Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Anderson.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I worked for 5 years in the bicycle industry as a tech support specialist for a few bicycle brands, and I really enjoyed it. At the time, all of my hobbies, friendships, and time was centered around different forms of cycling in northern Minnesota. But after being turned down for a 25 cent hourly raise in 2022, I realized I needed some more expertise in whatever I was going to do long term.
I decided to pursue chiropractic school because I think of the body as a mechanical system in the same way I’ve understood a bicycle as a mechanical system, albeit much more complicated. After a year of prerequisites, the 3.5 year Chiropractic program was both challenging and rewarding. I went from being someone that can fix your bike, which is a very low-pressure ordeal, to somebody entrusted with helping a person heal from potentially debilitating pain. The pressure placed on my expertise changed drastically, and that motivates me to spend time with my patients and to research any unfamiliar topics that come up in clinic.
I decided to open my own clinic in Richmond because I have always had a very specific vision of what a Chiropractor is supposed to do. A Chiropractor should have the same qualities as any good doctor: someone that listens to your complaints, asks the right questions, and has the expertise to either help you or find someone that can. A Chiropractor should have an array of tools (not just spinal manipulation) to resolve mechanical dysfunction in the body and get patients out of pain.
As a lifelong Type-1 Diabetic, I’ve always understood the American medical industry to be cold, prohibitively expensive, and out of reach for too many people. My goal for my clinic is to be an integral part of the Richmond community, and available to anyone who believes as I do: The human body is designed to move, and movement should be pain free.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have certainly been some manageable hurdles along the way to get here. Towards the end of Chiropractic school, my fiancee and I decided to move from the Midwest to Richmond without knowing a single person in this part of the country. That sort of move will always be challenging, but Richmond has been unimaginably welcoming to us. When I first moved here, I was seeing patients out of a Chiropractic office in the suburbs. I find it challenging to go through an experience and slowly realize it’s not a fit, and that was my experience with this clinic. I parted ways with them to start my own practice, guided by the question of “how hard can it be?” As a healthcare provider, I love treating patients and feel perfectly comfortable with that being my only task in a day. But as a small business owner, I wear hats that I didn’t even know existed before.
Anyone who has started a business in this country understands that feeling intimately. You have demonstrated skills and expertise in A through F, but running a business requires expertise in G through Z and then some. So what do you do? You figure it out! And every one of those small tasks relating to starting a small business, collectively, make up the biggest challenge so far.
In these challenges, I’ve found guidance through mentors in the area, which is an incredible example of the Richmond hospitality that I love so much.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Body Shop Chiropractic & Rehab?
Body Shop Chiropractic & Rehab is a chiropractic practice based on everything I think the future of chiropractic care needs to include. We do full body exams for everybody, regardless what you come in with. One example I always tell people about is the fact that chronic ankle instability can increase your likelihood of back pain, even though the two seem completely independent of each other. This is a concept called regional interdependence- the belief that the entire body is connected, and dysfunction anywhere can impact how the rest of the body moves. Pain is a complicated signal the body uses to tell us something is wrong, but it’s often not very good at telling us what, precisely, is wrong.
The future of chiropractic also needs to involve lots of attention to the muscular side of injuries, so that’s a huge focus for our clinic. Most patients that come in get some combination of chiropractic care paired with tailored exercise therapy, dry needling, cupping, or cold laser therapy. Chiropractors, at best, are musculoskeletal experts, and I tailored this list of therapies to treat the vast majority of musculoskeletal conditions.
Although we treat anyone with a spine, most of our patients are millennials or gen X that have injuries from either an active lifestyle or a labor-intensive job. What sets us apart is our focus on helping people stay healthy and active before minor aches and injuries become major problems. We also work directly with employers in physically demanding industries like construction, carpentry, and plumbing to provide convenient, proactive care for their workers. The goal is simple: address the physical demands of these jobs early, help employees stay healthy and productive, and support their quality of life both on and off the job.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I’ve recently been reading a few different books that inform my world view, which changes how I practice. The first is called Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention by Clara Mattei. It’s all about how the world could be- and needs to be- working better for the working class, and I really take that to heart. It adds into my overall approach to this profession as a way to bring healthcare to the working class.
Another book I’ve been lost in recently is by Chris Hayes, called The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. This book talks at length about how the attention economy, and especially big business within the attention economy, is fundamentally reshaping our world. I’d recommend this to anyone because it has changed how I respond to the stimuli in our eternally overstimulating world.
Pricing:
- New patient exam- 1 hr ($75)
- Returning visit- 25 min ($75)
- Chiropractic adjustment- 15 min ($50)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://BodyShopChiro.Rehab
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bodyshop.chiro/
