Dr Steven Smilkstein is a Chiropractor and Cayla Urdang is a Biokineticist. They run two separate practices from one set of rooms in Birnam. They share a reception and a waiting area, and each of them sees their own patients. The Healing Company is the name on the sign outside.
Who you will see
Dr Steven Smilkstein is a Chiropractor. He holds a master's degree in Chiropractic from the University of Johannesburg and a master's in sport science and rehabilitation from Logan University, and he is an internationally certified Sports Chiropractor. Sport has taken him to events around the world, among them the World Games in Poland in 2017, the Jiu Jitsu World Cup in Israel in 2023 and the FISU squash world cup in 2024. He lectured in biomechanics at the University of Johannesburg from 2012 to 2023.
Meet Steven
Cayla Urdang is a Biokineticist. She has a BCom in Sports Management and a BA Honours in Biokinetics from the University of Johannesburg. She builds exercise around each patient's needs, goals and daily life, and has a particular interest in autoimmune and orthopaedic conditions and in exercise during and after pregnancy. She has completed the Fit4Two course in pregnancy and postpartum exercise, and offers Discovery Vitality Fitness Assessments. In her words, movement is medicine, and it looks different for everyone.
Meet CaylaHow it started
Steven has been in private practice for more than 15 years. He set up his first hands-on injury practice in 2010, and he has brought other disciplines into his patients' rehabilitation ever since.
Cayla finished her honours degree in Biokinetics at the University of Johannesburg in 2015 and went into private practice the following year. Since then she has worked with a wide range of people and conditions.
Steven started The Healing Company in September 2023, and Cayla's practice joined him in March 2024. They did not become one practice. Each kept its own patients, its own records and its own practice number, and that is still how it works today.
Why under one roof
Most people who come to us are in pain, and the two kinds of care often follow each other. Hands-on treatment for a back or a joint is one part. Exercise to get you moving and strong again is another.
Having both in the same rooms means that if you need the other one, it is a few steps down the passage. You do not have to start a new search, make another drive and sit in another waiting room.
Steven's own phrase for it is a one-stop shop: more than one discipline on your doorstep.
Two practices, not one
Steven and Cayla do not treat patients together, and they do not share your records. You are a patient of the one you came to see.
They are registered with different bodies too. Steven is registered with the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa and Cayla with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, and each practice has its own practice number.
If you already see a Chiropractor or a Biokineticist somewhere else, you are welcome to keep them. Steven and Cayla are each glad to work alongside the people already looking after you. And if one of them thinks someone else could help, in these rooms or outside them, they will tell you. It is a suggestion, and you can say no. Nothing about you passes from one practice to another unless you say it may, which is what the rules on patient information require.
You do not need a doctor's referral to see either of them, and you are welcome to see only one. If you are not sure which of them you need, tell us what is going on when you send an enquiry and we will point you the right way.
What they do share is the front door, the reception desk and these chairs.
Finding us
We are on the first floor of the Medi Response Building, in the East Wing, at 5 Willow Brook Street, Birnam. This is the sign to look for outside.
Both practices are open from 7:30 am to 5 pm, Monday to Thursday, and from 7:30 am to 1 pm on Fridays. They are closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
There is no online booking. For general enquiries, phone us on the number below and we will arrange a time. We are contracted in to all major South African medical aids.
082 578 2415