Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Dr Tom Walters Is Helping To Change Our World

Challenge beliefs gently. All of us carry beliefs about pain and what it means. Early in my career, I would be more aggressive about challenging faulty beliefs my patients held, which would sometimes be met with resistance and pushback. Over the years, I learned to be gentler in my approach and plant subtle seeds that challenged the harmful beliefs. Ultimately, this slower and more gentle approach was more effective in terms of helping my patients think differently about their bodies and pain.

As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Tom Walters.

Dr. Tom Walters is a board-certified orthopedic physical therapist who specializes in the treatment of pain and movement disorders. He is the founder of Rehab Science and dedicates his time to teaching people about human movement and pain and how to recover from injury most effectively.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

Sure! I grew up in Billings, Montana, with my mom and stepdad. I was the oldest of three boys until my parents adopted my younger sister and brother when I was in high school. My mom was a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and my dad was a social worker. My two youngest siblings were brought into our family after being placed in the social services system because their biological mother had significant substance abuse issues and could no longer care for them. My parents had big hearts for serving others, and I think a good deal of their concern for those in pain rubbed off on me.

I was an athlete my entire life but became really focused on martial arts in the sixth grade. I competed heavily in sport taekwondo for the next seven years…