THINK BONE
Think Bone
by Shabana Tanner
Shabana graduated as a Certified Zero Balancing Practitioner at the UK ZB Meeting at Gaunts House this year. This is the beautiful essay she submitted as part of her certification process (reprinted with her permission).
”The more I work with Zero Balancing the more I contemplate deeply about one’s structural form with the energetic body and the relationship between the two.
A couple of Fritz Smith’s quotes come to mind whilst I ponder over this and have drawn me to delve a little deeper of what is going on beneath the mechanical functioning body.
From the Core Zero Balancing Training manual, Dr. Fritz Smith quotes
‘Bone energy is the densest energy in the body’
‘What’s going on in a joint is more than muscles, tendons, bones, blood, and nerves’
I am in amazement of how the structural skeleton holds itself and how cleverly it is aligned to allow the perfect movement. The rib cage bone structure for example is like an armour protecting our vital organs and how our pelvic girdle is our significant centre which connects us from the upper to the lower part of the body. I think of it as ‘the core.’ To me the skeleton seems so substantially arranged in its perfect form, seeing it in the ZB world, as one form, one whole. Each connection joint has its purpose providing that essential support and movement in the way it operates.
In our ZB practices, our lesson is to ‘Think Bone’ whilst we connect to the prominent parts of bone throughout the body in a ZB Session. Our aim is to balance the client’s energy with their structure, ‘the bones.’ When we look at bone, we tend to see its rigid structure, but we know that from a Zero Balancing session, we can free up any tension residing there by placing well held fulcrums with-in bone, creating that vital space, taking up the slack, adding traction where necessary, and holding it in our attention.
Bones can have deeper connections and memories, a pathway even to exploring what is occurring beneath the visual body, how does one explain the thought of an older memory stored in bone that props up in a Zero Balancing session, or an aroma in the room, how did we get to there through touch on bone? What other vital information are we able to access if we allow it to be? This shows a deeper layer of unravelling a phase, timeline, or a deep memory recalling, which has made me think deeper of how zero balancing can bring up historic flashes through touch on bone.
In John Hamwee’s book ‘touching the energy of bone,’ there is indeed evidence that memories of certain kinds of trauma stored in bone. Tuning in to one of my experiences, touching someone on bone on their arm was enough to suddenly provoke a tear, it was instant. Something was residing there which needed to be released.
Any changes to the muscles, joints and bones can affect our posture and walk. How we connect through intended skilled touch to these muscles, joints and deeper into bone can very much shift things in the body to a more neutral place as well as engaging with the energy body itself.
So, what do I feel when I am engaging with a client’s structure?
I do not feel it is a case of lifting one’s bones, like a dead weight or mindlessly grasping an object, it feels like a connected touch of intention and an energetic clear engagement.
A clear touch is no doubt a vital part of the process of touching the skeletal body. It feels more of an ‘attended touch’ which feels different to the carrier, a meaningful connection, with intention, and with purpose. When engaging the structure, I am also becoming more in tune with interface and its relevance within ZB, and how powerful this interface can be when it is of a clear form. I feel the importance of going deeper to connect to bone and this has been such a great learning experience as I progress through my ZB journey. From what I feel when connecting with a client is that there is sometimes a tenseness or what feels like a congested area around the muscles on bone that I can feel that seeks attention. On other occasions I have felt a type of vibration lurking in the body which feels like something lucrative is occurring, moving, transforming even. How do I best describe this? It resembles the form of a wave beneath the ocean which has a form of ripple effect above, a form of freeness that is constantly evolving and changing creating a balance that the body desires and needs. As I ponder over this, I could call this an ‘intended shift’ occurring in the body. Although it is not visible but nevertheless sensed through touch, and through ‘knowing;’ that part of me that knows something has happened, like a movement of energy navigating to a desired place from the work that is being executed from the fulcrum. It is extraordinary that the body knows what to do.
The energy that I feel in bone can feel dull, lifeless, moving, or vibrant, sometimes when I feel the tension in the body, they can at times appear to be like hard spots making themselves known to the fingertips. It seems extraordinary that the tension or spots in the body softens and sometimes they just disappear, seems miraculous when I think of it in this way, I could call it ‘a bit of magic!’’. Allowing the body to do whatever it needs to do, giving it the space and the courtesy of intentional contact, giving it the attention, the most purposeful thing you could ever do. If you are giving the body its full attention, isn’t it likely to change?
I am discovering the significant importance of this amazing form of a structural body, it has the creative alignment for one, it has absolute engagement and connection to the muscles, tendons, connective tissue, ligaments, nerves and how they interact with each other and impact each other. This has encouraged me to look a little further on what the skeleton does and is in fact more than just bone, and how we tend to perceive it in its rigid form.
In a New Yorker magazine in 2013, there was an article ‘Do our bones influence our minds’ and a French geneticist and physician named Gerard Karsenty was curious about a protein called osteocalcin that was found at high concentrations in the skeleton.
In summary the findings of this protein changed the way we view the skeleton, it transpires that the osteocalcin is a messenger, sent by bone to regulate crucial processes over the body. So not only do the bones provide that structural support and serve as a repository for calcium and phosphate, but they also issue commands to far-flung cells. It is quite astounding to know there is this interaction, command signals from bone to cells.
Also, what was of interest in this article is the finding of the skeleton and the brain connection.
In the journal Cell, Karsenty showed that bone plays a direct role in memory and mood. Karsenty concludes that he knows enough now to recognise that the body is far more networked and interconnected than what most people think. He says that ‘No organ is an Island.’ And if ‘X talks to Y, then Y should talk back to X.
This was a very compelling read and consistently does underestimate how we view our skeleton, there is so much more that the bone does, it is indeed very much an alive and a working structure. In ZB work, this is extremely encouraging and highlights how our bodies connect as a whole and the interactions beneath they have with each other. So, it appears, we are doing much more in a ZB session than we might think we are doing...
Connecting with the client’s energy and structure has allowed me to work a bit deeper, engaging the structural body and through applied fulcrums allowing the energy to flow in the body in a way that helps the client clear any blockages and tensions. I find that if I have worked on a client in a particular area, there are other parts of the body that have become softer. As I see that the skeleton is perfectly a linked structure, it is perceivable to say that working on a part assists other parts in the structural bone chain and therefore the whole.
I look at the relationship between the two, the structure and energy and they are equally as unequivocally valuable as each other, I would describe it as the two sides of a coin, which has two different perspectives but make up the whole of ‘a coin,’ or the ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ comes also to mind. How they interconnect with each other and complement each other without friction.
Without each element of structure and energy, the therapy would feel vacant or a component being absent, deficient, lack lustre even.
There is surely harmony between them, the perfect natural balance.”
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