We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. David Berv a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. David Berv, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

As a sports chiropractor with a specialty in golf performance, I spent my entire career helping people manage pain and perform better. Over a decade deep into practice I suffered a spinal injury that made me alter the way in which I practiced and played. One weekend after a very busy and particularly painful week I attended a food festival. Within the hours of being there, I experienced gradual and progressive numbness beginning with both feet and moving up my legs. The ensuing days and weeks brought with it a total body numbness, both front and back, from nipples to toes. This led to a slew of medical testing and a resultant diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The months that followed began a new defining period in my career which can be entitled “life is short, enjoy it while and as you can.” The physical, mental and emotional upheaval of this time period changed my life, my career and my direction forever, punctuated by a constant search for joy, a constant effort to partake in activities that manage stress and a structured existence that focuses on work/play balance.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I am a “50 something” recently retired chiropractic sports physician and acupuncture diplomate, presently acting as the chief experience officer for a floatation tank center in central Virginia. I became interested in the chiropractic industry after a car accident in Boston in the late 80’s brought me to a chiropractor for my pain. At the time, I had graduated from college a year prior and had little vision about my next steps.

At the very beginning of my college years, I started seeing an acupuncturist.
Through this healing influence I was introduced to internal martial arts such as T’ai Chi and Chi Kung. I spent a considerable amount of extracurricular time studying martial arts for all 4 college years. Also while in college, I attained a certification in a form of energy work called Polarity Therapy which was reminiscent of my childhood years where my mom introduced me to other types of healing arts, energy work, crystals, color healing and meditation, and more. The thought of being an “alternative medical doctor” was appealing. It gave me hope and vision.

I chose beautiful Portland, Oregon to get my doctorate in chiropractic, where I was able to play outdoors as much as possible for the four years of chiropractic school plus and additional year to become certified as a chiropractic sports physician. Throughout my westernized medical training in chiropractic, I have always carried within me, the passion for an integration of alternative medicine – which differentiated me from others and inspired the interdisciplinary practice I created.

My wife and I moved across the country to start my practice – a cooperative health care clinic with chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, exercise rehab, functional medicine, nutrition, pilates and yoga. At the time, I was an alternative medicine pioneer in my medically based community. I was also all about a combo approach to health care and always maintained a lookout on behalf of my patients, for other helpful practitioners, treatments and modalities in the community.

I was in practice for over 20 years and was well known for treating high level athletes and for fostering positive outcomes with complex musculoskeletal cases that were unresponsive to other therapies. Along the way, I attained some additional specialty certifications in golf fitness/performance, acupuncture and asian healing arts. However, over the past 7 years, I have practiced alternative medicine in the form of being the “chief experience officer” for a floatation center in Richmond, VA., which has enabled me to see a much wider cross section of the community than in musculoskeletal medicine.

Working as the operator of a float center has given me insight into the powerful and positive brain hacking effects of float therapy. These effects I have experienced first hand, being a frequent floater, to manage the crippling mind and body effects of Multiple Sclerosis, which graced my presence 9 years ago. My relationship with MS and how it has impacted my life is either in the background or the foreground of every waking moment. As a result, I live with intention and purpose in all that I do, see, touch and feel.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Just as Tiger Woods was coming on the national scene at the end of the 1990’s, I was practicing sports chiropractic with a niche specialty in golf. At this time, golf fitness was in its infancy. I was a pioneer, who established a golf performance company that not only produced a customized golf performance software program, but a national teaching and training program for chiropractors and physical therapists to integrate golf performance into their clinic. I built out a section of my commercial building to accommodate for an indoor hitting bay with motion analysis and a functional evaluation area. I worked with a number of PGA and LPGA touring pros, including working in other states with golf touring pros at Champions Tour events. I became a golf teaching professional, integrating my knowledge of swing mechanics and body mechanics, who was frequently featured in golf magazines. There was nobody in the entire state that was doing the type of work I was doing and it was very satisfying. I took a 2 year sabbatical from clinical practice to develop all the teaching and training programs, while also doing diligence to keep aware of competition. However, in the 11th hour of unveiling my national program, I was blindsided by a large corporate golf giant, who basically had created an identical golf analysis system and customized golf specific exercise prescription approach as I had done, including elements of my proprietary software. I had options at that point, but for many reasons that are beyond this read, I chose to pivot and shift direction where I brought everything in house and established a modest local golf performance program.

Shortly after this career pivot, I began to experience low back pain that grew to be incapacitating and sought many options to avoid surgery. My back got to the point where I didn’t think I could practice Chiropractic anymore. So I pivoted again and went back for more schooling to practice acupuncture and began to integrate acupuncture, asian healing arts, chiropractic and sport-specific, customized exercise plans. Only a few years into practicing in this way, I suffered another health issue, where I noticed an intolerance to heat and along with this, crippling fatigue and a host of other aches and pains. It got much worse over time.

In 2013, at the height of my career with several specialties and also being the clinical director of an interdisciplinary health care center, I collapsed with my first Multiple Sclerosis attack. This changed everything and was the catalyst for an even more significant career and life pivot. Coincident with my MS episode, I discovered float tanks while traveling to visit family. I had climbed into a float tank in hopes of helping my pain, fatigue and numbness. I emerged from the experience feeling completely different in both body and mind. I observed my immediate and positive reaction both from the lens of a musculoskeletal specialist and as a patient. It was clear to me after emerging from my float tank experience, that floating was a profound and potent way to impact the nervous system and to help with both physical and emotional states. It also became clear that I needed to make a change in my life, both because of stress and my physical condition that made it hard to practice with focus and strength.

I got a float tank for my home and floated most every day for a year while my world was upside down from Multiple Sclerosis. The frequent floating and the act of mindfulness while floating effortlessly atop 10” of skin temperature water saturated with 1000 pounds of Epsom salt, resulted in experiencing the epiphany that I can no longer practice in a clinical setting seeing patients and that I can no longer operate the clinic I had been directing for almost 20 years. I made a gradual (and mentally/emotionally difficult) transition over the course of a couple years as I built out and opened a commercial float center, while I weaned off my patient load. The day to day at the float center was less stressful and a totally different interaction with patrons.

With my somewhat abrupt departure from a well established career, I still had a deep desire to use my clinical skills. Coupled with the fact that the float industry had very little published and available research about benefits for various conditions, I gave myself purpose, by designing and writing clinical case studies. Within 4 years, I had completed over a dozen clinical studies on floating, which has benefitted the industry at large. I routinely have people from all over the globe contacting me to discuss my studies. As time has passed, my burning desire to be in clinical practice has waned and I have enjoyed the shift, retooling my skills and still helping others, while concurrently taking the time and doing the work to heal myself from the effects of Multiple Sclerosis and chronic pain.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2008, after about a dozen years into a specialized musculoskeletal career as a sports chiropractor, I ironically began to get incapacitating low back pain. My X-rays and MRI’s indicated surgical necessity. I asked the surgeon for some time. I stepped up my rehab game and really worked on practicing what I was preaching. Despite doing this, I still needed some intervention and had several injections and even had some of my nerves “burned” with radio waves. This intervention left me with some other physical deficits and gave me even more pause as to eventually having surgery. So I kept plugging away at my self prescribed home care, got stronger and stronger with less pain episodes and I was able to avoid going under the knife. I got so strong that I was able to get my certificate as a golf teaching professional and was able to both play and teach golf performance.

At this time, my back pain then shifted to my mid back, and I began to notice other constitutional health issues like fatigue, heat intolerance and general malaise. This led me to scale back with my patient schedule while I got my acupuncture certification so I could practice in a less physically strenuous way.

My work evolved to be both challenging and enjoyable, yet left me completely wiped out at the end of the day and week. This pattern kept up until 2013 when I was taken to my knees by multiple sclerosis. This changed my world overnight. I had initially gone to an orthopedic surgeon, who said that I needed surgery on my mid back, at the site of a disc herniation and he thought that it was what was causing the numbness in my torso and lower body. I said no to surgery, we looked elsewhere with MRI and found lesions in my spine and brain. Good thing I didn’t have surgery.

After I went through a few weeks of intravenous steroids, still in a state of shock, I sat in front of the neurologist. He asked “which one of these medications do you want to take?” pushing a pile of big pharma literature at me. I asked him, “which one would you take?”. As he averted his eyes and did not directly answer me, I decided I was not going to take MS medication. Rather, I was going to do the work and heal myself naturally. This led to me getting a float tank for my home, which led me to make an eventual career change, after several years of keeping my multiple sclerosis a secret from my staff, patients and friends.

During this time, as I was transitioning from my twenty year career in medicine and golf performance, I began to notice a different pain, this time in my neck. MRI’s clearly showed a surgical situation, with severe degeneration and disc herniations in many regions of the cervical spine.

I sat in front of a different neurosurgeon than the one for my MS, and he said that surgery was the only option. I got a second opinion and the second surgeon concurred. I said to both of them, “ but won’t I likely have to come back a second or third time due to the nature of the condition, and won’t my chances of healing be diminished because of my MS”? The answer to both questions, from both surgeons was “yes”, to which decided I would not be getting surgery.

The decision to not have surgery has led to the practice of living with a constant consciousness and modification with the activities in which I participate. Whether yoga, floating, functional medicine, breathwork or exercise, I have found a way to navigate through life with positive intention, the pursuit of joy and many days with minimal to no pain. Pain and dysfunction do still continue to happen routinely due to my overall condition. But it only makes me more aware, more diligent with self-care and allows me to enjoy the good days even that much more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.myfloatzone.com
• Instagram: @myfloatzone
• Facebook: @thefloatzone
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdavidberv/

Image Credits
For the 2 photos of me floating in the float tank, credit goes to John Kramer