I was working with a tearful10-year-old boy who suffered a serious concussion, and I was emphasizing the delicate balance between returning to activity and resting. I used a leapfrog analogy; you challenge yourself with more activity, then you need rest to let your brain integrate, and then you can try another new activity. He seemed to get it, yet I looked into his tired eyes and found myself wanting to reach him more directly. Suddenly, I was talking about knitting… how there is yarn, but there needs to be spaces between the yarn to make knots, and both are necessary to knit something. Then I said out loud, “I‘m not sure why I’m talking to you about knitting, that’s kind of a weird analogy for a 10-year-old boy.” A few moments later, his mother told me one of the things he enjoyed while recuperating was finger knitting. Information is in the field all around us, all the time.
My next patient suffered from chronic neck pain. Her intention for her session was pain relief and getting in touch with her intuitive self, which she felt was locked behind an inner barrier. I worked through her lower body, addressing tension in her lower back, hips, and feet. When I checked in with her, she told me her body was deeply relaxed, but her mind was still busy. I then went to the head of the table and put my hands on her shoulders. I had been “listening” to her body to find a time and place to contact the place in her that was locked away, and it was suddenly in my hands. I asked her how it would feel if she were to let her whole self into her body, the parts that she was familiar with, as well as parts that had been inaccessible to her, and even parts of herself she was not aware of yet. She said it felt like a really good idea, but she didn’t know how. I asked if it felt safe. She said yes. I put my hand on her sternum and guided her to allow her whole self, her soul or spirit, to make a nest, a home, in her heart space. When she felt safe to reside in her heart, she met the parts of herself there and witnessed communication between them. She felt there was a part that was unattainable in its sovereignty and grace, while at the same time feeling she had arrived with her sovereignty and grace. I felt the separation heal. When she got off the table, she said her neck felt much better! And a beautiful, unguarded smile lit up her face. Experience tells me she will likely have spontaneous awareness of her intuition and confident sovereignty in the next few weeks. Healing is a holistic phenomenon.
Next, I saw a 50-year-old contractor who had an accident resulting in a compression fracture in his spine. He had chronic lower back pain. His frame for his Zero Balancing session was to feel more flexible and comfortable. Each session we had done to date had helped his back feel better for longer stretches of time. This session was done in silence, with a lot of focus on his mid to lower back. During the session, I found myself thinking about how people can reach new possibilities in themselves as a result of tragic accidents. I noted how the thoracic spine pivots on the lumbar spine in the area injured in this patient, and I silently wondered if this was an opportunity for him to pivot some aspect of his life. He had given me no verbal indication that this was so; we were mostly concerned with optimizing his spine function, so I knew the wondering was coming from his body. We finished the session with him feeling relaxed and pain-free. When he got off the table, he said, “I feel like there is a next step for me with this work. I feel there are other ways it can help me. I might want to take a class, but for now, what can I do to learn more?” How do we know what we know?
A middle-aged psychotherapist had seen me a few days earlier with a strange combination of symptoms: severe unrelenting headache, full body pain and stiffness that was not resolving, nausea, light sensitivity, and a short-lived fever of 99.5 degrees. She returned today feeling much better after a trip to the ER where she was diagnosed with shingles (without obvious rash) and put on medication. She had scheduled a ZB to help “feel like herself again and to refill herself” after this frightening episode. As we began the session, I asked her if she was experiencing more stress than usual. She recounted the story of her mother’s final days and death, as well as the subsequent immersion in deep ancestrally-rooted and culturally-charged family dynamics. She felt saddled with the opinions of others and guilty for distancing herself from them. I shared with her my understanding that she was possibly carrying in her field issues that were not hers, as well as the understanding that she wanted to fill herself with herself again. I also shared that I have come to believe that when a viral illness is at play, there is often this dynamic of someone not inhabiting their whole self, so that other organisms can reside in their field. She totally related to this possibility. We had a powerful session in which she recognized she didn’t need to carry her ancestors’ experience (head-down, work-weary, survival consciousness), nor did she need to carry guilt for not being like them. Her freedom from that role was evidence that her ancestors’ lives were a success. Did she get shingles because of the stress or because she had something to heal in her field?
These are just a few sessions from one day that also included a patient who traveled an hour to get to my office, crying with acute low back pain. Several maintenance adjustments for healthy patients. An adjustment and short ZB for a teenager with grade II-III scoliosis who says ZB relieves any pain and helps him focus in school. A college student home on break who likes ZB because it helps with anxiety. Another teen boy in whom I‘m confident we are preventing scoliosis as we correct his functional leg length inequality over time. A PT with chronic shoulder pain who tells me, “when I can’t fix myself, I call you.”
