Deep Massage Society

12/29/2025

Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill” – in The Moment and Other Essays

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s armchair and confuse his “rinse the mouth – rinse the mouth” with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us – when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature."

12/28/2025

Bones are the densest and deep living tissue within us. How could we not want to show them love and respect?

12/28/2025

In Zero Balancing we allow and facilitate a infintely deep relationship to the bones - that is captured in a different wonderful way by Georgia O'Keefe and her work.

Here is a lovely video of Georgia O'Keefe on her "barrel of bones" and more. I don't think any painter has given us a better sense of the majesty, the power, the illuminating power of bones - and the love for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v71awD38Qy4

12/14/2025

My new newsletter devoted to Zero Balancing will be sent next week to all new subscribers and to people who hadn't yet opened it. I hope you subscribe if you haven't yet and open at least a few of the gifts given to you through the texts there in.
Happy Holidays,
David Lauterstein

A bi-monthly newsletter with insights and resources that help us all shine a bit more brightly. Plus a little news, if I have any.

12/09/2025

OK - the December newsletter is ready to go on Wednesday at noon. Today added 5 new poems to it. DO SUBSCRIBE!
Happy Holidays, everyone. May we be safe, may we be happy, may we contribute to the cessation of all unnecessary suffering.

A bi-monthly newsletter with insights and resources that help us all shine a bit more brightly. Plus a little news, if I have any.

12/04/2025

"A fulcrum becomes a working force when it is held stationary. It is during this stationary period that forces of the fulcrum influence the client's body; it is here that alignment and change begin to occur." –Fritz Smith, MD, Zero Balancing founder

Find a class: www.zerobalancing.com

Photo by Tej Williams

11/27/2025

In Zero Balancing and Deep Massage, we honor, cultivate, and refine our ability to pay attention. We work with attention, not intention. And in bodywork, meditation, martial arts and really, in all of life, as Simone Weil says, absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. So when I touch a person with full attention, it is a way of praying. It shows faith in the client and unconditional love for the miracle that that person is.

"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer".

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity".

- Simone Weil

09/26/2025

Hi Everyone, I'm happy to know that already we have 11 people for the ZB I that I'm teaching in Austin, Oct. 23-26. I love to have one table-assistant! It's always a great learning and community experience!
I'll take names and decide on this by end of next week, before I go to Maine (on Oct. 4).
Comment below or email me at hello@david-lauterstein.com

09/23/2025

CORE ZERO BALANCING IN MAINE - COMING RIGHT UP!

The next Zero Balancing class I'll be teaching is in Maine - at the Downeast School of Massage. This is the fundamental Core ZB course - all in just 7 days - ZB I and II - Oct. 6-12. We're about half full with room for more.

ZB is an incredible therapeutic tool, but also studying it and the groups that form make it an initiatory experience. This comes from the humble but deep spiritual source of ZB, Dr. Fritz Smith, and from the focus of ZB, which is the core of the body, mind, and spirit - the wisdom that lives in our very bones.

https://www.downeastschoolofmassage.net/continuing-education

09/21/2025

WHAT "FREELY MOVABLE JOINTS" TELLS ME

Each movement in Mahler's 3rd Symphony's has a wonderful title: 1. Pan Awakens, Summer Marches In; 2. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me; 3. What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me; 4. What Man Tells Me; 5. What the Angels Tell Me; and 6. What Love Tells Me.

The class I am teaching, "Freely Movable Joints," seems to have infinite potential titles for our movements:
for example:
1. What the feet and ankles tell me about walking on earth
2. What the knees tell me - you use me all the time, but don't love me enough
3. What hips tell me about dancing.
4. What the shoulders tell me about reaching out.
5. What the elbow shares with the knees.
6. What the wrist and hands tell me about writing the truth.
7. What the jaw tells me about the songs I sing.

Each of us has many things each joint tells us. When we listen to what they have to say, our lives are that much richer.

09/06/2025

09/06/2025

FREELY MOVABLE JOINTS - SEPT. 18-21

Each joint in our body is like a holograph. In a hologram, if you shine a light through even a small fragment of it, you will see the whole picture. Freely Movable Joints shines a light through each joint, through each of our inner bridges. This illuminates the whole person.

Integrated into the basic ZB Protocol it will give your work an unprecedented completeness as well as very specific ways to address symptomatic issues in the feet, ankles, elbow, hip, SI, shoulder girdle, arms, wrists, hands and head.

If you've had ZB I and II, FMJ is a must!