EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams
Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams practices in Spokane, Washington at Clear Chiropractic. They have two locations, and right now, she’s at the South Hill location.
BACKGROUND:
Dr. Ellis Williams has wanted to be a doctor since she was five years old because she wanted to help people who were sick and suffering. Her mom suffered from migraines. She also wanted to be a teacher, and the true definition of a doctor is to be an educator. She wanted to educate people on how they could live better life. She studied biology in undergrad but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. When she graduated, she decided to take a year off and study for the MCAT.. She got a job as a nanny for a chiropractor and also worked in his office 2 days a week.
HER OWN HEALTH JOURNEY:
She had dealt with back pain since middle school. Yoga helped to relieve pain. Every doctor she’d ever been to just said, "Oh, you'll grow out of it, don't worry about it." Now that she knows, she should have been under chiropractic care right away. Kids with pain become adults with pain. She had her first adjustment when she woke up with a kink in her neck one day and couldn’t move it. The chiropractor she worked for made an adjustment, and later that day, the kink was gone. Later, with X-rays, she found out that she has an extra vertebra in her lumbar spine. They had been adjusting her and making it worse because she had had this anomaly that no one had known about before. She tried a lot of different things, then once she got under upper cervical care and had her neck adjusted, her back pain went away.
CAREER JOURNEY:
After working at the chiropractic office for just a few months and volunteering in an ICU, she decided not to go to medical school but instead go to chiropractic school. She started school at Life Chiropractic College West in the Bay Area, California. There are over 200 different techniques, and they teach 12 of those there. That’s where she found upper cervical.
WHY UPPER CERVICAL AND DCCJP:
Dr. Ellis-Williams says this about upper cervical care,” There are so many different things that happen when you get your neck adjusted. Better posture, the neurology that happens, the pain receptors, there's just a myriad of things that happen in the body when we get our head on straight. Your body is so, so keen to know exactly where your head is in space. If we can make sure that that connection is happening, we can increase or decrease all of the, basically the alarm signals that are going off. When your head isn't on straight, there are alarm signals going off everywhere, and wherever is taking on stress, that area is where you're going to hurt. One analogy for that I had in chiropractic school that I really like is when you step on a cat's tail; it's not the tail that screams.”
You can find Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams, DCCJP here :
South Hill
Spokane, WA 99223
(509) 315-8166
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. What Pain In The Neck. This is the show where we're interviewing experts and friends about true and tried solutions to suffering. My very special guest today that I'm so honored to have with us today that has set aside some time out of her very busy schedule with everything she's doing. She's got a successful practice. She just got married, she's finished continuing education. She's here at the Blair Chiropractic Society Annual Convention where she's on the board, and has responsibility, super power woman.
I really am honored to say when we talk about friends and experts, you fall in both of those categories. Welcome, Dr. Bekki Williams. Why don't you start off just by introducing yourself, where you're practicing.
Okay. I'm Dr. Bekki Ellis Williams. I did just get married recently, so I'm still using the Ellis. [unintelligible 00:01:19] like, "Aren't you Ellis?" Yes. Ellis Williams.
Okay. Yes, I got that wrong.
No, that's no problem. Eventually, it'll be just Williams, but it's a transition.
I understand that.
I practice in Spokane, Washington at Clear Chiropractic. We have two locations, and right now I'm at the South Hill location, so you can find me there.
Okay. They can find you there. If somebody wants to contact you for any reason, and they're not in Spokane, how do they do that?
Yes. Through email would be a great way. dr.williams@clearcairospokane.com. Dr.williams. That's how you can reach me. Social media, I'm on there a little bit, but you might not get a response for a while. I'm not great at social media.
Okay. Beautiful. You are really good at helping people who suffer get their lives back. That's what we're here to talk about, and I'm really excited about that. Why don't you talk about your background, anything that you choose, all the way from your childhood, to any important moments, and all the way up to leading you to finding out about Blair Cervical Chiropractic?
Cool. When I was a little kid, people would say, "Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I always wanted to be a doctor. That's what I wanted to be since I was five years old. I knew that I wanted to be in healthcare.
When you say doctor, what was that like in your five-year-old brain?
Yes, in my five-year-old brain, that just meant helping people who were sick, who were suffering. I always wanted to help people. When I was in first or second grade, I got a report card back, and it said, "Bekki is a great student. She always gets her work done, but she spends too much time helping other people with their work, and doesn't get all of hers done."
Well, is that really a problem? That is the kind of people we need more of in the world.
I also wanted to be a teacher. The true definition of a doctor is to be an educator, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to educate people on how they could live a better life.
Yes. Okay. From that point, that's what you do right now? That was your up to first grade, so what's next?
Then I went to undergrad. I studied biology. At that point, I was not really sure what I wanted to do. Thought maybe dental school, optometry school, I was just looking at everything. Then when I graduated from undergrad, I decided probably now is a good time to start studying for the MCAT, so I took a year off.
What is MCAT?
That's the preparation exam to go to medical school. I was pretty well set on going to medical school, but I needed a job, because I needed to live. I found a job on Craigslist of all places, and it was to work for a chiropractor. He was looking for a front desk receptionist, so I applied for the job. He gave me a call back and said, "I hired somebody else, but I'd love to have you be a nanny for my kids." I was like, "I've never done that before. I don't know."
Did you take the job?
I took the job. I was a nanny for a chiropractor, which actually was awesome. Dr. Jason Stockton at Tacoma Family Chiropractic. It was amazing because I got to see both the at home and the office lifestyle of a chiropractor. I worked in the office two days a week, and then I spent every day with his kids too.
Okay. You said you got to see it. Can you paint a picture for our listeners?
One thing that really blew my mind was, one day one of the kids was like, "Oh, I've got like a headache or something going on." He was like eight years old. I was like, "Oh, okay, do your parents have ibuprofen in the house?" He was like, "No, what's that? Can you get me some Arnicare gel, and then we can rub it on my neck, and then we can call my dad and see if I can get in for an adjustment?" I'm like, "What?" I had never heard of such a thing, because I didn't know, and here he was eight years old and asking me for Arnicare.
He is educating you?
Yes. I learned a lot.
You learned a lot. What was your own health at that point?
My own health. I had dealt with back pain forever since I was in middle school, and it really helped a lot for me to do yoga. That was my way of helping to relieve for pain. Every doctor I'd ever been to just said, "Oh, you'll grow out of it, don't worry about it." Basically, a lot of people have been told just live with it. That's just your life.
That is really interesting, because here you are a young person with back pain, and they're saying you'll grow out of it. If you're an old person with back pain, they say, "Oh, it's just part of getting old."
Yes.
What's your perspective on that now?
Now that I know, I should have been under chiropractic care right away, or something, even if it was acupuncture, or something in my life, cranial sacral therapy, like something could have helped me. Kids with pain become adults with pain.
Yes. Pain is not normal.
No, it is not. It's your body's way of saying something's wrong.
What led you to getting help with that?
My first adjustment was actually because I woke up with a kink in my neck, so I couldn't move my neck. I was totally stuck. I called my boss, and I'm like, "I don't even know if I can drive to work."
Your boss is this chiropractor.
Is the chiropractor. Which I probably should have been under care now that I think about it.
Yes. Seriously.
"You probably should have been adjusting me all along, and I wouldn't have had the kink in the neck in the first place." I ended up going in, he adjusted my neck, and later that day, it was gone. The kink in the neck was gone, and I was back to normal, and I was amazed.
Okay. What kind of chiropractor was he?
Diversified sports medicine extremities. Very different from what I do now, but it helped me.
That's good. Yep. All chiropractic is good. One of the goals with this podcast is to educate people because, a lot of people just think chiropractic is one thing. There's actually a lot of different techniques within chiropractic. Then you have almost a general level, and then you have people who continue and become specialists. Then you have people who continue even more that are specialist specialists.
Yes. The ultra nerds.
The ultra nerds. Now, congratulations, you have joined that category.
Yes, I have. I'm happy to be here.
Yes. Our oldest sons, one of his favorite jokes. "Is there a doctor in the house? Raise your hand." "Yes, I'm here." "Nerd." Yes. Okay. That's a little sidetrack, but we got to have some fun in the podcast. Okay. You worked for him, and then while you went to school, until you went to chiropractic school?
Yep. I worked there for just under a year, and even after just a few months, I decided I didn't need to go to medical school. I'd done some volunteering ICU rounds and stuff at the hospital, and it just made me feel terrible being there. I just had this gut feeling that that's not where I was meant to be. When I found chiropractic, I just realized that this doorway had been opened to me, that it just led me to where I was supposed to go.
Okay. I want to ask you just a little bit more about your feeling when you were in the ICU, in the medical world. I just I'm assuming you're not saying that's not bad, but what was it about it that didn't agree with you?
I literally felt ill being there, which is funny.
That's interesting.
Literally I would almost faint. I would get the tunnel vision, and have to sit down, and put my head between my knees, and I don't even know what it was about it. Even now if I'm like in a scenario with people with needles or things like that, I'm like, "Hmm, nope, nope, that's just [laughs] not for me." That was a part of it. Then another part of it was I just saw after learning more about what the process was going to be if I was going to go to medical school, and what you have to do as a medical doctor, that's not the life that I wanted to live.
I don't want to work 5 days in a row, 12 or more hours at a time, just being exhausted and being tired. That is something that we need, we need medical doctors, of course, because they help us with so many problems. If you get in a car accident, you need to go, and you get a CT scan, you need to do all those things. That's just not where I was supposed to be.
Yes. I think that that's really important, and I just appreciate that so much, that you were able to listen to the signals that your body and your soul was telling you. What was that process like? Was that hard, or what can you share about that process of shifting gears, and finding your passion?
It was hard at first of like, "What's wrong with my body? Why is it failing me in the sense of like, why am I getting these feelings?" Then now that I think back on it, just like you said, it was my mind and my soul that was telling me that that wasn't the path. Then once I found chiropractic, and just realized it was so much more than what I thought it was, I was really able to just find my purpose in something of being able to help people, especially people who've tried everything. I mean, you hear it every day I'm sure in your office same thing of like, "I've been to every doctor, I've been to every specialist. I've gone to the Mayo Clinic, and no one's been able to help me, and this is my last-ditch effort." [laughs] I'm like, "Well, I'm glad we could be here."
Yes. Actually, that is my purpose in this podcast and interviewing lots of different experts. That's the expert part, the friends part is more about people that have found help, and after they thought all help was out. If you think you've tried everything, what would you say to that person that think that they've just tried everything, and they've been everywhere, and there's no help for them, what would you say to that person?
There's always something. No one has truly tried everything, so there's always something to try. One thing I tell people is, if I meet someone who I can't help, then I know a million people that I can refer them to. They probably haven't done Craniosacral therapy before. They probably haven't done biofeedback, or hypnosis, or there's so many options out there, and seeing a practitioner that recognizes when they can and can't help you is huge. Knowing someone who's in the community and knows a lot of people who's really connected, that's a great person to see.
Great. Great advice. Back to your own personal journey, so you're in chiropractic college, you've found your calling. You've had this great experience with a chiropractor who's, I mean for a simplified term, although it would be more of a generalist, was that your view of chiropractic at the time?
Yes, that was definitely my view.
You went into school expecting that?
Yes.
Where did you go to school, and tell us about the journey from entering chiropractic school to being on the other side of chiropractic school.
I started school, and I went to Life Chiropractic College West in the Bay Area in California. One really cool thing about Life West is they teach the techniques. There are over 200 different techniques in chiropractic, but they teach a series of 13 techniques. You actually go to take a class, and that class is that specific technique, and then diversified is the little bit of everything. It's diversified, it's just a little bit of taking a little bit of things from each technique. But I really am kind of a meticulous kind of person, I like to know the science, I like to know the why, I like to have a plan.
For me to go in and just try a whole bunch of things, I'm like, I want to know what's the best thing, and that's when I found upper cervical, upper cervical is very specific, very, very specific.
Okay. The word specific, someone who's never-- this is the first time they've ever heard of upper cervical. Describe it.
The way I like to describe it as an analogy would be diversified care, most chiropractors are like a shotgun approach. You shoot a lot of things at it, you might hit the right spots, you might not, you cover a lot of ground, and see what sticks. Whereas upper cervical care is more like a sniper approach, so we can see and get into exactly where is the root cause, the problem. When you pull that dandelion by the root, you know it's not coming back. Whereas if you're just cutting off the flowers, it's going to keep coming back all the time. You never really got to the root cause, and that's where upper cervical care is so different from other types of care.
That's a good picture. I think I might borrow that from now on.
[laughter]
Okay, so you find you find that you like that more because you get a plan, and at some point I assume that you try that on your own body?
Yes.
Tell us a little bit about that.
When I started going to school, of course, you get like an intern, someone, another senior student that takes you through care, and there were some adjustments that went well, some adjustments that I would be in tons of pain afterwards, and I didn't really know why.
That was a diversified approach?
Yes. That was a diversified approach. Then with the X-rays, I found out that I have an extra vertebra in my lumbar spine.
Oh wow.
They had been adjusting me and making it worse because here I had had this anomaly that no one had known about before.
Okay. I just got to stop there, and just say, personally, I would only go to a chiropractor that looks at it first, because if you feel it or you're guessing, you might miss something. Would you agree with that?
Yes, and you might make things worse. You don't know. [laughs]
Yes. If you haven't been to a chiropractor, and you're considering it, make sure at the very minimum, there's X-rays of the portion that they're adjusting. I would also say that they show it and explain it to you.
Yes, and explain it to you in a way that makes sense. Not just giving you a report and saying, "Oh, here's what's going on," but does it make sense to you, and someone who's going to take the time to answer your questions.
Yes. Make sure you understand it, because your body, you want to understand that.
Yes.
Yes. Absolutely.
Definitely. Yes. I did a lot of different types of care, tried a lot of different things, just bouncing around because I just wanted to try everything. Then once I got under upper cervical care, that's when my pain, even though they weren't adjusting the part of my spine that hurt, because it was my mid back and my lower back that primarily had pain. I didn't have neck pain or headaches, but they were adjusting my atlas, my very top vertebrae, and all of a sudden my back pain was gone.
Yes, so that's the upper neck?
Yes.
Okay. This podcast is called What Pain in The Neck? It's a wider metaphor for all kinds of suffering that's like, it's just a pain in your neck like every day, right?
Yes.
In your case, your pain in the neck was mid and lower back, and yet it was coming from the neck. Now that you are an expert in the upper neck, can you explain that?
There are so many different things that happen when you get your neck adjusted. Better posture, the neurology that happens, the pain receptors, there's just a myriad of things that happen in the body when we get your head on straight. Your body is so, so keen to knowing exactly where your head is in space. If we can make sure that that connection is happening, we can increase or decrease all of the, basically, the alarm signals that are going off. When your head isn't on straight, there are alarm signals going off everywhere, and wherever is taking on stress, that area is where you're going to hurt. One analogy for that I had in chiropractic school that I really like is when you step on a cat's tail, it's not the tail that screams.
[laughter]
It's not the problem with the cat's mouth, the problem is because you're stepping on their tail. [laughter]
Okay. Yes. Good picture.
The symptom isn't always the source of the pain, it's just the spot in your body where it's telling you something's wrong, because my head was off, it was causing me to have poor posture, because of my poor posture, I was feeling that middle back pain from slouching.
Very nice. Oh, good picture. Thank you for explaining that so well. Now, you get out of chiropractic college, and then honest to goodness, life happens and you help people.
Yes.
Okay. Do you have some stories about that, and what that's like, and do you want to share some particular stories?
Sure. One of the big reasons I wanted to help people as a kid and be a doctor was because my mom had had migraines. That was a big thing that I am very passionate about, is people who have migraines, which is perfect, because upper cervical care is one of the best things out there for migraines.
Have you been able to help your mom?
Not personally. I would visit her a couple of times, but she lives about nine hours away drive.
Have you been able to find her a good doctor?
Yes. We found her a couple of different awesome chiropractors that are in Billings, Montana, and she's been able to relieve her migraines, and she doesn't have them anymore.
That is a huge story.
Huge.
Okay. Now, back to you first, what do you see day to day?
Some chiropractic offices are called "Expect miracles" a lot of people will have that on their wall, and that is so true. We just see people all the time who've had migraines forever, then you address them one time, and they're gone. It's not, of course, for every person where it goes away instantaneously, but there are times where that happens, and those are always so touching.
[crosstalk] Those are the best. In my case, it wasn't migraines, per se. My story was, I had crushing, debilitating headaches. I was just in a room-- sometimes I could hardly ever even remember to speak a whole sentence because mid-sentence, I forgot what I was going to say, it hurt so bad. I had been 22 years like that. It wasn't that severe the whole 22 years but I had a, like some people say, they get headaches. But I just had a 22-year headache that just never went away. It varied in intensity.
In my case, the minute I got my adjustment, the whole problem didn't disappear immediately, but I felt different immediately. For the first time in my life, I slept through the night, and a healing process started. I feel like probably more often than the instantaneous migraines go away. Would you say is that what you see before you go?
For sure, people get help. They're like, "Wow, I don't know how to explain it, but I just feel different. My head is sitting on my body differently." That's when they get help. Like, "Wow, this is the first time something has felt like it's addressing," even before they get an adjustment, and you're just explaining what you found on their images, and going through the report, and it's like, "Finally, someone can explain why I'm having this problem. Every doctor I've been to tells me there's nothing wrong with me, then now here you found something." That alone is huge. Just to know that there is hope.
That's true. There's hope. Then, actually, that hope becomes reality.
Yes. That's the best.
You said, when you look at the images. Can you talk a little bit more about the images?
We take very specific X-rays. In my office, we do use X-rays. We have the other location. We do take a CBCT. The cone beam is basically like taking a whole bunch of X-rays all at once. The X-ray series we use is to see exactly how your head is sitting on your body, and if it's in the wrong place, then we know exactly how to move that top neck bone in order to get it into the right place. The X-rays are really our blueprint of knowing where we're going, and what we're doing. What's going on on the inside, because you can't feel it from the outside.
Yes. Good point. Here you are, our listeners can't see you, but you are young, and you've achieved your dream of helping people. Yet you chose to do more. The reason I know you is because you were in this Diplomate program with my husband. Why don't you describe what that is? What is a Diplomate, and what's involved, and what did it take for you to do it, and why did you do it?
I decided to do the Diplomate because I knew that it was going to be able to teach me how to be even better. I am a perfectionist, I want to be able to do everything perfectly right. I want to know the best way that I can help people, and I knew that doing this further education was going to help me along that process. The Diploma is called the DCCJP. Diplomate of Chiropractic Cranial Cervical Junction Procedures. Basically, we're looking at the upper neck. We spend three years, over 300 hours focusing in on the neurology, anatomy, physiology of the junction between the base of your head and your second neck bone.
It's a lot of time spent on one really small area, because a lot is happening in that area. The Diplomate program is an intensive three years, but it's been totally worth it. I've achieved so much more knowledge, and being able to have more confidence, and knowing that I can help people. One big thing that I've taken away from it is, we know that these miracles happen, but now I know why. I can actually explain it to someone.
If you really want to know why your low back pain is gone because of a neck adjustment. It's like, I can go through the series of neurology to explain exactly why that is. Most people would never want to know, because that's really too much. It's pretty amazing to be able to know the exact pathways from your brain that are making that process happen.
If I'm a person, let's use migraines, or with headaches, that was my situation. Why would I care about what your credentials are? How are you different from, say, where you started going to a diversified chiropractor? That diversified chiropractor helped you with your back pain. Why would I need you? Why would it be important to consider finding a specialist?
The way that I first learned about upper cervical care in chiropractic school is people said, "Oh, well, if you someone who's really, really sick. Who's like, your mom has cancer, or something really big is going on. A huge health care crisis. That's someone that you would refer to an upper cervical care provider." Like, "Then, why wouldn't you just send everyone there? Why would you wait all this time until they're really sick to get help?" Seeing an Upper Cervical specialist right away, if you're going to try chiropractic, that's a great place to start, but maybe you've seen other chiropractors before, and they've made it feel worse, or you don't feel better.
If you have a problem with your teeth, and you don't like your dentist, you're not going to just give up on teeth care for the rest of your life, right? You're going to find a new dentist. That's the beautiful thing about chiropractic, is that there are so many different types of chiropractors that if you see someone, and maybe it's not a great fit, that's totally fine. They want you to get better. If there's one thing that all chiropractors have in common is that we want our patients to feel better. If someone else is going to help them better, then I know that they're going to want that too.
To know the difference between the chiropractic, some people do better with diversified, and that's fine too. For me, I know that I do the best, and especially people who have chronic or neurological things, really intense, or they just don't want to be popped, that's a great person to see an upper cervical specialist.
Good advice. Thank you. What motivates you to go work hard, and get up every day, and just continue to be better and help more people?
My motivation, I don't know. I enjoy it. I love helping people. That's always been who I am. I get joy from being able to help someone else. It's just a beautiful thing to be able to just hear even a grandma say, "I was able to play on the floor with my little grandson who's three years old for the first time because I was able to move," or, "I was able to turn my head and check for my blind spot while I'm driving."
That's a big one. We hear that all the time.
That's a huge one. For me, it's just something I love.
I'm so glad that you're doing what you're doing, and that you found your passion. Truly, with your point of view like that, you're the type of doctor that I personally would trust. We're going to bring this episode to a close. I would like to ask you, do you have a favorite quote, or a life verse that motivates you and keeps you going? That you come back to over and over?
Not necessarily something in particular, but I do love listening to podcasts, and motivational speakers. One thing that I find that's similar that I love to do is doing a gratitude practice. At the end of every day, my husband and I, I right before we're going to go to sleep, we each say three things that we're grateful for. Even if it's something small, like, "I'm grateful that you made breakfast this morning." Or something like that, or something big. Just being grateful for the little things.
Yes. That's beautiful. Before we wrap up, is there something that you would like to say that we haven't covered, or I haven't thought to ask you?
I don't think so. I think we covered it all.
Thank you so much for your time today. The goal of this podcast is, if we can help one person, then is all worth it. I think that someone listening to you today, that hope that you see over and over, that at least you've given one person hope. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.