NAO Founder

National Academy of Osteopathy has been registered on June 02, 2010 by the registered manual osteopath and certified naprapath, Dr. Shawn Pourgol, MBA, DC, DO, DN, PhD who since then continues to be its president and one of the professors teaching osteopathy, business management and ethics.

Dr. Pourgol’s goal is to ensure every person around the world who is suffering from chronic pain has access to osteopathic care. To that end he aimed for NAO to graduate successful manual osteopaths by making sure NAO education is unique. What makes our education unique and different is the we focus heavily on chronic pain management as well as business management. Dr Pourgol knew that wealthy manual osteopaths attract others to study osteopathy and as a result the profession grows. To that end Dr Pourgol teaches over 250 business management lectures in our DOMP program. These lectures plus the ability of these DOMPs in treating chronic pain are the reason why NAO graduates make $150,000 per year in Canada which is $60,000 more than what other manual osteopaths make.

Dr. Pourgol’s outstanding education and accomplishments began in 1989 when he attended Eastern High School of Commerce Canada, and became the Ontario scholar & Toronto Scholar of 1989. In his continuous pre-doctoral education at Ryerson University (now called Toronto Metropolitan University) in Applied Chemistry and Biology, he managed to obtain the highest academic average of 97% (A+) between 11,000 university students, for which he was rewarded with the Merit Award, by Honorable David Peterson, the premier of Province of Ontario. Subsequently, Dr. Pourgol was accepted in 1991 to the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College where he finished with a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) Degree in 1995 (which resigned as a chiropractor in 2014 to focus on osteopathic education). He has post graduate training in physical rehabilitation, sports medicine, clinical ergonomics, business management, work related injuries, naprapathy and manual osteopathy; including a DOMP (Diploma in Osteopathic Manual Practice), a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy), a PhD in Osteopathic Clinical Rehabilitation and a doctor of naprapathy (DN).

In addition to his work at NAO, Dr Pourgol is also the Founder, President and one of the professors of the National University of Medical Sciences (USA, Spain, Panama), California Health University (Los Angeles) & Seville University of Health & Medicine (Spain). He is also founder of the non-profit, charity based Pourgol Osteopathy Chronic Pain Hospital in Panama that offers free osteopathic and naprapathic care to the public and the Pourgol Osteopathy Chronic Pain Research Center in Spain. In 2017, Dr. Pourgol founded the Osteopathy Chronic Pain Clinics of Canada in Toronto (Ontario) which is now the largest chronic pain clinic in the world. The rapid growth of OCPCC from 1 clinic in 2017 to over 378 clinics in 34 countries is the result of great work of its manual osteopaths who are all graduates of the fellowship program in Osteopathy Chronic Pain Management we offer at NAO (available to all NAO graduates for free).

Along with all his other duties, Dr. Pourgol is also serving as president of the Asociación de Osteopatía de Panamá and the Canadian Union of Osteopathic Manual Practitioners. In 2012, Dr. Pourgol founded June 22nd as the World Osteopathy Day which is now celebrated across the world. in 2016 he created the Coalition for the Regulation of Manual Osteopathy in Ontario as a way to unite the profession and achieve government regulation.

Dr. Pourgol can be reached at pourgol@pourgol.com .