009- Special Interview with Dr. Krista Burns of the American Posture Institute

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor, providing you with elegant and efficient research based content to help your practice prosper and succeed. Now get ready for a variety of dynamic communication tools designed for immediate growth courtesy of your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello, welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. Today we have an exciting interview with Dr. Krista who's a leader with the American Posture Institute as well as a worldwide leader with the League of Chiropractic Women. This is a great interview. We dive into research, we dive into motivation a little bit and I think it's going to provide a lot of value for everybody out there listening. So without further ado, I'll say a few words about Rocktape and then we'll dive right into the interview.

We're to going.

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So today we have a fantastic guest on our episode. We're going to be talking with Dr. Christa. She's a posture expert and predominantly based out of Italy and we're happy to have her taking the time and lend her expertise for all of our docs out there listening to the Evan space chiropractor. So Dr. Christa, thanks for coming on today.

Hey, thanks for the invitation Dr. Jeff. It's great to connect with you and your audience. Love what you're doing with the podcast.

Well, thank you very much. So, so for anybody that doesn't know who you are that's listening, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role within chiropractic in a couple sentences?

Sure. So My name is Dr. Krista Burns and I'm the co founder of the American Posture Institute and the certified posture Expert online program where we're committed to being the world's leading resource for posture related information, products and correction systems. And we teach and certify posture experts throughout the entire world to be highly trained posture experts.

Cool. And one thing that struck me about it is I think not only from a chiropractic perspective is posture of supreme importance. But one thing, working in multidisciplinary clinics with myself, I found even more MDs. And even in a surgical realm, those docs are becoming more and more concerned and interested in how posture plays into not only the disease process or a process of challenge that we might have functional challenge as individuals, but even how that happens and affects things post surgically. Have you seen anything about that?

Yeah, and you're spot on what you're saying here, because what's incredible about the posture paradigm within chiropractic and outside of chiropractic is that everybody, every healthcare professional throughout the entire world, throughout every different type of healthcare profession, agrees that posture is a fundamental aspect of health and optimal human performance. So by speaking that language to other healthcare professionals, it's a really great in for us as chiropractors to connect with them on a level that makes sense to everybody. So when we utilize that language of posture, it's a really good connection that both pre and post surgical or prep is going to be really great in with speaking with interdisciplinary healthcare professionals.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's much more eloquent than I could have stated it. So good job. In terms of, if we bring it back to chiropractic, how did you get involved? So what were some of your chiropractic interests? And, you know, how did you get involved in your focus on posture?

That's a great question. And I'll kind of take you on my journey, my posture journey. So I started off in practice in Italy, and when I started off in practice, I was a generalist. I didn't have any sort of specialization whatsoever. And I'll be really honest with you and your listeners, I essentially failed in practice my first year. I really struggled. I refer to that first year in practice as a treadmill effect. The feeling of trying everything, implementing all kinds of different marketing and strategies and this and that, but never seemingly moving forward. And then I read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and it talks about what it takes to be a great company versus a good company. And he talks about defining your unique expert position. And your unique expert position is what you do better than anybody else in the world, what you're passionate about, what you can make money doing. And reflecting back on my first year, the one thing that seemed to really work was posture. And so I went on a journey of becoming a posture expert myself, which included taking two different certifications, attending seminars, reading textbooks, reading research, learning everything I could on human physiology to truly become a posture expert. And from that point is where our online certification posture expert program was born. Because we found so much great evidence based information, we wanted to share it with other dogs and give them that opportunity of having the certainty that we have as posture experts. So that's what brought us to where I'm at today. We'll put it that way.

Yeah, I think that that's. I appreciate the candor and I think that certainly resonates with. Will resonate with a lot of listeners. In terms of one thing I always like to ask is chiropractic heroes. So who are some of the chiropractors and kind of that you that you've looked up to, whether past or present or people that really struck you within chiropractic and whether it's familiar names to our listeners or maybe a new name or two. Who are some people that you think we should know about if we don't already?

Sure. I'm a huge functional neurology fan. So of course Dr. Carrick, he's the father of functional neurology. He's led so many doctors, taught so many different amazing health practitioners out there, as well as Michael hall, another amazing functional neurologist. And I do personal coaching with Dr. Kathy Winland Colby. She's also on the board of Lilly Chiropractic Women with me. And I just really, really respect her approach to chiropractic. And in terms of being a female in the profession, I'll tell you what, she's a powerhouse. She's definitely a role model to all the female chiros out there.

Nice. And I guess going with that line of thought, one thing, and I'll be honest, I don't know too much about it, but the League of Chiropractic Women, I know that we have a lot of female listeners and I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and maybe even tell a little bit how female chiropractors that are listening could potentially get involved or can you elaborate on it a little bit?

Absolutely. And thank you for asking. I appreciate that. Dr. Jeff. So basically the League of Chiropractic Women, we have one agenda and that agenda is to empower all women in chiropractic. And we're an organization dedicated to the empowerment of women finding their unique voice in chiropractic. So we have all kinds of different programs set up from live seminars to monthly webinars, the speakers bureau, which helps you again, develop that authentic voice so that you can speak chiropractic to your community and to your patients in a more eloquent manner. And it's just a really great organization of wonderful women in chiropractic. And that's something that's unique about us too is it's not just women DCs, but it's all women in chiropractic. So also spouses and CAs and faculty members, patient advocates. Any woman in chiropractic who supports that chiropractic message.

Awesome. I think that, and I guess this kind of goes without saying, but that's worldwide, right? So anybody can be anywhere and be involved in that. Is that correct?

Yeah, absolutely. And if anybody who is listening is interested, you can check us out online@lcwomen.com and that'll give you all the information. And if you're listening from Europe and the president of the European lcw, so definitely contact me. I'd love to get you involved.

Sweet.

And we'll make sure to link that in the show notes as well. So everybody that wants to or should be involved, which I think should be just about everybody, can certainly learn more about that now, I guess bringing it back around to posture and sort of the focus of your kind of professional development. I'd ask you what gets you excited about chiropractic, but I imagine it's going to reside in that realm. I know you do a ton of traveling regarding posture seminars and sort of your expert certification. Is that also going world? And can you tell a little bit about kind of the process or even regarding posture? If any of the docs want to dive more into how that can help their practice or how they can gain additional information, how would they go about it?

Excellent. Well, the posture expert certification course is completely online. So that's the beauty of it. You don't have to travel outside of your home and you can get all the information right there. And Basically it's a 20 hour course, everything you need to know about posture. And it's based off of the textbook which I've recently written called the Principles of Posturology. And what we do in the course is we like to look at posture from all different aspects. So in the first module we're talking about why posture? What does that actually mean from a public health perspective? And then module 2 is the complete anatomy and physiology or the structure and function of the posture system and how the posture quadrants relate to one another to optimize human function, human performance. And then module three is all about complete posture analysis, both static and dynamic analyses, or to have that really good analysis to make the proper treatment recommendations to your patients. And then of course, module four is all about correction strategies. So we do the complete posture correction protocol for spinal alignment, as well as postural rehabilitation and posture habit reeducation. So I'll tell you what, it's a great course. It's everything you need to know about posture to build your certainty as a doctor to get not only amazing results with your patients, but also to communicate it with your community.

Sweet. That sounds great. And in terms of that, it sounds to me like there's obviously some great foundational tenets to it, but really it also can be used with a variety of chiropractic techniques. So whether you predominantly do flexion distraction, whether you predominantly do diversified adjusting, at least to me, posture is kind of a universal foundational piece that and its application can really go across the board. Is that correct?

You're right on with that. And that's one thing that's really unique about our program is we aren't a technique. We give you a lot of options for strategies to correct posture, but we don't say you must do this technique in order to do our protocol. Instead, we give you all the information that you need to know, and then we encourage you to utilize whatever strategy that you prefer, whatever technique that works the best for you in your body and your patients, and utilize that for postural correction.

Awesome.

Yeah. I've always thought about posture really, in terms of kind of the things that you touched on. Really. It's a universal language. There certainly has been a variety of texts and research regarding posture, proper posture, and how that affects our long term health. And I think as far as chiropractors are concerned, there's probably no better practitioner to kind of pick up that torch and really be able to speak to your patients, because I think it provides a ton of value for them long term. Certainly can keep you in mind as a practitioner for them as they go on with their life.

Yeah. And I mean, posture is one of those words. Every time you say the word posture, even if you're listeners right now, I say the word posture and they probably instantly sat up straight. It's a word that we connect to. It's a word that we've heard ever since we were little kids and our mom told us to sit up straight at the dinner table. Right. And then your teacher told you to sit up straight in class. It's a word that we connect with as a society, as a population, and everybody understands the word itself and then makes that connection with their human physiology. So if you think about it from our perspective, and you know, there's statistics out there, that 85% of patients who visit a doctor, not just chiropractors, but any doctor, they leave the doctor's office unsure of what their doctor told them. And 40% of people, of patients, they don't know what to do next. So if we look at those statistics and say, okay, 85% of patients don't understand their doctors as it is, if we're also speaking to them in a language in words that they've never heard before, it's going to put us in that 85% of being misunderstood. However, if we use words that they already understand and is in their vocabulary and belief system, then that puts us in that 15% where the patient goes, okay, I actually get what my doctor is telling me. And then if you utilize posture imaging like we do in our clinics, you're not just telling them, you're also showing them. So you show them a picture of their posture and make that connection, one with the vocabulary and the verbiage, but two with that photo so they can actually see what's going on with their body.

Yeah, I think that's huge. And I think that's really, you know, proper patient centric care is really what it comes down to. And I think certainly, you know, posture can play a huge role in that. In terms of, I'm going to switch gears a little bit in terms of I always love to hear what other people are looking at, reading, or seeing. So do you have a book, a podcast, or an entrepreneur that you'd like to highlight to our listeners or somebody that struck you in the not too distant past?

My all time favorite book is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey. And the reason I love that book so much is that it talks about that in order to have you have to have personal victories, they must precede public victories. So anytime you want to have a public result, whether it's in your clinic or in your family or in your community at large, you have to have that. Personal victory first means you have to master yourself before you can master others and make that community impact. So that book just really, I read it all the time. I have a highlighted version that I keep going through over and over, and every time I read it, I learn something new. It always inspires me to the highest level. So I recommend all of your listeners to read it as well.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you for sharing that key point in it. I think that's a powerful piece of advice and knowledge, no doubt about it. One thing that we didn't touch on, but is kind of we'll close with is, I know that you had some research that you wanted to share with our listeners. Now we'll link it in the show notes, but I'll let you tell a little bit more about what the listeners will be able to download from the show notes. I know it's going to be a big hitter as far as everybody that's listening.

Yeah, well, I'm a huge. I love what you're doing again with this podcast. I'm a huge fan of evidence based practice and when I was creating the Posture Expert program, I went through thousands of research studies. And what I did is I actually put it together in a manual, which is the top 24 research studies that every chiropractor needs to know. So what I do is I provide you with the reference itself and then I actually summarize the research study because I recognize that not everybody has time to go through thousands of studies. So I summarized it and said, what does this actually mean for your practice and how can you utilize this research? So I'm going to give Dr. Jeff the link. Everybody can go and download it absolutely free. And if you just go to certifiedposturexpert.com posture research, you're going to get those 24 research studies sent directly to your email. So I hope you guys enjoy it. I know the listeners of this podcast definitely will.

Thank you, Dr. Christa, and thank you for being an awesome guest today. I think you've shared a bunch of really important points that the docs are going to get a lot of value and I'm definitely going to be certainly Downloading your top 24 chiropractic research articles as well. So I thank you for that and I really thank you for being a guest today.

Now again, thank you for what you're doing and providing this platform for doctors to have such incredible value. We appreciate you and thanks again for this opportunity.

Thank you.

And there you have it.

That was an awesome interview with Dr. Christa. Please check our show notes for all of the information that we talked about. And until next week, have a fantastic week in practice and we'll talk to you soon.

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