[00:00:00] Lynn: I always say that a great place to start is you have to learn to come back to yourself and your inner voice. We've been trained to listen to so many things outside of us, from the news to the priest to our professors, to all these things, instead of listening to what's going on within ourselves.
[00:00:17] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. Thank you so much for joining me again today. My guest is Dr. Lynn Carey. She earned her doctorate in chiropractic and bachelor's degree in nutrition from Life University. She owned a practice in Wilmington, Delaware for 18 years, and she's traveled to Brazil and India.
Dr. Carey loves empowering others to create their desired life of health, wealth, and perfect self expression. And today she stays busy pursuing her entrepreneurial dreams and homeschooling her teenage son. We had such an interesting conversation about her early childhood memories and what happened when she developed scoliosis.
We talked a lot about healing ourselves naturally, the power of the body, and really some experiences that she's learned with her chiropractic practice. It's such an enlightening conversation around self-healing and things that we can remember about our ability to heal and trust in our body's natural abilities.
I enjoyed our conversation and I hope you do too. Take a listen.
Hello. Good morning, Dr. Lynn Carey. Thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:02:00] Lynn: Thank you Aneta for having me. It's an honor to be here.
[00:02:03] Aneta: So tell me a little bit more about how you came to be a doctor of chiropractor and then also just where your passion has come from for the wellness space.
[00:02:14] Lynn: I grew up just knowing that there had to be more to life. I really was raised in the full-blown. I love the term rat race. My family just worked all the time, and kind of didn't question it. Yet, they still spoke like there wasn't enough, things are hard. We have to keep working. It was almost like I was not a good person if I wanted to rest or relax. It was look frowned upon. That old hard school Italian School hard knocks and so I think a lot of that's a heart like I worked hard. I worked hard in school, but I hated it, I was an honor student, so it's all that's going on.
But I was just following the system because that's all I knew, even though I had an inner knowing, but no outer confirmation telling me that I had a knowing or I knew where I was on the path, that I had another path.
But when I got to age 14, I was diagnosed with scoliosis, which I found myself. They always checked in school and they had said I was fine, but when I found it, I had a big bump in my back and it was severe. And they ended up putting herniated rods in my spine. Because that was just what the medical world does.
And I was lucky they took them out after a year and a half. But I think it was because I had pain. After all, according to them, the surgery was a success. There were no problems. But I was a mess after. I was not sick before, but I was always sick after pain symptoms like I got chicken pox a year to the day of my surgery. It was one thing after another.
I already had depression, it was like, what came first, the chicken or the egg, but I already had the questioning of life and the depression. And this is just now I had all the physical stuff too. And I just went to college because I was told I had to didn't like that either.
And I was just looking for a major. What do you do with your life? That pressure at 18 to define yourself. And I was lucky that someone told me to look into chiropractic and I believe it was a God's calling. It saved my life on so many levels. I didn't even get adjusted.
Before I went to chiropractic school, I read the pamphlet. It said the power that made the body heals the body. And it was like the first time I heard the truth, the inner knowing found something I couldn't have consciously said, but that's how I'm describing it now. And I just went to chiropractic school and it was the beginning of a life-changing journey, that continues to this day.
[00:04:38] Aneta: Were your parents immigrants?
[00:04:41] Lynn: No, my grandparents were. My mom m was first born here.
[00:04:45] Aneta: Isn't it interesting? I immigrated with my parents and I feel like there's this really hard work ethic for immigrants that come in and even the scarcity that you mentioned, I think it's tied into because they do remember not having enough.
And there's always this, there was no going back. They burned the boat. They left like the chances of people leaving. And so it does build this dysregulation nervous system where people are working and they're striving and they're working so hard. And it does get passed down to us as children too.
Because you said, even though it didn't feel right, that you didn't have any external validation that there could be a different way because it wasn't modeled.
[00:05:24] Lynn: Yes. And, you're bringing tears to my eyes because right now I feel like there are so many layers that we build as we go through our lives. You can only uncover so many probably traumatize the nervous system. It's like you can only consciously handle so much at a time. And I feel like right now I'm going through understanding that root cause of that scarcity mindset, that lack, that hard work ethic that I think I have brought into my adult life.
Because I associated making money with really the struggle and the pain and not liking what I did. Because my family had a business. We were expected to work in it, but I hated it. It was terrible, but there was that guilt. And then I found passion. Like I found purpose with chiropractic and then with other entrepreneurial endeavors.
I found purpose passion and inspiration. But for me, it's been a struggle to be able to support myself through that because there was a disconnect and it's interesting, I'm realizing now that I think the scoliosis was part of that money thing. My father died before I had the scoliosis.
There are so many things I just feel the disconnect of life had the braces, braces being put on my teeth before and after my father died. And that's one of the connections of scoliosis, like another pattern. There's all these things. And I'm really, I started working at my family business right after my father died.
And it was right. A year before I got diagnosed with scoliosis and I'm realizing right now how much I believe it was connected to that scarcity and work ethic and isn't that crazy. I'm going to be 50 and I'm just connecting the dots right now on that one.
[00:07:02] Aneta: Yeah. That is so interesting and impactful. And sometimes we just have to pull ourselves out of our everyday life and go, wait a second. I mean, because the right inspiration can come to you at any time, like this inner knowing. So you found the scoliosis and so you're saying that you think that there was a connection between all those other things happening in your life. What do you think may be contributing to the scoliosis?
[00:07:24] Lynn: Yeah. So this is what I've come to learn as a chiropractor and through my healing as I love the book Louise Hayes book, you can heal your body. She has the emotional component to the physical symptom and the emotional thought that we're having that we replay and then she gives you a positive affirmation. I believe there is, that's what I would tell people. I'm like, look, your physical symptoms are just an outer expression of something going on inside of you.
If you can tap into what that belief is or what that fear is, and you can change that the physical symptoms going to change. That's how it works. It's not even a guessing. That's how it works. That's the energy flow of the body.
[00:08:03] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:08:03] Lynn: So we were learning that in school. I remember some of the components of scoliosis were feeling pulled between two parents.
I could say that on so many levels. My father died when he was 12. I was raised Catholic. So I believed that he went to heaven. This utopia place. And I believed he left me here in hell. Well, that's how I felt. And I was kind of angry. He's in a better place. So I didn't have a fear of him, but I felt like I had a parent in one place and my mother here on earth, so it pulled in two directions. I do believe my father died from his failed entrepreneurial endeavors, and failed dreams.
He lost the business. He lost the house. Had to start working at a job that he hated. On a night shift, and I believe that led to cancer. So I was a part of that. That was my beginning upbringing, this struggle from him. But then my mother had it 10 times from that immigrant.
That immigrant scarcity mentality works hard. You're no good unless you do kind of hard knocks. So that was all happening. You could say that I felt like there had to be more to life, but there was no validation. So that's being pulled in two directions. Then there's also the component.
Do you see everybody? It was so crazy. Do you see all these young kids or braces are put on the teeth, no matter if your teeth are crooked or straight? It's like, shouldn't be even 50/50, I feel like you get to a certain level and they're bracing your teeth. What is that? I don't even know if it became a big business, but I believe, I went through, I had the headgear, everything like all this stress on your face.
Your body's growing, puberty, all those things. Well, you're being held here. What does your poor body have to do to compensate for that?
Plus, I had the trauma of my father dying, which kind of locks in the trauma. You can't express it. So I had all these things, but also when I got diagnosed with scoliosis, I started working at my family business. We had a sub shop that all my cousins worked in, I was like the youngest. I remember thinking, my family works all the time. I want to be included. I want to work too.
Because that's where I'll be seen, I'll be accepted. Well, when I got there, I saw the dysfunction, the alcoholism, the workaholism, they weren't happy, the fighting with each other. But I was told don't question that, that's normal. Well, I'm realizing that's I think a lot of the cause of my trauma in my spine. It was just one thing after another. And that's unbelievable that I'm just connecting the dots to that right now. But that's really what's been coming up for me.
[00:10:42] Aneta: Wow. That's amazing. And then the irony, we're not that irony because there are no coincidences, I think. But then the fact that you went to chiropractic school without ever being adjusted, but something you said rang true like your spirit just knew that what you read on the pamphlet felt aligned somehow to what you also believed.
So tell me a little bit more about that for some people that maybe don't tap in that way or aren't as connected. Like, what about the pamphlet did sort of ring true for you and gave you the go-ahead to say, okay, I think this is where I need to pursue my career.
[00:11:21] Lynn: So ironic. Chiropractic was able to look and maybe this will give people a lot of clarity. every profession has, we could say good or bad or different paths. But chiropractic could walk two worlds. It looked mainstream. You had a doctorate. You could make a decent amount of money every year.
It was an accepted profession. It looks good socially to become a chiropractor. So it had those elements that I felt like that's what you want a college degree for. My mother approved kind of thing because really when I told her about chiropractic, she said, they're quacks. You don't want to do that.
So there's that other element that people don't understand. But I believe at the time that I was coming into it, it was becoming more accepted mainstream. But when I got there, I meant, the pamphlet itself, I thought
nobody ever said to me that the power that made the body heals the body. I've been struggling with my body and sickness for five years, going to different doctors.
All they knew was how to give me drugs for physical therapy, but the pain was horrible. The sickness kept coming down. I was always getting strep throat, just run down
[00:12:30] Lynn: that one person
I kept saying, why do I keep getting sick when I'm done with this antibiotic we're the pain didn't even work.
And they just would like let me write you a stronger prescription and I'm like these people don't know. So when I heard that, it was like the first time I knew there was an answer for me, even though when I got there, it wasn't that I started getting adjusted and it was a quick fix.
And I think this is where people miss the message of healing. They think you have to do whatever remedy it is and get better. Well, no, sometimes it's a process. Most of the time it's a process because you're untangling all that crap. And so I was changing my mindset, understanding how the body heals.
[00:13:16] Lynn: I was learning what the medical world learned because I had to pass all these boards to become a doctor. So I saw that all they know how to do is give big labels to basic bodily symptoms so they can drug them. They didn't understand anything else. They didn't get nutrition. They didn't understand the energy of the body.
We were understanding that there is an inner wisdom in the body. That it's doing what it needs to do to run your body all the time. That if you tried to do that consciously, you couldn't do it. So I understood that the body's always making itself better. It's always healing symptoms.
There's a purpose for symptoms. What is the body trying to tell you? It's always making itself new. It's always healing itself. It never stops unless you're interfering. There's interference you see? So I was getting tested, but having all this change in mindset, I got to the point where I didn't fear the pain anymore.
I didn't fear what my body was doing. I understood it. That's probably the most empowering thing that can happen to a person once they have understanding, once you lose the fear, that's where the true healing happens. I believe.
[00:14:23] Aneta: Yeah. And also like when you release the fear, then you're not resisting. As you said, it's a different perspective going, what is my body trying to tell me? And how can I support it? That's awesome and fascinating. So you started your chiropractic career and can you tell me just maybe some stories of healing that you were able to witness or be a part of with your clients?
[00:14:48] Lynn: Yeah. I mean, that would be spontaneous things I would adjust one person one time and whatever it was. Low back pain and neck pain, their symptom would go away and that's fine.
Sometimes I would be like, well, they missed the healing part. Now they think I fixed them. That didn't impress me so much because I thought now if that symptom comes back for them and it's not a quick fix, they're going to think something's wrong. They're going to blame chiropractic. They missed the boat.
They didn't get to the root of why that happened. So I don't feel like they got the full healing experience. And yet people think is healing and success. You fixed them. That's how I looked at it. The purest part though is the kids. Like kids getting adjusted when they're little and the earache goes away or the symptoms go away and their, digestive problems go away.
Allergies go away because they're getting adjusted. Because they don't have years of buildup. It's easy to clear a child. The trauma that they experienced a lot of times because they were given too many drugs, right away. And the birth trauma, so happens in that experience that we call normal. It's not a normal birth anymore.
It's trauma and so many drugs. I mean by the time you're 18, you're given like 72 shots if you follow the mainstream system. What is that? How does the body even survive that? So it was a blessing to be a part of a lot of children's journey, they found another path early. I always thought that was such a blessing.
[00:16:10] Aneta: Yeah. So for someone who maybe hasn't ever been to a chiropractor, I love getting adjusted. And as I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, okay, I need to work on my posture and I need to go schedule my appointment. But tell me a little bit, maybe you can share for curious folks, but maybe have never gone. How does your profession work and what exactly is helping heal the body or heal the person when you're working with your clients?
[00:16:38] Lynn: So the intent of chiropractic is just to feel the spine. Every area of the spine should be moving properly. So, because that is what protects the brain spinal cord, and nervous system, excludes the spine.
That nerves exit through the spine. That's how your brain communicates to your body. It's like an electricity flow. We call it the light, the flow of the body. And we would adjust the spine. It just releases those blockages of energy that get stored up. We call it stress. I mean if you're stressed out, you feel you can hold yourself funny.
So it's like, if you keep doing that, it becomes a chronic pattern. So the adjustment just breaks up that pattern. So that can help someone have an awakening to make changes in the body, to reset the body. Hopefully, they go differently in their life. But my thing was, I didn't want people dependent on me to do it.
I saw that I could help you align, but the work is to do the inner alignment yourself. It's working on your inner flow. So what would cause, like, I would see what causes some people to heal and some people not to, it was their mindset, their thought patterns, their lifestyle, how happy they were in life.
That was the biggest. Are they following what they want to be doing in life? Or are they going to a job they hate? A marriage they hate. A relationship they hate. Where was the joy? Were they soul's truth and purpose, or were they doing what society expected them to do? And that was the crux for me.
And I thought it was about doing work to find your soul's alignment. It's the alignment of the soul. Chiropractic is a metaphor for being in alignment with your higher source.
[00:18:18] Aneta: Well, and how do people get there? What have you found in terms of how to live your purpose or how to be in alignment with yourself?
[00:18:26] Lynn: Yeah. So that's why I'm big on people creating their desired life. I love that expression because I believe you can work on your health, but I believe you can't separate all areas of your life. You have to look at your money flow, your relationships, the people around you, and how you feel every day, and that could be overwhelming.
I always say that a great place to start is just, that you have to learn to come back to yourself and your inner voice. We've been trained to listen to so many things outside of us, from the news to the priest to our professors, to all these things, instead of listening to what's going on within ourselves.
So a great place to just get reoriented, I think, is the journal. If you just put pen to paper and start writing out, what would your dream life look like? Are you living it or are you not? Why not? Some people say I don't know what I want. I believe it's because they don't believe they can have it.
So it's like, I say don't judge that. Just judge what your wildest dreams look like and start paying attention to what inspiration flows for you, even if you don't know, and write it down. Something that would help that is making a gratitude list. Make lists of things that you appreciate, even just feeling the sunshine on your face like little things. Retrain yourself to look for things to appreciate, because that's the vibration of inspiration.
Instead of looking for the problem, always look at a problem that you have to fix our society is very problem-oriented, and become solution-oriented by feeling that place of gratitude, and appreciation. That's where the inspiration can come and then ideas will start to flow.
Well, if I could have no limits to time and money, what would I be doing with my life? That's a big question. To journal. What would it look like? And you don't have to figure it all out because if you just stay open to that place, reflect on that maybe every day, you're going to get answers pop in. The right person is going to show up with a message for you. A book's going to fall into your lap.
The podcast will come up on your screen. I always say you get answers. It starts to become like a puzzle. You start putting these pieces together and that's where the soul starts to thrive. If you want your life force to come through at a hundred percent, follow your dreams. Even the stuff that you are afraid to face, that's where people stop.
They're afraid to face the limiting beliefs and the fears that come up. But if you realize that they're breakthroughs, you can have breakthroughs with that, which allows so much more energy to flow. You're here to clear those limiting beliefs. That's the blessing of the soul's journey to face those limiting beliefs so that you can release them.
They may have served you back in the past but, they're probably not serving you now. So you have to get a new perspective on them and change that system. That's how you start to have absolute well-being. That's where it's at.
[00:21:24] Aneta: Yeah. I love that. I'm such a big supporter and proponent of journaling. I just think it's such a great way to tap into your subconscious mind, tap into your heart space, and ask yourself those questions. I'm with you. I think that people censor themselves, they negotiate with their dreams before they even really honor what's coming through because we focus so much on the how, and when it seems hard, we just go, oh, that's silly.
How will I ever do that? Or I won't have time or I don't have the money or that's irresponsible or whatever the excuses are. So what age did you start to discover this? Because it sounds like when you were younger, you were having some conflicts. Even your body was giving you signals, but maybe it wasn't in complete harmony.
[00:22:08] Lynn: Yeah. I guess I was just immersed in my healing journey in chiropractic school. I was having such a radical transformation. I was in so much pain, the pain became worse first, really scary because I was getting adjusted.
It was awakening all the trauma in my spine that had to release. So it was quite a journey. It wasn't like got a few adjustments that I was It was a process, a couple of years. It was very mechanical for me. I just wanted the structural adjustment. I wasn't into the spiritual stuff at that time.
As soon as I opened my practice and talked about ignorance on fire, for 23 years old, I opened up a practice because I just wanted to practice on principle. I didn't like how other chiropractors were practicing. I mean, chiropractic was very sacred to me. And I just saw other chiropractors who became colleagues, I would say.
They just didn't get it. They didn't have their own healing experience. So it was very mechanical. They came out and I felt like to build a practice, they were pushing the fear, doing the insurance, all this stuff. And to me, that was anti-chiropractic. It was sacred to me. I wanted it to be about wellness.
People could afford it. And so I opened up my practice and a lot of things happened. I realized no one taught me about money or business. So I started reading that, but also my healing journey went deeper. It became more spiritual. I started getting adjusted with a lighter touch. I was having a kind of an awakening in that way. I started reading an autobiography of a yogi.
[00:23:31] Aneta: Yeah, it's a good one.
[00:23:32] Lynn: And I was realizing that there was so much working on people too. This was so much bigger than what we thought. This life force that runs the body is what we call life. It's so much bigger here. It's so much more than what we can comprehend. And I realized at that time, in my first three years in practice, I realized, I'm like, there's no disease, except that we believe in it. And how do you say that in my early twenties?
I'm discovering all this stuff, but I couldn't voice this to the average person, just the basic chiropractic message was too much for most people. They didn't want to change their life. They didn't want to face what they had to do. They just wanted me to fix them so they could keep going on in their lives.
Well, I didn't get into practice for that. I wanted to get to the bottom of what life was about. That's always been my mindset. That's what makes me thrive. So I just kept reading and doing it, and then I was having my inner transformation. It just kind of was all happening at the same time.
[00:24:29] Aneta: Yeah. And I could only imagine as a young 20-something-year-old starting with her practice, where did you live at the time? Was the community open in Delaware? Yeah, it wasn't like Portland, Oregon.
[00:24:44] Lynn: We didn't even have a health food store.
[00:24:46] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Lynn: Like, I came from Atlanta, where it was like a kind of a hub of what do you call the new age or the healthy living kind of style.
But I go back to my town in Delaware, there was no Whole Foods that was like Trader Joe's where you could buy organic. It was before all that. It was interesting, an interesting time to see where society has evolved to now looks so accepted compared to 1998 when I started. So that gives me hope that the consciousness is waking up a lot with all those things.
[00:25:17] Aneta: I think so. So do you still have your private practice right now?
[00:25:22] Lynn: Not. No, I practiced for 18 years and that was something I had to go through. I felt like I expanded beyond it and I wanted to close it so bad, but there was so much guilt involved because I love chiropractic. So that was the whole process to finally get to that point where I closed it and I don't regret it at all. I realized I stayed in it too long, but that was part of my journey.
[00:25:44] Aneta: Yeah. And what's part of your journey now? How do you spend most of your time?
[00:25:49] Lynn: Yeah. So right now the lockdown of four years ago screwed me up. It derailed living by 2019, I was building my dream life, building my business. I was building a network marketing business because I believed I could help people create healthy habits, and financial freedom, and work on their personal development at the same time. That's what I loved about it.
And I was living in Miami Beach, my dream, and I understood the economy. Finally, I had to invest. I had my money and I finally felt like, this was great. And then the lockdown happened and everything was derailed. I lost all my personal networking events. I was speaking up for health freedom because I knew what was going on and wasn't right.
And everybody around me did not want to hear it. I was like, here we go again. Here we go again. I felt like when I opened my practice. People weren't ready for my message. Well, in 2020, right away, I was speaking like, this isn't right. What's going on? And people were not ready for, I'm like, how did I align myself to everybody asleep at that time?
But anyway, so I'm rebuilding myself still with the same business, but I had to do more online. It just threw a wrench in my plans, but I'm getting to the root of a lot of shadow work that I wasn't able to do before. I was only one line at a time. And it is what it is, and I'm at peace with it. So
[00:27:13] Aneta: Sometimes through the darkest times and challenges, we can define ourselves to find the light within. So how can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your different programs, where can we find you?
[00:27:30] Lynn: So I have a website creatingmydesiredlife.com and you can go on there and you can email me a question. You can get on my mailing list. You can also find my book there. It's called My Journey to Grace.
[00:27:42] Aneta: Tell me a little bit more about your book.
[00:27:45] Lynn: Yeah. So I wrote it at the beginning of when we first locked down in 2020 because there was so much fear happening. And I realized if everybody understood healing like I had the experience that I did with my body. They wouldn't be falling for this. They wouldn't be living in this fear. This would not be happening. I knew it in the pit of my being, every fiber of my being. So I just decided to write my story.
I wasn't planning on doing that then. I thought maybe down the road I'd write my book because I was still figuring out the financial piece building a business and becoming financially free. After all, I had a lot of pieces figured out and I was just putting my puzzle together to create my desired life.
When that happened, I said, like, well, I guess nothing's happening right now. At the time. I didn't know we were going to be derailed for almost two years. I thought we were going to last a couple of weeks, but I just decided to write my story and one thing led to another, and I self-published it and I just thought it was just a passion project for me.
Again, it was just like. I learned from other people's stories. I love hearing success stories or how empowered stories because when someone figures it out, that means I can figure it out. It's like we're setting a new blueprint for humanity. And so I knew my story could help people have faith that they can heal themselves.
That's the truth of what it is. You don't have to be afraid of another disease that they create, another disease coming into the world. So the empowerment's within, and that's really what the book's about.
[00:29:07] Aneta: That sounds so great. I'll have to check it out. We'll include the links in the show notes and Lynn, I ask everyone a final question, which is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:29:18] Lynn: I love that question because right now I feel like I'm going through a challenging time. But do I regret anything that I've chosen before? No, because I think I am living the width of my life, it tears me up because I played my hands full out every moment. I've always taken the chance. I've always said yes to life.
I've always said yes to my dreams, to the best of my ability of what was in my awareness of the choices that I had at the moment. And I'm thinking that's a pretty grand life because right now it looks like everything's upside down, but I'm like, I'm okay with that because I know from the darkest hour comes the greatest light and it's going to be another awakening for me and it's going to be a really good story, this piece.
[00:30:02] Aneta: Thank you so much for coming on the show today and just continued success.
[00:30:07] Lynn: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
[00:30:10] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.