In my first virtual podcast, I meet with Dr. David Woodward, DPT of Na’au Pono Physical Therapy in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I first met David at a biohacking conference years ago where, during a stunt you’ll have to hear to believe, he and his wife both injured themselves. But if you’re going to heal, adapt, and grow faster than you ever thought possible, what better place than in a room full of biohackers?
Listen in as David talks about how the Neubie moved the needle for him in his and his wife’s own recovery, how he came to purchase a Neubie for his own practice, and the amazing outcomes he’s received from it so far.
[Garrett salpeter] 0:11
I’m Garrett salpeter. And I believe that the most powerful and transformative way to help people recover from pain and injury, heal from trauma and reach their highest levels of fitness and performance is to focus on the nervous system. In this podcast, we’ll share knowledge from the frontiers of neuroscience and inspirational stories of how applying that knowledge has empowered people from all walks of life to heal, adapt and grow. All right, I’m here with David Woodward from now pono physical therapy in Honolulu, Hawaii, also known as the power of now.
[Dr. David Woodward] 0:48
Trademark. Aloha. Good morning.
[Garrett salpeter] 0:55
Thank you so much for being here. I’m excited to get this opportunity to catch up with you. And grateful to you for being the first physical therapist, the first practice in all of Hawaii to have new fit to offer new fit on the islands. So thank you. Well,
[Dr. David Woodward] 1:12
Marlo,
[Garrett salpeter] 1:15
Can you please tell us so everyone who’s listening can get to know you a little bit. Tell us your history as a physical therapist and your clinic and everything you had been doing? Even before we met?
[Dr. David Woodward] 1:29
Okay, so yeah, I’ve been a physical therapist since 2009. And I worked from there until about out for different practice until 2015, and decided to open up my own practice. And my vision for opening up practice was to provide something that was more in alignment with what I wanted to do.
[Dr. David Woodward] 2:02
And, you know, I felt as a physical therapist, I was able to do kind of a tremendous a lot with skilled manual therapy from the North American Institute of manual therapy and fortunate to learn under the private practice that I was working on there. And I wanted to add more to it to some of the stuff that interested me from podcast that just came out at that time.
[Dr. David Woodward] 2:26
Bulletproof Radio, and a lot of the bio hacking stuff started from there. And I came back from home for college back in 2000. Back so I’ve been quite a dork in that in that remark. But I wanted to use the utilise that to create an overall wellness type of approach versus, you know, yeah, we have this good manual therapy things we add movement that is meaningful for patients, but I want it to to provide more, I knew there was more to create the efficiency with how to heal people. So that’s what I did. And I was able to acquire all kinds of amazing bio hacking equipment just from attending the conference. And I mean, I know there’s been for seven years, but I’ve only been to four of them, I believe, for the past four, since they changed the name as well. So
[Garrett salpeter] 3:30
So for everyone who who’s listening, if you’re not familiar, this is the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference now called the upgrade labs conference. So Dave Asprey and started bulletproof coffee and the bulletproof brand of all different sorts of products now, has this wonderful conference every year or not this year with Coronavirus, but every year for the last six or seven years, and you know, there’s wonderful speakers and technologies and different equipment and all these really cool things. So just to give a little context for everybody. Yeah,
[Dr. David Woodward] 4:08
No, thank you for that. So, yeah, so since then, as a PT, I’ve been able to combine this type of approach and you know, with all these different types of biohacking equipment as well as you know, within my physical therapy room and wellness programme, but we’ve been able to contact this type of approach also with in aesthetics, which is what my wife does with us here at no point. All
[Garrett salpeter] 4:41
Right. Yeah. So you’ve got a physical therapy practice you’ve got your wife is an esthetician, a couple others on this on the team as well and we’ve got to blend in physical therapy, biohacking, wellness, aesthetics, a lot of stuff going on there what but you know, again, but Before we met, what were some of the technologies or I know, you mentioned manual therapy techniques, what were some of the things that moved the needle the most for you.
[Dr. David Woodward] 5:10
So getting back to what you’re mentioning about the technologies, the first one I actually acquired was a vibration plate. And I just thought it was like the neatest experience that I’ve had the first year I went to the conference, so I ended up getting one. And then a lot of people responded, just from simple vertical vibration. You know, people were hooked. They were like, oh, my gosh, what is this? You know, in Hawaii, these kinds of things aren’t very common. Right. And when people see things that are new and interesting, you know, it piques their interest. And especially, I’m known as the physical therapist throughout all the doctors as well, he just does things differently. Right? Or, if they’re having a hard time with figuring out what to do with this patient, I’ll just send them to us. Because he said for some reason, some of the stuff he uses works.
[Dr. David Woodward] 6:07
And that was with just and that was just with the vibe late in the beginning. I was like, what? So I thought why do I stop there? I mean, let’s let’s invest, let’s take a look at some things that we want to invest in that help to address not just pain and nutrition, but like how can we become more resilient? If that was our overall goal, right? How do you create the most resilient human being? So after that, we acquired the Nano v. And the Nano V became, you know, very essential for us. I mean, we’ve been doing it daily, every day. And now he is what helps to basically deliver the fourth phase of water into your system.
[Dr. David Woodward] 6:07
And through a mist, which is pretty amazing, actually. It’s hard to explain. To experience it is something but what it does is that it helps your proteins to fold more consistently so that you’re able to repair on a cellular level consistently right and more efficiently. So we have this, you know, in combination with our wellness programme, but also some patients that choose to our clients to want to come in and do it, whether it be through PT, or even aesthetics with my wife. They see dramatic changes in their skin, in their gut function in their in their recovery. And so that was a life changer in the beginning.
[Dr. David Woodward] 6:07
After that, we acquired a couple of other bio hacking things such as the x 3x three bar I think you know if you’ve heard of it before, Dr. Jake wish and vanquish Dr. Vanquish amazing biomedical engineer. And then, after we acquired that we had we hooked up with light stem, which does red light. And because we were always interested in using red light, we wanted something that could be applicable to a lot of our patients and clients alike. So we invested in selling these pain belts that they used, which are pretty neat. I just happen to have it right here. I don’t carry it with me everywhere. But bed light and tent was starting to become very useful here between me and my wife. She uses a different type of red light stem for her clients, of course, rather than one for pain, but after the red light. That’s when I decided to give a call over to Garrett to you about the newbie because of an experience. Yeah, let’s
[Garrett salpeter] 9:03
Talk about that. So first of all, thank you for sharing that. I think these could be excellent topics. Maybe we’ll do a part two. Hopefully you can join us here and better. I’ll be there in Hawaii. Oh yeah, we can do a part two and dive into some because there’s really interesting, interesting science and really interesting stories behind vibration. Exclusion Zone water or you know, fourth phase of water mandovi.
[Garrett salpeter] 9:29
Like you talked about red light, there’s a lot on red light. And all of these are certainly very complimentary with the newbie and the work, we’re doing a new fit, and they fit well within the all the concepts and everything that we’re doing. So that’s good. And then yes, so in this very technologically advanced syllabi that you have there. Yeah, this could be definitely some synergy there. Can you just share with everyone that story of how we met at funnily enough, we have to go through something.
[Dr. David Woodward] 10:01
Yeah. So this this recently happened, like, as I was mentioning, just after I got the x three, actually before the lights dim. And so we went to I went to the conference, or actually, I’m sorry, my whole family went to the conference. Yeah. And this was the last one that they had in, in Beverly Hills.
[Dr. David Woodward] 10:24
And so make a long story short, there was an event that required a lot of risk. And when it comes to risk, me and my wife, we don’t turn back, you know, we all look back, we just take it straight on. And actually, it took a lot for me to get to that point, you know, but nowadays, I’m just going head on. And that’s literally what we did. My wife jumped off, the event was jumping off about 25 feet or so on to a stunt back. If people don’t know what that is, what a lot of stunt people jump into a whole bunch of air in it.
[Dr. David Woodward] 11:03
And it’s supposed to cushion you. I don’t know what the factors were. But I just don’t think that, you know, at that moment, you know, there was probably wasn’t enough air or whatever factors they were, but my wife jumped first. And she injured her, her neck, kind of abruptly, similar to a whiplash type, and reactivated her. Her back pain and pelvic pain that we worked were working hard on from before I jumped after her onto the stunt bag. And immediately as I jumped, after I hit the bag, I coiled and my back just gave, and I felt like all the air out of my body just left. It was it was pretty impactful.
[Dr. David Woodward] 11:59
I mean, in more than one way, obviously. But it was it was terrible. And I was so upset at that moment, I didn’t refuse to help from anybody. I just, I just was upset on so many different levels. And I went home for actually, I’m sorry, we were helped by a number of, you know, medical professionals that were there where I was good friends of mine, and had a friend that took me to his clinic, had some different types of therapy, will use of different machinery, the same stuff that was at the conference, actually, this guy had at his place too. And it helped me quite an amount. That night, I slept better than I hoped.
[Dr. David Woodward] 12:44
But my back was very, very stiff and sore. I couldn’t bend down very much, you know, just to lift the toilet seat. You know. And so it was hard because I had my kids there with me too. You know, and my wife and my, my grant, my mom and dad, the grandparents, they were helping out to watch the kids while we were at the conference. And I felt really bad. So, I mean, Dara had a discussion, where should we go or not? I was like, no, let’s go. Because this is the place that we got to do it at everything that we could get to get better. So we went there and I went to the Nano V station because we were looking for something that could help me at the moment. And we did red light in the beginning.
[Dr. David Woodward] 13:30
But we walked around and I saw Rowena from EMG or nano V. Yeah, from the NG three. She, she’s like, what happened? Are you okay? I said no. And this is what happened blah, blah, blah, you know, hurt my back really bad and are hurt her neck really bad. And he said, oh, you guys see Garrett. Garrett is amazing. My hip was so sore. Now look at me, only look great. I said yeah, you know, so she told me go check him out right now. So I went you know, I thought of other things in the beginning, mainly because I did have some biases against electrical stem. Because I had electrical stem on myself, you know, I have it at my clinic. So I was thinking, why would I even need it? I already know what it’s about.
[Dr. David Woodward] 14:21
So when I finally made my way over there, you know, in my most down time, right in my most debilitated state at that moment. It was amazing. You took me in like, without even, you know, he didn’t even look anywhere else. You looked right at me. I remember and you’re like, just come on in. I’m like, oh, okay. And you went right away into the assessment. I you know, and that action alone, you know, met a lot, you know, for me and my wife. The fact that you, you know you put me in front of everybody else at that moment because you saw me I really hurt. And
[Garrett salpeter] 15:02
it was, it was painful to look at. It was it was bad.
[Dr. David Woodward] 15:07
But it was great because from there on, I’m a very tactile person, I learned so much in that moment. Because I had nothing. You know, I was thinking in my head trying to self-diagnose myself, I was like, I hope I don’t have a fracture. You know, I don’t want to go to the doctor, I refuse treatment. And when he took me in, I was just open. I was like, Listen, man, I’m open to whatever.
[Dr. David Woodward] 15:32
And you did the assessment on me. You went through some, just the forward bending, getting back that forward bending the first time was eye opening. For me, I was like, this is nothing that I’ve, like I’ve experienced ever in my life, you know. And I had a whole new look on electrical stimulation, because I wanted to know why. Why was this about? You know, why this helping in other words, and, yeah was, that’s when I got to schedule later on. Fast forward, you know, with you in Austin and acquire my own newbie.
Ad Break 16:06
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[Garrett salpeter] 16:41
And, you know, I really liked that. One, I liked the story, thank you for sharing and being open enough to try something new. And especially when you I mean, everyone who’s been around and has as much experience as you in the PT field, typically does have some biases around electrical stimulation, and sees that it sees it as either not working very much at all, or only within a very tight constraint for very particular very specific indications. None of which would really make a difference, you know, in the traditional mind-set, in your case, after a traumatic injury like that yet, in 15 to 20 minutes, you know, we had, we made a pretty significant impact.
[Garrett salpeter] 17:23
And I think that’s one of the cool things is that it shows, I mean, events like that, it just shows how powerful the process is, because it works so quickly. We have people, you know, 510 15 minutes, every, every 510 or 15 minutes will come to the booth and they’ll have Hey, I got this, I got this pain in my foot, I got this pain in my back, I got this pain in my elbow, my knees been hurting me for years.
[Garrett salpeter] 17:45
And it will make progress time after time, after time after time. And I think it just speaks to that, the importance of the nervous system and something that that I’m sure I’ll be saying a lot over these podcasts, kind of the central theme of the new fit method, which is that so many times it’s not necessarily about what happens to us, it’s not necessarily about anything being damaged or broken.
[Garrett salpeter] 18:11
But it’s about how we respond to that trauma or injury, and the neurological guarding and protection, and how that actually, in that guarding state, the state where the nervous system is perceiving threat, that’s what triggers pain. That’s where the body limits itself where the nervous system and brain limit the output of the body get you stuck in that hunched over state where your range of motion is super limited, you’re in that, you know hobbling around, lower back pain, you know, quote unquote, through my background kind of situation. And by very quickly identifying exactly where those protective patterns are, and then resetting them, you were able to have that breakthrough very quickly. And I mean, as much as we don’t want that to happen in the first place. It kind of was we talked about, it’s kind of serendipitous timing for you to get into. But yeah, it’s it.
[Dr. David Woodward] 19:02
You know, and you know, me and my wife joke about this a lot. But I feel like that incident was a blessing. Because we were able to actually experience what actually works and what doesn’t, you know, in the most acute situation. Yeah. And yeah, there are things that made a difference in decreasing inflammation. But, I mean, how much it changed our understanding or connection to that pain. It just meant so much at that moment between both me and my wife, like my wife was in tears, man, like, right there. I mean, you she will tell you and yeah, and I truly believe in it that it helped with this whole healing process. For my back end for my wife’s neck. And pelvic pain, too. That was an amazing thing. That helped with that. Yeah.
[Garrett salpeter] 19:54
Yeah. And that had been something that even you kind of re aggravated, but she had been dealing with already right for a while.
[Dr. David Woodward] 20:00
It. Yeah, it was after our second daughter, our second kid, we only have two. But she heard her back around that period of time from giving birth, but also an incident that happened while she was trying to give our son a bath. That she hurt her tailbone. And so very chronic nerve pain on the anterior surface of the sacrum of the of the back, and very difficult area to get.
[Dr. David Woodward] 20:31
And I tried ultrasound, ultrasound was probably one of the closest that was working. But since we use the newbie with it, she’s almost down to nothing, which is like, she never thought would happen. I mean, we’ve done acupuncture, too, and acupuncture has helped dramatically, but when, you know, the, what I am interested in with this newbie to and was that we could do movement with electrical stimulation, right? And it becomes much more meaningful, right? We in re-educating the nervous system. And that’s what it helped with her at that moment was, okay, how can I move through these different patterns, and experience that specific range of motion without pain? And that’s, that’s moved the needle, not just me and Dara, but all my patients to thank you.
[Garrett salpeter] 21:21
Awesome. Well, you’re welcome. And thank you. And let’s say a little bit now. So So we met at the conference, the spring of 2019, and then communicated a few times, and then got you back over to the mainland to come to our open December at the end of 2019.
[Garrett salpeter] 21:41
And now, you know, it’s late summer, early fall 2020. So you’ve been using it for eight months or so. Can you talk a little bit about how it’s impacted your practice, you know, both specifically in terms of outcomes that you’ve seen, and, and also, conceptually, in terms of how you’ve seen it work with the more sophisticated manual therapy techniques and other strategies and kind of how it fits within your, within your practice. So I guess that’s two questions in one, but
[Dr. David Woodward] 22:17
Okay, I’ll start with the one I’m most familiar with in in regards to the manual therapy part. So now what we learned within the North American Institute of manual therapy, we learned different types of mobilizations, you know, under rigorous amount of assessment. So majority of what we do in the beginning of our sessions with patients in the initial part is assessment. And treatment is rather quick, can be rather quick, mainly because we have the ability to do joint specific type of mobilizations or manipulations if we see such, you know, and if we have the confidence for it. And so the most important part is not just the manipulation and assessment, from what I’ve learned with them, it’s also the motor control, like how does the nervous system, learn how to stabilise that newly acquired or restored position, right of the joint.
[Dr. David Woodward] 23:16
And so, we do muscle energy, type of techniques, contract, relaxed type of techniques in other words that helped to stimulate those type of nerve fibres and nerve activity to stabilise right, those neuromuscular systems. What’s interesting is that what I was able to do was, what this is what caught my eye, when you mentioned how it re-educate, and I was like, how, right and then when I learned more about it at Austin Austin, in in the class with you, you know, you go into the actual detail of it within the class. And it just like light bulbs went off, you know, I mean, they were exploding. It’s like, oh, my gosh, why am I not doing this?
[Dr. David Woodward] 24:02
Right? So if this is true, and that is true, then you know, we could get patients better and much more efficiently. Right? Get a crack this out in a matter of a couple of weeks, then they can, most of them, most of my patients want to go from rehab, right to wellness. Right? And so, I mean, if we could get patients better quicker than we could really focus on the patterns that can ensure there, you know, their what do you call it, their success?
[Dr. David Woodward] 24:32
And so, that’s what I’ve been doing is utilising these skilled manual therapy techniques, with after assessment, especially, and after we do some type of manual and even in combination with doing those. What do you call those motor control or those muscle energy techniques? I’ve used the pads at the same time, it’s even better And it was interesting, because some of the podcasts before, that I’ve heard from your career podcast was people using it with, you know, with Graston type of techniques, or, you know, a stem, or the Chinese call the guasha. Right? Scraping. And we were all on the same page with that we were all doing the same thing, which is so funny, you know, and using the gloves, right. But that’s how I was doing the RE education for like the neck and stuff, I was using the gloves.
[Dr. David Woodward] 25:33
And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is like amazing stuff. Could use it all the time, you know. And we’ve been getting patients better. One, one story that I was mentioning earlier was about this woman that had two knee replacements. And she had a previous replacement, maybe about 10 years before her second one.
[Dr. David Woodward] 25:55
But what was interesting to me to hear from her was that, you know, we had a red light on her, you know, as she was getting, as she was working through, through the exercises that was doing with her and helping her decrease inflammation and pain. We were using the regular Russian stem, because that’s what we had. And I told her Oh, just wait, I’m going to Austin, December, you’re going to be blown away, because I shared her with my experience, right? I was like, oh, my gosh, I’m wondering, what is it going to do for you, and she’s like, oh, my gosh, I can’t wait. And so after I came back from Austin, you know, with this newbie, she was my first patient. She was the first one in line ready, ready to go. And consistently, you know, through the manual therapy techniques, but also just keeping that that knee
[Dr. David Woodward] 26:48
Stimulated in the sense with the newbie, and working out the other working parts within her spine, and pelvis, using not just the manual therapy techniques, but the newbie to give consistent, you know, feedback on what the tone is, like there. So we could change it, that we could start re-educating. And she said, I’ve seen so much more results in two weeks than I did, you know, with, you know, a month and a half after my operation. And she’s like, No offence. Like, yeah, it’s definitely the newbie has nothing to do with this stuff.
[Dr. David Woodward] 27:30
But it was it was life changing for her, you know, and her daughter, she didn’t even know she was in pain, she wasn’t in pain anymore until her daughter asked her the question. Are you in pain mom? She’s like, Oh, you know what? I don’t think so. I didn’t even think about it. And, and she shared that with me and one of the visits. And, you know, it was it was profound for her, it was life changing. And I could share that too. I knew how life changing things can be through this experience with the newbie, at least. So
[Garrett salpeter] 28:03
Awesome. Well,
[Garrett salpeter] 28:05
Thank you so much for sharing that. And I love working with therapists like you who are I mean, obviously very experienced, very knowledgeable. Nothing that we’re doing is going to replace, you know, your skills and your knowledge and your experience.
[Garrett salpeter] 28:21
What it can do, though, I think we’re seeing is that it can kind of, you know, supercharge it or give it that give it that boost and, and help provide the tool that can get you to those the same goal, we’re working towards the same goals, you’re already focused on re-education and motor control, you know, just help get there faster, you know, and be very synergistic.
[Garrett salpeter] 28:41
I think with what you’re doing. And I love that you’ve been able to take the concepts and the basic techniques. And you know, there’s times when people want to paint by numbers, just to follow the recipe and do this, this and this. And then there’s times when, you know, people can take the concepts and apply them within that within the framework and, and get great outcomes.
[Garrett salpeter] 29:04
And I just love to hear how you’ve been able to do that to apply the new fit methods and technology along with what you’re doing there. And it truly is. It’s an honour to be working with you and I really appreciate it. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story and major mahalo to you. Thank you, big, big major gratitude. I really, really appreciate you and it’s been a lot of fun getting to know you and getting to work with you over the last year or so. And we’ll have to do a do a part two hopefully in person.
[Dr. David Woodward] 29:44
Oh, yeah, most definitely. Yeah, you can use my place. Yes,
[Garrett salpeter] 29:48
I liked it. We need to I need a little getaway.
[Garrett salpeter] 29:53
Yeah. So just real quick before we sign off, can
[Garrett salpeter] 29:56
You let everyone know where they can find you. If they want to look up your practice or see you on the web on social media, where can we find now on?
[Dr. David Woodward] 30:06
Yeah, so you can check out my website now upon a physical therapy.com and AUP o n o, physical therapy. And you can check us out also on Instagram and Facebook. Yeah, we’re going to start doing or reigniting our blogs. Actually, coincidentally, our next blog was supposed to be about you and I. So yeah, I’ll definitely mentioned this. But yeah, so yeah, that’s where you can find this out. We’re all about the education and promotion of using these different types of bio hacking equipment. So yeah, Thanks, Gary.
[Garrett salpeter] 30:53
Awesome. And if anyone happens to be listening in Hawaii, it is absolutely worth a trip over there to experience the power of now. Thanks. Thank you so much. We’ll sign off. Thanks, everyone, for listening. And goodbye, a lot. Thank you so much for listening to the undercurrent podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and be sure to subscribe to stay up to date as we release future episodes.
