Have you ever noticed how stress doesn’t just make you anxious — it affects everything? Your digestion, your hormones, your sleep, your mood.

In this solo episode of Healing Beyond the Symptoms, Dr. Leah Hahn, D.C. of Body in Balance Wellness Center in Golden, CO, unpacks the powerful role your autonomic nervous system plays in regulating your body’s most vital functions. She explains how chronic stress locks your system into survival mode — keeping cortisol high, slowing digestion, disrupting sleep cycles, and throwing hormones off balance.

She breaks down the science of the sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/digest) systems, helping listeners understand how modern life keeps us stuck in a loop of vigilance, fatigue, and hormonal chaos — and what it takes to reset.

You’ll also learn about the vagus nerve, your body’s master regulator of calm, and how to activate it through breath, movement, and gentle care.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems
• What “dorsal vagal shutdown” really means for digestion and mood
• How cortisol imbalance disrupts sleep and energy
• Why chronic stress causes hormone fluctuations and PMS
• Practical steps to regulate your nervous system naturally

Your symptoms aren’t random — they’re communication. When you support your nervous system, your body can finally return to balance.

Most of us think of stress as something that happens in our minds — a mental storm we can outthink, outplan, or outwork.
But what if stress isn’t just mental?

In this solo episode of Healing Beyond the Symptoms, Dr. Leah Hahn, chiropractor and functional wellness doctor at Body in Balance Wellness Center in Golden, CO, breaks down how stress leaves a physical imprint on your nervous system and body.

She explains how chronic overwhelm creates visible changes — from tight shoulders and shallow breathing to digestive problems, sleep disruption, and hormone imbalance. Stress doesn’t just fade; it imprints on your physiology and behavior until you teach your body safety again.

Dr. Hahn also shares practical ways to release stored stress and retrain your nervous system — including body check-ins, micro-resets, breathwork, movement, and Network Spinal care, which helps reorganize tension and restore balance.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How stress becomes a physical pattern in the nervous system
• Why muscle tension, gut issues, and hormone imbalance are stress responses
• The four main stress responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn
• How chronic stress impacts digestion, sleep, and immunity
• Simple daily practices to regulate your nervous system and restore calm
  
  

If you’ve been dismissing your body’s signals as “just stress,” this episode will help you understand the deeper meaning — and how to finally reset your system.

Stress doesn’t end when the moment passes — it leaves an imprint.

In this solo episode of Healing Beyond the Symptoms, Dr. Leah Hahn D.C., of Body in Balance Wellness Center in Golden, CO, explores how stress is not just mental but deeply physiological, affecting posture, hormones, immunity, and emotions long after the trigger is gone.

Dr. Hahn explains how stress, trauma, and chronic overwhelm imprint on the nervous system, keeping it stuck in fight-or-flight or freeze mode. Over time, this creates tension, hormonal imbalance, sleep disruption, and emotional reactivity — even when life seems “fine.”

You’ll also hear the story of a client who faced profound loss and physical limitation after years of emotional trauma — and how her nervous system, through Network Spinal care, gradually reorganized toward stability, peace, and healing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why stress is stored in the body, not just the mind
• The neuroscience behind trauma and nervous system imprinting
• How stress changes muscle tone, hormones, and digestion
• Why talk therapy alone may not resolve body-held trauma
• Practical tools to retrain your nervous system and create safety
• How Network Spinal care helps release stored stress and restore balance

Your body isn’t broken — it’s patterned. And those patterns can change.