Meet Dr.Holden

Discovering Chiropractic

Being raised here in beautiful Skagit Valley, I've always had an appreciation for nature, the surrounding magnificence, and the sense of being a part of something much bigger than myself. I joined the military after graduating from Mount Vernon high school in 1978. Upon returning home, I began working for the National Park Service and US Forest Service seasonally performing a variety of jobs including fighting forest fires and trail maintenance, while earning a degree in Natural Resources. As it turned out, that groundwork in the sciences, biology, botany, and chemistry, sparked an interest and curiosity in me of how things worked in our internal environment. The political climate and federal budget cuts in the Forest Service forced me to reconsider my career choice at the time. I decided to continue my education pursuing a degree in the medical field. I distinctly remember my first encounter with a chiropractor was while taking an advanced anatomy course at Skagit Valley College. Our professor had invited a guest speaker to cover the topic of neuroanatomy, and he was a local chiropractor. Prior to that my only knowledge of chiropractic was hearing the rhetoric they were all "quacks." The presentation was articulate, understandable, and illuminating. I had to know more... How could this "quack" know so much about something as complicated as neuroanatomy? My curiosity got the best of me. I called his office and set up a meeting. The conversation that ensued changed my life forever. He explained the concept of chiropractic to me, that our body has an amazing ability to heal itself. The nervous system controls and coordinates literally everything that goes on in your body, including this healing potential. Interference in the nervous system creates "misinformation" from the brain to the body and vice versa. It is the chiropractor's job to remove this interference. It just made sense to me. So off to Davenport, Iowa where I attended Palmer College of Chiropractic and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Science and my Doctorate in Chiropractic.