Welcome to the second newsletter of the year and a special welcome to the fourteen new people that have experienced bodywork sessions with me so far in 2023! Some of these have come through the Pro Bono sessions I am offering each month, but there are several who have come ‘through word of mouth’. I am grateful for anyone who recommends me to others. Your own experience of the results speaks larger than any description of the work that I might come up with.
I started bodywork as a business 5 years ago, but only went full time just over 3 years ago, just before Covid struck. Not great timing and the last few years has made it more challenging. However, with a great deal of support from you guys I’m still here. The feedback I get from you all validates my tenacity to keeping going. We did 750 sessions together last year!
I would love more clients to really make this work long term. So if you see anyone carrying chronic pain, feeling a little despondent, anxious, or just needing a reset - just maybe I can help. They can even try it for free on a monthly Pro Bono day if they’re not sure. Feel free to share the link to this newsletter!
As you know, bodywork helps us to be more mindful, present, and connected with our body (‘embodiment’ is the technical term). If we could only work on those three things a little bit every day, our life would be so much more peaceful, happy and fulfilled. It comes down to choosing better.
This month I’ve also included an excerpt on the founder of Zero Balancing, Dr Fritz Smith MD. At 93 he is incredibly kind, humble and knowledgeable. It’s really interesting background to how and why he chose to develop ZB.
Contents:
A simple tip to change your life
What seeds will we cultivate?
Mindfulness and Pain Reduction (study)
Founder of Zero Balancing – Dr Fritz Smith MD
Pro Bono Days
Music Corner
A simple tip to change your life
The other day someone mentioned to me that the things that other people were doing really annoyed her, and the things they sometimes say to her really can upset her. Hands up those who have experienced that?
One of the benefits of developing a little mindfulness is that when incidents like that happen – let’s face it, it’s not rare – we can take a moment. Taking that moment is crucial. This will change everything.
In that moment we get to decide what effect the actions or words of another will have on our own state of mind. We can’t dictate what someone else might say or do. But we always have the choice over how we will respond. No one can ever take that agency from us.
Why should I let someone else’s bad mood spoil my day? Would I give them my eftpos card and pin number? No. So why would I let them decide how I’m going to feel for the rest of the day? That’s my choice, which I get to make when I take that moment – coming back to the breath helps here.
The examples can be wide and varied: someone cuts us off in traffic; someone tells us we’re getting grey hair; the boss changes our work priorities yet again; our teen just got a horrendous tattoo.
How do we respond? Well there’s two really good choices if nothing positive comes immediately to mind. One is don’t respond, take some more time. The quick defensive retort is almost always the worst response, straightaway we’ve surrendered our right to choose, we’ve fallen into their trap.
The second choice, which can always be used in any situation – choose kindness. No matter what they did or said. We don’t know what has been going on in their life that has brought them to make the choices they do? Usually someone who is habitually being aggressive or insensitive is suffering from a deeper pain, that may result from someone else’s mistreatment. Why wouldn’t we show some compassion in that case? Smile and wish them well.
Now it may have no effect on them whatsoever. They might be even more rankled that they didn’t get a rise out of us. That is not the point. But it will amp up our own day in a positive way. We chose to be kind, we chose not to ‘fight fire with fire’, but with a cool hose of water. It is our own state of mind that is important here, and it’s always our choice.
Stay mindful, present, connected – and choose kindness.
Which seeds will we cultivate?
I have a collection of sayings written by the famous Vietnamese Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh (book ‘Your True Home’), I usually read one or two every day to keep me in a mindful state. Here’s no. 272 which is appropriate to the theme:
“… when we’re born all the different kinds of seeds – seeds of goodness, of cruelty, of awakening – are already inside us. Whether the goodness or cruelty in us is revealed depends on what seeds we cultivate, our actions, and our way of life.”
Our choice.
Mindfulness and Pain Reduction
In a recent study* two complementary therapy approaches for women suffering with chronic pelvic pain were investigated.
The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction approach showed significant improvements in pain, depression, and inflammatory markers. The Healthy Lifestyle approach showed improvements in depression and inflammatory markers, but not pain.
Zero Balancing and Craniosacral therapies have a powerful effect on our capacity for mindfulness, as well as working directly with the pain, releasing tension, and unblocking areas of stuck energy.
Energy flows more freely, stress is reduced, anxiety alleviated, and pain is much reduced, often eliminated.
* Complementary Approaches for Military Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain: A Randomized Trial
Carol D. Crisp, Robert Baldi, Matthew Fuller, Eduardo Abreu, and Andrea G. Nackley
Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine 2023 29:1, 22-30
Founder of Zero Balancing – Dr Fritz Smith MD
Fritz Frederick Smith (pictured) was born in May 1929 in Cleveland, Ohio and his life integrates an incredible number of influences from the history of body-mind therapy. Growing up in a family involved with science and health practice, he was educated in the scientific community. For example, some eight years before he was born, his father Dr. Ernest Smith initiated the first four-year chiropractic training in the USA.
In 1955, Fritz Smith himself graduated from the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, becoming a Doctor of Osteopathy, and six years later, he went on to graduate from the California College of Medicine in 1961 as a MD.
For a long time Dr. Smith had felt his medical understanding could not account for all the things he had experienced regarding the human body and healing, so he went in search of answers. In the mid-1960s, under the tutelage of Ida Rolf, he was one of the first medical doctors to be certified as a Rolfer. During the late-1960s, he regularly studied at the Esalen Institute in northern California, which hosted many of the forerunners of the body-mind therapy movement.
It was at Esalen, when he met Dr. JR Worsley, the founder of the College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture in England, and while witnessing his acupuncture demonstrations, that Dr. Smith’s beliefs in a purely Western medical model were finally “cracked”.
As Dr. Smith wrote in Inner Bridges in 1986:
“My medical information was not incorrect, but was limited and constrained by the empirical method, the demand for proof, for tangibility, for causal relationships, for facts. Everything I had been taught up to that point ignored the intuitive and experimental side of life. It taught illness as an “event” and not as a “process” taking place within the broader scope of a person’s life. It did not recognise the tacit and intrinsic concept of “energy” and the world of inherent movement, which have long been acknowledged in Eastern philosophy and other healing systems. I had accepted my medical model as the full story; now I knew it was only one chapter of the much broader subject of health, wholeness and human potential.”
After his experience with Dr. Worsley, Dr. Fritz Smith became a serious student, experiencer, practitioner and eventually a teacher of the use of “energy” in healing. His pivotal influence was his time studying in the UK with JR Worsley from 1971-78, receiving a BA and MA in Acupuncture. At that time, he also qualified as a California Certified Acupuncturist.
Dr. Smith has been a student of Jack Schwartz, Brugh Joy, studied Jin Shin Do and Shiatsu and has also explored meditation, yoga, T’ai Chi and Qi Gong. All these influences came to bear in his medical practice as he began to integrate the world of inherent movement and energy with his scientific skills and understanding.
During this process of integration, Dr. Smith came to recognise a specific area in a person where movement and structure are in juxtaposition, similar to the situation in a sailboat where the wind (movement) and sail (structure) meet. Following the initial exploration of this interface, Dr. Smith formulated the structural acupressure system of Zero Balancing in 1973 to evaluate and balance the relationship between energy and structure in the body. The powerful and lasting effects he witnessed in patients following a Zero Balancing session led him to understand that the bridging of energy and matter exists in the level of the body, and the mind and the spirit of a person and that any, or all, of these levels can be addressed by Zero Balancing.
The implications of his new understandings and experience of this inspirational structural/energetic interface led him to specialise in the broader fields of health, wellness and human potential and thereafter to teach Zero Balancing to thousands of students over the past 50 years.
Dr. Smith is the author of countless articles and two books, Inner Bridges: A guide to energy movement and body structure and Alchemy of Touch: Moving towards mastery through the lens of Zero Balancing.
Dr. Smith remains Director Emeritus on the ZB Touch Foundation Board.
(From Zero Balancing Touch Foundation website: https://zbtouch.org/about-us/founder/)
Pro Bono Days
These are continuing in 2023. They are proving popular both for those that may not be able to access this kind of support, and those who are curious to find out more about it before they commit.
Ngaio: Tuesdays – 21 March, 23 May, 20 June, 18 July, 22 August, 19 September, 24 October, 21 November, 12 December
Upper Hutt: Wednesdays - 22 March, 24 May, 21 June, 19 July, 23 August, 20 September, 25 October, 22 November, 13 December
Music Corner
This month’s item on Nature is self explanatory. When we’re finding it hard to be mindful, go for a walk in nature and just watch. Another great choice!
East Forrest, Ram Dass – Nature
With caring and kindness,
Rhys Dwyer
If you know anyone, from kids up who maybe struggling with body-held tension, energy levels, stress, anxiety, or choices, then please ask them to check me out. Bodywork and present moment awareness may just make a big difference.