- Tom
“I was navigating a lot of struggles before starting care here. I had debilitating pain in my lower back that would cause shooting pain down my leg. The pain started years ago and really increased about a year ago. It made it difficult to get around, to walk the dog, to do chores, to garden and can, to grill and cook… I wasn’t able to enjoy these things without experiencing this debilitating pain. At work, I was in pain all day long.
Once we did the scans I found out there was a lot more stress going on than just in my low back. The amount of stress in my neck was off the charts, and I learned through you guys, how it’s so important to address the body as a whole because everything is so connected.
It was interesting because I actually had a surgery in my neck years ago, I was losing feeling in my left side and they found out I had severe cervical stenosis. I ended up having to get my neck fused. It was crazy to see all of the stress come up on my scans in these areas from so long ago, and how that could be affecting my low back.
I was scared at the thought of having to go through another surgery, it’s a lot of money and time off work… I’m just so glad I took the chance and came here.
The other chiros I had been to never really helped to the extent I needed. It was always a come in when it hurts and we’ll “crack” you. You guys had the scans to actually measure how my body was functioning, how much stress and where that stress was at in my nervous system, and what I actually NEEDED to heal. You looked at how everything was functioning TOGETHER.
Once I started coming here, it didn’t take long for me to start feeling better… It was only about 2 weeks and I knew I had made the right choice. I finally felt hope again.
I love gardening and canning, being able to hold and pick up my grandchildren, being able to walk the dog and to do simple things like grilling without being in extreme pain.
I feel like I have gotten my life back. It literally feels like a miracle. Life is just so much more enjoyable now. So many people live their whole life feeling like “this is just how this is going to be from now on.” But it doesn’t have to be that way. I am living proof of that.”
- Mary Beth
I’ve had scoliosis surgery which involved fusing most of my spine a little over 20 years ago. I had been struggling with very chronic and persistent neck and lower back pain. My neck pain was to the point where it was a little bit incapacitating. I have a really high pain tolerance that I have developed over the years as a result of that, but I knew it wasn’t healthy and that it wasn’t serving me at all. It was just getting worse. Someone I trust referred you guys to me. I had chiropractic care on and off in the past, but I have never had anything that was consistent. I was seeking care for my physical health and for my pain management.
My biggest concern was my general quality of life. I am a very active person and very involved in my grand children’s lives. That was something that was and continues to be super important to me. I knew that was something I needed to address if I was going to have good physical health , the ability to be agile and have my pain controlled. My concern was that it was just going to keep getting worse.
When I came in and had the initial scans done, I was shocked to see how bad things really were… but on the other side it was encouraging because I was finally taking some steps to remedy that and to get myself into a better place. I was just going through life trying to put one foot in front of the other and just pushed it to the back of my head. I was learning how to live with it. The idea of doing that the rest of my life was not appealing and if there was anything that was going to be able to help me improve that, I was all in.
I started noticing the benefits of chiropractic care fairly quickly, and it continued to get progressively better. I think as my body began to reset and I would pay attention to what I was feeling, I started to notice “my gosh, my neck isn’t absolutely killing me every second of the day”. Honestly, this probably saved my life, which seems extremely radical, but from the standpoint of the quality of my life and being able to enjoy life… it’s been dramatic.
There was a time after I came off of the beginning program, I thought I would try out coming only once every 2 weeks. Within 2 weeks, I was back on my once per week wellness plan. I could feel my body starting to slip back. I had this sharp contrast of being physically debilitated by the pain, to having relief… but then I got the idea that I didn’t really need to do much work to maintain all the progress. I now know how important it is to maintain consistent chiropractic care, just like you have to maintain other healthy lifestyle changes if you want to stay healthy. This is a lifetime commitment for me. I am insanely grateful to have discovered that there was something out there that could do this. I had chiropractic care in my past, but I never got the kind of relief and certainly have never committed to a consistent program that could give me that long term relief that I have gotten from CLC.
It’s an investment, but for me at least, coming to Congruent has been the single best investment that I have ever made for myself. This is a community here. I think there is an interesting dynamic here of family and friendship. You combine that with health and well-being and the sincere interest that the doctors have to bring everything to the table that can be of help and of use. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are. You guys have a deep commitment to serving. This has been truly life changing.
- Don
I started coming to Congruent because I’d been having a lot of back pain, this had been going on for 5+ years. I wrote it up as getting old. I’m 52 now, I just thought this was the way it was going to be, I’m going to have aches and pains everywhere… at that time my knees hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurt. My back got so bad that when I would lay down it would be very painful. When I would try to get out of bed it would be very painful. It’d loosen up after moving around during the day but it got to the point that even when I was walking at work I’d get sharp pains that would make we want to fall down.
I knew I had to do something. I wasn’t one at the time that necessarily believed in extended care. I have a hard time getting myself to the doctor, I have to be super sick. My mindset at the time was that I just needed to be “straightened out”. After the 3rd or 4th session, my back was feeling 10x better. After the 4th adjustment, I could literally jump out of bed, run down the stairs to let the dog out… I hadn’t done that in 5 years because my body hurt that much. I didn’t know that it didn’t have to hurt. I was extremely impressed by that. It allowed me to get back into the gym and be more active, I ended up losing 25 lbs over the first 3 months of care because I was able to actually do things again that I hadn’t thought I could do anymore. It’s made my life more enjoyable. I have a grandson and I am able to play with him now. I can keep up with my teenagers and goof around with them, doing things that I thought were just out of the picture for me.
Before care, I had mentally accepted that I just wouldn’t be able to do the things I really enjoyed anymore. I found other things that I was able to do so I could enjoy my life, but it wasn’t things that I really liked to do. My whole life I had been very active. I played every sport I could growing up and into my young adult life. Seeing that deteriorate was depressing.
It was very invigorating and quite frankly surprising when I started feeling so much better and I realized “holy cow, it doesn’t have to be like this, this isn’t normal to feel like this”… because I thought it was. My biggest realization was that I didn’t have to be in pain all the time and give up all the things that I enjoy doing because of it. When I take new roles at work, I don’t feel as stressed as I used, I can mentally handle stress better now. I don’t worry about “if I go play pickle ball or golf, am I going to be in pain for a long time and throw my back out”.
I was feeling amazing, I was finally able to do the things I love again and get back to having an active lifestyle… but life got busy. I got real busy at work and I told myself that I didn’t have the time anymore for chiropractic care since I was “fixed”. At the time, I wasn’t in the mode that I needed to continue to come if I wanted to continue to feel this good… UNTIL those little things started coming back. They started coming back slowly. I was in a role at work where I was traveling on airplanes all the time, I wasn’t eating good or exercising… I fell back into my old routine and of course my back started giving me problems again. I knew exactly what I needed to do before I got back into the condition I was in before I ever came to CLC in the first place. When I came back to Congruent the second time around, I had a different mindset coming in. I knew I needed to take a serious look at keeping some sort of chiropractic routine going long term to maintain all my progress and health. I knew a consistent routine of adjustments would allow me to live the life that I want, the longest that I can, and that’s very important to me.
- Danielle
In January, I was to a point where I wasn’t able to move. I was having to work from my bed and was in tears from how bad the pain was. I knew there was something wrong. I have a high tolerance for pain so I just let things continue to get worse and worse over the course of the last year until I couldn’t function anymore.
It was so frustrating to feel like I couldn’t be myself, do the things I wanted to do, even just move around because of the pain. I was honestly scared because I knew something had to be seriously wrong. I don’t really like to take pain meds, but at my worst I was having to rely on them just to get through the day.
When I had my first appointment at CLC and we went over the neurological scans, there was A LOT of stress. The scans don’t lie. They really helped to identify and target where all the pain I was having was stemming from. I was able to understand how my body was responding to traumatic things I’ve been through over the last 20 years. It put everything into a nutshell for me and I was able to have this light bulb moment. Things that I didn’t really think were impacting me were actually having a way bigger impact on how my brain and nervous system were functioning than I realized.
I had been in a perpetual fight or flight state over the last few years. After my first adjustment, I just felt this huge release of stress being lifted off my nervous system. I feel like I have a TON of energy now compared to when I first started. The “aches and pains” I was contributing to just getting older are no longer present for me. Chiropractic has helped regulate my moods and has allowed me to handle situations that would normally make me very upset or emotional a lot better. I have a much bigger capacity to really address stressful things in my life, and I’ve made some huge life changes to get me into a much better place. It’s also helped with my sleep.
I recently fell down some stairs after I started care, and I was really nervous that was going to take me a long time to recover from, but after about 2 adjustments I felt completely back to normal! In the past, something like that would’ve been a lot longer recovery for me.
Before care I was in a cycle of pain, and then it was hard to move, and then it would just snowball. It was so hard to break the cycle. Chiropractic was the missing piece. I haven’t had any situations where I’ve been bed ridden from pain since beginning care, and I’ve lost almost 20 lbs! The doctors at CLC have helped educate me that if there is pain happening, there is something going on underneath the surface that needs to be addressed to actually heal.
I continue to get adjusted on a weekly basis to help maintain all the positive changes I’ve seen in my life. Life is stressful! I have to travel often for work and meet a lot of deadlines, I want to do what I can to stay on top of it so I don’t end up back in a place like I was before starting. Every one is so kind, knows me by name, and are genuinely interested in how I am doing. The environment is so great at CLC!
- Marsha
When I started care here, I was dealing with severe chronic back pain and stiffness. I couldn’t even walk 30 feet without being in unbearable pain. It changed my lifestyle and quality of life significantly. I had to spend too much time fighting pain. I wanted to be able to walk my dogs, garden, and cook without being in pain all the time. The pain was interfering with my sleep and every morning was so painful. I didn’t know how to avoid that.
Coming to CLC has changed my life for the better. The neurological scans were really helpful to gain an understanding of where my pain was coming from and other organs of my body that were being affected by the stress in my nervous system. I learned that a lot of the inflammation in my body was coming from neurological interference in my digestive tract and detoxification organs like my liver and kidneys.
Once I began my care plan, I was coming 3x/week for several months and that helped tremendously. No other chiropractor I had been to ever told me to come that frequently, and I found myself stuck in this continued cycle of pain because of that. I’d get adjusted, I’d get a little relief, but a few days later the pain would be just as bad again. What you had to offer was so different because I had more frequent adjustments so my body wouldn’t just revert back to all the old patterns. Within that first month I was starting to notice my pain levels decreasing significantly and I was constantly getting a little bit better every week.
A couple months into care, I had my annual labs drawn at the doctors and it was the first time in over 20 years that I didn’t have blood in my urine!!
A few months ago I had a dental appointment where my jaw was held open for 2-3 hours. The next day I got up and I could hardly move my mouth because of the pain; I could hardly chew. My dentist ended up giving me a mouth guard which helped a little bit, but when I told the doctors at CLC what was going on and we started working on my TMJ I started noticing a tremendous difference and it is completely back to normal now. I don’t even have to wear my mouth guard anymore with the continued adjustments I’ve received in the TMJ area. The mouth guard wasn’t nearly as helpful as the adjustments that I got.
I’ve been coming for a year now and I feel so much better! If I do injure myself, an adjustment helps almost immediately and I don’t have that constant pain like I used to. I am able to take my dogs for walks, garden and cook again without pain! I am sleeping so much better. I always used to be kind of afraid to get out of bed because of how much pain I would feel in the mornings, but now I can get out of the bed in the morning with no pain.
My husband and I drive to Florida every year, and the drive used to about kill me. My back would be ruined by the time we got there and it would make it really hard to enjoy vacation. But this last time we went to Florida I handled it so much better. I recovered so much more quickly. We recently went to Hawaii and my back didn’t hurt at all while I was there!
I’ve learned so many things from the doctors here, and I have been eating much better to avoid inflammatory foods that influence how much stress we see on my nervous system. I appreciate the spirit, the knowledge, the friendliness and the welcoming environment that CLC has to offer!
- Missy
“Before starting care at Congruent Life, I dealt with migraines/headaches, restless sleep and severe lower back pain (some days it was hard to do daily activities like walking). I’ve suffered from lower back pain since middle school/high school and was advised to go to physical therapy and even tried a different chiropractor as well. I found little to no relief, but the pain was manageable for the most part and I just assumed I’d have to live like that for forever so I nearly gave up trying to become better.
When I moved this past summer, the pain came back and I couldn’t even walk standing straight and sitting at my desk job was unbearable. I was taking ibuprofen all day and was in so much pain. It was all I thought about all day and throughout the night. I finally decided something needed to change, and I wanted to go about it as natural and holistic as I could. I wanted to find a solution where I didn’t need to rely on a medication to feel like myself. I had been following CLC for about a year and finally took a leap of faith to find out more about the practice. I was super excited to finally find a chiropractor who wanted to understand the neurological component underlying my issues and not just “adjust and go”. I knew my headaches and restless sleep were more than what the surface showed and it was obvious many of my symptoms were related. Dr. Mike did an amazing job explaining how everything is connected in the nervous system and told me that many of my symptoms were due to underlying reasons. I have never been so grateful to have a doctor finally agree with me on something!
One of the reasons I chose CLC to help me was because they used technology to look at the nervous system. Since I felt that my problems were neurologically related, I didn’t think an x-ray would be sufficient enough. I was excited to hear they use THREE (!!!) different scans to track progress, rather than my old chiropractor who would maybe do one x-ray at the beginning and tell me to “come back in 2 days and we’ll go from there”. Dr. Mike and his team are so warm, welcoming and knowledgeable and I felt like I have belonged since the day I walked through the door for my initial appointment. I think that’s what makes them stand out the most; how welcoming of an environment the office and staff is and how willingly they are to help anyone! I’ve looked forward to my appointments for the last 4-5 months and leave feeling better and better each time.
Now that I’ve been seeing Dr. Mike and his staff for several months I can’t even remember what life was like prior to chiropractic care. I recall that after my first adjustment I was almost in tears because of the relief I felt in my lower back and hips. I walked out of the office and felt like a new person. Little did I know in the weeks following I would see a huge change in my attitude (way more positive!), my sleep has gotten so much better (I’m able to fall asleep so much faster and feel well rested now), my headaches have improved significantly, and I just am a happier person. My lower back pain is still there from time to time, but it’s nowhere near where it was on the first day I walked through the office doors. It’s manageable and I am able to tell when I’m overdoing something now and can help prevent injuring it again. I’m forever grateful for the care and knowledge the CLC staff has given me and HIGHLY recommend them to everyone I encounter!”
- Kaylee K
“Before starting care, I had a bunch of problems with energy, stress, tension in upper neck and shoulders, back pain and migraines. I used to see a chiropractor up until my senior year of high school and once I came to college 4 years ago, it was too much of a hassle to drive home all the time. Freshman year I made it work but sophomore and junior year I really struggled with pain. I tried a bunch of different treatments. The last 3.5 years have been a real struggle before I came here.
My pain affected me mentally. I had to adjust my entire life. I could not stand for long periods of time. As a college student, I wanted to go to all the football games and I knew that I could not stand there. I made it through the first quarter and I was in so much pain that I was in tears every single game. It hurt to walk home because I was in pain after that. I couldn’t sit for long periods of time, so when we had our hour and a half to three hour class, I would be that student to get up in the middle to go for walks because my back hurt so bad. It really affected a bunch of different things, I knew I couldn’t sit for long periods of time but I also couldn’t stand for long periods of time. It really affected a lot of things; I am 20 and couldn’t even sit in a chair like a normal person.
I went to 8 different doctors trying to find out what was wrong, I had been tested for rheumatoid arthritis; all sorts of different tests done, everything came back negative. Basically they told me I had arthritis and that it was just something I had to deal with or I could be on chronic pain management for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to do that. I tried steroid injections, cortisone shots, physical therapy, it was just absolutely unbearable. I completely limited all my activities so that I wouldn’t hurt. But now here I am.
I didn’t think I would be able to run again because of all my pain. But a month ago I ran 2.5 miles and it wasn’t unbearable pain afterwards! I did it and I was so proud of myself. Some days I was so frustrated I couldn’t run, now I have that if I want to do it!
I honestly was kind of skeptical at the beginning of chiropractic care, I thought, “These people say they are going to fix everything, they’re just like everyone else.” But then around week 3 my body finally started feeling better and I have not had a migraine all week, I feel so relaxed. I finally have hope again after years of chronic pain! I’ve even noticed my energy levels have improved; I’m not always exhausted the way I used to be! Despite my skepticism, this actually was helping me so much!!!
What was different here is that you guys listened to me. To all the other doctors, I was just another patient. I’d walk in, tell them my pain and they’d be like, “You can take pain medicine.” I came here and you’re like, “That’s unacceptable, that’s not going to happen, we’re going to work through this.” You guys didn’t only care about just my pain, but you also helped me with my diet, my mental health and making me feel better about myself, and just completely changing everything; I can be a normal college student now that I’m not in constant pain and I have CLC to thank for that!”
- Dylan
When I started here I had been struggling with lower back pain and pain between my shoulder blades for 6-12 months. I was constantly uncomfortable no matter what I was doing. Stretching wasn’t helping me that much and I used to have to roll out 2-3x/day on a foam roller to try and crack my back to even get a little relief, but I rarely have to do that now that I am getting adjusted. I live an active life style. If I was cutting down trees, working on my car, lifting weights… they would all exacerbate the symptoms, but yet even on days that I was relaxing the pain wouldn’t improve. It was interfering with my sleep and my mood because I was always uncomfortable. I was missing appointments and family get togethers because I wasn’t able to get much sleep.
When my wife told me about CLC I figured I would give it a shot. I was skeptical for sure, I honestly didn’t think it would help but I was willing to give it a try. I had been to other chiros before and it never really helped much. It took a little while to start noticing big improvements, but it was so helpful the way you guys explained why healing takes time and the neurological scans you had to back it up. The scans allowed a way to measure progress and a standard to compare it to. Pretty much everything that you guys do at CLC is different than what I’ve experienced at other chiros and it definitely works. I’m glad I gave it a shot, it has helped out with my back pain immensely!
Around week 2 or 3 of care, we gained enough healing momentum to really start to see the improvements. By week four I was feeling so much better. Now I couldn’t imagine not doing it and going back to how I was feeling before. I’ve been coming for over a year and rarely have back pain anymore. After I work a few days with all my police gear on, my back will start to get a little uncomfortable, but as soon as I get adjusted it helps so much. A lot of other police officers I work with have chronic back pain and I wanted to catch it before it got to that point. Now I feel like I am being preventative and proactive in my health. I am able to sleep way better and I am a lot happier now that I am not always in pain.
- Emily M
I started coming to CLC when I was in the last few months of my pregnancy and had horrible pain in my hips and low back. I work at a school and even just walking up and down the halls was getting to be unbearable. Trying to care for my daughter at home was getting difficult to navigate with all the pain I was in. I love being active and exercising for the sake of having a way to release emotional stress, but I wasn’t able to do that anymore either.
When I initially came I thought it was going to just be a “quick fix” for pain because that’s all I’ve ever been used to when I’ve gone to other chiros, but then I learned about ALL the other benefits of getting adjusted consistently. I was so excited to get started after my initial appointment. I learned about how chiropractic can help provide a better birthing experience in general, promoting a more optimal position for baby, and by helping to prepare my body and nervous system for birth. My dream was always to deliver naturally and my first baby was born via C-section. I knew that this would help prepare my body naturally for the VBAC I was shooting for. I also learned how chiropractic can help prepare my body better for that postpartum healing journey. I didn’t realize before how beneficial chiropractic care was for regulating your hormones and your thyroid.
CLC was so different than every other chiropractor I’d ever been to. There was never any follow up with my other chiropractic experiences, it was all based on pain and then they’d just tell you to come back when it hurt again. I started to realize that was all just a band-aid for an underlying issue. It was never enough to truly get to the root of the problem. In contrast, I came to CLC and you did neurological scans to help pinpoint where the stress was in my nervous system, and the organ systems that could be effecting. You gave me a plan to get to the root of that stress so we could help better prepare my body for birth, postpartum, and proper hormone regulation.
I shared my history with you and you were able to give me an explanation behind why I may have thyroid issues. You could literally see it on paper when we did the scans that that region of my nervous system that controls my thyroid was really stressed! I was close to having postpartum depression with my first, and I wanted to do all that I could to help prevent that this time, going on medications was something that I wanted to avoid if possible. I learned the nervous system and chiropractic plays such a huge role in regulating all those postpartum hormone fluctuations.
The way you explain every adjustment and how that could be impacting my body is so helpful and again, unlike any other chiropractic experience I have had. I don’t just get “cracked” and sent on my way, it’s so much more than that here. I feel like I know so much more about how my body functions in general now, you certainly don’t get that when you go to the doctor. You’re just given a medication that will “fix” the problem, but in all reality, that isn’t really addressing the root of the issue.
After the first adjustment, I got in my car and started to tear up because I felt intense relief in my neck and my head felt like it got completely clear. I remember thinking “wow, I haven’t been able to just sit and be relaxed like this in so long”. The pain I felt in my pelvis was causing me to be in tears every night and I finally felt like I found someone who could help me. I felt so much relief in knowing that there was an option to help my thyroid function better more naturally.
I’ve gained so much knowledge on how to support and nourish my body properly as well, during both pregnancy and the postpartum time to help with that improved hormone regulation. I learned there is such a big drop in so many hormones after delivery, I feel like I was able to support my body so much better this time around with adjustments and some of your supplement recommendations so I didn’t feel such a massive dip and that postpartum depression that can come with it. With this postpartum period, I never had those days where I felt like I couldn’t function that I experienced with my 1st. I also had a successful VBAC which was one of my biggest goals!
I was super skeptical about new borns getting adjusted, I was imagining baby adjustments being the same as how I got adjusted, but they are SO GENTLE! Through my pregnancy I saw so many babies in here getting adjusted and would hear conversations about how much chiropractic could benefit infants after the baby experiences so much stress to their neck during the birthing process.
My son was 1 month old when we brought him in to get scanned because he was developing a flat spot, he was so stiff and rigid, he couldn’t move his head both directions, and it was really hard to comfort him. We could’ve either gone down the road of getting a helmet for him for the flat spot, or we could try and prevent it all together with chiropractic. Sure enough, once we started getting Gavin adjusted, he became so much more relaxed, he could move his head both ways, and his flat spot completely rounded out. I know that the health benefits of getting Gavin adjusted long term are so much better than that “quick fix”. We can be so much more preventative and proactive, and avoid things that that stress in his neurological system could have developed into in the future. He is SUCH a happy baby now!
After my son and I’s experience at Congruent Life, we cannot stop talking about you guys. Everyone is so kind at CLC and I feel like the doctors are almost like my life coaches! I tell everyone to come here!