The Story of Nexus Chiropractic

August 20, 2018 by

This week marks the 18th Birthday of Nexus Chiropractic. In addition to making me feel old, it also fills me with gratitude to everyone and everything that has contributed to our success and longevity.

Some of you have been with us the entire 18 years and others may have only recently joined the Nexus family. I thought it would be nice to summarize our history to provide some insight to how we arrived here in 2018 and maybe create some feelings of nostalgia for those of you who have been around awhile.

I graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in February of 2000. Having no experience in either business or the real world, I chose – by default – to come back to my hometown of Cornwall. I was lucky enough to have passed all my board exams shortly after graduation and was ready to open my own practice.

Before becoming Nexus, the practice was called Gault Family Chiropractic. GFC officially opened on Aug. 14, 2000 at 421 Marlborough St. (what is now Doggie Styles Day Spa).

When I started practice, I used a very specific, but very different technique system called Gonstead. As a chiropractic student, I was the president of the Gonstead technique club, which at the time was the largest of it’s kind in the world. I had also attended hundreds of hours of extra curricular seminars in Gonstead while still in school.

Gonstead employed the regular use of x-rays and a temperature sensing instrument that required men to be shirtless and women to wear gowns. As a result, we had change rooms that fed into the larger room where I worked with people one on one.

Another major difference in the office at that time was that I worked without any staff. I was the chiropractor, answered the phones, took payments, made appointments, paid the bills and even scrubbed the toilets. In hindsight, this was a very stupid business decision yet did allow me to learn ALL facets of the business.

My first employee was a family friend, Elsie Craig who was between university degrees. Over the next year and a half, we kind of figured out how to properly run a chiropractic office before she went to teacher’s college and Sandra Hanniman joined the practice as my assistant.

About 9 months into practice I steadily grew frustrated with the results I was getting with patients. In particular with my long-term patients who understood the overall health benefits of regular chiropractic care. My frustration was that they would initially get better and healthier and then after awhile they plateaued and further care only maintained them. My expectation and objective was for people to continue to improve in health and wellness over time.

To move past this, I diligently refined my technique and made small changes to my clinical approach, but nothing was creating the results I wanted. It was around this time that I listened to an interview with Dr. Donny Epstein and he had an answer to many of the questions that had been swirling in my head. He expected the same outcomes I wanted for my patients and he had developed a technique around that.

Skeptically, I registered for his Basic Level Seminar in Toronto to see what it was all about. The first thing that struck me was that it looked weird because it was so gentle. There were no forceful adjustments or ‘cracking.’ This was a major challenge to my idea of what a chiropractic adjustment required.

To make a long story short, what I saw over the course of the weekend was a very precise and gentle system that created reproduceable results. Other technique leaders were taking the seminar and were blown away at the results. I was also fortunate enough to be used as a demo by Dr. Epstein on several occasions and what I personally experienced gave me no choice but to begin to provide this care to my patients and community.

I recall the internal dialogue I had with myself after receiving one entrainment. It was, “Oh sh*#! Now I have to go home and do this.”

So, I literally went home and started adding the new work to what I had already been doing. After a short period of time I started shifting patients over to the new work solely because I realized that those I was still forcefully adjusting were not progressing past a basic level of care.

This began the second epoch of Nexus Chiropractic.

In 2004, I met a local massage therapist named Matt Beaudette. When we met, Matt was working on opening his own business, and had a vision for an entire ‘Wellness Centre.’ The timing was right for me and we became partners in Adolphus Wellness Centre which is where Nexus Chiropractic remains to this day.

Shortly after moving to Adolphus St., Sandra moved to Ottawa and both Cindy Besignano and Adele Gannon were hired to the expanding practice. That was 14 years ago, and they are still here!

In 2007, I started moonlighting. At that time, I was offered a job by a company called X-CELS which trained chiropractors around the world in communication, personal development, and practice management. I was very happy to work in this capacity for 6 years.

In 2010 we built an addition onto 24 Adolphus St. By this time Matt had moved on to Acupuncture school and I bought his portion of the building. My family was growing so my wife Beth and I decided to move our young clan into the house portion of the building. So, while the addition was being built (what is now the entrainment studio) I worked and gave workshops out of our future living and dining rooms.  I do recall Lukas coming down during an Introductory Presentation and entertaining the crowd with a pair of underwear on his head!

The Gault Family Chiropractic era ended, and the Nexus Chiropractic era began in 2013. We decided on this rebranding simply because we wanted to practice being about more than just me. I was looking to bring on another chiropractor (I am very picky, which is why it has not happened) and it would not be fair to them if my name was on the sign.

In 2015 the work I was doing improved in a significant way. Dr. Epstein began teaching a more advanced version of his work to a group of dozens of doctors from around the world. I was part of the pioneering class of this program – Master-E and continued on with it for the second year of Master-E Plus. While the Master-E work looks almost indistinguishable from what I was doing before, the outcomes are much more powerful (and requires much greater focus and presence from me).

 

So far, this history has focused with the changes that have taken place at Nexus. Just as important, there have been some fundamental constants in the practice. One constant has been the use of technology in objective evaluation of patients. I have always felt it important to have an objective baseline for each patient in the form of a detailed initial examination. Equally important is periodically objectively measuring changes that occur with care.

Why objective pre and post evaluations are important is because of another of our constants – that we have always focused on the primary underlying conditions – not chasing symptoms. This is crucial in helping people in a deeper way than just treating the surface, which can be akin to placing a band-aid over a bullet hole.

A third constant is that we have always been dedicated to professional development and technical and clinical mastery. Both staff and I are constantly learning, travelling to seminars, reading and taking courses – far beyond what is professionally required. We invest so greatly in this because we want to serve our people to the highest level possible.

It has been a challenging, fun, and absolutely rewarding 18 years and I am looking forward to many more. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to EVERYONE who has made this possible and allowed me to do what I love for a living.

Thorin Gault, D.C.

Aug. 18, 2018

 

 

Happy 12th Birthday, Gault Family Chiropractic!

August 14, 2012 by

I decided to delay the final article of the Winning the Game of Life series to celebrate the 12th birthday of Gault Family Chiropractic! The time has flown so fast that it hardly seems possible that 12 years have passed. So, in this article I will share some of the history and evolution the practice has undergone.

Gault Family Chiropractic officially opened its’ doors on August 14th, 2000 after I had graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in February of that year. Our first location was in the former gas station at the corner of 5th and Marlborough streets (now a methadone clinic)! At this time I had no children, had not yet re-met my wife and believe it or not hand an almost full head of hair. I also started the office without any staff and did it all myself (very stupid in hindsight).

When I opened the office I had barely even heard of Network Spinal Analysis, let alone have any thoughts of practicing it. Initially, I practiced a very structural (yet specific) system of chiropractic called Gonstead. In fact, I had been the president of the largest student technique club in the world at that time at Palmer and had attended hundreds of hours of professional seminars before I had even graduated. With Gonstead, we did full spine x-rays on almost everyone, and all women were gowned on each visit while men were seen shirtless. Obviously we used a private room at that time.

On the strength of word of mouth and the regular workshops I still give to this day (although I no longer show a VHS recording of a live birth or use big words like ‘histopathology) the practice grew nicely and I hired my first staff member Elsie Craig. Shortly thereafter we were joined by our first co-op student, Amy Main who is still a practice member in the office.

In spite of the growth of the office, early in 2001 I began to become dissatisfied with the long-term sustainability of the results I was getting with my regular patients. They seemed to hit a plateau and stay there. At this time of dissatisfaction and questioning that I happened to hear an interview with Dr. Donny Epstein, the founder of Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), who seemed to have many of the answers I was looking for (and a whole lot more). A month later I was at one of his seminars, he placed me on a table to demonstrate an entrainment and at that moment I knew I had to bring NSA back to Cornwall (even though I didn’t want to)!

Over the next year we transitioned the practice into full NSA, Elsie left to go to teacher’s college and we hired practice member Sandra Hanniman to replace her. The practice grew immensely at this time as I dedicated myself to mastering NSA. By 2006 I had become only the 12th Canadian doctor to achieve the highest level of certification in NSA.

In the winter of 2004 I met massage therapist Matt Beaudette, who was about to open his own practice. He had a vision for a building with a variety of health care practices under one roof. In fact, he already had an accepted offer on 24 Adolphus St. and was looking for a business partner. That was the birth of The Adolphus Wellness Centre that included GFC; several massage therapists, a dietician, naturopath, EFT practitioner and a great psychologist (my wife).

In the fall of 2004 perhaps the event that has had the greatest positive impact on GFC occurred. I hired Cindy Besignano and Adele Gannon as Sandra was moving to Ottawa. They have literally been the backbone of the office over the last 8 years.

In 2009 I began coaching, tutoring, and consulting for other Network Chiropractors as a part of the “X-CELS” program started by my personal mentor, Dr. Pierre Bernier which I feel has given me the ability to have an impact not only in our community but around the world.

Thank you to everyone who has made this possible. We love the work that we get to do and love helping people of all walks of life. A huge thank you to my family who sacrifices so I can be obsessed with improving my work. Thanks to all of the patients, practice members and guests who have trusted us and supported us over the years.

The one thing I can promise is that we will never get stale. We will continue to refine our care, services, and procedures to get better and better. I can promise that on our 24th birthday, we will be light years better than today. Thank you for 12 years of healing, passion, and fun!

 

 

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