Ah man! Do I have to do this?! I hate talking about myself… You know when you wind up in a circle of new people where everyone has to introduce themselves to the group, give like a 10 second life history (which is a TOTALLY insufficient amount of time), and share some stupid fact? Just thinking about that is giving me anxiety belly…
BUT I suppose it’s only fair that I share a bit about myself as my job is to try to learn as much about you as I can, eh?
Well for starters, let’s drop the formality. Please just call me Andy. And if you must do the whole doctor thing? I’ll settle for “Doc”, fair enough?
All this began in Tiffin, Ohio. From an early age I was always encouraged by my family of engineers to learn how things worked and so then you could figure out how to fix them. That thought process paired nicely with Chris Monsour’s AP Biology class my Sophomore year of high school. That was when I really found my inner nerd.
It’s funny though, I can honestly say that I was not one of those kids who always dreamt of being doctor. I figured I might as well study biology seeing as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (I still don’t), but I just wanted to keep learning.
Fast forward to Wright State University. After one semester in the biology pre-med program, something just felt off. I didn’t connect in the way I thought I would. I hated the fact that in this pre-med track, the next 10 years of my life was more or less decided. So I switched programs and spent the remainder of undergrad between communication courses and practicing martial arts. Quite the combo.
The time I spent training competitive Judo and this wild Russian martial art called “Systema” reconnected me with my inner nerd. I was learning how the body worked on a physical level. This was when I tuned in on this idea of finding and releasing tension in the body. I finished WSU with a communication degree and found work middle management positions because that was what society us we should do, right?
A few years passed in corporate America and this itch kept coming back that I couldn’t quite scratch:
I thought, I can’t function in this corporate hell hole much longer… There has got to be something else. There has to be a way I can get back to the sciences and tie in the martial arts, the communication degree, and work with my hands. How though?
Slowly, the pieces started to come together. I spent a lot of time talking with my co-workers and listening to their health problems. Every day I would see these patterns in their lives that clearly were causing their problems and yet they just didn’t see it. I found myself drawn to the wisdom of older folks, who despite their age, were physically doing better than I was. That was it. I knew what I needed to do.
This was around the time I met my wife, Alex, who inspired me to pursue further education as a chiropractor rather than in academia. A dental provider herself, she told me, “You’ll hate your life teaching at a university, they’ll try to cage you. You are wired to be a provider.”
Thanks hun, you were right:)
After a little planning, we decided to buy a camper, sell our house, quit our jobs, and travel around the country until I found the right program and we found a city that we would want to settle down in for the long haul. That was February 2020. We made it a good month and half on the road before the world started to burn. We somehow survived and kept working toward our goal.
For some reason we kept getting drawn back to Portland, and after I was accepted to University of Western States, our fate here was decided. We found home out here. We found nature at our fingertips. We found community in good friends. We found a place where we could let our hair down a bit and really just be ourselves. Alex established her dream dental practice, Haven Dental PDX, and I found a way to bring all of my skills together. I locked in at UWS and things came full circle. I finished school not only with a doctorate, but circuitously enough, a human biology degree as well. Funny how life works like that.
I spent some time working closely with Dr. Jasmar Reddin DC who was ready to retire after a fruitful 38 year career. I took over her patient base and merged my practice with Alex’s dental practice to become Haven Bodyworks PDX and here we are! :)
