Alan Hext - Structural Energetics in Zero Balancing Bodywork

Structural
Energetics in Zero
Balancing Bodywork

ALAN HEXT

Foreword by Fritz Frederick Smith, MD

Contents

Foreword

Fritz Frederick Smith, MD, Founder of Zero Balancing

Alan Hext is a senior Zero Balancing practitioner and teacher, a master acupuncturist, and a serious student of Chinese medicine and the Chinese classics. He and I became good friends after first meeting in the mid-1970s and he later became one of three people instrumental in bringing Zero Balancing into the UK. The inception of Zero Balancing actually occurred in England during my first year of acupuncture training at Professor J.R. Worsleys College of Chinese Medicine, Kenilworth, England. I had met J.R. Worsley several months earlier when he presented an acupuncture programme at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. He and I had an instant and deep connection. One evening we were standing on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean when he said to me: Fritz, I wish you could see the world the way I do, through the wisdom of the five elements of Chinese medicine. As I read Structural Energetics in Zero Balancing Bodywork , I understood even more deeply the wisdom which J.R. Worsley referred.

In his book Alan views the system of Zero Balancing through the windows of acupuncture, the Chinese classics, Chinese characters and the teachings of J.R. Worsley himself. In describing Zero Balancing and structural energetics, Alan continually references qi energy and the importance of the concept of pairings, fundamentally expressed as yin and yang, the sunny and shady sides of the mountain: It needs to be remembered that it is a single mountain and yin and yang are the double aspects of the one. In Zero Balancing, structure and energy are the fundamental pairing we work with, the underpinnings of the body, understanding that they are a reflection of the one. Alan flushes out amazing new richness, relationships and potentials of Zero Balancing, and presents the reader with a deeper understanding of body/mind therapy. In many places he weaves Zero Balancing so beautifully with the Chinese classics that his book might be regarded as the Chinese anthology of Zero Balancing.

Disclaimer

The fulcrums and methods in this book are for descriptive illustration. They require formal instruction and training for their proper practice.

No medical claims are being made in this book. The reader should seek appropriate professional care and attention for any specific healthcare needs.

Introduction

If you are reading this in the form of a book, the structure you are holding in your hands has a spine. You have engaged with the book by opening its pages. The spine is acting as a central coordinator and an axis that allows you to access its pages left and right, so that they become available to be read. By reading its contents you have activated potential communication and comprehension. These are key aspects of the books structural energetics.

The essential structural energetics of a human being are that we are vertebral beings with a central spine. We stand vertically upright on two legs. Our head is elevated so that it rests on the top of our trunk. The two girdles of the shoulders and pelvis connect our trunk with the four limbs of our arms and legs. Our hands and feet have a particular anatomy that has structurally and energetically developed through their interaction with our brains.

What is animating our structure? What is the internal regulation that gives our life integrity and unity? What attracts us to stand upright? Zero Balancing provokes curiosity into a breadth of questions, about, for instance, gravity, consciousness, our body-mind and what it is to be human.

We continue to explore, understand and realise who we are as living human beings. Zero Balancing has a part to play in our personal evolution and understanding what it is to be alive. It is a body-mind practice that invites us to awaken to being consciously human. Zero Balancing has a contribution to make to our development as human beings, beyond its recognisable value in nurturing health and wellbeing.

The appreciation of Zero Balancing is comprehended through direct touch, and the limitations of describing practical work by the written word present obvious difficulties. Comprehension requires interactive hands-on education. I remember from my school days the problems of attempting the task of writing instructions on how to tie a necktie. Describing the practicalities and sensitivities required in Zero Balancing has similar challenges. An intellectual grasp is transcended by non-verbal demonstration that directly reveals what is meant by the art and skill of Zero Balancing.

I am writing this in the year in which Fritz Smith, MD, the founder of Zero Balancing, celebrates his 90th birthday. He is testimony to the power of this remarkable form of bodywork to nurture good health and longevity. He continues to actively teach and explore its potential. His biography and the story of Zero Balancings development is told in the book Life in the Bones , superbly edited by David Lauterstein (2017). Fritz has taught Zero Balancing internationally, inspiring thousands of healthcare practitioners to study and practise the skills he developed. As the creator of Zero Balancing he is naturally honoured as the founder. However, he has been clear that Zero Balancing stands independent of himself as an art and skill that can be taught by anyone trained to teach or who is qualified to practise Zero Balancing.

I first met Fritz when I was living in California in the mid-1970s. At that time this area of the world felt as if it was a place of renaissance, discovery and innovation. I was there exploring the different bodywork approaches that were being developed. This State, on the rim of the Pacific Ocean, geographically faces and is culturally open to the wisdom of the Orient. I visited Fritz in his practice and observed him with clients. He would see them for a relatively short amount of time and practise with ease and focus in what appeared to be a simple manner. His clients would drop into deep relaxation, responding with enjoyment to the quality of his caring touch. They would then arise and re-accustom themselves to standing upright on their own two feet. Their first few steps showed them getting used to feeling being in a new body. Their eyes were alive and shining, as if a light within them had been turned on. Something was happening beyond immediate explanation that I had not come across in other therapies.

I deeply appreciate and have enormous gratitude for Fritzs generosity and teaching. From his welcoming me to observe him in practice in the 1970s as part of my acupuncture studies to his personally Zero Balancing all the participants in early workshops over many years, Fritz has, in turn, been even more generative through giving his permission and enthusiasm for Zero Balancer teachers to establish local Zero Balancing organisations in several different countries. Educationally Fritz has encouraged experienced teachers in their explorations of Zero Balancing, giving his approval to teachers creating their own Zero Balancing skills workshops. He has helped Zero Balancing flower through placing his trust in those he has taught as teachers in their presenting new dimensions of the possibilities and application of Zero Balancing.

Fritz has shared his knowledge and insights freely. He welcomes questions with the openness of one who equally learns from your questions. His teaching has that special quality of informing you, an experience of getting it in your hands through the direct experience of touch. It is as if he had shared a treasured gift, one you will know through its practice and which generates a multiplication of this gift through sharing it with others. The sense of revelatory delight that is realised through hands-on discovery is a frequent experience of the joy of learning Zero Balancing. He has taught a therapy that the student can literally get a handle on in their first workshop, whilst realising it has unfolding development as a skill and therapeutic art as their practice matures.