Kindred Conversation: Joy Dettling, Life and Health Coach

Story and Photos by Hilary Nichols


Tears run down my cheeks. My right hand, resting on a hand cradle contraption, buzzes lightly. Life and health coach Joy Dettling asks me to continue speaking about my central concerns, as she monitors the correlating reactions on her laptop. “What’s bothering you?” she asked. “What are the blocks between you and your betterment?” With one deep aha moment after the next, I am surprised to be finding the words to express some of my most long-held emotional blocks and self-doubts. As I speak, the ZYTO EVOX hand cradle measures my reactions through the pulses in my fingertips and reports the levels on her screen. With a thumbs-up, Dettling assures me that, “We are on the right track.”

Like a lie-detector device the technology reads my frequencies and can gauge my strongest reactions without interference of interpretation—not my own, nor a therapist’s. “I think we have narrowed into your central query here. You can continue to speak about this concern,” Dettling encouraged. Tingles enter my right hand and spread throughout my body while the hand cradle now offers a return healing frequency.

This new therapeutic modality is unfamiliar to me. Of course, initially I was skeptical, but the description in their literature seemed viable. My interest was piqued with the statement, “New scientific studies are showing how frequency has powerful effects on the human body. Every cell in our body is resonating at a specific frequency and these frequencies are used to communicate about processes and functions in the body.” When Joy Dettling offered to share her unique healing modality with me, I considered the treatment with a healthy dose of doubt, but I had witnessed Dettling’s leadership style. As the founder of Ignite Life, she has a quiet confidence and an unassuming authority as the host of weekly movement gatherings, frequent workshops, and her treatment modality. Her grace and strength, her humility and open heart are assuring, and I have come to trust what she offers. Ignite Life’s mission is to “ignite the spark of life within by accelerating true personal growth and healing,”which for Dettling, includes her own. So, I took a deeper look.

“Shift the subconscious with ZYTO EVOX, an innovative healing frequency technology” is the description on the Ignite Life website. From there, I read the testimonials and became more intrigued. “The bio-feedback received through the tool was instrumental in my gaining insight and acknowledging next steps. I highly recommend Joy as she is invested in my process and success in achieving the knowledge that helped me to break through barriers I had created for myself.”

When Dettling shared her own story of this treatment, my faith was affirmed. I don’t need to understand the inner workings to believe it. In fact, do I understand the underpinning of any of the treatments that I imbibe? From aspirin to antibiotics, it is all a mystery to me. These days Dettling is the picture of health: fit, slim, young, and agile. But that wasn’t always the case. I met Dettling as the host of the ‘Ignite Body Freedom’ weekly ecstatic dance jam. She starts and ends each gathering with a check-in circle, and it is there that we got to know each other. She is a yoga teacher, a dancer, a traveler, and a lifelong devotee of healthy living practices. But she did not always feel healthy. In fact, for years of her life she felt anything but. She was sickly and in pain, complaining of countless discomforts and crippling fatigue. Traditional medical establishments found nothing to attribute it to. When she was first introduced to the ZYTO EVOX treatment she was a skeptic, too, but it was the first healing experience that actually relieved her condition.

“I had to know what makes ZYTO EVOX Perception Reframing so impactful,” Dettling writes on her website, describing how she came to this body of work. “Starting ZYTO EVOX Perception Reframing sessions was the turning point in my health. With each session I felt like I was unpeeling layers of an onion, closer to the roots of my issues—physically, mentally, and emotionally. One session I did on “pain” mysteriously cleared my pain almost completely within the week. It was like my body was clearing out old beliefs about itself that I didn’t need any more. With these sessions I was able to let go of those limiting beliefs and embody new empowering ones and watch them manifest in my overall wellbeing.”

During my second session, I too became a believer and a fan. Again, she asked me to express what my concerns might be. And with my hand on the cradle, I found myself accessing the story of self-doubt. “Speak again, on that topic,” she instructed. “Okay, you have had your release.” My tears began to fall. My old beliefs became evident and I felt my outdated self-perception begin to clear away with such a feeling of release. “My work is very focused on getting to the roots,” Dettling affirmed. “Yet there is nothing to figure out or understand, we just have to be receptive and let it apply its impact.” Our third session in the series was over the phone. She left a cradle in my care, and I was patched into her home computer through the device. Joy was encouraging, calm, kind, and insightful. She seemed nearly as excited about my progress as I was. I had to ask, “How much of this experience is interpersonal and how much is the impact directly from the EVOK hand cradle?” Dettling doesn’t pretend to know. “People do seem to respond to me, and I realize that I do connect with the clients and impact their sessions simply with my presence.” I do recognize the benefits of a good guide, but nothing has moved me more certainly and swiftly than these sessions. I did wonder how the hand cradle’s buzz impacted me. Dettling explained, “The technology learns your frequencies with a sense of what is out of balance and can return the necessary frequency that is analogous to flower essence.” After each session Dettling shares a report that identifies the incoming dose in detail: Virtual Items Select for Output 121.24 Bush Gardenia, 101.82 Water Violet, 75.70 Crabapple, 46.00 Black-eyed Susan, 45.94 Alpine Mint Bush and their characteristics: Positive Outcome: passion, renews interest in partner, improves communication. And negative conditions: stale relationships, self-interest, unawareness.

Sunday and Tuesday mornings Joy Dettling invites the group of dancers to sit for an opening circle and then she begins her playlist of 75 minutes of energetic tunes that fill the gymnasium. She has hosted Ignite Body Freedom movement class twice weekly for over a year. As a frequent participant, I feel lucky that she has found her way to these many healing practices and that she has had the inclination to share them. Joy Dettling speaks from her own experience, “True healing happens when we bring support to all layers of our Being: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual.”

Into the dance Dettling swirled, spun, sprung, and landed with her ebullient energy that ignites the room. We were carried through this practice of self-expression with her generous guidance, and then we sit again to share how important the magic of this childlike time is to each of us participating. For me, it all comes together and with a hand to my heart, I extend my gratitude to Dettling.

Learn more about Dettling and Ignite LIfe on her website ignitelife.net.

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