The True Story of How Joy Quit Drinking With The Help of her Chiropractors

She had been through therapy. She had done the retreats. She had tried everything — and nothing touched the deeper layer. Joy came to Body In Balance not because she was looking for sobriety. Her son had been under Network Spinal Care for years and simply said, "Mom, try this."

What happened over the next two years surprised everyone — including Joy. In this first episode of our four-part client transformation series, Leah and Dr. Scott Hahn break down exactly what was happening inside Joy's nervous system: the identity fractures of suddenly becoming a solo parent, the stress physiology driving the drinking, and how repatterning her spine changed not just her behavior — but who she became.

She's been sober for over two years. She attended her son's wedding and didn't even want a drink. This is what healing from the inside out actually looks like.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sometimes it's a calling, sometimes it's neck pain, sometimes it's tension building in a person's life. Today we're going to start a four-part series talking about different clients that we worked with, why they came to body imbalance, how they progressed through care, and how their patterning was really affecting their life and how that became more adaptable and resilient and what that process really looks like. Let's dive in. Welcome to Healing Beyond the Symptoms, the podcast that helps people discover the root causes of their health struggles and take back control with science, strategy, and self-awareness. I'm Dr. Leah Hahn, a chiropractor and functional wellness doctor who believes that true healing starts beneath the surface. So let's dive in. I'm Dr. Leah Hahn, and today I'm sitting down with Dr. Scott Hahn, and we're going to be talking about these clients and their stories. The first client that we're going to talk about today is named Joy, or we're going to call her Joy. And I remember the first couple weeks of her process of starting network spinal care. And we just wanted to kind of lay the groundwork a little bit about Joy and her story. What I remember is that she was someone who had actually experienced quite a bit of tragedy within her life. She had lost her husband at a very early age, and it was a very traumatic event. And she had been a single mom, you know, raising two kids. And so life had just kind of seemed hard. And there's a lot of difficulties that she had been going through. Like so many people, she turned to alcohol to help kind of mitigate stress and just kind of help her manage. And so she had some really specific goals when she came to body imbalance. She came in.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

She had been under significant stress for years because she had been operating as a solo parent, just with, you know, the death of her husband, with her kids being younger, and then all the load falling on her. And the stress that she had been storing in her body, she had basically been using alcohol as a way to kind of disconnect and to try to, I don't know, if not feels the right way, but just try to survive and get by on a day-to-day basis. And her son had seen her struggle for years. He had been in her care for a while and just finally decided, you know, or told his mother to kind of say, check these guys out, see if they can help. And that's when she finally decided to come see us.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I remember her son had done really well with care. He really noticed that his like that mind-body connection had really expanded and he was a lot more conscious and present in life. And he really wanted that for his mom because he thought that, you know, if she could change how her nervous system was functioning and handling stress, then she would be able to maybe make healthier choices along with that, which is something that we see with network care all the time. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What that kind of looks like in terms of healthier habits developing?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So one of the things that we talk about in network is one of the is the huge study that network completed. It was almost it was a little over 2,800 people. And they looked at lifestyle factors, they looked at life enjoyment, they looked at pain, they looked at stress management. They looked at things that were more health related within their lives to see kind of, you know, who did the best, what were the common factors, what were people doing, what was their overall level of wellness and well-being. And what they found was that people who were under basically long-term like network care, their level of well-being and wellness was double that of what the general public was, of those people who were doing all of the healthy habits. People who were maybe eating right, maybe they were getting the proper water, maybe they were doing their yoga, they were doing all the, you know, supposedly right things, but they were living their life in a miserable state and not knowing it. And a lot of times those those activities can be used as a way to maybe compensate. So where one person, um, such as in Joy's scenario, might have been utilizing alcohol, other people might be utilizing exercise, or they might be utilizing um just different ways to kind of disconnect from their world to try to stop experiencing the pain that they're that they're having. And what they found was is when they looked at people under just network care, it was double that of those the individuals who were trying to do all the healthy habits.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

The double the level of wellness and well-being. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

But as a but when they actually added in network along with all the healthy habits and all of those positive things, their level of wellness tripled.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah. So they were able to triple their sense of well-being. And they had broken that down into different factors. So one, like you said, was like pain management, which is more like, you know, headaches, you know, maybe sinus congestion or immune system issues or just pain. And so that improved tremendously for people. But then they also looked at, you know, how they were handling stress. That was a big one. They looked at that in terms of both mental and emotional stress. And they looked at life enjoyment, which really kind of boils down into spirituality. Like what was their sense of connectedness to others? What was their sense of just feeling good about themselves and their self-esteem? So that was a really cool study. You know, when we store, we talk about that study a lot in the office because clients are often noticing those kinds of changes as they get healthier and as they go through the process of network care. So as they're healing, they start to not only notice, like, hey, my headaches are gone or my sciatic pain is gone, but I'm just a lot happier and I'm more content and I'm more peaceful. And I think those are really great goals for people to have. So Joy's son uh had really thought about that for his mom, that this could be a way for her to really kind of catapult her healing experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think one of the biggest things that I remember is when Joy started care. It was just um her processing a lot of the loss, a lot of the problems, a lot of the just the pain and everything that she'd been carrying with her for years, even though she had gone to therapy, she had done, I think she'd done a lot of retreats, she had done a lot of other self-healing stuff. But it wasn't until basically she found us that we were able to kind of get to the deeper layers. And I remember one of the first things that really started when we were working with her is one of the ways that we look at the body is it's it's called a phasing system. It's specific to network. And the phase specifically is the oscillatory frequency with which the system is resonating at.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

And the phase itself So explain that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I'll explain that a little bit more. I'll try to put it into context that can maybe make sense for most people. But each emotion, when we when we think about emotions within the body, there was a study that was done where they looked, they showed people photos of emotions, they showed people and they had people kind of touch people with with the motion in that sense. And they were able to, people could only really readily identify two different emotions when they were looking at pictures. But when it was through touch, they were able to recognize eight different emotions. So through touch, we're able to find much deeper layers than just looking at a picture on a paper. And I also think that's something to be said too nowadays, where so much of telemedicine is done online and you miss the connection to the individual, you miss the connection to uh, you know, what is actually what's that person feeling? Because you know, science has shown that we can feel that, we can experience that, we can tap into what that other individual is experiencing to help them heal. And in Joy scenario, when we get back to the emotion, so when you touch someone who's angry, you can feel that vibrational tone. Like if you've ever walked into a room after two people have been fighting, you can tell something's off. You can feel that within that space. That is what you that that tone, that frequency that leaves an imprint on the body. And that imprint, if it's repeated over and over and over and over again, that becomes then kind of the software that becomes which is what's running the system. So this is the operating system that the system's running at through whatever emotion that is. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's anger, maybe it's self-doubt, maybe it's I'm not good enough. Whatever life is throwing at them at that moment, that thing, that experience can get programmed in, and then that frequency then can get programmed into the system or can get trapped into the system. And that's where we can come in through with network is to be able to find that, help the system recognize what it's holding there and help it to release to be able to advance to much higher levels. So with Joy, I think the biggest thing that I remember starting when we started working with her, it's a pattern that we call it phase three, but in phase three has multiple different aspects of it. But in Joy's case, what it really was, when we look at kind of the bigger pick like purpose of what phase three is, it's how we view ourselves relative to the world. It's our identity. What makes us us? So it wouldn't, to me, it made sense where it's like, okay, if someone's struggling with who am I, what's going on. And if you think back about the past, where it's like, hey, I was a mom and all of a sudden my husband passed away, and now I have to be, you know, the the breadwinner, I have to take care of everything. I literally have to do everything, like the whole weight of the world fell on my shoulders. You know, who am I in that sense to be able to take, take that on? And so when I looked at, and when we see that, that that it would make sense then why phase three would show up in her in her body that way.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

So that will show up. And we're, you know, looking at the spine and we're looking at the patterning of the spine and palpating whatever the tissue feels like. And we would find something possibly like a short leg. One leg is shorter than the other. We may see like a twist in the pelvis. So one side of the pelvis is sitting higher than the other, or it's flexed forward or externally rotated, internally rotated, something like that. So there's this very physical manifestation of that, but there's also this tone and this emotional tone. And a lot of that phase three patterning, like Scott was talking about, is so much to do with someone's sense of who they are, their identity, the different roles in their life. So whether, you know, this in Joy's case, her role as a mom changed her role in terms of, you know, her kind of responsibilities and having to almost play the role of a father as well. So all of that shifted in her world. And so that was the big thing that we were working on initially. I know as things progressed, I worked a lot of a C1 phase or a phase two, which is all about the upper cervical part of the spine. And in her case, that has so much to do with a sense of overwhelm and fear. And it's so that was kind of the next phase that really presented itself when we started working with Joy. The very last phase or the most recent phase that we've been working on for her is uh is C2. So kind of more mid-cervical spine. And that patterning in the body has a lot to do with not wanting to really experience emotion. And so it keeps the mind very, very active. It tightens the upper back. There's usually not a lot of breath that's able to move through the system. And in the in terms of that, like the as that mind stays very active, it's almost hard to identify what emotion is there. And so it's kind of a protective mechanism. And we talk about like kind of disconnection between head and heart. So as we are working through this patterning and we're clearing out those tension patterns, what do you see on the other side of that? So as her nervous system has gotten healthier, we have many different facets of this. So there's the alcohol use, but there's also the adaptability and the healing that was happening. What did you see for joy?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

So there was a lot of factors that started to happen. I think the first thing was she saw that it's just like this habit that I have is no longer surfing me. It no longer fulfilled a purpose. And it wasn't, it was one where I think I mean, she knew she was an alcoholic. It's something she had dealt with for years. So it wasn't something where the family had to come in and help her wake up to, it wasn't like an intervention or anything like that. It was more so she just finally was able to wake up to realize like, this isn't who I am. This isn't who I want to be. I don't want this part of my life anymore. And because we were able to change the stress physiology that was driving that underlying unconscious pattern behavior, that is what allowed then that basically that physiological or basically her unconscious choosing of alcohol to be able to shift. So it was just one where it's like, now I can have this conscious awareness of this isn't who I want to be. Therefore, then the patterning and the habits that you have surrounding all the different details that drove that habit into place, that stress, that pattern, all those, that wasn't present. So therefore, the habit, which was the drinking, was no longer even not only not needed, but not wanted, and was able to just immediately shift. So it was no longer part of this consciousness. On top of that, I remember she started losing weight just because as she started, you know, introducing other healthy habits. But when you're not drinking the alcohol, you drop out inflammation. So the body starts to function and feel better, the gut biome, the gut health, all that stuff starts to get healthy, which that can also have a huge impact on your brain as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

All of that started happening. And then in terms of those phases that we talked about, lots of shifts within her pelvis. Her, we worked again, we talked about C1 and C2. And as those areas started to become healthier or more adaptable, the thing that we really saw with Joy, and what I've really gotten to witness lately, is that she is so much more content and more peaceful. So she feels a lot more joy within her life. She feels a lot more present. She notices that she stays a lot calmer in situations. She's a lot more aware of her behavior and her reactions. And that's what adaptability in the nervous system looks like is she's clearing out all of this tension patterning and her system is working on a much higher level. We get to see all of the benefits of that in terms of how her life is moving forward. So not only is she not drinking, and she's able to accomplish that in a pretty effective way, but she's also noticing this healing and this peace, this peacefulness that's developing within her life.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And she's been sober for over two years now. And her son got married. She was able to go to the wedding. She didn't even feel like she wanted to drink, and she was worried about that just because it was this the social setting of like this is what's expected. And it wasn't even something that she really wanted, she felt like even called to do or even needed to do. So she was really happy with that because it didn't even feel like part of her, and she didn't feel like she was missing out either by not doing that. I think the other thing that I want to add on to kind of what you just talked about was as the so with network, there's different levels of care. There's three different levels of care. And what will happen is in level one of care, that is where the phase or the kind of the pattern that's presenting itself, that is where it's having a kind of a negative context on the system. And we have, and we've, you know, I think we've talked about in the past where basically the phase itself serves a very important purpose. But the problem is, is when that phase continues to play itself over and over and over again, because it's designed to keep us safe. So it's not like the body is just doing something stupid. It's not doing something random, it's doing something very intentionally protective to protective, to keep us safe in that moment to survive and get by. It's when we've been stuck in survival more mode for weeks, months, or even years, that's where it starts to negatively impact the physiology, even from like the postural structural stuff, which you then you can see that manifest then on the on our table when we're working with people. You can see the physical distortions, which then can equal like hip pain, knee pain, foot, ankle pain, stuff like that. You'll see a lot of low back stuff in those in those areas, or I should say, with people presenting with those issues. And then what will happen is as the kind of the spinal tension pattern starts to unwind and release, it's calm. So the first thing people kind of initially feel is just more relaxed, which is huge for someone who's been carrying stress. Feeling more relaxed is very important in that scenario. And then as they progress into some of the higher levels, as the body starts to change that, you're going to start to see the muscles start to turn on to try to pull the body back to where it needs to be. And you can get some soreness in those areas. But what happens, what happens emotionally is you start to see people make different changes within their lives. So they start to choose positive habits. They start to choose things that are constructive for them versus destructive. So rather than just cutting out alcohol, now you're adding in things that are you're replacing it with healthy habits like drinking water, eating healthy foods, maybe some mindfulness or something like that. And then what ends up happening is we advanced kind of into the next level. You'll see kind of the initial pattern flip basically. So the consciousness of like the phase three, where it's like, who am I? What do I represent? We have a solid understanding of this is who I am, this is what I represent, this is who I am to the world, and this is how I fit in without that level of self-doubt or insecurity or not knowing. And you see someone who feels much, they're much more stable, much more grounded, and they just they resonate that and people want to be around that, people see that, and they want, they want to be that as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

So, what would like say a phase four look like on the opposite side of that?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Phase four, so phase four relative to if someone, if it's a phase four where someone's trying to retain a lot of control, security kind of within within their life, what you'll see is rather than them trying to control every little aspect, nuance, they're able to go with the flow. They're able to stay present with their system, not getting hijacked or overwiring or fear or worry or or what's gonna happen, or what about this, or what about this? It's just like, okay, well, whatever happens, I'll be okay. And I can just allow whatever needs to happen to manifest and kind of play out the way it needs to.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Exactly. You see a lot more connection to emotion as well, like being able to actually tell how they feel and be able to express that as well. It's pretty cool. So that's what that adaptability within the nervous system looks like. And I think that Joy's story is a great example of how that can transition from a state of maybe fear or uncertainty in one's life to really healing deep patterns, really repatterning the nervous system, reorganizing how the nervous system is working so that someone's life can really start to transform. Whether that was alcohol or, you know, other kind of unhealthy habits that we're not really serving someone, there's so many different ways someone's life can transform. This is part one of a four-part series where we will be talking to Dr. Scott about different transformative stories that we've seen in our practice and how people's lives can really shift as they reorganize and repattern their nervous system. Remember, you're not broken, you're patterned, and patterns can change. Thanks again for joining me today on Healing Beyond the Symptoms. If you've been curious about network spinal or if you've tried everything else and still feel stuck, I want you to notice your body is not broken. It's patterned, and those patterns can change. If you're ready to experience how gentle care can lead to profound transformation, I'd love to invite you to book a wellness consultation at Body in Balance Care Practic.com. Together we'll look at what your body needs to finally release, reset, and thrive. Until next time, breathe deep, trust your body, and remember to be gentle and be powerful.