Zero Balancing and Occupational Therapy
The Kawa (River) Model uses the metaphor of a river for the life journey.
Happy Birthday to Zero Balancing Founder Dr Fritz Smith, who is celebrating his 92nd birthday! We are so grateful for this mind body therapy technique he developed, which has transformed our lives.
Zero Balancing (ZB) is an effective complementary and integrative health treatment tool for holistic practitioners, including Occupational Therapy (OT) practitioners. It helps remove restrictions and restore balance to a patient’s life flow, improving overall occupational performance.
We recently published an article in the new peer reviewed online journal, The International Journal of Zero Balancing and Transformative Touch as a way to encourage OT’s interested in complementary and integrative health approaches to consider training in this technique. In the article, we compare using ZB during an OT treatment to the Kawa (River) Model as an OT frame of reference for removing life’s restriction.
Loren has 29 years of experience as an OT (as a second career) and I have over 35 years experience as an OT. With over 10 years as certified Zero Balancing practitioners, we find ZB to be a profound treatment tool in our OT tool belt. It is holistic in nature and is based on a wellness model. I can personally say the basic ZB principles are the guiding foundation for my life.
Loren uses ZB with his patients in a local in-patient rehab unit. Many of his patients can’t tolerate a typical 30 minute session, so he applies the basic principles and a few portions of the ZB protocol into his treatment sessions when appropriate. Most patients feel better after the treatment and often request it again.
I have a private wellness practice and incorporate ZB in with other modalities and my OT treatment, with a primary focus on promoting relaxation, teaching self care practices for stress management and releasing restrictions to the life flow to allow the body’s innate wisdom to move towards greater well-being. This combination is very transformative for empowering people to get back to purposeful living with greater ease and improved well-being. I love ZB so much that I am currently in ZB Teacher Training, so that I can teach others how to do this technique.
If you are new to Zero Balancing, you can find classes and practitioners (https://ZeroBalancing.com). The Zero Balancing Touch Foundation has information on current ZB research projects (https://zbtouch.org) as well as a link to the newly launched online journal. This journal is a collaboration with The Keep, through Eastern Illinois University. (https://thekeep.eiu.edu/ijzbtt/).
Waggy, Deanna OTR and Waggy, Loren OTR (2021) "Zero Balancing and Occupational Therapy: Removing Restrictions to Life Flow," The International Journal of Zero Balancing and Transformative Touch: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 9.
Available at: https://thekeep.eiu.edu/ijzbtt/vol1/iss1/9
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