Our chiropractic story
As we approach the first anniversary of Continuum Chiropractic here in Oxford, we thought it was about time you had the opportunity to get to know us a little better. Who are we and why did we decide to set up our practice here? What inspires us, challenges us and made us choose the path to become chiropractors in the first place? It’s all here folks. Read on to find out all about Gert and Chloe of Continuum Chiropractic.
Let’s go way back to the beginning…
In the early 2000s, Gert was working in his home country of Belgium as a physiotherapist. He had just completed a masters in sports physiotherapy and was already well integrated in the medical team of several high-end sports teams. Pro-cycling, National football, basketball, and athletics to name just a few. But after 5 years in this profession, he started to see its limitations. Despite being an excellent way to ease a body of aches and pains and to rehabilitate an athlete back into their sport, Gert observed that physiotherapy was often an arduous route to recovery, involving an intense frequency of treatment and sometimes disappointing results. He longed for something more and just happened to drop in on a lecture one day where a chiropractor was speaking about his work. Gert was immediately inspired. Not long after this talk, Gert was setting all the wheels in motion to end his physiotherapy career, leave behind his home country of Belgium and set sail to England to start his 5-year degree in chiropractic…
Meanwhile, I (Chloe) was up in Manchester starting a degree in Biology. Fascinating as the theory was, the long hours in laboratories just didn’t satisfy my desire to work with people, so I took the decision to change direction. Having been helped and guided by an incredible chiropractor during my youth for various health challenges, my choice to head down south and study chiropractic was an obvious one.
In 2007, Gert and I started our Chiropractic Masters degree at the AECC (Anglo-European College of Chiropractic) down in sunny Bournemouth. After graduating in 2012, we decided to head back to Gert’s home country of Belgium together, which turned out to be quite the adventure! I started work at a large practice with patients travelling far and wide for their adjustments. The appointment times were short, and the diary was always busy, so I gathered a wealth of experience very quickly. Gert travelled around working in several practices while also heading up the medical group for the Belgian National Gymnastics team. This all meant a lot of long hours and international travel for us both, but somewhere in-between we also managed to set up not one, but two practices in Belgium. Within a couple of years these practices were thriving and we had an incredible team of chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists, all working under one roof.
So the big question is – why did we leave all that behind to move back to England?!
The answer to that really is the arrival of our little boy Luca in 2020. We were already growing tired of some of the systems in Belgium…the constant fight to be recognized as chiropractors…the cultural expectation to work all hours of the day…but the arrival of our little boy gave us the final push to want something more. To get out of city life…to be closer to family…to start a new venture where we could really carve out the work-life balance that we wanted. Various paths led us back to Oxfordshire and when we found a house on the market and a beautiful practice just up the road, we were convinced! A few months later and we landed back on English soil.
Now that we’re here, we are so excited to show you what the last 10 years have taught us and why it makes us stand out so much as a practice. We have worked in all kinds of therapeutic settings, accrued thousands of hours in postgraduate study between us, and become parents, which has certainly taught us a lot! Our ethos here at Continuum Chiropractic is simple. We want you to feel welcomed here. To step into our practice and become a part of the community we are creating. To enjoy the beautiful space…learn more about yourself…receive excellent chiropractic care…and to start to want a different life for yourself too. One with more health, more balance and more vitality. Welcome to Continuum Chiropractic. We can’t wait to meet you.
