Have you ever worked with a client who is very sensitive? On a continuum from “feels very little” to “feels every little thing” a highly sensitive client would be placed on the “feels every little thing” side. Working with highly sensitive clients invites a concentration of attention and skill. It requires a deep awareness and embodiment of Zero Balancing principles on the part of the practitioner, especially Interface and High Regard.

Before the session

Working with highly sensitive clients requires careful listening to understand both their experiences and how their structure and energy are organized around those experiences. Some clients will openly identify their sensitivity, while others may not be as self-aware. Clients might describe strong reactions to touch or other sensory stimuli, feeling easily overwhelmed, or having a heightened awareness of their internal or external environment. It’s not uncommon for a client to request adjustments in lighting, sound, or scent in your office. There may be a history of trauma that has shaped both their nervous system and their energetic nature. 

Watch for working signs during intake and framing. You may notice hesitation, a need for reassurance, or a desire to have their experience validated. Some clients need a sense of control over what may happen. Others may appear overly agreeable, even when uncomfortable. You may also notice a mismatch between what they say and what their body or facial expression communicates.

On our part, focus on High Regard is essential and may require increased self-awareness. Notice your thoughts during the session. Do you find yourself questioning their report? Thinking they are overly sensitive? Resenting their request or instructions to alter your office environment? These are important signals. If High Regard slips, you may unintentionally mirror the ways their experience has been dismissed elsewhere.

During the Session

Be curious. Observe how this individual is living in their body and how they respond.

Pay close attention to how their field is organized and contained. It’s especially common to find the lack of a container. You may feel your fulcrums going into nothingness. 

Do not assume that sensitive clients need a light or more energetic touch. Use the first few sessions to calibrate the ratio of structure to energy in your work. If tolerated, short, structural sessions with lots of compression often both feel better and work better. 

Pay particular attention to staying at Interface. While there are any number of things we can choose to pay attention to during a session, extra focus on Interface with every fulcrum can be extraordinarily helpful with highly sensitive clients, especially during the first few sessions. It gives them an experience of their edges, their own boundaries, and the ability to manage some of the unwanted stimuli assaulting their senses. 

Highly sensitive clients may be more likely to disconnect during a session. Allowing this disconnection is a missed opportunity. Zero Balancing can feel so very good. Using the verbal fulcrum “feel how good it feels” amplifies a real-time, positive experience of being in their body.

After the Session

Watch closely for signs that the session was too long or too energetic. If a client is ungrounded or spacy when they get off the table, adjust your next session accordingly. Fewer fulcrums, faster pace, more structure, all can help the client stay more connected with themselves. 

As Zero Balancing practitioners, we can offer highly sensitive clients therapeutic bodywork sessions in which they feel safe, seen, met, and accepted for who they are. The healing potential is massive. ZB offers them the opportunity to navigate this often harsh world with more ease. 

Holding ourselves and others with Highest Personal Regard is a core principle in Zero Balancing. We emphasize this principle in all our courses and ideally embody it in our interactions with colleagues and clients. But what is Highest Personal Regard exactly? And is it truly possible to maintain this perspective toward ourselves and others at all times? Let’s have a cup of tea or a glass of wine together and talk about it!

The Core Zero Balancing Study Guide 5th Edition defines Highest Personal Regard as “holding another person in high esteem without judgement or comparison.” 

So we might start our inquiry with defining “high esteem” and “without judgement or comparison.” 

What is high esteem? 

What does it mean to hold someone without judgement?

What if someone is behaving badly? 

Does the term “behaving badly” imply judgement? 

Are there actions that can be universally defined as bad that don’t involve judgement? 

What does it mean to hold someone without comparison?

With what might we be comparing them? Other people? Standards of behavior?

Over the years, like so many of us in the Zero Balancing community, I’ve strived to embody the principle of Highest Personal Regard, living the practice with my students, clients, colleagues, family and friends. It’s the way I approach meeting anyone new. It’s the way I’d like to be approached. My Highest Personal Regard is theirs to lose. 

Repeating that last sentence: my Highest Personal Regard is theirs to lose. Can one lose this? Are there times when it’s not possible to hold someone with Highest Personal Regard, without judgement or comparison as it’s described in the Core ZB Study Guide? 

What if someone hurts you? What if someone is intentionally aggressive and seeks to cause harm to you or others? Are they deserving of high regard? 

Considering the realities of everyday life, additional questions arise. 

Does everyone deserve high regard?  

Can you hold someone in high regard if you don’t like them? If yes, how did you accomplish it? 

Can a person lose your high regard? If so, can they get it back?

Here’s another scenario…If your intent is to hold someone with high regard, but your instinct, your donkey, is sending out warning signals this might be an unsafe person, which should hold sway? Do you ignore your instinct in favor of the idea of high regard? Is high regard the same as trusting someone? Can one exist without the other?

Lastly, turning the focus to ourselves…

Is holding yourself with the Highest Personal Regard easy? Difficult? Both?

Can you lose your own high regard for yourself? 

I hope you find this process of investigation worthwhile!  Let me know your thoughts!

Have you ever worked with a client whose energy was contracted? When you first put your hands on them, you notice very little energy is available to work with. I’ve had several such clients. I’ve been fascinated by what happens when, after several sessions, their energy begins to expand. Here is one phenomenon I’ve observed.

I first noticed what might happen when contracted energy expands with a client who was grappling with immense stress both professionally and personally. Not surprisingly this stress manifested as structural tension. For instance, they held their legs so rigidly that I often had to say, “help me bend your knee,” just to position them for a hip fulcrum. Their energy mirrored this contraction so there was very little available to work with. Although they consistently felt more relaxed by the end of each session, their overall contracted structure and energy persisted through multiple sessions.

We know that one way to work with contracted energy is a slower session with longer and more energetic fulcrums. After several sessions working in this way, the client’s energy began to expand. And then the most interesting thing happened. I discovered their field had very little integrity. 

What I noticed first was the stark contrast in their post-session response. In previous sessions, they got off the table feeling more centered, clear and relaxed. Now, after the very same type of session that had offered so much benefit, they were feeling spacy and ungrounded. 

I was perplexed. Finally, I began to notice the energy released by my fulcrums seemed to dissipate into nothing. The client’s field lacked sufficient integrity to hold onto the newly available energy. This was a significant realization for me: I was giving them exactly the wrong type of session. To build integrity in the field, a faster-paced and more structural session with compression is indicated, not a slower, more energetic approach. When I made these changes, the client began to improve.

When contracted, the state of their field was masked. As their energy expanded, I was able to get more information about the lack of integrity. There was more energy available for me to feel so I was able to discern the nature of what I was feeling.  

My work with clients has been significantly shaped by lessons learned from this client and others like them. I now prioritize gathering information about the organization of the client’s field organization during the initial and throughout subsequent sessions. When energy availability is minimal, I pay close attention to observing the integrity of their field as their energy starts to expand. Attunement to subtle shifts allows for timely adjustments in approach.

For these clients, sessions often involve dynamic changes in tempo, structure, and the type of fulcrums used. I alternate between fulcrums that encourage expansion and those that use compression to strengthen the field’s integrity, usually following an expand, expand, compress, expand, expand, compress rhythm. Once the field’s integrity is well-established and sustained between appointments, I can use expansive fulcrums when necessary without the field destabilizing. Clients whose energetic contraction was masking a lack of field integrity have thrived with this approach. Their lives begin to change. They become more grounded and stable and more available to themselves and others. 

I’ve been thinking about two memorable Zero Balancing (ZB) experiences that made me wonder about the nature of a “good” ZB. In one instance, I received a session from a practitioner who was fairly new to ZB. Upon discovering I was certified, they became very nervous and remained so throughout the session. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive a very good session. At least I didn’t think so at the time. Yet later that evening, the session triggered a deep and beneficial personal process. So it turned out to be a great ZB! While assisting a different class, I gave a ZB to someone who remained tense and stiff throughout the entire session. When the session ended, they jumped off the table and practically ran out of the room. I felt awful and was convinced I’d given them a horrible ZB. Yet when I saw them the next class day, they looked blissful and said it had been one of the best experiences they had ever had. So I’m wondering…what makes a good ZB good?

Have you wondered about this? What is your definition of a good ZB? 

Have you ever received a really good ZB from a practitioner who wasn’t highly skilled? What made it good?

Have you ever received a not-so-good session from a practitioner who was highly skilled? What made it not-so-good?

During the session I received my attention mostly was on how nervous the practitioner was. What has been your experience with how the client’s attention affects the ZB they receive? 

During the session I received, the practitioner did not meet my donkey. Is meeting the donkey a requirement for a good ZB? 

I was not able to relax during the session. Is client relaxation a requirement for a good ZB? 

I got off the table feeling I hadn’t had a good ZB. What might explain the beneficial result that happened later that evening? 

When I was the practitioner giving what felt like an unsuccessful session, my attention was on self-judgment. I worried I wasn’t doing a good job. Does the practitioner’s attention affect the quality of the session they give?

I assumed I was not meeting my partner’s donkey because there was no relaxation. Does meeting the donkey automatically relax the client? 

Can you meet their donkey if they don’t relax? 

I was convinced that if I had been a better ZB practitioner (I had 12 years experience at the time) the person would have relaxed completely. Do you agree? 

Based on the feedback, the effect of my session was enormously helpful. How did that happen? 

I hope these questions were interesting to you! Thanks for reading!

Clients often ask about the ideal frequency for Zero Balancing (ZB) sessions. By utilizing the Half Moon Vector through the legs, we can evaluate how effectively the balance between their energy and structure is being retained from session to session. We can then offer an informed recommendation. This article was part of a series looking at the variety of ways we can use the Half Moon Vector (HMV) through the legs. Let’s explore… 

Using the HMV to determine if your Zero Balancing sessions are creating change that lasts. 

Many of us see clients for several sessions, usually once a week at the beginning. Often the client will be looking for help with a problem that takes more than one session to resolve. This article will focus on one way to determine whether the changes that happen during the session are temporary or lasting.

For this discussion, let’s define changes that last as the session “holding.” The client’s field is more organized at the end of the ZB session. Does that organization last? Is having a well-organized field becoming the client’s baseline? 

How do you obtain the information? 

Is the first HMV of this session similar to the last HMV of your previous session? This is one means of determining whether the ZB sessions are creating lasting change. 

If this is a new concept to you, start by paying attention to the changes between the first HMV of a session and the last HMV of the same session. You are likely already noticing this. Pay attention to several sessions with several clients until you are comfortable answering this simple question: “Do they feel the same or do they feel different?” If they feel different, the way the last HMV feels is more organized, because ZB creates a clearer, stronger, more organized field. Notice how the last HMV feels and name it somehow so you can recognize the feeling again. 

Once you gain comfort and confidence by noting the differences between the HMVs in the same session, try comparing the last HMV of one session to the first HMV of the following session. If they feel similar, the sessions are holding. If they feel different, it’s likely the client has reverted to where they started last session.

How can you use this information to guide your sessions? 

I use this information in several ways. Lasting change is one way to tell whether the ZB sessions are helping. If the changes are not lasting after several sessions, I may need to look at how I am working with the person. Perhaps I need to alter the length of the session or choose different fulcrums. If the changes are lasting, I’m probably on the right track. 

An example would be a client whose energetic container lacks integrity. It doesn’t hold together. If the container feels more solid at the end of one session, but more friable at the beginning of the next session, I may need to use an alchemical fulcrum to strengthen their container. 

I also use this information to determine how often a client needs to come for a session. Sometimes it takes several sessions before things start to hold. Sometimes things hold after the first few sessions. Once sessions start to hold, we can experiment with stretching the time out between sessions, to 10 days, 2 weeks, 3 weeks and so on. Clients usually want to know how often they need to come. Using this method is one way to answer their question in a more concrete way. 

How might you improve your skills?

Every week, choose one or two clients to focus on. Pay particular attention to how the HMVs feel at the beginning and ends of their sessions, as described above. Have fun and let me know how it goes!

This is the final offering in “The Power of” series. We end with looking at the powerful relationship between Donkeys and Riders. While we often refer to the Donkey as our authentic self, and the Rider as our conditioning, we might not often think about the relationship between the two. 

We learn about Donkeys in our very first ZB class. Donkey refers to the authentic self. It’s efficient…one word with broad and deep meaning. Our Donkey refers to our core self, that instinctive part of us that knows what we like and need, and can identify the course of action that will serve us best. I think of cats and dogs as all Donkey. Our beloved pets don’t wonder whether they deserve a treat. Their instinct tells them who is safe and who is not. They are not polite. They have no Riders. 

Our Rider is who we think we should be or how we have been taught to behave. Our Riders make choices consistent with beliefs, often unconscious, that limit us. Looking at how we and our clients live out the relationship between our authenticity and our conditioning can be a fascinating and growthful exercise, and is often very healing. 

How can we identify whether behavior is driven by the Donkey or the Rider? A simple example is when the client looks uncomfortable on the ZB table yet says they are fine. We know it’s their Rider talking because we can see how uncomfortable they feel. The same is true when we receive a ZB and remain silent when a colleague’s touch is out of the box, perhaps to avoid conflict or thinking we need to protect their feelings. The Rider is ascendant in the Donkey-Rider relationship and we are behaving as we believe we should. 

People, including ourselves, are often unaware that they are acting from their conditioning, and that there are other ways of being. This mirrors the dynamic between the Donkey and the Rider, where the Rider holds dominance—a prevalent theme in literature and drama, and often, in our lives and the lives of our clients. The protagonist is driven by their Rider, their perceived identity, desires, and relationships. Then, a series of events or turning points triggers an awakening to their true nature, purpose, and love. Their Donkey is now making their life choices.

Where to Riders come from? The behaviors we learn to ensure our safety and survival in childhood may develop into Riders that control our choices as adults. Our Donkeys, expressive of our true selves, may be barely perceptible or entirely silenced by our Riders. While we may understand the origins of our Riders, we may not always be aware of the influence they have on our lives.

True potential for healing and self-actualization arises in changing the dynamic between the Donkey and the Rider. By empowering the Donkey to take the lead, we can connect and live through our authentic selves. It happens with every Zero Balancing session received. The conscious connection with the core of the person engenders an experience of being seen, met, and accepted, creating a safe space for the Donkey to ascend. 

As we give and receive more ZBs, we witness a healing transformation in both ourselves and our clients. We observe healthier choices or the dissolution of toxic relationships. Boundaries are established effortlessly, and the ability to cope with the fallout from those affected by these boundaries is enhanced. This is the power of Donkeys and Riders.

I’ve been wondering about how healing spaces get created. I typed “What Creates a Healing Space?” into the search bar in my browser and all sorts of information came up describing the characteristics of healing spaces, such as safety and comfort, or helpful elements such as particular lighting or plants. It seems to me something happens beyond the decor, the objects and lighting. And how is safety and comfort created in a space? Is it only the color of the walls or the plant on the windowsill?

We might all agree that when we talk about a particular aspect of a space, we are referring to the field. My questions are about what creates or influences that field?  

When I opened my first private practice office in the Boston area, I wasn’t thinking about creating a healing space. I don’t think I knew what one was at the time. I was mostly aware of what I didn’t want. I didn’t want a clinical or sterile environment. So I chose furnishings that I thought were welcoming yet professional. However, once my office was established, clients would comment they began to feel better as soon as they opened the door to the waiting room. In retrospect their comments were telling me I had created a healing space. 

In interior design, there is lots of information about the use of color and texture, symmetry and light to create a mood or feeling in a room, i.e. to affect the field in an intentional way. Something seems to occur that transcends the individual components and transforms a room into a healing space. What is it? 

Can a room heal? 

Is it something to do with expectation? Clients are coming for healing, or perhaps have already experienced healing in our office. Does their expectation of healing make our offices a healing space?

What is the mechanism through which light, color, and specific objects, affect the field of a space? 

Does your intention influence the field of of your space? 

Does your state of consciousness influence the field of your space?

 When you opened your office, did you consciously decide to create a healing space? If so, how did you do it?

How important is a healing space? 

What is the relationship between a healing space and healing? Can you have one without the other? 

Can your clients heal if you haven’t intentionally created a healing space? 

Have you ever experienced deep healing in a space that didn’t feel particularly conducive to healing? 

Have you ever walked into a space that looked like a healing space but didn’t feel like one? What was missing? 

Do different people need different healing spaces with unique properties? 

Are hospitals healing spaces? If so, why? If not, why not?

Are acupuncture, massage, or ZB offices automatically healing spaces? If so, why? If not, why not?

I hope these questions stimulate your curiosity! Thanks for reading!

Have you ever tried to talk about Zero Balancing with someone unfamiliar or skeptical regarding energy-related healing arts? It can be challenging for practitioners and clients alike to be met with skepticism or disbelief. And our response to disbelief can determine whether the conversation stops or continues. What if we were to view this experience in terms of differing worldviews, differing paradigms? A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens story that’s omnipresent at this time of year, can help us approach talking about ZB to people unaccustomed to experiencing themselves as energy and structure.

A Christmas Carol is a story about a paradigm shift. When Scrooge first sees the ghost of his dead business partner Jacob Marley, he experiences a paradigm challenge. In his worldview or paradigm, ghosts do not exist. Yet he has just seen a ghost. His response is the archetypal human response…denial. Dickens writes Scrooge’s explanation for his experience as “…an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.” The content of his explanation is irrelevant, actually. He needs to find evidence for his direct experience that fits within his worldview. Underneath his bravado, he’s terrified. Let’s call this Stage One of a paradigm challenge: denial. 

Let’s create a Stage Two of a paradigm challenge and call it wondering. As the story continues, he has more experiences and begins to feel safe enough to be curious and wonder about these ghosts.

Lastly, our Stage Three in this paradigm challenge model is a paradigm shift.  Ultimately, Scrooge changes his worldview to include the existence of ghosts. This is beautifully illustrated by his desperate plea for help directed at the Ghost of Christmas Future. He could no longer deny his sensory experience of reality and altered his worldview accordingly. His paradigm changed.

Many years ago while teaching at Simmons College, I had the opportunity to create a five week course on complementary therapies in rehabilitation for graduate students in Physical Therapy, Nursing, and Healthcare Administration. My first thought was how I was about to introduce healing modalities like Acupuncture, Zero Balancing and Herbal Medicine to people entrenched in the Western medical model. The course could have been called “Here’s a Paradigm Challenge!” 

My ultimate goal for the students in this course was Stage Two rather than Stage Three. I suspected that if I required them to shift paradigms, I’d lose them. They would remain stuck in Stage One, denial. I was explicit in my expectation that they didn’t have to believe anything they saw or heard. My request was that they become more conscious about their worldview and that they allow themselves to wonder.

We can use the same approach when talking about Zero Balancing. When we introduce someone to ZB, we are exposing them to a different paradigm. Like Scrooge, the archetypal response is denial. Denial may present itself as skepticism, disbelief, or even ridicule. It may be demonstrated by an attempt to categorize ZB through their current beliefs. “Oh, it’s like Reiki or Craniosacral or Osteopathy,” meaning “Oh, it’s like something I’m familiar with and can identify within my current paradigm.”  Their response is archetypal and we would respond the same way if our own beliefs were challenged. Knowing that in advance, we can modify both our response and our expectations. Our goal might become creating enough safety to allow them to feel curious, to wonder. Stage two. The key here is our awareness and flexibility to accept and adapt to the archetypal process of a paradigm challenge. 

I once heard a comment at a Zero Balancing workshop.  A ZB practitioner stated some of their clients didn’t want to get better. My immediate reaction was one of disagreement. I thought, no! If my client isn’t improving, it’s because my touch can be better or I haven’t yet found the key to what they need. Similar situations, different conclusions. I assumed it was me, the practitioner. My ZB colleague assumed it was them, the client. Thinking about this brings up a lot of questions.

I think it’s safe to say that at one time or another, we have all had clients who haven’t improved. We might agree that it’s common to have some discomfort when clients aren’t getting better. People often come to us seeking healing and quite likely we all want to help them to heal. Isn’t that one of the reasons we give ZBs? To help others? So what is our reaction when that healing doesn’t seem to happen, from either their perspective or ours? Who or what needs to change for the outcome to be different? Is it us or them?

If your response is “It’s me”, how does that manifest in your practice? If your client isn’t improving, do you tell yourself something needs to change? If so, what? Do you evaluate or self-assess? Do you consult a colleague or mentor? Do you doubt your skill? 

Can it ever be that the client actually doesn’t want to change, even though they say they do? 

Does the “It’s me” response show up outside your treatment room in other areas of your life? 

If your response is “It’s them”, how does that affect your practice? Does it affect your perception of your client? Do you resent them? Do you keep seeing them? Does it make it hard to hold them in high regard? Can it ever be you that needs to improve? 

Does the “It’s them” response show up outside your treatment room in other areas of your life? 

Can it be both you and the client? Can it be Zero Balancing? 

Can we be in the witness state while determining if it’s us or them? 

Have you ever had a client that was not a good match? Have they improved? 

Have you ever been the client who is not improving? If so, was it you or was it the practitioner? 

Do you ever consider things might be ok just as they are? If so, what makes you feel that way? 

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you figure out! 

These are turbulent times. Dr. Fritz Smith, developer of Zero Balancing, sometimes talked about finding stability in chaos in this way…when the waters get choppy, stay low in the boat. One way to stay grounded and stable is to apply the ZB principles of fulcrums and working states, viewing world events as fulcrums and the aftermath as working states. The pandemic, October 7, 2023, the upcoming election, multiple wildfires and hurricanes, all macrocosmic fulcrums affecting the global field and through it, the microcosm of our daily lives. We are all in a working state and have been for quite some time.

As we know, the fulcrum is our working tool in ZB. A fulcrum creates an opportunity for movement, in much the same way a stationary board becomes a lever by placing it on a fulcrum. And we also know that when we place a fulcrum and hold it for a few seconds, our client’s system responds by going into motion. Their internal world starts to reorganize and change in response to our stillness. They have gone into a working state. It’s an in-between state; a transition from patterns that existed before the fulcrum and new patterns yet unformed. Each fulcrum, working state and new pattern are part of an organic, holistic process that naturally moves the client toward a higher state of health. 

Outside the context of a Zero Balancing session, a new job, moving house, getting married, a pandemic, loss of a loved one, a national election, all these life experiences can be viewed as fulcrums. They are catalysts creating change and the experience that follows is a working state. In some instances we placed the fulcrum into our own lives and thus have chosen, wittingly or not, the experience of a working state. In other instances we have received the fulcrum and it was not by choice.

Reminding ourselves of the inevitable working state that follows a fulcrum can provide context, understanding, and guidance. We can reframe our experience. We have entered a working state. We know this in-between state is inherently unstable. From this perspective, it’s normal to feel stressed, challenged or uncomfortable, sometimes extremely so. And in recent years, we have experienced fulcrum after fulcrum after fulcrum, amplifying the instability. 

Recognition of the working state can be the first step in finding some stability in the chaos. We have named the discomfort and realize it is inevitable. Feeling at ease and stress free is likely not on the menu, like wishing for lasagne at a Chinese restaurant. With the world in a working state, the task becomes figuring out how we can best to ride the wave, tolerate the discomfort, and manage both the archetypal and personal stress. We seek ways to feel more stable while understanding that things will remain in motion until the new pattern emerges. We surrender. The stress is a typical, if uncomfortable, response to instability in the outer world.  It may not feel easy and it may feel easier! 

Naming the working state can provide a potent reframe for our clients as well. Reports of anxiety in response to world events is common in my treatment room, as I suspect it’s common in yours. Sharing the perspective of these ZB principles can be inordinately helpful, especially followed by a ZB session, which will organize our clients’ fields as well as our own, helping us all to feel more grounded and stable.