Testimonials

For nearly a year, I struggled with a chronic cough that just wouldn’t go away. It affected everything—conversations, social settings, even simple moments with people. I was constantly having to explain that I wasn’t sick, and it started to wear on me.

When I came to Congruent Life Chiropractic, the experience felt immediately different. They didn’t take a random trial-and-error approach. They had a clear process, real scans, and a way of showing how the stress patterns in my nervous system were actually connected to the chronic cough I’d been living with. For the first time, I understood why my body was doing what it was doing.

Not long into care, I hit the moment I’d been hoping for—I realized I wasn’t coughing anymore. It felt amazing. I could talk, work, and be around people without feeling self-conscious or misunderstood.

Now, life feels lighter. I can be fully present with people without explaining myself or worrying someone thinks I’m sick. Getting my nervous system back on track changed everything.

Before starting care at Congruent Life, I was struggling with a lot of lower back pain and constant hip issues. My hips felt so unstable that my legs would even dislocate anytime I moved, which was incredibly uncomfortable and discouraging. I went to the doctor, and physical therapy was suggested, but my mom asked if I wanted to try the chiropractor instead. I agreed, and that decision completely changed everything for me.

From the moment we walked into CLC, everyone was so welcoming and genuinely excited to help me get my body back to where it needed to be. I’ll never forget that first adjustment—Dr. Nikki was amazed at just how misaligned my back and hips were. But it didn’t take long before I started noticing real changes. Within just a couple of months, my hip and back pain had completely gone away, and there was no longer any need for physical therapy.

Now, I no longer deal with hip issues or debilitating back pain, and that relief alone has been life-changing. But what’s even more amazing is that my anxiety and stress have improved so much too. I am truly thankful for Dr. Mike and Dr. Nikki—not only did they help me heal physically, but they also gave me back a sense of peace and confidence in my body that I didn’t have before.

We started seeing a chiropractor in the Quad Cities and she referred us to Congruent. I have had chiropractic care my whole life, my uncle was a chiropractor and I would get adjusted by him once a week during my whole childhood. I knew the importance of chiropractic care for children and it was important to me to start my girls out at a young age to help them navigate life and developmental stress as best as possible.

When we came for our initial scans on our first visit, I had an “ah-ha” moment. My body wasn’t feeling quite right, I was still in a postpartum season and we were able to pinpoint areas of stress in my body. I was able to understand WHY I was feeling the way I was. All 3 of us saw huge improvements in our sleep patterns when we started care. A lot of the times the doctors will tell me “this is coming up on the girls, is she navigating xyz milestone?” And sure enough over the next day or 2 we will see that happening. All the sudden Audrey is starting to talk and just last week you were saying that the areas that help with speech were coming up. It’s so amazing you are able to tell what their body is navigating based on the stress in their nervous system!

My husband is a dentist. We tell patients to get their teeth cleaned twice a year. Why would it be any different with the nervous system? It’s the same type of scenario- we want to be as proactive with health as we can as a family. Having you guys here during every phase of our life for support is so wonderful. Historically, people say “oh you don’t need to go to the chiropractor unless you are in pain”, but you don’t have to be in pain to reap the benefits of chiropractic care. It’s such a useful tool to have in our toolbox to help use navigate life stress. We are so happy we are here, we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

My biggest problems before starting at Congruent was the pain I was having in my neck and my knees, constipation, and hair loss. Within the first month of care I was already starting to feel better! I had a lot of stiffness and pain in my neck before and that has improved so much! I can move and not have issues now. I have noticed a huge improvement in my digestion as well. Before care, I was having issues with constipation and chiropractic has helped relieve that for me. Additionally, I was having some issues with hair loss and that has finally stopped with regular chiropractic care!

It was huge for me to see such a big improvement from my initial scans to the progress scans. I have always been a person who carries a lot of stress and I am very pleased with the results I am getting. I am able to handle emotional stress better (and so is my husband!). I just feel so much better overall. I am able to be a much more active person now, living life with less pain and stress! You guys have been very professional and caring. You really search things out to figure out what is happening in our bodies and I appreciate that so much.

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.

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.

I started coming to CLC because I’ve always dealt with lower back pain, anxiety and depression. My low back pain was pretty severe, I would try to work through the pain but sometimes it was so severe I just couldn’t. It would get so bad sometimes it would take me to my knees. Every night my back pain would just kill me and it would interfere with my sleep, now I rarely have back pain! It’s so much better now!

I had also been dealing with anxiety and depression since my postpartum time with my daughter 7 years ago and it was really hard on our family as a whole. Looking at my life before chiropractic care compared to now… I’ve come a really long way. Before I was always so mean and it seemed like the smallest thing would irritate me, like if the bed was made wrong or something was put in the wrong spot. Now I am so much more “go with the flow”, we can go to bed and the entire house will be a mess and I don’t even care! It is such a relief! I had to take medication for a little bit for my anxiety and depression, and it helped but it also made me feel like I didn’t have any emotions at all. Chiropractic has helped me more than medication ever did and I haven’t had to take it for years.

My only chiropractic experience in the past would be to just come once a month. It was never really pinpointing where I actually needed adjusted, it was the same thing every single time I went. It was eye opening coming to CLC, seeing the neurological scans you do here, and just how much stress my nervous system was under. It made sense I was feeling the way I was for so long!

It wasn’t a quick fix. It took a little while of consistent care to start to the see the really big changes, but my life is completely different now!

I started coming to CLC because I was having really severe back pain, almost where I could not get in and out of my car without wincing in pain. I knew I had to get that figured out. I also wanted to support my body in the postpartum season and all the changes that come with that physically and hormonally.

I was nursing so I didn’t want to take much medication for the pain because I was worried about how that could impact my son and my milk supply. I wanted to find a solution that was as natural as possible.

I had been to one other chiropractor before and my experience was I just went in, told them where my pain was, they adjusted me and I never went back. Your approach is so much different here. Seeing the neurological scans and where the internal stress was at in my body correlated with how I was feeling. It was very validating. I was able to see how the stress of everyday life really does have an impact on how my nervous system is able to function. After the first month of care I got a follow-up scan and it was so cool to be able to see how much better my brain and body were functioning.

The consistency of the adjustments in the beginning was key for me. Within the first month of care, my pain was already a lot better. I love the way you explain where you are adjusting each time and how that can impact the function of the body. It makes me feel like I have more knowledge of my body, which I never felt before. I’ve learned how to support my nervous system during times of stress and feel more empowered about health.

Since starting at CLC, my back pain is no where near what it was. Now that I’ve dealt with my main problem I came here for, it’s important to me to continue getting adjusted so I can stay proactive with my health to keep that pain away while also helping other parts of my body function the best they can. Now that I am getting adjusted consistently, I am able to deal with my stress and anxiety a lot better, which was a benefit I didn’t even realize I could get from chiropractic care before coming here! I had never truly been able to get over that “hump” of anxiety. I really felt like I was “stuck” and I’m feeling so much better both mentally and physically now.

I just want to thank you for allowing me to learn more about my body in a respectful and yet understanding way for the average person who has never inquired anything about their body before. This has been such an eye opening experience and I just feel more “connected” now than I ever have before.

I had chronic headaches for years (stemming all the way back to childhood) before finding Congruent. I had tried a lot of different things over the years. I would go to the doctor and honestly felt like they just never listened to me. All they wanted me to do was to take more pain killers, which never really worked for me. I also didn’t want to be dependent on medications.

After my daughter was born I struggled with a lot of postpartum anxiety and depression. I had a lot of friends who have come to CLC and after hearing their testimonies on how it helped them with their anxiety and depression throughout that postpartum time, I knew I wanted to have that support before going into another pregnancy.

Dealing with headaches for so long was really defeating. I felt like I had to just accept that my life would consist of daily headaches forever. My mom has struggled a lot with chronic headaches too and she had said to me once “we are just headache people” so then my mindset for a while was “oh I guess I’m just a headache person!” but the more I grew up and talked to other people I realized that wasn’t normal.

Before starting here, I had a headache EVERY SINGLE DAY. Seeing the neurological scans on the first visit was very validating. I saw that there was a lot of stress in the areas of the nervous system that can result in headaches; we were able to pinpoint the problem and the root cause. I realized there was something we could do about this, and maybe I wouldn’t have to live with daily headaches forever.

Within a 2-4 weeks of beginning care, I was already starting to see big changes. In addition to the daily headaches, before care I was also having severe migraines about 1x/month. After the first month of care, I can say I have been migraine FREE for 6 months! My headaches are so much better now. Instead of DAILY headaches, I only get a headache about 1x every 2 weeks! If I get a headache, I can usually pinpoint it back to not drinking enough water that day.

The intensity of my headaches have also improved so much since coming to CLC. My headaches used to shut me down a lot, I couldn’t work, I’d be in bed vomiting with black out curtains. Even on a normal headache day it would distract me a lot from my work and my family and I would have to lay down. If I get a headache now, they are so much less intense and they don’t alter my days like they used to. If anything it’s like a dull annoyance. I’ve also been able to manage my anxiety a lot better since beginning care. My life is completely different now!