dr. Drew Hall has been practicing Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic since 2002. He was the president of the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Society (2009-2020), he has spoken on the Blair Technique nationally and internationally. In 2004, and again in 2016, he was recognized by his peers as “Blair Chiropractor of the Year.” He is certified to teach Blair technique and has instructed many seminars and has had over ten associates trained in his office. Dr. Hall was featured in a documentary short "the power of upper Cervical" in 2009.
His patients praise him for helping with ailments such as Migraine Headaches, Tinnitus, Lupus, neck and back pain, Meniere’s disease, vertigo, and other chronic health conditions. Diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1995, Dr. Hall was feeling hopeless until his own health was dramatically improved through the Blair Upper Cervical Procedure. A passionate and caring doctor, his desire is to raise awareness of the Blair technique, and to ease people’s suffering. Dr. Hall specializes in helping people recover from chronic long standing health conditions that have not responded to mainstream medical treatment.
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