How many times have you imagined that your bones, and the tissues around them, are brittle? When material, living or inanimate, is brittle, breakage is imminent, like ice crunching under your feet. As we age, we expect our bones to stiffen, to lose pliability and elasticity, hence becoming more prone to breakage. While some flexibility is lost with age, how much can we attribute it to our BELIEF that old equals inflexible?
ZB founder Fritz Smith, MD at work. Photo by Giovanni Pescetto
Something happens during a Zero Balancing touch therapy session that causes me to question this prevailing wisdom. At times, with a touch, as I engage structure and energy, bone tissue seems to warm and melt under my fingers. Massage and other manual therapists describe similar reactions to their work: tissue, once dense or locked in position, warms and becomes soft. It literally melts under the skilled touch of the therapist.
Bones, the structural underpinnings of the body, may be more susceptible than other tissues to becoming rigid. Our culture easily equates softness with weakness. How many times have you been told to stand firm? To be unyielding? To hold steady? These beliefs, while based in language, affect us to the core: our bones. We stiffen and resist change from without. If our stance is threatened, we reinforce our already rigid structure all the more.
Imagine what might happen if you were to let these beliefs go. If, of a moment, you could release your bones from the work of holding you in place. How would you and your skeleton handle the aging process?
“I was sure I was going to get arthritis in my hip because it often bothered me. It hasn’t hurt at all since I’ve been coming for ZB.”
Might you absorb shocks more easily of your bones and joints could absorb and transfer life’s impacts rather than be cracked by them? This is not to say that Zero Balancing or other bodywork helps bones to become unbreakable, but that with conscious touch and release of old beliefs, they become more likely to bend.
August 2013, Salem, MA
Amanda:
Lovely writing. Reminds me of Tao Te Ching Chapter 76…
Liz
Thanks, Liz, for your feedback. Best wishes and supple bones.
Amanda
Amanda, I really resonate with this post. So often we expect the worst to happen rather than trust ourselves to find the best life has to offer. I’m sooo glad I found Zero Balancing too! Feeling bone soften under my fingers is a fabulous sensation and gives me great hope that my client will have positive shifts in their body and being.
Thank you, Cindy for your lovely response to this post. ZB has really opened my eyes to so many new possibilities. //\\ Amanda