There have been books and articles in the news over the past few years about how the body keeps track of everything that happens in our lives, especially difficult or traumatic events. You or someone you know may experience lingering pain from injuries in which the tissues involved healed long ago. Sometimes, there is no discernible damage, but there is persistent pain. Many clients describe having worked through traumatic events in psychotherapy yet still feeling the event stuck in their body.  In Zero Balancing, the mechanism through which the body remembers these experiences is tissue held memory. 

A few months ago, an area of my back got stuck in a very painful way. As my Physical Therapist was working in that area, I remembered a fall that happened 40 years ago. The chair I was standing on tipped and I fell backwards, hitting the middle of my spine on the back of the chair. Luckily, the chair broke. I recovered quickly and only thought of it occasionally in the following years. Quite likely, the fall was how that part of my back got stuck in the first place. The pain caused me to seek help, which ultimately healed the old injury. And also released the remembrance of the experience, including how frightened I felt when it happened. A perfect example of tissue held memory.  

What is tissue held memory? How does tissue hold memory? In the Zero Balancing paradigm, the memory or its vibratory form, AKA energy, gets stuck in bone, AKA structure. Read more about structure and energy here. In my case, the force, or energy, of my back hitting the chair was absorbed by my structure, my vertebrae and ribs. As was my emotional response, which was also energy. My tissues held that memory until it was released by the bodywork I received. Usually these occurrences, the release of tissue held memory and healing of an old injury, are happy accidents in Physical Therapy. In contrast, a primary goal of a Zero Balancing session is to find and release stuck energy.  

Zero Balancing practitioners seek stuck energy in bone. Another word for energy is vibration. Vibration is a particularly good descriptor because vibration can be felt through touch. It makes energy palpable and accessible. 

When you receive a Zero Balancing session, your practitioner is looking for where your energy has gotten stuck in your bones. Through training, they learn the signature feeling of stuck vibration and the gentle technique that invites your energy to free up and move. Your body is deciding how much to release at every step. The practitioner may touch an area of held energy and nothing will change. Another area, perhaps a small change. Another one, a larger change. The innate wisdom of your body is calling the shots. That’s the reason the energy from my fall was still stuck, even after 30 years of receiving ZB sessions. The instinctive intelligence of my body chose when, where, and what to release. It’s part of what makes Zero Balancing so safe. To quote the founder, Dr. Fritz Smith, “The practitioner gives the session. Nature gives the experience.” 

Sometimes the content of the tissue held memory is revealed. Sometimes not. It’s not necessary or necessarily important. When stuck energy in bone is released, healing occurs. 

People seek Zero Balancing (ZB) sessions for many reasons. Because I am a Physical Therapist, the issue that usually brings people to my office is pain. Sometimes it’s physical pain. Sometimes it’s emotional pain. Often, it’s pain they have suffered for a long time, such as an injury from a car accident that never seemed to heal or the aftermath of a traumatic event. Regardless of the initial reason for coming, they find multiple facets of life improve after a series of ZB sessions. While it’s the pain that brings them through the door to my office, every ZB session helps every part of them.

What is meant by “every part of you?” Exactly what it says. All of you. Your body, your emotions, your mind, your spirit. You are so much more than your physical body. When you awaken in the morning and determine how you are feeling, you certainly scan your body. And likely you have some attention on other aspects of yourself, like how energized you feel, how happy or sad, whether you are looking forward to the day or dreading it. In the Zero Balancing world, you are assessing your structure and energy. 

Structure is everything in the body that can be seen, such as bones, muscles, skin, blood, even our cells. If it can be seen, it’s structure. Energy is everything in the body that is unseen, such as the motion of our organs, our thoughts, ideas, emotions, beliefs, consciousness. Try to think of a part of you that isn’t either structure or energy. Don’t be surprised if you can’t. I can’t either. In short, all of you is either structure or energy. 

Structure is what we usually think of when we think of our bodies. Bones, muscles, joints, organs can be seen with our own eyes or through an Xray or MRI. When we go to the doctor or Physical Therapist, this is what we report on and receive care for. The unseen, our energy, might be a bit more challenging. Yet we are all familiar with aspects of our inner world. We talk about having lots of or not enough energy. We are aware of feelings of happiness, sadness, frustration, anger or stress. We have ideas, hopes and dreams. We have beliefs, either conscious or unconscious, such as “the world is a safe place,” “the world is an unsafe place,” “I’m ok,” “I’m not ok.” Although unseen, these are foundational aspects of who we are. 

Zero Balancing helps all of you because it works directly with your structure and your energy through touch. Zero Balancing practitioners are trained to touch your structure and energy simultaneously and consciously. While certainly any touch, like massage, physical therapy or even a handshake, is touching energy, it is the conscious attention that makes Zero Balancing unique. In a ZB session, the practitioner uses mindful, skilled, respectful, and safe touch to seek and balance stuck energy in your structure, specifically in your bones. 

The result is a healing session that acknowledges, engages, and accepts every part of you. 

The beauty in this approach is that you don’t have to know all or any of the parts of you that need healing, although awareness has its own rewards. All you need to do is to lie on the Zero Balancing table, relax and enjoy yourself as every part of you is helped. 

In the Autumn newsletter, we looked at the western or reductionist method of treating pain. You can read the article here. We learned how this approach can work very well for pain where specific causes can be identified and treated. For example, arthritic hip pain can be completely alleviated with a total hip replacement because the arthritic joint surfaces are removed. Once the surgery has fully healed, the pain is gone. Unfortunately, this approach can fall short if the causes of pain are complex.

Thirty-five years ago, shortly after graduating PT school, I had a patient who suffered from back pain. I will call her “Joanie” (not her real name). She told me her pain had started on her wedding night. As we worked together over several sessions, she shared that it was her husband’s second marriage. He had four adult children. One was incarcerated, one was drug addicted, and the other two had additional challenging problems. When her back hurt, she went into her bedroom, closed the door, and lay down for a few hours. 

Even as a newly graduated P.T., I could see that her back pain might be serving a purpose. It gave her permission to withdraw from a chaotic  and distressing situation. My heart sank as I realized that treating the structural problems of muscle spasm and weak abdominals might not be enough. This turned out to be true. Although her muscles improved, her pain did not. Because the structural issues were only a part of the problem, physical therapy only partially helped. 

The idea that pain can serve a useful purpose may sound a bit crazy. Who would want to remain in pain? The answer is no one. For “Joanie”, perhaps having back pain was less onerous than living in her current home situation. I couldn’t know. What I could know was that there were many complex factors influencing her pain that might affect the success of my treatment intervention. The physical issues with her back did not tell the whole story. 

When we hurt, we want answers. More than answers, we want relief. It can be frustrating when those answers aren’t clear. If your back hurts and the MRI says your back is fine, you may feel depressed instead of relieved. In actuality, a normal MRI is a blessing! Yet you don’t have an answer for your pain and the prospect of continued pain is a depressing one. 

The value of understanding that pain can be due to multiple causes as well as structural issues is that it can broaden the scope of where you seek assistance and the types of interventions that may improve your pain. And it can also explain why some interventions don’t help or don’t help enough. 

It’s common to feel some resistance to pain being caused by factors beyond the physical. The idea may feel invalidating, as though the reality of your experience is being doubted. Resistance may create an obstacle that blocks your expanding understanding of yourself and what you may be experiencing. Yet seeking causality in every part of yourself corroborates what we know to be true; that we are all complex and unique, and every part of us deserves attention and good care.

A holistic, non-diagnostic modality like Zero Balancing can be very useful in this type of situation. Read the next article for more information. Click Here

It’s easy to forget how good you can feel, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to feel good every day? Do you think it’s possible? Have you decided the way you feel is good enough? Think about your daily experience. Perhaps you have some aches and pains, but you’re ok. Would you like to feel better than ok? Don’t settle. Read on for a simple way to amplify feeling good.

I think many of us settle for feeling ok rather than feeling good. Perhaps we are just too busy with the day-to-day to even think about these things. As long as something doesn’t hurt enough to stop us, we keep barreling ahead. Or perhaps we believe that feeling good or even great isn’t possible. 

I recall a time as a teenager when my severe menstrual cramps finally let up after hours of pain. When I think of it, I can still feel how great my body felt. The relief seemed to spread through all of me and I felt so good. It was more than the absence of pain. There was a presence of feeling good. And remembering it now actually recreates the good feeling in my body that I had so many years ago. 

How can that be? One way to explain this phenomenon is through the lens of Zero Balancing (ZB). In the ZB world view, everything we experience is vibratory in nature. Thoughts and experiences are held in our tissues as vibration. Vibration can be amplified by attention. Think about the last time you experienced pleasure, something particularly delicious to eat for example. If you closed your eyes and focused your attention on the taste, it tasted even better. Your increased attention amplified the vibration of enjoyment.  

I remember feeling how good it felt to be without those awful cramps and how much I enjoyed the feeling of being pain free. Without knowing it, my attention amplified the vibration of feeling good and it’s still accessible to me all these years later.  

That’s the trick. Simply feel how good it feels to feel good and watch what happens. 

You can practice this phenomenon by noticing and then focusing on a good feeling while it is happening. 

For example, how does it feel when you feel good physically? The next time you have a good workout or a particularly satisfying meal, focus on how good the sensation feels.  

How does it feel when you feel good emotionally? Think back to a time when you felt worried or sad. How did you feel when the situation was resolved? The next time you experience worry changing to relief or being comforted in your sadness, dive into how it feels. 

How does it feel when you feel good mentally? Perhaps your mind has let go of the thoughts that usually chase each other around in your head. Perhaps your mind is engaged in a pleasurable work activity or a creative endeavor. When you next have a creative insight or a moment of quiet in your mind, really feel how good that feels. 

How does it feel when you feel good spiritually? Have you ever experienced a sense of serenity or peace? This may happen while meditating or praying. It may happen when viewing a sunset or walking in nature. Notice the next time it happens and focus on how good it feels. 

By bringing your attention to feeling good, you intensify and anchor that vibrational pattern in your body. You can improve your life by feeling how good it feels to feel good. Try it and s

Many people come to my office seeking help for physical pain. Most are looking to both understand why they hurt as well as to find pain relief. Discovering the underlying cause of the problem helps meet both goals. Knowing what is causing the pain can help one to avoid exacerbating activities. Treatment that accurately targets the cause is more likely to work. What happens when the cause is not where we expect it to be?

Through the lens of western medicine, one might find the cause in the same anatomical area as the pain, in an area separate but directly related to the cause, or in an area separate and unrelated to the cause. After an ankle sprain, the pain is often felt directly over the injured ligament in the ankle. With a pinched nerve in the spine, the radiating pain is usually perceived in an area separate but directly related anatomically, such as when one has pain down the side of their leg in the area supplied by the pinched nerve. The nerve is actually being pinched in the spine, not in the leg where the person feels the pain. Pain in a separate area that is unrelated to the cause is called referred pain. For example, when pain from a liver problem is perceived in the right shoulder. The right shoulder is fine and not anatomically related to the liver. Yet it’s the person’s right shoulder that hurts as a result of liver disease. 

In each of these examples, the practitioner seeks to find a singular cause for the symptom. Another term for this is reductionistic. Often, a western medical approach seeks to explain or reduce a complex phenomenon to its simplest terms. This can work beautifully when the cause is basic. It makes sense that treatment needs to be delivered to a single affected part of the body in order to be effective. An ice pack directly on the ankle to help an ankle sprain. Posture exercises for the low back to help pain radiating down the leg. Medical treatment of the liver to help the referred pain to the right shoulder. 

Things rapidly become more complicated when one considers the individual who has the ankle sprain or pinched nerve or liver disease. 

Let’s consider 5 people with an ankle sprain. All of them have twisted their ankles. However, that is where the similarity ends. One person has just gotten a new construction job, one is a new mother, one is someone who has been dreading an upcoming family event, one is a tennis player training for a competition, and one is someone who fell out of a tree at age 6 whose injuries were ignored. It’s easy to see how a seemingly simple sprained ankle might generate 5 very different experiences. While the ice pack over the injured ligament is still advisable, each individual may experience a different healing journey. The impact of who the person is at their core, their life circumstances and beliefs, whether the injury disabled them by preventing a desired event, or enabled them by exempting them from an unwanted event, can have a big impact on the course of their recovery. Add to the mix the fact that the person may feel grateful, guilty, resentful, ashamed, relieved, or simply be unaware of their emotional response to the change in life circumstances caused by the ankle sprain. While localizing the tissue damage may be simple, the impact of all the other aspects of the person on their healing process can be complex.

This is where a holistic approach can be very helpful.

Watch for Part 2 coming in the Winter Newsletter for more!

Many people I work with have pain. Pain serves to alert us to a problem that requires action and care. We experience pain as a physical sensation in our bodies. The natural assumption is to assume the pain has a physical cause. But what if the cause is not physical or not physical any longer?

Let’s define ‘physical’ as pain signals arising from injured tissue as well as from inside the brain, where nerve pathways may still be reporting pain long after the injured tissue has healed. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m wondering about the experience of pain without a physical or structural cause. 

To be clear, I am NOT saying pain is “all in your head.” I don’t think such a thing exists. If someone feels pain, they have pain, whether we can find a physical cause or not. I’m reminded of a client from many years ago who was referred to me to treat her calf pain. Her pain had started 3 months earlier after catching her foot and tripping. I could not find any physical problem with her calf. In addition, the way she had tripped rarely resulted in a calf injury. However, there was no doubt in my mind that she had pain. Her experience of her pain was real. 

If pain is alerting us to a problem and there is no physical cause, what might the reason be? I wonder if the pain is calling us home. Is it our body saying “You’ve been gone too long. Come back inside.”?

What causes me to wonder is this: everyone coming to me for help with pain is taking action to care for themselves. Simply making the appointment is selfcare. Receiving care requires us to turn our attention inside, to see if we feel better, to evaluate whether the heating pad helps or how it feels to do an exercise. Zero Balancing sessions also bring our attention inside. Clients look more like themselves when they get off the table. I commonly hear “I had no idea how out of my body I was.” 

If pain is our body calling us home, why did we leave in the first place? 

Sometimes we’ve left because leaving helped us achieve a goal, like working long hours to get a promotion or simply to make a living. If no one is home to answer the phone, we miss our body’s call telling us it’s time to eat or sleep. We can keep going. 

Sometimes we’ve left because it’s too difficult to stay. Extreme anger, fear from life-threatening situations, inconsolable grief, trauma of any kind. Leaving our body can be an essential survival strategy. 

While we may have had excellent reasons for leaving, once away we tend to stay away. We lose the awareness that we are out of our bodies. Living this way over a period of years has a cost and can deprive us of vital feedback about our internal world. Luckily, our bodies have an inherent and strong drive toward health. This drive toward health may be what sends out the call. And sometimes the only call we can hear is pain.  

Seeking to alleviate pain leads us to take actions that bring us home. Actions that result in experiencing positive rather than challenging feelings. Feeling calmed and comforted by a heating pad. Experiencing the increased strength, flexibility or stamina from treatment exercises. The better it feels in our bodies, the more we will want to come home and stay home.

Have you noticed how good it feels to be in a freshly weeded garden? Or a newly cleaned home? We can all recognize the natural cycles of our lives moving from organization to disorganization to organization over and over again. We weed the garden. New weeds appear. We vacuum the bedroom. New dust bunnies appear. Weeded gardens and clean bedrooms feel better. It’s not just the feeling of accomplishment many of us have after cleaning or weeding. We feel better even when someone else has done the work. Organization feels better than chaos in both our outer and inner worlds.

Clearing or cleaning the external space around us has an organizing effect on our internal space, also known as our internal field. The concept of an organized internal field is fundamental in Zero Balancing (ZB). A more organized field feels better than a disorganized field. Receiving a Zero Balancing organizes your internal field like weeding your internal garden. It’s one of the main reasons you feel better after a Zero Balancing session. 

Zero Balancing techniques, called fulcrums, work by introducing a field that is clearer, stronger, and more organized. For an analogy, think of what happens when a magnet is placed next to a pile of iron filings. The magnetic field is stronger and more organized than the field holding the filings in a pile. The filings line up in response. Likewise, your body responds to Zero Balancing fulcrums by becoming more organized. Because patterns of physical or emotional pain are less organized, they reorganize in response  to the stronger, more organized field introduced during your ZB session. The result: you feel better. 

My clients often report feeling relaxed yet energized after a Zero Balancing session. This may be due to the amount of their energy that can be tied up in a disorganized field. In the garden, when vegetable plants are crowded with weeds, those weeds compete for resources like water, nutrients and sunlight. 

Likewise, our internal resources are challenged by having a disorganized internal field. Disorganized patterns tie up valuable energy. This can make daily life more challenging. 

Approaching an important event while internally disorganized can increase anxiety. Whether giving a presentation at work or hosting a dinner party, having your PowerPoint slides in order or a complete shopping list helps with the archetypal anxiety associated with these activities. An archetypal emotion is one that is normal and inevitable given the situation. If you are human, you will experience this emotion when in this situation. It’s archetypal to feel thirsty when in the desert. Thirst is unavoidable. If you organized your trip, you’ll know which pack has the water. If you can’t find your water because you didn’t organize well, your discomfort can be amplified by feeling fearful or frustrated with yourself in addition to feeling thirsty. Situations that are challenging archetypally, like presentations or dealing with difficult individuals, become more arduous. There are weeds in your internal garden, competing for resources. Knowing this can help you to prepare both your inner and outer worlds for our challenging world. The internal organization provided by a Zero Balancing session can help with upcoming surgeries or performances, new jobs or retiring. 

It’s natural to cycle from organization to disorganization. Navigating our often challenging external world is easier with a well-organized internal field, an internal garden free of weeds.

In the 30 years I’ve been giving Zero Balancing (ZB) sessions, I have observed that clients who come for multiple sessions gradually become better able to handle the normal and sometimes excessive stresses that life can bring. Irrespective of the initial reason clients seek help, aspects of their inner and outer lives seem to improve; most notably in their experience of inner stability.

Everyday language has lots of phrases that describe inner world instability. “The rug was pulled out from under my feet.” “You could have knocked me over with a feather.” “I can’t seem to get my legs beneath me.” With so many destabilizing challenges in our lives, having inner stability can be critically important. 

Are you familiar with Weebles? A Weeble is a toy that does not fall down. The world outside can tilt and the Weeble may wobble, but it somehow is able to adapt and doesn’t fall down. Weebles are a good example of stability for this discussion. Stability requires maintaining a broad range of adaptability and resilience in response to sometimes extreme external forces. If we have good internal stability, we may wobble but we don’t fall down!

How might we avoid “falling down”? Looking at the physical body, we know that a fall occurs when the person’s center of gravity moves outside their base of support. A wider base is more secure than a narrower base because the center of gravity can move farther without moving outside the base of support. If one removes a leg from a kitchen chair, the base of support is smaller so the chair will tip. A lower center of gravity is also more stable. If we remove a leg from a footstool, it may not tip at all because its low center of gravity may compensate for the smaller base of support. 

Try standing on one foot. You feel the wobble as your body experiences a narrower base of support. If you grab a chair you have enlarged your base of support. If you bend your knee, you’ve lowered your center of gravity. Unless you choose to change your position, you will remain stable. The floor won’t move. 

What if the surface you are standing on is both moving and unpredictable, like when surfing? The surfer adapts to this challenging situation by remaining in a stable stance; knees bent and feet wide, low center of gravity and wide base of support. The external instability is constant and outside the surfer’s control. It is the surfer’s inner stability, body position and focus that keeps him on the board. 

Life often resembles surfing and some waves are pretty big. Zero Balancing can help us find that surfer’s stance in our inner world.

Zero Balancing balances body energy and body structure. Loss of inner stability can occur  when joints that function to transmit force or energy become compromised and less able to function optimally. This is quite common and may not even be noticed. If you feel ungrounded or easily knocked down, this may be part of the cause. ZB sessions can restore this function, facilitating the freer movement of energy through our physical structure. Our energy, our essence, can move through and inhabit our bodies more fully, helping us to adopt a surfer’s stance in our inner world. We experience a body-felt sense of increased stability. 

Repeated ZB sessions anchor this kinesthetic experience. Stressful times become easier to manage. While some stressors may never feel easy, having an easier time can be a big help. We may wobble yet we experience more adaptability and resilience. We don’t fall down.  

Inner stability provides an essential tool for navigating a changing, unpredictable and often unstable world. It helps keep us on our surfboards!