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

Hi Dr. Christopher, thanks for joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

I played college football as a smaller, 180 pound middle linebacker. Most people at this position are 220-250 pounds. I then played rugby. These sports injured my body and caused mild chronic pain. By the time I got to chiropractic school, adjustments weren’t helping me and I was considering quitting chiropractic school. I got lucky and caught a lecture by Dr. William Brady. He said, “You’re being taught you can help everyone with chiropractic adjustments, right? I don’t believe that. But I believe you can help some people, those in chronic pain, better than anyone else is helping them by diagnosing and treating this secret problem called adhesions.” And I was hooked. They helped me and I decided to focus on helping chronic pain sufferers.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I struggled with depression all of my life. Had a lot of suicidal ideation in my teens. I suffered a lot. Because of this suffering, it’s been a mission of mine to help other people suffer less. With 78 million Americans suffering in chronic pain, I saw an opportunity to help chronic pain sufferers who are 30-60 years old, who have had pain over 6 months and seen at least 3 doctors or therapists without relief finally get permanent pain relief without surgery or pain medications. This is how I help people suffer less.

Adhesion is the most common cause of chronic pain that almost no doctors or therapists are talking about. I started my clinic, Barefoot Rehab, in Denville, NJ in 2010. We have patients who fly across North America and even from Europe to see us. I started training other non-surgical pain doctors and therapists how to fix chronic pain in January, 2023, as I founded Adhesion Release Methods. We currently have 35 providers across the world as far away as United Kingdom and Australia.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

95% of all humans seem happy being complacent with their skills, vocation, work, or hobbies. Only 5% wants to be excellent, world-class, and master their skillset.

Healthcare, and chronic pain healthcare in particular, is hard. If it weren’t hard, there would be way less people in chronic pain. Sufferers deserves the top 5% of pain doctors and therapists.

Cultivating the soft skills of hard work, mental resilience, critical thinking, open-heartedness, and enormous empathy are invaluable to creating a world-class skillset, practice, and life for the non-surgical pain doctor or therapist who is committed to living their best life.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a chiropractor, the adjustment is king. We’re taught that we can fix anything and everything with adjustments when you free up the nerves. Since most of us were young and hadn’t lived enough decades to have significant chronic pains ourselves, it was easy for all of us to enjoy the release of a pop and think that we could serve the world in that way. But with alot of awareness around how the world was already playing in the chiropractic market (only about 3-10% of the population sees chiropractors), it became obvious that the model was broken.

That’s why I’m so grateful that I learned about the diagnosis and treatment of adhesions.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.barefootrehab.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/barefootrehab/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barefootrehabclinic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchrisstepien/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@drchrisstepienclips/videos
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@barefootrehab