Annual Zero Balancing Community Benefit

Our 2021 Zero Balancing Community Benefit theme was
"OFFERING A DEEPER LEAN" 

We invite you to join us in 2022, from wherever you are!

Stay tuned here or by email for details - and contact the office should you have any questions: zbha@zerobalancing.com

Many excellent Zero Balancing teachers stepped up in 2020 and 2021 to share their growing edges with you. Some have taught mostly in their local area so being virtual was a great opportunity to experience their unique perspectives.

And, previously, attending the Benefit may have cost you a plane ticket, room and board, and a few missed days at work to partake. So, this has been an amazing chance to benefit from the gems of knowledge and insight of these varied and experienced teachers.

Here's the 2021 agenda that was lovingly curated by the Faculty Committee:

AGENDA - Day 1 (Saturday) all times Eastern

11a - 11:45a    Opening Session: "Offering a Deeper Lean"

Katie Chase, Fritz Smith, and Rebekah Harbour

12p - 1:30p    Mentoring is a Deeper Lean Amanda King, Michele Doucette

Amanda and Michele, Mentor Advancement Program (MAP) faculty, present a lesson from the program on how to hold the ZB field and consciously amplify ZB principles (including Interface, non-diagnostic, high personal regard, witness state, the pause) when mentoring another person. The lesson includes a discussion of the qualities of embodied listening skills, along with a demonstration and mentoring practice in pairs in breakout rooms.  Pure and open attention is a fulcrum that gets the energy moving!

We’ve learned in the past year first hand how mentoring done well can be deeply powerful, transformative and healing. How can we mentor another person consciously using ZB principles to amplify our work? Perhaps you want to assist a new ZB student, a client, or a colleague who could use support. How do we lean in with another person and create a safe container for awareness and growth, whether we are in person or online?

By the end of this session participants will be able to:
 

• Consciously create a safe container using ZB principles for a one-on-one coaching or mentoring session - in person or online
• ​Apply interpersonal skill sets to lean in and meet  another person where they are - in person or online
• Practice  open attention and embodied listening as fulcrums and catalysts for positive change

At a time when many of us have not been even able to receive touch, this presentation hopes to offer the "touch" of attention and highest personal regard. Our class creates time for each participant to offer and receive mentoring from another for 5-10 minutes. Being heard and understood is deeply healing and can spark new ideas, creativity and hope.

1:45p - 2:45p    Connecting Heaven to Earth Bob Brown

In this class Bob teaches fulcrums for all the chakras and has experiential exercises to get in touch with each within yourself. As part of the class, he developed working with both the ground and the heavens as the other ends of a fulcrum.

3p - 3:45p    Understanding our Cultural Lenses Rebekah Harbour

By the end of this important session, attendees will:
 

• Better understand themselves and their own cultural identity that may be taken for granted or unconscious.
• Understand how unconscious bias may be a factor in their ZB sessions.
• Understand the relevance and importance of being conscious of cultural lenses in ZB practice.

4p - 4:45p    ZB Rituals for Couples & Families Laura Lea Sweney

This experiential class is directed at building family infrastructure and connection - the primary idea is building a bedtime family ritual based on the 5 senses and ZB principles of interface, donkey connection, and nestling.

Laura Lea will offer some activities to be done with family/children and also some partner activities - so if you have any children or a friend nearby (doesn’t have to be a spouse/partner) who can experience the class with you, that would be ideal.  The learning objectives in the class include:

• To have activities/ guidelines you can offer your clients to allow them to build stronger family connections.
• To gain better connection within yourself
• To develop a deeper sense of interface, donkey-connection, and nestling
• To fall in love with yourself, even more!

4:45 - 5p    Closing

5p              Optional Post-Event Gathering

AGENDA - Day 2 (Sunday) all times Eastern

(Suggested 11a - 11:45a)    Optional Movement Session your choice of:
 

• Basic Spinal Series with Jo Johnson

• Spring Forest Qi Gong with Laura Lea Sweney

• 3 Tan Dien, 5 Bows, Meridian Chi Kung with Ty Romijn

​

• Warm Up & Healing Meditation with Jamie Carmody

12p - 1:30p    Breakout Session #1 (choose 1)
 

• Our Stories as Teachers  Judith Sullivan

Judith Sullivan has been a certified instructor with the Zero Balancing Touch Foundation since 1989. She’s the innovator behind Zero Balancing Expanded: Addressing the Viscera (formerly Spirit of the Organs), ZB Kids, Zero Balancing Expanded: Addressing the Skull (formerly Secrets of the Skull), and Fabulous Fulcrums; the author of The Attitude of Awaiting a Fish, and (often called The Fish Book! by her students) and recently completed editing the fourth edition of the Core Zero Balancing Study Guide.

Part of Judith’s great gift to this community and all who know her is her ability to tell a story. By the end of this session participants will experience the richness and power of stories as teachers, and how they’re often the teachers of your students or clients.

• ​Resilient Donkeys Megan Lavery

Resiliency is the art of being able to recover from, or adjust to, adversity.  In terms of trauma, resiliency is the ability to not only survive, but to thrive.  This workshop will look at specific body-based skills that build resiliency and help a person self-regulate.  We will explore how many of them are built into a ZB session and how to enhance the client’s awareness of them using core ZB and verbal skills.  Students will learn and practice 5 resiliency building body-based skills.  They will learn how to use these skills for themselves, and how to enhance them both within a ZB session and as skills for their clients. ​

1:45p - 3p    Breakout Session #2 (choose 1)
 

• ​Promoting the Zero Space Jamie Carmody

You've been told that having some sort of 'practice' is essential to becoming a better ZB'er, but have you experienced the why? Come find out about the "Zero Space" of the meditative mind and how to cultivate it for better focus and connection both to yourself and your clients. We will work with breath and body to quiet the mind before and after doing virtual ZB's and then compare these experiences. This immediate body-felt information you get will inform you and your body-mind about the nature of this space and its benefits. You will also come away with practices to cultivate the Zero Space on your own time. No experience is necessary for either the exercises or doing a virtual ZB. All levels welcome.
 

• Central Axis Restoration of the Thorax Roy Capellaro

​The course will allow the participant to understand and perform static and dynamic fulcrums using one or both hands as well as "chording" with  multiple fingers. The participants will become familiar with multi-vectoral fulcrums at the connective tissue systems of fascia and bone and be able to amplify the fields associated with these tissues during the fulcrum(s).

• Informal Gathering Katie Chase

3:15p - 4:15p    Breakout Session #3 (choose 1)
 

• ZB Elevator Speeches Katie Chase

Have you been in position to describe Zero Balancing and thought “I wish I could just get you on the table so you’d FEEL it instead of me talking about it!”? By the end of this session participants will know how to construct a story (or sentence) that delivers a clear “win” regarding the benefits of ZB in a way that’s especially designed for that (potential) client. We’ll practice in small groups and you’ll receive a guide with complete notes and editable fields for your take-awa
 

• HMV: Essentials to the Esoteric Michael Oruch

By the end of the presentation the students will have a better grasp of the basics...  how to do a more efficient and effective HMV - hand and body position, blue line, pause, rhythm, etc. Also then how to incorporate the frame and other more abstract/esoteric concepts and considerations. Michael will end the presentation by offering everyone a Restorative HMV incorporating their personal frame.

4:15 - 4:45pClosing Ritual & Meditation Ty Romijn

5pm  Optional Post-Event Gathering