Dr. Steven Polenz
My journey as a healer began with my own need for healing.
As a young athlete, I lived for the thrill of competition. I ran faster than everyone else. I scored goals. I jumped higher. I ran further. My body was my instrument, and I played it with abandon—until the day my right hip and back pain stopped everything.
The pain progressed until walking became an ordeal. I would take a step with my left leg, then grab my right pant leg with my hand to swing my right leg forward. This awkward, painful shuffle became my new normal.
Coming from a medical family, my mother took me to doctor after doctor. Examinations. Physical therapy. Nothing helped. The professionals who were supposed to have answers couldn't explain why a young athlete was suddenly unable to walk properly, let alone run or jump.
Then, in what felt like a last resort, my mother took me to a chiropractor. I can still vividly recall that first visit. The chiropractor took X-rays that revealed how twisted my hips, pelvis, and spine had become. When I laid on the table for my first adjustment, relief flooded through my body immediately.
I was hooked.
The connection between proper alignment and pain relief was so powerful that I would ride my bike from home to the chiropractor's office just to get adjusted. I loved how good I felt afterward, and something about it resonated deeply with me. While my mother's medical world never called to me, chiropractic spoke a language my body understood.
That experience set me on my path. I pursued my Doctorate of Chiropractic, excelling in hands-on techniques and structural analysis. The teenager who couldn't walk properly became the doctor helping others regain their mobility and freedom from pain.
Early in my practice, I encountered a puzzling pattern. Some patients experienced miraculous relief after adjustments, while others felt worse. This inconsistency haunted me.
What was I missing? Why did traditional approaches work beautifully for some but fail others completely?
The patients who didn't improve under my care kept me awake at night. Their faces, their pain, their trust in me to help them—these weighed heavily on my conscience. I had mastered the techniques I'd been taught, but clearly, there was something more to healing than what my training had covered.
In moments of quiet frustration, I began to notice something subtle—faint intuitive impressions while working with patients. A sense that I should adjust here rather than there. A feeling that something was being overlooked. These whispers of intuition were easy to dismiss, until the day of what I now call "the broccoli visit."
I was working with a patient suffering from an extremely painful neck muscle spasm that wouldn't release, despite everything in my chiropractic toolkit. Stepping back in frustration, I closed my eyes and simply asked, "What should I do?"
In my mind, I saw one word: "Broccoli."
My rational mind thought, "What the hell?" But nothing else was working, so I asked if anyone in the office had broccoli. My wife's eyes lit up—we had been sampling a powdered green vegetable drink with broccoli as a main ingredient. We mixed some for the patient.
To my amazement, their muscle spasm began to relax almost immediately. When I returned to the adjustments, everything flowed perfectly. The patient left that day pain-free and elated.
This moment changed everything. I realized some patients didn't respond to adjustments alone because their bodies had other, more fundamental needs. This epiphany drove me to dive deep into functional nutrition, becoming certified in advanced nutritional therapies and integrating them with my chiropractic work.
The results were remarkable. Patients who had plateaued began progressing again. Complex cases started responding. My practice transformed as I combined structural alignment, nutritional support, and—increasingly—the intuitive guidance I was learning to trust.
The final piece of my healing approach arrived unexpectedly—through my own injury.
I was biking with my wife when a skateboard shot out from a group of kids on the trail, catching my rear wheel and launching me into the air. I hit the pavement hard on my left side, feeling immediate, intense pain in my hip. Though I feared it was broken, I somehow made it to my office for a full day of scheduled patients.
Unable to stand due to the pain, I sat in a chair beside my treatment table. Since I couldn't physically adjust my patients, I had no choice but to work energetically—something I had dabbled in but never fully embraced.
What happened that day was nothing short of miraculous.
As I closed my eyes with my first patient, I was flooded with colors and mental pictures revealing exactly what they needed. I had never experienced information coming through with such clarity and certainty. Every image, every impression carried a feeling of deep truth. I followed this guidance, working energetically as I watched the colors and mental pictures shift and change.
I could feel in my gut when an energy block released or when I found the right supplement they needed. I observed tension visibly leaving my patients' bodies. One after another, they told me the session was more powerful than any previous visit—they felt changes they had never experienced before.
After my last patient left, I sat quietly, trying to comprehend what had just happened. I realized then that my bike crash—which I later discovered had actually fractured my pelvis—was a blessing in disguise. It forced me out of my routine and revealed that it was time for my energy healing abilities to emerge.
The accident was like a cosmic intervention that sat me down in a chair and compelled me to surrender my familiar methods. In that surrender, I discovered a part of myself I never knew existed. It felt like living with one arm my entire life, not knowing I had a second arm, and suddenly discovering I could use both. A missing piece of myself had awakened, and I was profoundly grateful for the crash that led to this revelation.
These three profound experiences—my childhood healing through chiropractic, the intuitive nutrition breakthrough, and the awakening of my energy healing abilities—formed the foundation of what would become the Healing Space.
I began to understand that true healing isn't just physical, nutritional, or energetic—it's the harmonious integration of all three. And most importantly, I discovered that everyone carries energy blocks from their life experiences, blocks that can manifest as physical pain, emotional struggles, or life patterns that keep repeating.
What started as a personal journey to heal my own body evolved into a mission to help others release these energy blocks and reclaim their vitality. I developed a unique approach that honors the wisdom of traditional healing modalities while accessing the deeper energy patterns that often underlie chronic issues.
The Healing Space emerged as a place where people could come together to experience this integrated healing approach. In community, I found that the healing energy amplified—just as music resonates more powerfully in a concert hall than an empty room. When people gather with the intention to heal, something magical happens. Energy blocks that have resisted individual efforts often dissolve in the collective field.
Week after week, I witness transformations that remind me of my own journey—the relief of finally addressing issues at their root, the joy of rediscovering vitality, and the freedom that comes from releasing long-held energy blocks.
My path to becoming a healer wasn't straightforward. I thought when I fell in love with Chiropractic that I would get my degree and go be a chiropractor for the rest of my career. But as life always does, it throws us surprises. Just like I bet your life right now is not like you imagined it would be!
My path required injury and healing. It demanded humility when my early approaches fell short. It called for surrender when my bike accident presented an opportunity for me to discover new abilities. Each step was necessary, each challenge a doorway to deeper understanding.
What I've learned through my life is that our greatest struggles often conceal our greatest gifts. My childhood inability to walk properly led me to chiropractic. My frustration with patients who weren't improving opened the door to nutritional insights. My bike accident and broken pelvis helped me see my energy healing abilities.
The Healing Space exists today because of these challenges—not in spite of them. It represents the journey of my life and everything I've learned about healing: that our bodies have innate wisdom, that nutrition provides the building blocks for recovery, and that energy work can access and release the deeper patterns that keep us stuck.
Whether you're struggling with physical pain, emotional challenges, or life patterns that repeat no matter how hard you try to change them, I invite you to join us in the Healing Space. Together, we'll identify and release the energy blocks that have been holding you back, creating room for your natural vitality to flow.
Your healing journey is unique, but you don't have to walk it alone. The intuition that guided me through my darkest moments speaks to you too: You can feel better. You can get through this. Your transformation begins with a single step.
I invite you to take that step today.