Community Highlights: Meet Ryan Moss of Upper Cervical Chiropractic of Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Moss.

Hi Ryan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My wife (Christina Coblish Moss) started the practice in 2018 right out of graduation. We were best friends in school, and I ended up in Minnesota where I started my own practice. Come 2019-2020 we start dating long distance, then covid happened, and we ended up getting a flight back and forth every other week. You can imagine how unsustainable that is, so one of us had to move. If you had to choose between MN winters and CO winters the choice is pretty obvious. So end of 2021 I move to Colorado and join her practice. Since then we’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs of the business, but have grown it into the baby that supports our lives. She currently is full time mom to our 10 month old baby boy, and part time real estate agent that caters to burnt out healthcare workers to help offset the hustle and grind with fulfilling passive income. I run the practice full time and am constantly working to provide the most up to date, scientific and specific type of chiropractic available. We see a ton of hard to treat conditions including migraines, concussions, vertigo, trigeminal neuralgia, neuropathy, and so much more. Preventing drugs and surgery to whatever extent we can is one of our big passions. The body has an innate ability to heal, that many people have forgotten. We remove the obstacles in the way of that healing and help support the person in front of us the best way we can.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all. It takes a lot of cash to start a business, especially one that involves a LOT of technology. The amount of debt between student loans, sba, and business loans is staggering. There have been at least three times we’ve had to look ourselves in the mirror and ask if it’s worth it to fight for the practice, or go bankrupt and start over with something else.
Currently we are on an up swing, but being a professional with a new baby is NOT EASY. It’s never easy, but when my body and mind need to be in peak form every day to serve my patients there’s a lot of pressure.

We’ve been impressed with Upper Cervical Chiropractic of Boulder, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
What a lot of people don’t know about upper cervical chiropractic, is that it has NOTHING to do with cracking or popping bones. I joke with people all the time that what we do and what a traditional chiropractor does seem so far apart from each other it’s almost as if we have different jobs. Our approach needs in depth imaging and analysis before we even start THINKING about making a correction. The whole idea is that the body will compensate for subtle shifts or misalignments at the top of the neck (or base of the skull). These compensations, given enough time, will start to create symptoms, and potentially degeneration in your skeletal structure at an accelerated rate. One of the alarming statistics about chiropractors, is that we make up just 1% of healthcare providers in the US, (if not less) and upper cervical chiropractors make up 1% of that number. In Colorado there are two offices that perform the technique we do, which is called Blair. There are around 10-15 Upper cervical chiros in Colorado, but of varying techniques. We pride ourselves in being able to help and bring hope to people that have otherwise suffered from their symptoms without any progress for potentially years. One of my favorite stories is meeting someone that’s had headaches their whole life, like as long as they can remember whole life, and within a couple weeks of working with us the headaches are gone. It seems so simple when you’ve been doing it as long as we have, but one of our biggest struggles is getting the word out. We can run ads, word of mouth, forums and testimonials, and still people come out of the woodworks years later saying, “I have never heard of this before, is it new?” Which sounds funny, but it can be very disheartening. We do our best to qualify people before we take them on as patients to determine IF they are a candidate for upper cervical, and if they are it’s a matter of how long it will take to help them, not a matter of yes or no.

How do you define success?
This is always hard to answer. Success is so different for everyone right? For me it’s very simple, being able to balance my time between my family, my purpose, and being financially stable for our lifestyle. If my job can meet all of those needs it’s successful. That’s professional success. Personal success is all about leaving things better than I found them. In the grand scheme of things it’s more likely my life and accomplishments are pretty insignificant, but to the people closest to me, and generations to come, I can make a HUGE difference. Making sure my kids are good, kind people would make me feel like I DID IT. Setting them up for financial success is also a huge goal. You always try to make your kids’ life better than yours right?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://uppercervicalboulder.com
• Instagram: uppercervicalboulder