EP013: Visceral Manipulation with Dr. Aron Choi

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting episode of Perfect Practice. Today with me, I have a very special clinician, Dr. Aaron Choid. Aaron is a visceral, manipulative practitioner. He's going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but I first want to welcome you, Aaron. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, Sachin.

Absolutely. And you know you've got some great insights that you're going to be sharing with us. We had a bit of a dialogue before we got started here, so I'm excited to share you with the rest of our podcast listeners. But just so people can get familiar with what it is that you do and what type of practitioner you are, why don't we dive a little bit deeper into what you do and how you got where you are right now?

Sure. So I am a naturopathic physician in Seattle, Washington, and my specialty is manual therapy, specifically visceral manipulation. And that's using my hands and touch to improve tissue quality around the organs, blood vessels, nerves, so that the organs and structures of our body function better.

This is actually of great interest to me. For those of you that don't know this, my wife has actually had three bowel obstructions. Two of them resulted in surgeries, and one of them she was actually literally able to meditate her way out of. So they were ready to put an NG tube down her and she was able to get into a deep state of relaxation and meditation and actually uncoil her bowel, which is pretty awesome to witness. So when you and I talked about this originally, I kind of had some selfish interest in working with you because I wanted to know more about how I can help my wife. And I'm really fascinated by visceral manipulation because I see such tremendous value in it and I think it's something that's very overlooked in functional medicine. So there's certainly a sub niche. We work with a lot of digestive patients in our practice, but Tell us a little bit more about that because I'm really intrigued and I want to make sure more people know that people like you exist, so they can refer people to you if they're, you know, facing some challenging cases. So who would see a visceral, manipulative practitioner?

Yeah, it's funny, I didn't know about this before either. I thought as a naturopathic physician, I'd be helping people with their diet and exercise and prescribing some herbs and supplements. And it wasn't until some friends of mine who were taking electives, visceral manipulation, were like, you got to take this, this class because it can do so much for people. So I jumped into it and now find myself working with patients who have digestive disorders, acid reflux, gallbladder issues, people who've had C sections, scar tissue that forms after laparoscopic procedures, who now they solve one problem with the surgery, but they have, you know, constipation or, you know, like you said, bowel obstructions. And it can, you know, not just digestive issues. I've seen things like vague groin pain, pelvic issues, thoracic issues with like the lungs and the cardiovascular system. So it's very wide ranging. But a lot of my practice is working with people who have digestive dysfunction.

Yeah, huge problem. And, and so people who have, who come to you, they've probably seen a variety of other practitioners before coming to you. It's probably unlikely that somebody comes to you first. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how people actually find you. How is it that people locate you so that they can get these services?

You know, fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of times it is word of mouth. These patients have exhausted all their other options. They've seen the specialists, they've seen their different primary care physicians, even other naturopaths. And it's from kind of word of mouth, from these other practitioners who are aware of visceral manipulation but aren't either well trained or well versed in it, that they end up in my practice. And I've done some talks at the Seeking Health Educational Institute conference and that kind of spreads the word. And people see some of my stuff online and are intrigued by visceral manipulation. Even if it seems sounds a little scary, they are really desperate to find something, just some hope that they can have some improvement in their pain or digestive function. And yeah, it's really my goal to spread the word that there is another option.

Yeah, my wife ended up doing a five day, 20 hour. It was 20 hours in one week. So it's, you know, four hours a day at a place in Florida. And, you know, it was pretty intense, so it was fun. And she had some amazing results from it. So I truly believe and value what it is that you do, because, you know, this type of work has significantly improved her quality of life. And, you know, she developed the bowel obstruction post surgery almost immediately after delivering my son. And then six years to the day, she developed another bowel obstruction, and both of those required surgery. And then just a few months ago, as I was mentioning earlier, she had a scare, and she was able to kind of work through it. So, you know, this is very near and dear to me. So, you know, I want to make sure that other people who are struggling with this or if you're a practitioner listening to this, if some of your patients are dealing with issues like SIBO or they have, you know, just unexplained issues that were a result of a C section or laparoscopic surgery, or they're having a hard time with deep breathing exercises because they might have some scar tissue around their diaphragm. Whatever the case is, you know, Dr. Aaron is amazing, and he's been trained under some of the leading practitioners in the world around this. So, you know, definitely seek him out if you're. If you've got some personal challenges you're dealing with or you've got some patients that you feel need a more thorough manual intervention. Not just the functional intervention, but the manual aspect of the intervention. So just a little plug for you there, because I truly and deeply value what you do for the public. And there was no functional test that would affix my wife. So it was only because of getting this type of manual intervention that she was able to feel better again. And many practitioners are dealing with patients who have sibo, and this is something that can certainly help them. So just a little plug for you, but keep doing the amazing work that you're doing. This ties into my next question, which is this is probably not something that's covered by insurance, right? So how did you get around that?

It was definitely going against the grain. Graduating from school, and one of the first things my peers and colleagues were doing was trying to get contracted with insurance. You know, how quickly could I get work contracted with Premier and Blue Cross and Blue Shield? And I knew in my gut that the insurance model wasn't for me for. For a couple of reasons. For one, if I felt like I would have to change the way I practice based on how much I get reimbursed. And I didn't want that to be part of my thought process. And second, I didn't think I could actually make a decent living doing the work that I wanted to do. Visceral manipulation and counseling on diet and exercise. And to think that I might get compensated maybe $30 for an hour's worth of time and sharing my expertise, it didn't seem. It just didn't match up to how I wanted to make my living and serve my patients. So luckily I had a mentor who was running a cash practice, so I could see the model of how it could be done. And I gravitated to him for that reason. And so I had a role model that I could follow and knew that I wouldn't starve to death if I didn't accept insurance.

Right. That's huge. And so there are probably. How do you deal with that from a patient's perspective? So you're talking about it from a practitioner's perspective and doing what you love and being able to offer fully engaged services. But how do you overcome the patient's objective or objection rather of wanting to use insurance and not being able to use it? How do you explain that to them?

The way I explain it to them is first, I don't talk about them, the insurance. I definitely present myself and what I do not as a commodity. And often people realize that they can't get what I offer from the mainstream medical system. So people are in a place where they know they need a solution and that I have a solution that can help them. And it's not that I charge exorbitant amounts of money to do this. And the way I explain it to them is one, showing them how it can actually save them money in the long run, how it can, how it can prevent them from suffering longer and decrease the pain of the consequences. Not addressing something like chronic acid reflux. And people get it and it becomes more an investment rather than an expense, a medical expense. And I do help patients by providing them with super bills and documentation they can submit to their insurance to get reimbursed part of that amount. But what I find is that the people who are serious about solving their problem are okay with investing money in something that they will benefit from. So it's really open conversation about what the process is like and making sure that it's a good fit for my patients.

Yeah, it's so huge. And the type of patients that you attract in a insurance driven practice versus a cash or out of pocket driven practice is very different. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. In the beginning, when I was starting my cash based time of service fee for service practice, initially I had patients who would come to me and their first question is, do you accept insurance? And I always try to explain to them that, oh, you know, I'm a cash based practice and this is how I work. And automatically I began to see the patterns that the people who were asking that question to start with were usually the ones, even if they did sign up to work with me, were not the ones who were the patients who are a good fit, whether that's energetically or they weren't invested in the process. And the ones who, who weren't looking for primarily choosing a doctor primarily based on insurance, they were more invested in their health in other areas as well. They seemed to be ready to look for someone to help them with their nutrition and they were more proactive. Their attitude about their expectations of themselves meeting me halfway and doing their homework seemed to be also a lot, a lot better. So I think the patients who. It just showed me that there's a difference in mindset between the patients who are looking for something that is covered by their insurance versus actually looking to invest in a solution was night and day and I had to get comfortable that not everyone would come to see me and they probably weren't a good fit. That was. That took me some time to get comfortable with.

Yeah, it's, it's not an easy thing. And especially because as practitioners, we try to be super empathetic towards our patients, but we have to be careful not to do it at the expense of their outcomes at the end, also at the expense of our own health and personal outcomes as well. Because we all deserve to make, you know, a good living. Right? When you're doing good work, you deserve to make a good living. One of the things that we talked about prior to this was some challenges that you faced when you had to make some very important decisions in terms of the trajectory of your career and practice and kind of some of the next steps that you needed to take to move on. You were telling me you were stuck in a situation that was financially providing you security, but energetically was very disruptive to you. So maybe you can talk about that because I think some people listening to this might be in situations where they're financially comfortable and that's what is. They're in their comfort zone from that perspective. And yes, we all have bills to pay, but they might be challenged energetically. I know a lot of practitioners who are working in hospitals, or they might be associates, or they might even have a busy practice right now. They're financially secure, but they're energetically destabilized. So maybe you can speak to that a little bit and how that was affecting you and how transitioning out of that has also impacted you.

Yeah, I was working in a clinic where, like you said, there was a steady stream of patients. I was being compensated, it was a cash based practice. But at the same time, the doctor I was working with, he wasn't very open to maybe raising prices where his prices were the same for the last 10, 20 years, or looking at new innovative ways of doing marketing. There was no marketing actually. It was all word of mouth, referral based. We were using paper charts and, you know, nothing's wrong with those things. But at a certain point, if I realized that if I want to grow my practice, if I wanted to become more efficient, there had to be changes in the systems. But the bottleneck was the resistance to change or the comfort with changing in the doctor I was working with. And I tried to be patient.

For.

A long time, probably too long. I'm tolerant, but in this case I think it was tolerant to a fault. And I realized that the results that I was not getting was a result of being around, you know, like you describe it, an energetic field that was limiting my growth. It felt like I was in a glass bubble. Not really. I couldn't see the obstacle, but I've always felt that obstacle in the back of my mind. And at a certain point I wanted to move forward with this doctor and move, move forward together. But at a certain point I had to kind of free myself from this, this glass bubble. And now that I've, now that I have it, it feels so much lighter. And so I recommend anyone listening that if they're in a situation that they feel like they're tolerating, they should cut. They should. They might want to ask themselves, why am I tolerating this and is this something I need to tolerate or can things actually be better?

Yes. I mean, this is a huge topic and we can go pretty deep with it. A lot of it I find comes from having a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. You know, people are afraid that there is nothing on the other side of that decision for them. Maybe you could speak to that as well. Like how do you, how do you go from, you know, being in a scarcity minded environment, trying to cultivate an abundance mindset? You know, maybe you can speak to some of the challenges that were presented and how you overcame them.

For one, it's. It's tough to know whether or not you. It's not always. Not. It's not always apparent that you. That I had a scarcity mindset in some ways. How is that apparent? It was. It was apparent in a couple ways. One, it was apparent that when I was leaving this practice, this doctor that had announced that I was leaving and essentially said that Dr. Choi is not going to be here anymore, I'm taking over, with no mention of, oh, Dr. Choi is leaving. You have an option to move forward however you see best. There was a very protective sense that these are my, you know, my patients and that there's only so many to go around. And that didn't make any sense to me.

It.

You know, I don't. It felt like, you know, for. When patients aren't things that you own people, these are people who make a choice to work with someone who can help them. And that was one of the biggest eye openers to me, that this doctor was very possessive, and it felt like he would lose these patients if he didn't claim them for himself. And that was kind of the ultimate sign of a scarcity mindset, that there's not enough to go around when in reality there's millions of patients who are sick and need help and there's actually. The reality is there aren't enough people who can help them.

Yeah, it's quite unfortunate. You know what I mean, when people don't realize that there are literally millions of patients that need this type of service. But, you know, I'm glad you're not in that situation anymore and you were able to burn the boats and make a decision that's moved you forward and energetically feels a little bit more aligned. You know, certainly it's outside of anyone's comfort zone to kind of make that decision, but I think at the same time, it's going to be much better for you, and it's working out to be much better for you in the long run. I think that one thing that we tend to forget is how important our own health is. And. And when we're not in a space that's energetically aligned with our core values and in a space that doesn't help us expand and grow, then I think that's very limiting. So those are some great insights that you've provided. Now. Tell us a little bit more about how you currently or in the future want to expand and grow your practice and market your practice. What are some of the strategies that you're Starting to deploy to get the word out there so that you can help more and more people. Yeah.

Now, moving forward, one of the things I realize is important is creating a platform to actually share the message. So, one, I did recently launch a podcast, which was very scary. Being vulnerable, putting myself out there, realizing that not everyone's gonna like it. But I also realized that the only way to reach people who need help is to be reachable, to have a way to actually speak to them. And so that's one of the things that I've had to overcome, is that fear of overthinking the process of creating content, doing interviews, just being out there in the world. The other thing I'm working on is, as we discuss in the Living Proof Institute, mentorship is creating webinars, teaching people, educating people on the option of things like visceral manipulation and functional medicine, that there is an option. And I find that when patients come in, they're just so. They're really intrigued. They're like, how come no one told me about this? It makes so much sense. And that just reaffirms in my mind the need to educate and to create content. And it doesn't have to be rocket science. I think one of the biggest hurdles for me is overthinking how much people need to know. No one needs to know the mechanism of acid reflux to know that there's another option. So for me, one of the things I'm working on is simplifying things and communicating in a way that, like, patients can understand, because it's that curse of knowledge. Once you know how something works, it's really difficult to take 10 steps back and explain it to a beginner.

Yeah, that's. That's one of the challenges. And one of the things that I. When I coach practitioners, you know, I tell them to forget about the logic and focus more on the emotion. Because as clinicians, we tend to. We're trained to. And we tend to focus on the logical aspects of what we do. And it's certainly, you know, visceral mobilization and manipulation makes a lot of sense, especially when you're dealing with organs that are all squished into this small, little space, and they can, you know, get, you know, entangled with each other with scar tissue. So it certainly makes sense. But at the same time, what people are more concerned about is the emotional aspect of their issues. Right. The constant doctor visits, the medications that are depleting nutrients are causing numerous side effects for them. Their inability to enjoy their favorite foods. Right. Although they might not be the healthiest foods, they probably enjoy those foods. And that takes away from some of the pleasure of living life or enjoying social events. So I tend to focus a lot more, and of course, I know you do as well on the emotional elements, somebody's case versus the logical elements, because most people make decisions based on emotions. If people made decisions only logically, then everyone would have tons of money in their bank account. Nobody would drive nice cars. Everyone will live in homes that were minimalist in style. But we certainly know people don't do that. And I think that one thing that you've done really well in your practice is focusing on what really gets people to make a decision. It's not always the logic. Logic is secondary, but it's emotion first. So, you know, congratulations on being able to communicate that and get that across to people. I know that, you know, one of the things that we've talked about previously is that you've also taken some training like communication and conversion training. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? And do you think that would be helpful for some practitioners to get out of their scarcity mindset and more into an abundance mindset?

Oh, are you talking about the sales training I was doing?

Yes.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Well, let me start by saying as someone who grew up introverted and quiet and pretty shy, I was always frightened about selling things. Right. There was always this icky feeling around selling and feeling like, oh, I don't have the personality to be that creepy car salesman. But over time, I realized that I was having prospects. Prospective patients call me, and I didn't know how to handle the objections, like, oh, how does. Do you accept insurance? How much does it cost? How long will it take? All these questions, I handled them so poorly that I always felt like I was begging someone to come see me. And that is not a place of abundance or confidence. So the need. I was losing people who I knew I could help. And that was kind of the biggest thing for me. It's like, what is going on? I know I can help them, but I'm not skilled enough to communicate it. So I. Should I say specifically which program I did?

Sure, absolutely.

Yeah. I found. I was on YouTube, you know YouTube and I like to watch TED Talks and I found this TEDx talk from a man named Dan Locke. He's based out of Vancouver, Canada, and he is a self proclaimed, like ticket of high, king of high ticket sales. And he wears this red suit. I'm like, who is this guy? But he started talking about the mindset like how our mindset is like a thermostat. And this thermostat keeps you where you're comfortable. So if you think of yourself as someone who's not, someone who can, who's worthy of receiving large sums of money and being paid what you're worth, no matter how successful you tend, you think you can't be, you always kind of fall back. So it's that, that phenomenon where people make a lot of money and then all are constantly losing it. It's that thermostat that somehow self sabotaging them. So I looked past that red suit and seemingly gaudy superficial guy and realize he knows what he's talking about. And you know, you hop on someone's webinar and you and he had this program called hi to get closer. And once I got on the program I was like, that's what I need to learn how to do. How do I know? You mentioned closer as a transactional term. But he really approaches it in a way of educating and helping people make their decision, make the right decision for them. So it's really heartfelt, the message. So I went through that training and a lot of it was training my own mindset. And how do I look at buying things? How do I feel when someone tries to sell me? And it really uncovers a lot of my own crap that I carry around and like, am I comfortable investing in myself? So it really starts from that place of being more self aware before even getting into how do you have a discovery call? How do you do a. How do you talk to a prospective patient? Prospective patient or customer. And you know that the mindset comes before the strategies and the tactics of doing sales. And it really changed the way I looked at sales. It's my responsibility to sell someone on investing in themselves if I know I can help them. So that's been one of the biggest changes in the last four or five months for me.

Awesome. And what are the outcomes of that? Been.

Once you. Well, we had spoken and you had told me to raise my prices and I raised my prices and I used my high ticket closing skills to convert three prospective patients into a package of visceral manipulation visits. $1,200 a piece. And they are like some of my best patients and they've thanked me. And that's the thing. So Dan Locke says at the end of a sales conversation, when you close someone, you want them to thank you. And that's what actually happened. So I wouldn't have been able to work with these people if I wasn't able to sell them and close them from a heartfelt place. So it's been amazing.

Yeah. The key is people who value themselves will generally tend to value your services because they, they can amplify the value of their investment. Right. It's the key is finding the right patients. And one of the things that I explained to people is if I had a million dollar home that I was trying to sell you and the market value was a million dollars and you agreed that that was the value of it. You know, most people say my health is worth a million dollars, but. Right. They have that big. But at the end. But if you were to buy a home and it was on the market for a million dollars, it wouldn't matter if that house was $3,000 on sale or $5,000 or $10,000, because of how much you actually value it and the deal that you're getting. So if somebody's health is worth a million dollars to them in their mind, but they don't take actions accordingly and they don't make that investment in themselves, then it's really more of a cliche that they're kind of subscribing to instead of actually having a true value of it. And so what we found and what you're finding as well is that people who are willing to make that investment generally tend to listen better, they're much more compliant, they value their health more, but more importantly, or just as importantly, they value your time more as well. Right. They come in from a different perspective. The vantage point that they come in with and approach each appointment with is very different than somebody who's coming to try to extract from you. These people are what I call amplifiers. So they're trying to take the service that you're offering and then increase its value by leveraging your knowledge, by listening to the recommendations that you provide. And of course, the other benefit of that is they're going to refer more people just like them. Right. That's the other thing is when we want to build and grow and scale our practices, the original like 50 to 100 patients that we start off with, that little cluster of patients is so vital to the expansion of our practice because they're going to refer other people just like them. And when we can essentially over deliver on our services because people are more compliant and they're, you know, they're valuing your time, they show up for their appointments, then it's amazing to see how the practice takes off. So it's exciting to see what you're doing and all the people that you're helping and serving. And, you know, you've overcome some barriers that I think that we've all had. I know I've had some of those barriers in the past that I had to overcome, and I think I've done a great job. But there's other barriers that pop up. So, you know, we're always facing these glass ceilings that we've got to shatter and get through. You've also overcome negative environments and energetic environments that weren't energetically aligned. So that's cool to see that, you know, you found something that you're super passionate about and you're serving people and you're scaling this message as well. I know one of the things that you're wanting to do is get more of this information out there so people know that there is help available to them and that there are things that they can do besides taking supplements. I mean, supplements are huge and definitely vital. But you're working on the other side of the digestive system, if you will. You're working on the surroundings and the physical space that these organs are confined in. And I think that that's something that's very heavily overlooked. So I'm excited to help you spread your message so more practitioners know about what you do. But also I'm excited to see how spread this message out to as many people as possible. So, you know, thank you for sharing all this information today. Is there anything you wanted to share with us? And perhaps you could leave us with a website so people can learn more about you or, you know, practitioners that are listening can connect with you so that they can refer their patients to you as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I want to thank you as well for being a role model that this is a possibility, because I'm realizing that, you know, the one. The vibration of you. You talked about this at our. At the most recent Mastermind that the vibration, it's really about all about the vibrations you put yourself within and the vibrations that you emit yourself. And it just feels so much. I feel so much like hope and the future looks bright. And that's really, I think, the vibration we want to send out into the world. If people want to find me, they can find me at www.aaronchoi.com. that's a R O N C H O I.com and I just launched a podcast called the Awkward Silence with Dr. Aaron Choi, and you can find that on itunes.

Awesome. We'll be sure to share those notes with our audience members. And, you know, I'll be sure to share your website so people can learn more about what it is that you do. And then do you. I had a quick question for you. Maybe just throwing this out there, but do you consult with other practitioners that are in this space or want to learn more about visceral manipulation? Do you help them out as well?

Help them out in terms of training them?

Yeah, in terms of training them or maybe guiding them in the right direction or coaching them with some of their existing patients?

Yeah. If people want to call me or email me and ask me some, some questions, I'm happy to point them in the right direction, you know, whether it's me or someone else that can, that can, that can help out.

Yeah.

Happy to do that.

Awesome, brother. Well, thank you so much for sharing. I wish you an amazing rest of your day. It's been a delight speaking with you. I look forward to seeing you again in person here pretty soon. Keep fighting the good fight and helping more people. I thank you once again. And you know, this has been amazing. It's very enlightening. And next time we meet you in person, my wife's going to be with me. So I'd love to. If you could just do an assessment on her and give her some feedback on how she's been doing and stay on top of her to do her exercises, I'd be happy to.

My pleasure. Thanks, Achin.

Thanks, my friend. Talk to you soon.