Principles Of Life And Health with Dr. John Murray

Dr. John Murray is a principled chiropractor out of Clinton, New Jersey. He has been around the profession for many years and still has the energy and enthusiasm as when he first started out. He serves as many people as he can, he gets sick people well and it all comes from a true place of healing. He also teaches the fundamentals of Tai Chi to help rebalance the nervous system through movement. He is an inspiration to me on the art of chiropractic. I’m excited to have him on the podcast today. Please welcome, Dr. John Murray.

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Principles Of Life And Health with Dr. John Murray

Dr. John, where are you from?

I’m from Clinton, New Jersey. I grew up here my whole life pretty much.

What were you into growing up as a kid?

Hunting, fishing, dirt bikes, stuff like that, always outside. We had a great place growing up in the 70s; 60s and 70s were an awesome time.

I see a lot of surfing pictures on your walls too in your office. Do you surf a lot?

I don’t surf as much as I used to but I’m going to get back into it now that my daughter is in my practice with me and we’re going to look to bring in one other doctor. I’ll have more time.

How did you get into chiropractic?

Chiropractic came to me more than I went to it. I think I was chosen to be a chiropractor. I had never been adjusted. I had no plans for college.

You’re in high school at this point?

I graduated high school in June of 1975. My aunt’s husband was a student at Palmer College. He happened to come home about two weeks after I got out of high school. He adjusted me and I didn’t know what he was talking about. He just said, “Do you want me to check you?” I said, “Sure, why not?” He adjusted me, a student giving me a diversified adjustment and it changed my life. It just felt right. It wasn’t an intellectual decision. I just knew it was the right thing to do. I had no plans for college. I was going to join the Marines at the end of summer. My life just went a different way. It was an innate decision. It was in my heart to do it. It happens a lot to people.

I always told my kids growing up, “Just be open and receptive to what comes to you.” Within two weeks then, I’m driving down to Atlanta, Georgia to a DE seminar in 1975. I’m seventeen years old, just got my first adjustment. Two weeks later, I’m in DE. Sid Williams is up there and all these guys in their leisure suits and Rolexes talking about how the power that made the body heals the body, serving for the sake of serving. I came away with there and all is congruent with my upbringing. My father always said, “Try to help people without looking for stuff in return. Just do the right thing and you’ll be rewarded in life.” That spanned out so far for me but it was verified and confirmed at DE. I didn’t know what they were talking about but it all felt good. From there, we drove up to Davenport, Iowa and I enrolled in probably the only college that would take me. At that time, it was Palmer Junior College. It was a night school. It was a short window that existed.

You were getting all your prerequisites and everything to get in to Palmer College?

Yes, right there at Palmer Junior College. At that point, I only needed 60 credit hours. I didn’t do a BS, I didn’t do anything. I knew I was going to be a chiropractor so I didn’t want to take all the other stuff. I took what I needed and I enrolled in Palmer College. My life changed drastically from there.

John, what do you think that is? That happens to people on a daily basis where something changes their life and you could either go two ways: You can follow it or you can say, “That was amazing,” and continue on with whatever you were doing.

We can get bogged down in our educated mind and judge things, “That was good,” but they don’t want to take a chance. They don’t want to take a risk. For me, I was seventeen, what the heck, it’s an adventure. Even now in my life, it’s an adventure. When something seems right in our office, we move on it. From my good friend, Freddy Schofield, we call that Mo Chih Chu, moving forward without hesitation. We get bogged down, self-doubt, fear of the unexpected. That’s why we have to work on what we think so much because we seldom give ourselves a pat on the back anyway. We’ve got to work on that. I think that if we listen to our hunches, B.J. Palmer said, “Heed your hunches.” He talked about that. Behind every success is someone who’s uninhibited. Behind every failure is someone who is inhibited. When you get those innate hunches, you just got to rock with them and go with them. The biggest decisions in my life were all done not on an educated level. Not on a matter of checks and balances.

Neither was B.J. The guy had no formal education and he was, in my opinion, one of the smartest people that ever lived on this planet. He just went with his gut instinct with every decision he made.

He did and it worked out. I really think that we can get bogged down and not following our hearts. I had three big goals coming out of chiropractic school but they weren’t written down. That’s the key. Write down your goals and read them consistently. I had three big goals coming out of chiropractic school. The first one was I was not going to get married until I was 30. The second one was I’m going to have a Porsche, and then I was going to have a condo. I never wrote them down. I got married at 23. I never had a condo or a Porsche. Write your goals down. But they panned out.

I walked in to your office and I was absolutely blown away with just your office, your enthusiasm for the profession. You have more enthusiasm for what you do than almost everybody I graduated school with that’s fresh out. It’s like it’s brand new to you and it’s infectious. You can feel it when you’re getting adjusted by you. It’s just an amazing thing to see. One of my favorite things about your practice is it’s literally attached to your house. You walk downstairs in the morning and you’re ready to go. I think that’s the best thing ever.

It’s worked out well. That was another innate decision as well. It’s an honor to have you come to our office. You’re on fire. You’re a tremendous adjuster. You have an understanding of chiropractic that far exceeds so many that have been in practice for many years. That’s a big thing, staying fired up as you go through this thing. How do you stay fired up? It comes back to me in my life that chiropractic gave me a choice at the time that’s a pivotal point in my life. I remember that every day with every patients that we’re here to give them choices. If we give them choices in life, there’s nothing worse with feeling like I don’t have a choice. We provide that for people, an awesome choice, an awesome alternative and you make a huge difference. You’re going to change thousands of lives. You don’t always hear about it but giving people choice, that’s what gives me my sustainable stoke. Some guys get into it just for the money. I didn’t even know my friends were all going to college to Columbia University and Duke and all these places. I didn’t even take SATs. Their question was always, “How much are you going to make?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I have no idea but I like this stuff.” I think that’s the key.

It’s funny that you mentioned that because I noticed that my practice does the best when my intention is helping as many people as I can. Obviously with that, the money follows. Then, when you start thinking about how much money am I going to make this week, the other side gets away. I’ve learned to put myself in a place where how can I help as many people as possible this week and the money will always follow that because that’s not the important thing. It’s getting sick people well.

That’s right and you’ll be rewarded. One of the things I heard at that first DE was Dr. Sid talking about you’ve got to have a business hand and you’ve got to have a service hand. The two can’t know what the other is doing really. You just got to go in there and adjust. We have systems in place for the business, so that I can just go and do my thing. We’ll never turn anybody away. You’ve got to show that commitment and still make enough money so that you can run a business and do all that too and raise your families and save for your retirement. It’s all about balance.

John, did you get all your prerequisites done? Was it a struggle or did it just come easy because you were determined to get everything done?

I was determined. I didn’t apply myself as much as I could in high school but I taught myself to study more or less. I worked midnight shift as a security guard while I was doing that for two years. I also started playing rugby at Palmer College on the Rugby Team. Rugby changed my life in a dramatic way as well. I just taught myself to study. What I realized is that if you work at things, you’ll be rewarded. I’m not going to be Usain Bolt, but if I train and I run, I can be faster than a lot of guys. If I work my brain, I can accomplish what a lot of people can. I’m not going to do theoretical physics but if you work at it, you can accomplish, it’s all about putting in the time. Put in time in your office, in your studies, in your physical training, in your health. Effort equals results.

How did you get your start after chiropractic school? What’s the first step for you? Did you want to open up your own practice right away or did you work for somebody?

I worked with a guy for about six months, a real good guy. He was a straight chiropractor, not a lot of deviation from just adjusting and subluxation. For me, with my background, I felt that nutrition was important, that exercise was important, that how you thought was important. B.J. talked about all these too. He was a great guy, great adjuster but he was more narrow in that scope. I had to go somewhere else to be myself. That’s what happened basically. I opened my own practice on my own in June of 1983 in Clinton; a 710 square foot office. My wife is the receptionist, but tiny little space. We’re there about two years and the office was growing. You’re figuring it out. I did Renaissance seminars in 1976 with Joe Flesia and Guy Riekeman when they did their flipcharts for patient orientation. Then they came out with this big video deal; the Renaissance program, Peter Graves video. We spent $3,000 on VHS tapes that were patient intro, report a findings and whatever, $3,000.

Our office just really started to grow. We did a thing with that Renaissance recommended, doing a Champaign reception strangely enough, invite a bunch of people. I had a connection through the Racquet Center where I was an instructor. We just offered Champaign and played the Peter Graves intro video and we have 70 people there and they all signed up basically as new patients. You just put yourself out there.

We were in that office in Clinton for a couple of years. Then I was riding my bicycle pass where our office is now. I always wanted a home office. I hadn’t written it down but I always wanted one. I was riding by where our house is currently and there was a plywood sign and it was spray painted, “Lot for Sale.” I saw that, I hopped off the bike. I ripped the sign off the tree and rode home and I told Diane, my wife, “We’re selling the house. We’re going to build the office here.” We don’t know how it’s going to happen but we were doing it. We sold our house and we had just enough money to buy the land. Thirty years later, here we are. Just staying fired up. I went to DEs earlier in my time frame. They were good philosophically. I always kept honing my technique skill. I think that’s important.

You’re very technique-oriented and based. You’re very thorough in SOT and Blair and Gonstead. You’ve probably seen everything. You can probably fix almost everything too.

We just try to put in a place like you do. Nothing beats having your atlas set. If I had three subluxations and one of them was atlas, I would always say that 99% of the time trumps everything. I took Knee Chest Technique. I studied Knee Chest before I studied Blair. I also studied Orthospinology and was certified in that too. Dr. Kale would say, “People are going to ask you, “Why are you working on my neck when it’s my low back?” His simple reply was, “In the Old West, they didn’t hang a horse thief by the waist.”

Many people think chiropractic is low back pain, neck pain and that’s it. Obviously, in your experience, you’ve probably seen so many things. What are some of the miracle things you’ve seen in your office? Big picture, what can chiropractic do for almost everybody?

Everybody has a starting point where they’re at in their life when we see them as a new patient. I also look at it as every day is a new starting point from visit to visit. We just have to work with their starting points and tap in, correct the subluxation where it is, give the body a chance to heal itself. One of the crazy things that happened a number of years ago was a lady in my office named Beaula Skylar. I always say, “Beaula, you’re going to make it to 100.” She didn’t quite make it to 100 but one day, she was in my office. The way my office is set up, my rooms are in a row. I just pass between the back in openings between the back of the rooms. People come in the front down the hallway and into the rooms. I’m looking in from room to room. I go from Room 1 to Room 3 because that’s where I had to go. Beaula is in Room 2, and I’m in Room 3 working. Then all of a sudden I hear this sound. I go in there and Beaula is freaking face down on the floor. She’s 88. I yelled on my receptionist at that time, Anne. I said, “Anne, call 911.” You’ve got to do that. I gently roll her. I could not detect the pulse and I could not detect maybe the shallowest of breathing but it was like, “Forget it,” maybe the tiniest pulse you ever felt but barely. I thought she had kicked it.

Before I was going to do CPR and mouth to mouth on old Beaula, I said, “I’m going to freaking adjust her.” I just palpated and I just let her have it with a supine cervical move on her atlas. I don’t know the listing, who the hell cares? The old girl, she started to kick in with her breathing and her pulse started to pick up. We had her stabilized in about ten minutes and just lying there. The ambulance came and did all that. Basically, I believe in that moment that chiropractic saved her life. I know a lot of people say how chiropractic saves lives. I think in this instance, it did. It definitely changes lives every day. With this case, I didn’t do anything. I just said, “Shit, I don’t feel like putting my mouth on hers. I’m going to adjust her.” She perked up, she came back. They wound up doing a pacemaker, which she might not had needed.

I loved how you just said, “I didn’t do anything like that.” You removed the interference. I’m always very weary of somebody that’s like, “I did that. I got them better.” It’s like, “No, you didn’t.” When you remove the interference, their body healed itself.

We don’t cure anything. We just remove that interference. That takes skill. Specificity is important is all I can say. Innate is really good at absorbing anything that’s constructive because we are sensory beings and healing happens on a sensory level first. Innate is receptive to any constructive input. If it’s 100% constructive, you get 100% immediate constructive result. If it’s 90% constructive, 10% not so great, whether it’s nutrition thoughts or even an adjustment, that concussion of forces is going to have to be dealt with in a way that’s not as pure. It’s like baseball where you got to get the ball over the plate. You can play with location a little bit and velocities, but you’ve got to get that ball over the plate.

John, what are some other things you give your patients to do that you’ve removed the subluxation or bone out of place and you put everything, their nervous system is in alignment. What are some other things you recommend for people to help improve their health?

There are certain things that everybody needs as homosapiens and that’s what I try to do. It’s what we all need as homosapiens. You can listen to some of chestnut stuff about thoughts, movements, trauma talks as thoughts basically if we address that. People need to drink more water. Bottom line, if you drink more water, you’re going to make an impact in your life. I suggest a six week average. If your average of drinking water is one glass, you average that for the last six weeks, your goal for tomorrow is two, not eight. You’re doomed to fail if you try to jump to eight. I try to get people, from a nutrition standpoint, just Omega-3, D3.

The Omega-3 is to decrease the inflammation in the body?

Yes, decrease inflammation, it activates more platelets in your blood, slip and slide better and it promotes vasodilation as opposed to the Omega-6 and Omega-9 that are complimentary but we get way too many of the Omega-6 and Omega-9 fats in our diet. They promote inflammation, promote vasoconstriction and platelet clumping and aggregation. That whole take in an aspirin every day is a joke. Drink enough water. Get enough good fats and your blood viscosity, which is the big problem with the heart, it will take care of itself. The greatest marketing in the world was St. Joseph’s Aspirin for children. As if St. Joseph blessed this aspirin and it’s going to save your heart. Other than that, we get them doing exercises too, just even walking. I have different exercises with bands but I suggest to everyone, check out my Tai Chi videos that are on my website. Start moving outside of the planes of motion that is determined largely by your work. Work determines how we move for a large, huge part of our life. We get confined into these planes of motion that are non-variating. Tai Chi just moves you in ways that east meets west, the best with Tai Chi in terms of spinal remodeling, restoring disc function. Once you activate the subluxation, once you correct the subluxation, restore more normal motion in that segment, you’ve got to keep enhancing that. You’ve got to keep it going. We’re sensory beings.

John, how did you get into Tai Chi?

I’ve taken a few hits ever since. I was born with forceps, toboggan accidents, motorcycles, over 100 rugby games. You consider more of a higher volume practice for 30-some years. Things just started beating me up. Even in spite of terrific chiropractic care. I had to modify my lifestyle. David Grantham, my teacher is just phenomenal. I said, “I’ve got to do something different.” I just went there and it turns out that Tai Chi is the best thing, meta-data analysis. It’s the best thing for arthritic changes going on in the spine and help prevent them as far as exercise goes. Meta-data analysis is the gold standard for research. You plug in different filters and Tai Chi keeps coming up, balanced.

What is the Tai Chi doing that’s getting such great results here? I don’t know anything about it. I’ve heard phenomenal things, I just really don’t know much about it.

We teach the fundamental warm up, stretching and spinal qigong. Qigong means movement but a spinal waving in a horizontal plane but also transverse plane. This is a therapeutic element of Tai Chi we do before we work on the actions. Tai Chi is a martial art that’s practiced in a more meditative way. That’s how it was brought to the United States. Although with my teacher, we always get into the martial context because that gives meaning to what you’re doing. The deal is it’s a therapeutic element of stretching and it’s dynamic stretching. You’re breathing, you’re moving. It’s not static. Yoga is more static. I don’t want to knock anybody who does yoga. It’s fantastic too. Tai Chi is more dynamic, more movement. You’re moving in rhythmic wavelike patterns. Everything is a wavelength. There’s different wavelengths of motion you’re doing. You’re bringing motion in different planes. Afferentation is the word, sensory feedback. You light up your brain like a Christmas tree with good energy with Tai Chi. That’s provided the joints are functioning properly.

That’s our goal in chiropractic on an elemental level, is to make sure these joints work properly and the joint receptors can transmit what’s called proprioceptive energy to the brain, which is constructive as opposed to nociceptive energy to the brain which is noxious. The root word of nociception is noxious or toxic. They both travel different pathways and activate different parts of the brain. If you have a subluxation, you’re getting nociceptive feedback from that joint. That goes to fear and anxiety centers in your brain that is not good for you. When you adjust someone, they feel good because now they’re brain is being bathe in proprioceptive energy. That activates your hippocampus learning, left prefrontal lobe of the brain. It’s a cascade of energy that’s undeniable. Tai Chi without the adjustment is not as effective. The adjustment is paramount. The Tai Chi just keeps you moving and lights up your brain.

I’m glad you said that because a lot of people will come into our offices saying, “I’ve done acupuncture. I’ve done the physical therapy. I’ve done everything and nothing has worked.” Then you removed the subluxation, you got their nervous system functioning again, the acupuncture starts to work. The physical therapy starts to work. Everything starts to work again.

Yes because you’re going to another depth of physiologic effect with the adjustment. Stretching or PT only works within the range of motion that’s become established for you. These people who are going to PT, that range of motion is pathologic. It’s insufficient. When we activate the motion through the adjustment because you’re exceeding their normal range of motion, you’re going pass the stretch. Then you’re releasing those joints to a whole another level. Now the exercise will work. Now the acupuncture will work. If there’s a bony osseous interruption or meningeal dural tension, interruption to the flow of energy, you can stick needles in there all you want. It’s not going to do that towards subluxation. I firmly believe that. You’ve got to free that up. It’s elemental; what we do is elemental. It’s foundational. That’s what’s so great.

People want to be well in a time frame that they think they should. They have no clue. There’s a germination period for sickness and disease, unbeknownst to the conscious mind, how we live our life brings us down. The conscious mind doesn’t recognize that problem until there’s significant enough damage or a symptom. Conversely, healing is unbeknownst to the conscious mind because it’s got a germination period too as we do constructive things once more for the roots. Germination period is putting roots down and then you get the sprout. We have to allow that germination period for the body takes time. Symptom relief is different. I’ll take symptom relief. I don’t like to hurt, believe me, but we want to transcend that. I suggest to people, “The only way you feel better is because you’re healing. We’re not just giving you something to change how you feel. You are actually functioning better.”

A lot of my patients have the concussions and the brain injuries and they’re looking for that one adjustment and they’re looking for it to feel better. Sometimes, we do get a couple of those cases where your remove the interference and they feel better right away. A lot of the times, with the brain injuries and everything, you feel the healing. It goes up, you feel good for three days and you’ll feel bad. Up and down, up and down and when you do come out of it, you’re a better person for it but true healing definitely does take some time.

In our adaptability, we’re pulling from one reservoir of energy, one reservoir of capacity. We don’t have a reservoir of capacity for work and another one for raising children and another one for playing rugby and another capacity for working all day in your office. You’re pulling from one regenerative reservoir of capacity. Your body, the brain innately is going to meter that energy where it needs to go most immediately for you to be alive in the moment. It might not get to your neck, maybe it’s handling something in your liver, we don’t know. The brain is like a conductor of a symphony. It’s going to meter the energy where it’s needed most. We don’t know where it’s going to go. We just know that if our finding is clear, the person is going in the right directions.

I want to pick your brain about something else. I have one patient that he has just such a high level stress job. I adjusted him on Saturday, I saw him yesterday and he was still holding his adjustment but the level of tension in his neck, he was just so tight. I was trying to explain to him, “We’re removing this interference here, but you have to change something at home or in your own life because you should not have this much tension in your neck after three days.” The guy commutes to New York City back and forth. There’s got to be something done to just alleviate that part of his life too. We can remove the subluxation, but it’s also the patient’s duty to do as much as they can as well. If you could just touch on that, what do you say just to alleviate stress in people’s lives?

I had a guy, a local attorney. We cleared him out beautifully. He got severe sciatica down the leg into the shin with L2, L3, L4, all that stuff. He got adjusted, he cleared. He went home and cut thirteen acres of grass on his zero term. He couldn’t move the next day and he’s wondering why. As we get older, we understand we have to kinder to our body. I would say the big thing, like with that guy in New York, make sure you get enough water. If he’s under emotional stress, his muscles are firing all the time and the metabolic byproducts of that muscular response, he might be dehydrated getting out there. Minerals, Calcium Lactate could be great for him. Also doing the Tai Chi move; the stretching with the Tai Chi will break up a lot of things for him. I do it every day. You can’t get in his head. He might just be a super whatever dude. He has to do other stuff to help himself.

Unfortunately, we’re educated that everything happens in a pill or a drug. It’s crazy there was an article just on an injectable statin kind of drug now. It is $14,000 a month to take it. This is if the other two drugs, the oral ones, don’t work. You just wonder what people’s expectations are. I was talking to him, I was like, “What are your expectations? We have to help each other out here.” The Omega-3s would be big for him. Just to make sure he’s got him. Nothing is more paramount than setting that atlas.

The trapezius has a dual innervation. It has a spinal accessory nerve and spinal nerve innervation. The spinal accessory has a subconscious component to it. What happens is subconsciously when we’re stressed, we elevate our shoulder girdle. We do that all the time. People come in my office, “All my stress is right here.” I go, “You and nine billion others.” It’s because of that dual innervation. You can consciously do this and as well when you’re confronted with a stressful situation you do this. You shrug. That’s because your shoulder blades are bony plates. When you shrug your shoulders, you bring in those bony plates into an area where it can protect your neck from an injury, from getting bit by an animal or a sword coming down on your neck. It’s a subconscious response.

What happens is stress is perceived lastly in the conscious mind. Firstly in the primitive brain, then the emotional brain. By the time it gets to the conscious mind and you’re all ticked off and you want to kill somebody, you realize that this isn’t a life threatening situation, mellow out. The conscious mind is the last to know. You’ve already reacted. How do you slow everything down? How do you quell the anxiety or that stressful response? Quell it enough. We always have to prepare for life as it is going to be stressful. You almost have to go into it with an awareness, “I can’t let myself freak out all the time.” You’ve got to set the conscious mind up because the primitive brain, the reptilian brain and the limbic system react before the brain can realize it.

When somebody cut you off in a light, what you really should be doing is punching him out at the next stop light. I don’t mean that but that’s how we’re wired. I would say water for that guy, some simple Tai Chi. Even if you get him some bands and just have him do shrugs. Have him do some horizontal rows with a band. Whether you’re in to exercise and you want to do that. There’s the quote of the day, “Activating motion outside of the normal plane or extent of movement. Motion greases the rails of health.” Auto regulation, the autonomics, everything. Your autonomics are regulated through motion. Parasympathetic, sympathetic balance.

One of my workouts is called the Heart Rate Variability Workout. That’s a whole another talk. Most people are biased towards their fight or flight signs of the autonomic system, the sympathetic. Everybody wants to be a tough guy now in the gym. They’re doing Cross Fit, they’re doing all this stuff. Everybody thinks you got to wind up in a puddle of puke to get results. You don’t. Everybody is way too biased to the sympathetics. What Heart Rate Variability Training is you sit for five minutes then you exert in some form for a minute, then you sit for five again. Under rest, you’re parasympathetic-biased, under exertion, you go sympathetic. You create a wave form with your heart rate response. The wave form is called wave training. As we rest or heal, let’s say I’m 56 beats a minute, I’ll exert to 120. I’ll stop completely, I don’t just slow down. I stop my exertion completely and allow my heart to recover for three to five minutes.

How many cycles are you dealing?

Anywhere between three to six, three times to four times a week. You could elevate your heart any means you want. I do it with a stationary bike because I can hit high levels of output without injuring a knee. I can do 500 watts for brief periods.

You’re saying that balance is at the nervous system because we’re too sympathetic, we’re too fight and flight and that’s going to just bring you down into rest and calming.

The chiropractic adjustment reboots the system similarly to how the transmissions learn how you drive. They learn shift points. If you’re an aggressive driver, they shift to different points. If you’re a mellow driver, they shift at different points. The car learns how you drive but the mechanic when you went for a tune up, he can press a button and neutralize it. That’s what the adjustment does. If you’re sympathetic-biased and you get your atlas set, you’re going to reboot the system and autonomics will settle down. That’s why people feel mellow. If they were lethargic, it’s going to due to have the opposite effect. The key thing is they go back into a world and lead their life, and they’re on full throttle all the time again. What this does is remaps the system. You reboot the system with the adjustment. You remap the system through your lifestyle. The remapping occurs with how you live your life. If you remap it in a healthier way, you’ll need less rebooting. We’re always going to need some rebooting and that’s why we’ll never be out of business. They’ll do better if they can remap their system. Don’t just be here. When people go to the gym and they do a spin class at 8:00 at night under artificial lights, when circadian rhythm lights, they should be coming down and they’re cranking at 150 beats a minute for an hour straight with little or no variation, they’re just duplicating their already stressful life at a higher level of stress. This gives you a cohesive response in your autonomic nerve system as it’s reflected relative to your efforts and recovery. If you want to do is squats, you put a barbell on your back. You can do a free standing squat. You can do it any means you want to bring up the heart rate and stop and repeat.

Dr. John, anything else you’d like to touch on or say about just chiropractic or healing or anything in general?

We, as chiropractors, it’s great to hang out with you. I mean, you’re fired up. You’ve got that energy of youth. You’ve got your life ahead of you. I’m really stoked to get to know you. I think we need to hang out with people who do things like we do because people don’t always understand us because we come from a different point. I embrace everything. I say the main thing is just working to have a little morning ritual where you take time to reflect, do some affirmations in the morning. Have a good nutritional way about things in the morning. Ask for referrals in your office. I do what’s called a Four Card Monday in my office.

I’ve been doing that. After you told me that, it works, the law of averages.

It’s crazy, they got to come in. They’re seeds.

This will work in a lot of businesses. Tell everybody what you told me.

This is from my good friend, Fred Schofield. I probably said I’ve come up with nothing original. I have a hard enough time learning what’s already been done. I pass things on. Four Card Monday is almost a way of confirming that you believe in what you do. You go out of your way to ask people for referral but it’s not that. It’s basically you’re helping people to help other people. You have to look at it that way. Here’s the deal. There’s a Parable of the Sower, Mark 4 in the Bible; there are a couple of other versions. Basically, it goes like this. The seed sower was sowing seeds. Once the seeds landed upon the path, the birds came and ate them up. Some seeds land amongst the weeds and the thorns and when they tried to grow, they got choked out. Some seeds land amongst the sandy or rocky soil, couldn’t put the roots down and when tough times came, they got washed away or dried up and died. One seed lands on fertile soil and multiplies 30, 60 and 100 folds. You’re just sowing seeds and there’s a germination period for everything whether it’s your practice, whether it’s your own health, your family. Just keep sowing constructive seeds and just having fun in your office. Have some fun. Be yourself. I don’t do anything too scripted. I never did a script I don’t think in my life. Just let yourself come through. That’s what I would suggest.

It’s around this time of the year and it was about 29 years ago. We are at a certain level of seeing people but I wanted to serve more people. In front of my house, in front of my office, I took orange spray paint and I just put ADIO, above down, inside out. I just said, “Screw, I’m spray painting that on my house.” Only I got it because everybody else, all my patients thought somebody vandalized my house. It’s around Halloween. It worked for me because my office jumped 150 patient visits a week within four months. Something kicked inside of me and that’s all that matters. They don’t have to get it. As long as you’re not hurting anybody and something works for you, go on and heed those hunches, and don’t take no for an answer.

Dr. John, where are you located? What’s your website? Where can people find you?

I am in Clinton, New Jersey, practicing 37 years. My website is JMurrayChiropracticNJ.com. I got a home office out in the middle of nowhere. Once you find it, you won’t forget it.

Beautiful office. I thought I was lost. I thought I took a wrong turn there because I was coming out there and I was like, “This is like a strip mall or an office building.” Then right in front it’s got your practice name and everything. It’s beautiful. Dr. John, thank you for coming on. This was one of my favorite episodes. I appreciate it and just thank you for just helping me out when I need it. I really appreciate you.

Thanks, the feeling is mutual.

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