Dr. Jordan Kocen
Dr. Jordan Kocen always wanted to be a veterinarian. The passion for helping animals exudes from him. “I don’t remember ever wanting to do anything else,” Jordan says. “As I went further in my education, it just felt right.” Veterinarian school wasn’t a means to an end for him, it was part of his journey.
After practicing conventional veterinary medicine for ten years, Jordan began practicing holistic medicine exclusively in 1995. After twenty years of success stories, he opened Veterinary Holistic Center in 2015.
His Services
Jordan has staffed his center with doctors who do physical therapy, massage therapy, and animal chiropractic. He himself does acupuncture, homeopathy, and Chinese herbs. When clients come to see him, he can pair them with the system of medicine that will be the best fit for them.
The success of the treatments mean the success of the center. Pet owners may come in with one dog, and the next time they have a problem, they come to him sooner instead of trying and exhausting conventional veterinary medicine first.
Don’t Believe in It? Good.
There are many misconceptions about holistic medicine. A common one is that it’s a scam. Another is that since conventional medicine is the standard, it should always be tried first. Many clients come in for their first visit with Jordan and have to let him know that they don’t believe in holistic woo-woo witch-doctoring. “Good,” he says. “It’s not a belief system. It’s a physiologic process.” He’s stimulating the nerve endings and spinal cord. He’s getting hormones and chemicals released. He’s revving up the body’s normal physiological processes. “If it’s not real, then you’re going to see it’s not real,” he says.
Other veterinarians were often quietly supportive, until Jordan treated their own pets. Now they’re believers. “It is a science. It’s medicine,” he says. As scientists, once they see that it works, he believes they should be trying to figure out why it works so they can get more efficient with it.
The three things that Jordan’s clients should know are whether or not any given treatment has a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome, what the good and bad about it is, and how long it should take to know whether it’s working or not.
Calm Down, It’s Not a Competition
Veterinary Holistic Center isn’t competing with conventional veterinarian practices. In fact, many conventional practices refer clients to the center, and many conventional practices also have doctors who do holistic therapies. Jordan’s practice, by design, doesn’t offer any conventional medicine, annual exams, diagnostics, surgeries, or boarding. They leave all of that to conventional veterinarian practices. What Jordan does is get the pet well enough to go back to their regular veterinarian for their annual exams. “It’s good for the animals, the owner’s happy, the regular vet’s happy. The goal is to help the animals get better,” says Jordan. “That’s why we became veterinarians in the first place.”
Opening Veterinary Holistic Center
After Jordan began taking a course on acupuncture, he had his first two acupuncture patients — one dog, one cat, both pets of other veterinarians at the general practice where he worked. He was shocked at the success of those first two patients, and so were their owners. Word spread, and his schedule began getting scrunched to where 80-90% of his days were just doing alternative therapies. Other veterinarians at the practice were doing great conventional medicine, so they didn’t need him to do it. Also, there were no other holistic centers in the area.
However, Jordan himself couldn’t do all of the holistic therapies. He was only trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, and Chinese herbal medicine. “I had been referring people to the chiropractors [and] massage therapists, but I didn’t know their schedules,” he says. He didn’t know if they were traveling or when they’d be in their offices. He also felt incompetent trying to scribble down their phone numbers on scraps of paper for clients. “Why couldn’t we be all in one place? I can’t offer those services,” says Jordan. “I can’t learn a whole lot more, and I don’t need to when you have other people who can do that very well.” He began thinking of what would be required and involved to get his own holistic practice off the ground.
He envisioned a place where he could bring other therapies in and veterinarians could collaborate on a lot of therapies to give the client the mix that served them the best. And that’s exactly what Veterinary Holistic Center has accomplished.
Contact Information
You can find Veterinary Holistic Center and more information about the therapies they offer at their website, or find Jordan at local events and occasional seminars. Don’t believe it? You don’t have to. Just come see it, and reserve the right to change your mind.
