09/30/2025
Being With Sensation: Lessons from Parenting and Zero Balancing
One of the deepest teachings I’ve received as both a parent and a practitioner of Zero Balancing is this: healing doesn’t come from fixing, forcing, or trying to make discomfort go away. Healing comes from being with what is—with presence, compassion, and trust.
One of my children has challenges with anxiety. Sometimes their mind loops around needing something to be perfect or a certain way, and their nervous system spirals into overwhelm. Over the years, I’ve tried many ways of helping—accommodating their wishes to reduce their anxiety, reasoning with them, pushing them to “get over it.” Sometimes those things offered temporary relief, but more often they left both of us more frustrated.
What has truly shifted things for our family came from something I read in a book on childhood anxiety, and what I’ve since seen reflected in my practice of Zero Balancing. The approach is simple, though not always easy:
Acknowledge the feeling as real and hard.
Trust that my child is strong enough to handle it.
Offer deep kindness and presence without trying to erase the feeling for them.
This doesn’t mean ignoring their needs, and it doesn’t mean indulging every anxious loop. It means standing with them in the middle of it, while holding the larger truth that they are capable, resilient, and whole.
Zero Balancing offers a parallel through touch. When I place my hands on an area of tension, pain, or sensitivity, I don’t try to immediately change it or “fix” it. I acknowledge it as valid and real, just as it is. At the same time, I connect with the part of the person that is well, strong, and intact—even if they can’t feel that themselves in the moment. My touch communicates both: I see the challenge you are carrying, and I also trust your body’s innate capacity to move through it.
In a way, this is what “not accommodating” looks like in touch. I don’t collude with the body’s tension by avoiding it, nor do I bulldoze through it. I simply meet it with presence, and hold space for the body to reorganize itself.
It sounds simple. But it takes years of refining our presence—in parenting, in healing, and in life—to be able to stand in that middle place of both compassion and trust.
And when we do, something beautiful happens. Whether in the nervous system of a child or in the body on the table, the system begins to find its own way toward ease.
