Bill: Hi, this is Dr. Doreste with the Cranial Release Technique®. We’re here today back with our friend Dr. John D’Ambrosio, a chiropractor extraordinaire and Cranial Release Technique® practitioner. One of my instructors who’s been with me for quite a while now. And John has moved from New Jersey down to the well North Georgia area. The… I’m sorry, John, you told me before you’re in Woodstock, Georgia.
Woodstock, yes, North Georgia, yes.
And we’re in John’s office. I thought it would be nice for people to see what it’s like for people when you go in to see a practitioner, what are you going to see, what type of equipment, of course, everyone practices a little differently, but I figured we’ll take a look at what John’s doing. And he’s using some very interesting technology which we’ll talk about in a minute.
So first of all, good afternoon, John. Thanks for joining us today.
John: Thanks for having me, always a pleasure to talk and catch up, Bill.
Bill: Beautiful, beautiful. So you’re in Georgia, you came from New Jersey, different clientele, I would imagine, different type of people you’re dealing with. I don’t know, uh, you know socioeconomic differences, educational differences, what they know about Chiropractic, what they know about Cranial Release, which is probably not much because most people probably don’t know about it, but right.
So how’s things going, how, because you started off from scratch, obviously, you moved, you know, almost a thousand miles, 800 miles, whatever it is. So how’d you get started, how are things going, what are you doing, what’s working? So there are other practitioners that are going to watch this could say gee, that might be something I should look into. So any words of wisdom would be very much appreciated.
John: Absolutely. So starting out there was obviously the process of finding a location and finding space within that location, and then the logistics of going through and getting the lease signed and then all the um government things you need to do. But once that was all settled, it did take a couple months to find Space. The real estate market down here because of everything that’s gone on, there’s been a huge influx of people coming down. So the housing market was crazy. There was, uh, it was a seller’s market, but there was some good deals in there, so we’re able to find a a nice place to live.
But the real estate market for commercial was tough, and it took me a long time to find a place. But I love the location I have now. And then it was a matter of really just getting things going because, like you said, I’m new to this area, so starting from scratch there, there’s a lot of chiropractors even where I was up in New Jersey.
I did a search to see, you know, five miles from my office, 10 miles, 20 miles, a number of chiropractors from where my office was there to, and I did a comparison down here, and believe it or not, it was almost identical. So Chiropractic is, even though there’s a school down here, it’s pretty well dispersed down here as compared to up there. So there was no real differences in that.
But the way I have to distinguish myself and Cranial Release was a huge part of that, and it was something that you’ve been saying for years, and I just really liked it and latched on to it. You know, Chiropractic is amazing, it’s powerful, you’re dealing with the spine, which is sending the energy, the life force to every organ, cell, muscle in the body, every gland, but that’s 20% of the nervous system. What about the other eighty percent up here?
And that’s where I, again, I differentiate myself with that because of the work that I do with, you know, not only Zone but Cranial Release, you’re really dealing with those 22 movable bones. And by affecting that 80%, along with you, I’m not ignoring the 20, right? I’m handling both. But also, I’m handling 100% of the nervous system, and people just love that.
It’s just not something they’ve heard, and it just makes sense to them. Along with the technology that I have to really analyze the nervous system, analyze their posture, and relay how it’s affecting their health. I’ve had people just say, you just gave me my whole life story, and you don’t even know me, based on just this exam you did. So it’s pretty powerful stuff.
Bill: That’s great to hear, great to hear. All right, so we, we talked a little bit about technology and, and all right, so you, you moved down to Georgia, you have a a YouTube channel, I know I’ve seen some of your videos, and they are quite good, quite entertaining. So where can they find you if someone wants to look you up?
John: I’m under the The Center for Life Enhancement, so you can find me on Facebook through that, Instagram, I do have a YouTube channel, and also a TikTok which is I’m not really actively working on that as much. My daughter thought it would be a good idea so they’ve kind of helped me get some videos together but when they’re off, I’m kind of lost on that because they know all the trends and I don’t. But I do have some stuff out there that’s got some really good views and it is entertaining they’re really good at picking out the right stuff for me to do.
Bill: And again the name of your office is?
John: The Center for Life Enhancement and that’s in Woodstock Georgia The Center for Life Enhancement in Woodstock Georgia.
Bill: Beautiful yeah and you’re also on for anyone watching this John is on the www.CranialRelease.com, Find a Practitioner page in Georgia.
We’ve spoken a little bit about this technology, so before we even look at the technology, what technology is there that can help us as practitioners to determine the I guess the overall balance of the nervous system or the different parts of the nervous system or things that we could sit down with a patient and explain and show them here’s where you are now, here’s where you are after Cranial Release, here’s where we’re headed to kind of give them a road map. So what technology do you have and why did you go in that direction?”
John: Okay, the three main technologies that I have, and I’ll start with the most simple and I’ll go up to the more complex because it just gives me the most information.
GRIP STRENGTH
First is hand grip strength. I have a dynamometer. I struggle with that word, but it’s important that that’s been shown to be a good gauge of overall health and mortality is your grip strength. And that’s a great tool to check right in hand grip, grip strength before and then after you work with somebody to see the improvements or if you’re just going to do it at a re-exam just to really see how they’re improving. So that’s the easiest and most simple. Okay.
Bill: I also have, before we go further, where would you buy one of those, where would you get it?
John: Let me see, I have one, let me grab mine.
Bill: I mean a surgical supply store?
John: I just got mine on Amazon. I researched to find what I felt was the best one. So this is Camry [Camry digital hand dynamometer], okay, and it’s really simple. You just turn it on, you squeeze, you could adjust the length of the grip, you could tailor it for a male, female, the age of the person, and then it’ll just let you know, in kilograms or in pounds, how strong that grip is on each side, and that’s a great parameter to check again. You could do that pre and post adjustment, pre and post cranial, to see changes you’re actually making in the nervous system. It’s probably more so leaning towards the motor system, but it’s still a great tool and a very simple and inexpensive one. I like it a lot
Bill: With that, you typically do see changes before and after?
John: Absolutely
Bill: Okay, good to know, next one.
Posture Pro posturepro.com [https://posturepro.com]
John: Next one is, I believe it’s called Posture Pro, it’s just an app that you can get for your phone. I have it on the iPad, and actually, there’s a whole suite of things that this can do, but it does analyze posture and then it’ll tell you, it’ll show you, you know, green line where you should be, red line where you are. And I think the cool thing about it is, it lets you know, you put in the person’s height and weight, and it’ll tell you what their head weighs based on height and weight, and then if their head is forward, what it’s actually weighing, the stress it has on the body.
So I had someone come in yesterday, their head was weighing 10 pounds because they had such forward head posture, it was putting 32 pounds on their upper back and spine. And that was something that was really eye-opening for them because they always felt, tired, their traps hurt, they were getting headaches. Well, you look at this, and it’s just like, well, of course they do, look what’s happening.
And I use a sledgehammer in the office, and I have people hold the sledgehammer right underneath the head, it’s a 10-pound Sledge, and I tip it and see how easy it is. I said, now move your hand down the handle a little bit and tip it forward, and it’s much harder to hold. And I explained to them that’s the stress it’s going through, and when your spine is stressed like that, the column is stretched, and that causes the cord inside to have to stretch like a rubber band, and that slows down the transmission from the brain out to the body. So that’s also another great tool.
Bill: That’s an excellent tool, and Posture Pro, I remember using that years ago, they used to put the dots on the body, do you still do that?
John: They still do, yes.
Bill: So you have an app on your phone
John: Yep, Posture Pro
Bill: And you have to put the dots on?
John: They did, they do the dots for you. So it analyzes, and then you could go and move them if for some reason that they’re a little off, maybe the way the light hit them, their eyes were not, you know, the dot was a little under the eye, you just move it up and put it right in the center of the eye and all the dots, you could customize if they’re not accurate based on the computer model, and then run it through, and it’ll let you know where there’s deviations and again the weight of the head, which I find to be extremely helpful.
Bill: and they get that as posturepro.com, and that app now has a whole bunch of other things in there, there’s a body fat analysis, there’s ranges of motion, there’s all sorts of things. I just use the posture part of it, but there’s a whole suite that’s valuable if that’s what you’re looking for.
HRV – Brain Tap
Bill: Good to know, okay. So they come in, you talk to them about the grip strength after you do your traditional evaluation, you do the grip strength, maybe you do the Posture Pro, and then the third piece of the puzzle is the HRV, is that right?
John: Yes, that’s HRV, that’s a neural check, and that is through Brain Tap, and that is a great instrument, that’s probably my favorite. They sit down for five minutes, they’re hooked up to the machine, it measures 300 heartbeats and the spaces in between the heartbeats, and then I’ll take everything that I’ve done, analyze it that night and come up with a care plan. But this gives such a huge amount of information, and one of the biggest things is it’ll show what state their nervous system is in. So for me, you know, I adjust and I do the cranial work, but if I have somebody who is overstressed in the nervous system, they need a very light, very specific adjustment, and I’ll use an instrument in some cases, it’s just to stay in contact. And if I didn’t know that information and I went in and adjusted, I’m in the right spot but use a more forceful adjustment, it would cause the whole nervous system to become inflamed and they would feel worse.
And a lot of people have come from other offices who are doing a great job but did not understand this, and these people are not getting better, they were getting worse, and once they came in, I explained this and tailored the adjustment exactly to them, it changed everything.
Bill: That’s very good to know, and I’m thinking of a friend of mine in Arizona who’s a Cranial Release practitioner. He’s a little bit older than you and me, and his complaint was whenever he goes to his Chiropractic friends for an adjustment, they can’t understand he doesn’t like a heavy, strong adjustment. He wants very light, but he just can’t get it, and that’s why he fell in love with the Cranial Release because with what we did with Cranial Release, that relieved his mid-back pain. And obviously I didn’t even touch the mid-back.
So maybe we’ll take a look at the technology if you don’t mind.
John: Sure, and I just have, um, a person, I have their personal information blocked off, but I’ll just show you a couple of screens because I just want to touch on the most important things that I’ll cover in the exam and the changes you could see doing what I do here.
So let me just flip the camera around, there we go, all right, I’m just gonna zoom this in a little bit so we get a better view, how’s that? I think that’s pretty good right there, great, okay, awesome.
All right, so this is uh one person, initially they had come in February 16th, and this is May 30th. The colors on this circle are important, you want to see a balance, you want to see this pie split into three equal pieces. The red is the central nervous system, that’s a backup system, the hormones and things that should just be one small piece of the pie. This here is the sympathetic nervous system (yellow area), and this green slice is the parasympathetic.
So this person came in, and they were so worn down, their nervous system was overrun that the sympathetic was no longer even in control. I’ll see a lot of people come in and they’re massively sympathetic, but if you get past that point, the sympathetic, you know, loose quotes, “burns out”, and the backup system has to take control.
So this person is tired, she was stressed, she couldn’t lose weight, she was just achy all over, and it was because her nervous system was in a state beyond fight or flight, it was an exhaustion.
Bill: How old is this person?
John: She’s 51, she’s now 52
Bill: And what does she do for a living, do we know?
John: A teacher, she’s a teacher.
Bill: This was in, this was in March?
John: This was in February when she first came in.
Bill: I don’t want to skip, but we’re getting the next slide, is when, May?
John: Right, right around finals time
Bill: Right, so we’re getting, you know, we’re getting deeper into the school year, and I would imagine the stress would be going up because they’re burning out from being in class since September. Okay, good, exactly, again ideally that first slide in a perfect world, that person would come in and those three triangles, those three colors would be evenly like 33 each.
John: Exactly, that’s the goal. But she was, again, she was overstressed. I mean we have multiple re-exams in between, and you can see the progression. But here we have the latest, so now you can see a big chunk is parasympathetic. Now, eventually, we want to see, like we said, 33, 33, 33. But right now she is in a healing mode to repair from everything she had.
So she’s in parasympathetic, she is in rest, heal, repair. She’s losing weight. She said, I’m not doing anything differently, I’m losing weight, I don’t understand this, I’m not complaining, but I feel better, I’m sleeping better.
And this is all because we balance our nervous system, and now the brain is doing what it needs to do, and she’s able to get into this rest and repair, which was the smallest piece of the pie when she first came in. Now she’s in a massive healing state, and eventually, all three pieces of the pie are going to be equal But this is where she is now in her health journey.
Bill: Right, and although you and I are pretty good at doing some different types of tests, without this technology, I don’t think you and I would know where her nervous system is as far as these three components go.
John: Absolutely not, we would have no real idea, and I checked, you know, pulse oximeter, I use, I check blood pressure, heart rate, you can’t get from those things what you’re getting from this. So it’s just super powerful. And at this point, now she is able to, if indicated, receive a manual adjustment now because her body is not in this over-stressed state. And there was one point where I did. She was, I checked her through the Zone technique, her elimination was off, and she had said all weekend something happened, I ate something, and I just had all these stomach issues. And I checked there, and I manually adjusted the areas, and she sent me a text that evening saying, I’m feeling so much better, thank you. And that’s not something I would have had to use instruments, which is fine, but just letting you know because I saw where she was, I knew I could adjust her any way I wanted at that point.
Bill: Beautiful, and just so I’m clear and so our viewers understand, virtually every patient that comes to see you will receive a Cranial Release, but not every patient that comes in on every visit will receive what we would call a manual or a traditional Chiropractic adjustment, is that right?
John: No, most people who come in, their nervous systems are overstressed, so they’ll get instruments or even a sustained hold adjustment, very light, and then I always finish everybody off, no matter where they are, with the Cranial Release Technique®, because it’s gentle and it’s this global correction to really open up the entire system.
Bill: Got it, got it, beautiful, okay, so that’s again, tell me those the first date and the last date that we’re looking at, there?
John: So February 16th was the first date, and May 30th was the second date.
Now I’m going to jump over to another screen which I think is pretty cool, okay, and this one is when she came in, like I said, she had a birthday since, but she was a 50-year-old female, she came in biologically functioning as a 57-year-old, and nobody wants to hear that. You want to hear, you know, you’re younger than you are, not older. Since then, she’s had a birthday, so she’s now 52, but she’s functioning as a 51-year-old. So she’s actually gotten younger, she’s gotten six years younger, the way her body functions. And if you look at this chart, this can be confusing, but her body was not harmonizing. So the different systems were not really talking well to each other because she was under so much stress. And now we’re seeing the nervous system, the glandular system, the muscular system, everything’s kind of talking the way they’re supposed to talk, so she’s doing much better there, and she’s younger. So, you can’t ask for more than that.
Bill: No, you cant. I remember seeing this through the brain tap people, and I remember saying, boy, if I was in active practice, I would be using this on everyone because if you can show them that they’re 51, but their body from all the indicators thinks it’s 57. And then you can do something, in this case, Cranial Release Technique®, and now they’re 52, but their body’s functioning at 51. I mean, to me, that’s a home run. To me, I would imagine she’s very excited and is telling all her friends and family. And that can be a great source of referrals with a tool like this.
John: Absolutely. She’s not only excited, but she’s back to exercising again because she didn’t have the energy, she was in pain. So her whole demeanor, everything changed. She’s now doing exercise classes, she’s just a happier person. She’s functioning the way she’s meant to function, and we’re going to continue to improve on that.
Bill: Beautiful, beautiful. Tell me again the name of this particular machine or software that you have
John: This is a neural check, and it’s by Brain Tap. Let me flip this back around so it’s a great piece of equipment, and it’s probably the best purchase that I’ve made. Besides obviously, uh, you know, years ago getting the Cranial Release certification. This is, it’s just a great objective indicator.
If I had to eliminate the other things in the office, I would still be very happy just practicing with this. I love having the grip strength and the posture, I think they all work really well together, but if you’re saying, well, I can only afford one thing, this is what I would go with because it’s just so powerful.
Bill: And would you mind sharing what was the price of the HRV and the HRV for those who don’t know, it is called heart rate variability, and that’s the device. So virtually a patient sits down, you hook them up with something, it’s non-invasive, it basically takes a pulse and runs it through your laptop, is that how it’s working?
John: It is, there’s uh, it runs through a certain module, which then gets all the information and then sends it into the laptop, so you get to view everything that comes up. And there are many different screens, they can get pretty deep and complex, so I really try to focus on the most simple and easy to explain ones that are really going to impact the patient. I mean, you want to see, oh my gosh, I am in fight or flight, that explains why I’m so tired. Wow, I’m five years older than I actually am, I don’t want to be that, I want to be younger, minimally I want to be my age, but I would like to be younger. Those things have the most impact, so those are the ones I share. If there are any other red flags that show up, I will go over them, but those are really the two main screens that I feel are the most powerful in education and communication.
Bill: I’m assuming you dealt with Michael Porter for.
John: Yes, Michael’s excellent. Okay, I also have the brain tap headsets because, um, I think they are super important as well. I can go into that a little bit also.
Bill: Unfortunately we’re out of time because I’m only allotted a certain amount of time for this recording, so, I’m gonna put all the details down below. Maybe we’ll come back another time, John, and you’ll walk us through the rest of the office. Talk about the Brain Tap, what that does, why you use it, how that works a little bit,
John: Sure, okay, sounds good.
Bill: First of all, thank you for your time as always, and if anyone’s in the Georgia area, how far are you from Atlanta? More about an hour?
John: I’m about 45 minutes from Atlanta
Bill: 45 minutes, so anybody in the north Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, anywhere in that region, John is obviously your man, if you’d like to go in and, that Brain Tap, the HRV test that we were just discussing. How long does that take to run?
John: About five minutes because it’s about a five-minute test, it takes uh 300 beats. So depending on somebody’s heart rate, you know, I’ve had some athletes come in, it takes a little longer because obviously their heart rate’s resting heart rate slower, but around five minutes. I set a timer for five minutes, and then I’ll peek in if it’s still running. I’ll step out for another minute, most times it’s don. But it’s very quick test.
Bill: okay. John, we’re going to get cut off, thank you very much for your time. Thank you everybody for watching @cranialreleasetechnique. I’ll put some of this information in the show notes about John and the technology.
Thanks so much, everybody, have a good day! Thank you, John!
John: Thanks Bill.