D.C. alumnus, Assistant Professor of Clinical Sciences

“A foundation of Chiropractic Philosophy”

Dr. John Thornhill grew up calling Montgomery, Alabama, his “home sweet home.” Yet, though he had a relatively happy childhood with a supportive family, things weren’t always so sweet, especially in reference to Dr. Thornhill’s health. By his own admission, Dr. Thornhill struggled with weight management challenges as a child, reaching its peak around fifth or sixth grade. This is a problem that is all too familiar, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that 19.7% of American children and teens ages 2 to 19 are affected by obesity, approximately 14.7 million young people.

As is all too common, unfortunately, with such personal health issues, Dr. Thornhill experienced his fair share of bullying and ostracism. Naturally, these social challenges contributed to feelings of depression and anxiety, compounded by early ADD and ADHD diagnoses. As a child, Dr. Thornhill seemed to hope for better solutions to help manage his various health needs and live a happier, healthier life.

One of the first signs of hope for a better path and a more optimistic way of looking at the world is clearer in the figurative rearview mirror than it was at the time for adolescent Dr. Thornhill. Chiropractic as a concept first entered his life when his mother started seeing a chiropractor, and Dr. Thornhill would hang out in the waiting room. Thinking back, he muses about what health benefits he might have experienced had he entered care at that time along with his mother, but for whatever reason, that did not materialize until later.

In the meantime, Dr. Thornhill did manage to lose some weight in junior high and engage in a healthier lifestyle. This was partly due to the influence of his father, who had been struggling with addiction but began his recovery in earnest as Dr. Thornhill was about to round his twelfth birthday. In a beautiful way, the two “sort of recovered together.” Dr. Thornhill’s father served as an example of redemption and hope for many, becoming an addiction counselor and working for the Alabama Lawyers Assistance Program with the State Bar of Alabama, helping lawyers to go through the process of recovery and deal with licensing challenges as needed. His father’s transformation in recovery was healing for not only their relationship, but for Dr. Thornhill’s physical and mental health.

By the time Dr. Thornhill began college, his past experiences and a few formative new ones during his time at Huntingdon College were about to encourage him toward an exciting new career path. His then-girlfriend, whom he later married, complained of a mild health issue during their freshman year and insisted she needed to go see her chiropractor. Dr. Thornhill was more than a bit confused because she wasn’t complaining about her back or her neck hurting, so why would she need to go to the chiropractor? She patiently explained that Chiropractic is about so much more than just caring for your back. To demonstrate, she brought him with her to her next appointment with her chiropractor, Dr. Kirk Skinner. To the untrained and uninitiated eye, the adjustment that Dr. Thornhill observed at that time intrigued and confused him, which illustrates why the need for clear chiropractic patient education is so important.

“I knew nothing about what was happening. I saw this giant table with these levers and these knobs. And he’s lifting her feet up, and things are popping and dropping. And I thought that, you know, it looked painful. I mean, it really freaked me out. But when she was done, she felt so much better and was very relieved,” Dr. Thornhill said.

Satisfied his girlfriend had found proper care, he got ready to leave, but they both looked at him with an expectant stare, implying that he, too, should get an adjustment. Though he didn’t feel ready to take that step, he agreed to the adjustment and found it to be transformative.

“The way it changed me was that I got on the table feeling fine, or at least what I thought was fine. When I got off the table, I felt better than I thought that I could feel. That really shook me up because we get used to feeling a certain way and thinking that’s it’s as good as it gets,” Dr. Thornhill said.

“When you feel better than you thought you could feel, it changes the way you think about yourself and about health and about the world and about your potential.”

Seeing his initial flicker of interest, his girlfriend encouraged him to consider becoming a chiropractor. At the time, Dr. Thornhill was a music major, but responding to a growing intuition, he promised her that if he did well in his upcoming biology requirement, he would switch his major to biology and then later go on to chiropractic school. Lo and behold, he sailed through that course with flying colors. True to his word, he became a biology major, and from then on based his course load on prerequisites for Life University’s (Life U) Doctor of Chiropractic program.

Choosing which university to attend for Chiropractic was a simple choice for Dr. Thornhill, as every mentor and chiropractor in the know encouraged him to enroll at Life U, even Palmer grads at that time in the mid 2000s acknowledged that “things are changing at Life University; that’s the place to be.”

After graduation, he practiced with his father-in-law in Clay County, Alabama, for six years before returning to Life U as an outreach clinic instructor. In the wake of COVID-19, Dr. Thornhill has since moved into a classroom and clinical services role. Chiropractic philosophy is an area of coursework that he often teaches and connects with. Currently, Dr. Thornhill is pursuing a Ph.D. with the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California. He has found that that effort has already borne fruit in helping to develop four foundational chiropractic philosophy courses at Life U, as well as allowing him to publish peer-reviewed articles on the philosophy of Chiropractic in research journals.

“What I plan to do from here is to really bring Chiropractic and its unique philosophy into more academic settings and vice versa, take academic philosophy and bring it to bear on the philosophy of Chiropractic.”