In keeping with the theme of this newsletter, this article will inform you about how a holistic, non-diagnostic therapeutic bodywork like Zero Balancing (ZB) can help if your pain has complex causes. Holistic means the whole person is considered, including their current life and past history. There may be multiple causes for pain and while those causes may include structural issues, other potential causes are also recognized, including stress, past medical and emotional history, personal beliefs, and personality traits to name a few. Non-diagnostic means the cause of the pain takes a back seat to the whole of the person. The treatment session is not determined by a structural diagnosis.

This is a very non-western concept. We are accustomed to and expect a structural cause for our pain, like a muscle strain or arthritis. Yet pain is often more complex and due to a multitude of factors. Because ZB addresses the whole person, the specifics are accounted for without  needing to be identified. 

The whole of the person is considered in this way. Zero Balancing balances structure and energy. Structure is everything in us that can be seen, such as bones, muscles, organs and joints. Energy is everything that cannot be seen, including stress, memories, experiences past and present, thoughts, beliefs, consciousness. Can you think of any part of a person that is not either structure or energy? Neither can I. Structure or energy accounts for every aspect. 

The Zero Balancing practitioner works with both our structural body and our energetic body at the same time, thus honoring the whole person. They seek those places where energy has gotten stuck, particularly the energy in our bones. Bone is the densest structure in the body and conducts the deepest currents. Bone energy is our core. 

Pain due to complex causes is thus addressed at a core level, reduced to its components of energy and structure. Zero Balancing helps If the source of the pain is an imbalance between energy and structure. In over thirty years of Zero Balancing, I’ve yet to find an instance where a structure/energy imbalance was not contributing to the problem to some degree. 

Here’s an example: I had a client referred to me for calf pain 6 months after tripping on the sidewalk. They had seen an orthopedic doctor who could find nothing wrong. I performed a thorough evaluation and found nothing either. There were no structural problems. The muscle was healthy, flexible and strong. There was no referred or radiating pain from a nerve problem. The knee and ankle joints were healthy and flexible. Their pain was real yet had no structural cause. There was no diagnosis. 

I used Zero Balancing and after a month or so the calf pain was gone. In the absence of a diagnosis, bringing their energy and structure into better balance did the trick. In fact, because of this success, they continued to come for ZB sessions. They’d had chronic pain in other areas of their body for years and had sought relief by restricting activity so much they rarely left their house. Some pain had been diagnosed with structural or emotional causes and some had not. Zero Balancing was an ideal tool to help. We did not need to know or understand the causes. As their energy and structure was brought into better balance, their life changed remarkably. The pain improved but did not go away completely. However, their relationship with the pain changed significantly. Avoidance of pain no longer controlled their decisions. They were able to expand their activities and live a larger and more fulfilling life. The effect of receiving holistic treatment was their whole life improved.