Meet Dr. Lauren Elkind

Dr. Lauren Elkind did not set out to become a chiropractor. She grew up in Orinda, graduated from Miramonte High School, and went to UC Berkeley planning on law school. “I always knew I wanted to be in a helping profession,” she says. “It was really just a matter of which form that would take: law, or something more hands on like physical therapy.”

That question got answered for her sooner than expected. A running injury in college left her with tendinitis that took eight months to heal. The physical therapy that finally fixed it changed her plans entirely.

Rehabbing on a Pilates reformer led her to get certified in Pilates herself, and she started working with patients at the Center for Sports Medicine in Walnut Creek. From there she went to work for Tammara Moore, DPT, doing Pilates based rehab for Tammara’s patients. It was Tammara who introduced her to Active Release Technique (ART) and functional movement, and by the time Dr. Elkind enrolled at Life Chiropractic College West, she already knew ART would be the center of her career. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2001.

Nearly 25 Years of ART

That early exposure to ART became the foundation of her career as a sports chiropractor, built around manual soft tissue work rather than a heavy adjustment based practice. She has been certified in ART since 1999 and has spent nearly 25 years treating professional athletes and weekend warriors for tendinopathies, muscle strains, and overuse injuries most people just live with, the same kind of injury that put her on this path in the first place. Today she is a Master Level ART® Provider, certified in every clinical module the technique offers: spine, upper and lower extremity, nerve entrapment, endurance athlete performance care.

That expertise did not stay confined to her own treatment room. For about 15 years, from the mid 2000s through 2021, Dr. Elkind taught ART seminars to other clinicians across the country, helping train the next generation of providers in the same technique that changed her own path.

Care Built for Every Stage

Her practice grew to include pediatric chiropractic care after her own son got into youth sports. Getting him treated made her realize how thin the options were for young athletes, most pediatric protocols were just adult treatment plans scaled down, focused on managing dysfunction rather than teaching good movement in the first place. She went back and studied developmental kinesiology and pediatric movement patterns, and today she treats young athletes and growing kids alongside her adult patient base, using assessment and treatment approaches built for their stage of development.

A Movement Based Approach to Every Patient

Whether she is working with a competitive athlete, a growing kid, or someone who just wants their back to stop hurting, her approach does not change: find out what is actually causing the problem and how the body needs to move to fix it. She uses Functional Movement Systems (FMS), Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA), and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) to get past the symptom and find the real source, whether that is back pain, shoulder pain, or a nagging youth sports injury that will not go away. That same movement based approach applies just as well to patients who are not injured but want to train smarter, improve performance, or stay ahead of the next injury.

When a case needs more than manual work and movement retraining, she brings in Focused and Radial Shockwave to jumpstart healing in chronic, stubborn injuries, and Class IV Laser to calm inflammation and speed recovery.

Serving Walnut Creek and the Greater Lamorinda Area

Dr. Elkind has been treating patients across Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, and the greater Lamorinda area for over two decades. Whether you are an athlete working back from an injury, a parent looking for a pediatric chiropractor who specializes in kids, or someone who wants to move better and stay ahead of injury, Dr. Elkind asks the same question of every patient: what is actually causing this, and how does your body need to move to fix it or keep it from happening in the first place. Book a visit and find out what is really going on.

Meet Dr. Lauren Elkind Dr. Lauren Elkind did not set out to become a chiropractor. She grew up i... Read More