Do You Receive This Touch?
A Zero Balancing Session
I was three sessions in.
I had already felt the big things — nervous system settling, existential shifts, belonging landing in my bones.
This time, I wanted to bring something specific.
Pain.
Context
I was 38.
My body didn’t feel the way it had a few years before. There were aches I could blame on sports. On long days of massage. On “getting older.”
But that explanation felt too easy.
There was a deep ache between my shoulder blades. Right behind my heart. It felt like a pull inward. Like a black hole back there. Dense. Quiet. Persistent.
Stretching didn’t change it.
Strength training didn’t change it.
Yoga helped for a moment. Then it came back.
I decided to bring that.
Where my head was
I was three out of four workshops into the Zero Balancing certification. I was beginning to feel the work in my own hands — how it meets structure and energy together.
I come from a musculoskeletal background. If something hurts, you address it.
Part of me was curious.
What happens when you frame around a specific pain?
Not to fix it.
Just to meet it.
Where my body was
Braced.
Carrying more than I realized.
That ache between my shoulder blades didn’t feel muscular. It felt old. Structural. Like something had been sitting there for a long time.
Where my heart was
There was more going on than just the ache.
I had been having recurring dreams where I felt powerless. In the dreams, someone would come toward me and my body wouldn’t respond the way I wanted. My punch would move slowly. My voice wouldn’t come out. I felt small. Overpowered.
When I shared this with David, he gently mentioned Carl Jung — how in dreams, every figure is an aspect of the self.
That stopped me.
If that’s true… then I’m not just the one being attacked.
I’m also the one attacking.
Somewhere inside, I was pushing myself. Forcing. Overriding. Keeping parts of me small without realizing it.
That wasn’t easy to see.
But it felt true.
The session
I arrived at David’s familiar office space and shared all of it — the shoulder blade ache, the dreams, the curiosity.
I don’t remember the exact wording of the frame, but I remember the tone. It felt direct. Honest.
The session was different from others I had received. Shorter. More precise. Less dreamy.
At one point, when his hands were at my upper ribcage — right between the shoulder blades — he asked quietly:
“Do you receive this touch?”
The question landed.
Not intellectually.
Structurally.
I realized I wasn’t dropping into that usual soft, meditative space. I was alert. Working. Guarded.
After the session, I didn’t feel blissed out.
I felt like I’d been hit by a dump truck.
Intense. Raw. A little shaken.
I went home and did something new.
I rested.
I curled up in bed. I let myself recover. I didn’t push through.
Afterward
I don’t usually assign stories to sessions.
But this one felt specific.
When I was 16, I was hit by a dump truck and placed into an induced coma. My body survived something enormous.
Maybe my body never fully finished what happened back then.
This session felt like something that had been held open finally settled.
The ache between my shoulder blades — that black hole behind my heart — began to collapse. Not instantly. But steadily.
It stopped demanding my attention.
Since then, I’ve been more attuned to my body’s signals. More willing to pause. To rest for 10 or 20 minutes instead of overriding sensation and pushing through.
What stayed with me was this:
Receiving isn’t passive.
It requires safety.
Sometimes it asks you to feel what you’ve been bracing against.
And when you do, something reorganizes.
—
jenuine bodywork
connecting heart to bone 💚