THE INNER WORLD OF ZERO BALANCING:
THE HEALING POWER OF STILLNESS
by David Laden © 2020 David Laden
Certified Zero Balancer, Zero Balancing Faculty Member
May, 2020
As you read this article your attention is naturally focused on the printed words and what they mean. But after you’ve read the article in this usual way I invite you to do a simple experiment : forget the words and thoughts, even forget the type. Instead scan the lines with your attention on only the spaces between the words. Slowly scan from space to space - between the words, between the letters, between the lines. In a little while your eyes will soften, your breathing will slow down, you might feel a bit queasy and you’ll notice a greater sense of peripheral vision – you will see the whole page of background with little squiggles (the type) that have only a design aspect without literal meaning. OK, go ahead and do this now if you wish with this first paragraph. Just read the spaces.
Alright, now blink a few times, take a few deep breaths and read this paragraph with normal vision as you come back from an altered state of consciousness. How do you feel? A bit uneasy? Perhaps, because you were suspending the brain and mind’s usual orientation to the objects in the field, their names and their meaning. Instead you were paying attention to the field itself and were allowing yourself to be conscious without thinking. Now that you’re thinking again you should feel more “normal.”
Stop and analyze your experience - when your attention was just on the field from which these objects (letters, words, thoughts) arose, you may have had an experience of slowing down, calmness, non-blinking, slow rhythmic breathing – all sensations that can feel very good once you get used to it. See if you don’t feel calmer and more peaceful for having tried this exercise - your attention is less bound to outer objects and their meaning. Since we know that “energy follows attention”, we have to some degree, in a very short time, redirected our energy from the outer objective world defined by the senses and their thought associations to a more internal experience of the “source field” of our own energy. Welcome to the world of Zero Balancing.
This can sound very mystical and otherworldly but it is not. Zero Balancing(ZB) is completely practical, in harmony with laws of the natural world and grounded in precise technique and anatomical detail. ZB is a form of therapeutic bodywork but it shares with meditation one fundamental principle : the internalization of energy. We human beings spend nearly all of our time with our energy directed and controlled by outer activity and outer stimuli. No wonder we are exhausted and stressed out, why we have so many auto-immune diseases and illnesses based on depletion and emotional overload. We cannot even sleep deeply anymore.
To understand how cultivating deep stillness of body and mind can regenerate us, we reflect that the deepest flows of energy in the body are carried by the deepest structures of the body, namely the skeleton and most specifically the foundation joints and their ligaments - structures designed for support and stability, allowing minimal movement but which lift the body into dynamic carriage and which transfer energy vertically, establishing the vital energetic flow “between heaven and earth”. Zero Balancing helps people to let go of the energetic magnetism of the sensorial world and to go within, drawing on deep inner springs of healing energy that are always present, no matter how hidden or dammed up. ZB reestablishes the strength and dynamic power of the flow of vertical energy in the body.
Zero Balancing was developed in the 1970s by Dr. Frederick (Fritz) Smith, an osteopath and acupuncturist, one of the first physicians to create a bridge between the eastern energy model and western anatomical model of the human body/mind. His well known book, “Inner Bridges,” was published in 1986 and is still in print. Actively teaching today at age 82, Dr. Smith is a model of health and well-being on all levels.
A Zero Balancing session lasts 30 – 40 minutes. The client is supine on a table dressed in loose clothing. In a carefully designed sequence called “the protocol”, the foundation joints and other bony landmarks of the skeleton are touched at “interface”, a term defined as touching both energy and structure consciously and simultaneously. The ZBer manually applies a variety of geometric configurations called “fulcrums”, designed to balance (activate or subdue) the internal energy within these deep and dense bony structures. ZBers work slowly, gently and with deep attention to the “working signs” of the client.
All working signs are indications that the client’s energy and consciousness are being engaged more internally, at the level of his or her pre-conscious being - the level below conscious thought, interpretation, and programmed personality mechanisms. This is the level within every person that instinctively recognizes and seeks to experience greater happiness, that desires to relax and trust and let go of habitual patterns of anxiety and defensiveness. In scientific language ZB stimulates the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, allowing the client to sink into “meditative” delta and theta brain wave patterns. These vibrational patterns are intrinsically healing medicine. During a ZB session people experience a stillness much deeper than not moving, a silence much deeper than not talking. They often report not wanting to move, hardly needing to breathe. When people do sit up and stand and walk, they find it effortless, stability coming from a deep skeletal level, freeing up the joints for fluid movement and unburdening the extrinsic musculature. It is very gratifying to see clients feeling so much more open, relaxed and alive.
A good Zero Balancing session helps the client experience themselves more fully - body and energy connected and integrated, more fully alive to their “clearer, stronger field”. When this Greater Field is more present, then painful and self-limiting physical and emotional patterns become less well-held and can be released more easily. New possibilities are felt as real. The healing power of Zero Balancing is strong even in a practitioner’s early stages of learning and practicing Core ZB.
There are advanced levels of ZB that build upon the Core classes – programs that involve ever more subtle ways of healing through touch. “Alchemy of Touch” works with amplified vibratory fields to facilitate change and transformation. “Geometry of Healing” explores working with the space between vibrations to connect with the “field of all possibilities”, a matrix from which all material forms are created and from which all new possibilities are born. “ Freely Movable Joints” works with the structure/energy interface within the larger locomotive joints of the body. These are just some of the many classes developed by Dr. Smith and the faculty of the Zero Balancing Health Association.
A registry of practitioners, classes and teachers plus information about the Certification Program can be found on the website : www.zerobalancing.com. Welcome to the world of Zero Balancing, a world that will richly enhance your life and your work!
Articles by David Laden
What is Zero Balancing?
The Inner World of Zero Balancing: The Healing Power of Stillness
Thoughts on the Nature of Happiness and How Zero Balancing Promotes Health and Well-Being
The Hidden Messages in Water
ZB Principles and Precepts
A Deeper Look: A Broader Context