Jeffrey C. Zimmerman

The Power of ‘Sync’

Achieving Optimal Health, Wellness, and Peak Performance

For most of his life Jeffrey C. Zimmerman has been tuning instruments. The first half, starting at the age of 12, it was the upright bass; the second half, since his early 20s, the human body and those of horses.

Once on a career path to be a classical musician in a symphony orchestra, over the past three decades Zimmerman’s educational pursuits in music and health have earned him degrees from the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, both in London, and the titles, Licensed Acupuncturist and Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

In New York City in the late ’80s early ’90s, Jeff studied acupuncture at the University of Aruba’s satellite program, by day, financing his education doing Oriental bodywork and, by night, playing bass guitar in the Broadway production of the Tony Award-winning musical, Les Misérables.

After earning U.S. recognition from the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Jeff traveled to China to earn acupuncture certification from the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

Jeff has also become a master practitioner in the ancient Chinese healing art of Qigong (“chee Kung”): “Qi” meaning “energy” or “chi,” and “gong” meaning “work” or “practice” – one that is assiduous in nature, like the martial arts Daoist Tai Chi/Qigong and Shaolin Kung Fu (Wushu), which Jeff began studying in 1988 and continues today, part of his core training that grounds his Westport, Conn., practice.

Music of the Heart and Mind

Ask him to describe his work, though, he says, “I put things in ‘sync’” – and therein lays the symphony that Jeff Zimmerman is now conducting.

According to Western science, “Sync” is a phenomenon that occurs naturally and inevitably in the universe as well as in the human body. Biological mathematicians finally proved (in 1989) that synchronous fireflies not only flash in unison but also in rhythm. Even lifeless things – pendulums on clocks, atoms – synchronize. A player in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra described the power of sync in this way: “When the orchestra is in sync, my bass vibrates easily; when another instrument goes out of tune, my bass starts to get away from me, vibrating erratically, and I have to fight to hold it in tune.”

Jeff Zimmerman and Western science embrace the belief that the body’s natural, optimal state is to be in sync. “It’s when everything works together harmoniously,” Zimmerman says. “It is total ease, total relaxation, and complete freedom of movement.”

Zimmerman’s Sync is an energy healing and performance enhancement technique that harmonizes the natural energies of the body to achieve optimal health, wellness, and peak performance; a state of fluidity and power where professional or amateur athletes perform better and recover faster, where risk of injury is reduced and rehabilitation accelerated, where everyday people suffering from the stress of repetitive activities live pain-free and natural healing occurs.

Examples of Jeff Zimmerman’s Sync Energy Work

• Teaching a professional football player techniques to stay focused, balanced, and injury-free to improve his skills and prolong his NFL career;
• Teaching a new system of attaining fitness goals to the world’s most successful strength and conditioning coach, who has trained 16 Olympic medalists;
• Teaching an injury-free golf technique to a woman in her 75th year that would change her life and propel her to two tournament opening wins;
• Teaching a 14-year-old baseball player how to improve his hitting and pitching to elevate his game;
• Teaching a woman how to find her center and balance to relieve stress, anxiety, and depression;
• Teaching a professional limousine driver plagued by debilitating back pain the technique and exercises to relieve his own pain;
• Teaching a woman with arthritic knees and ankles to walk correctly to make her pain disappear;
• Teaching a professional horse trainer how to change the energy levels and fluidity of his thoroughbred racehorses.

Synchronizing the Body

“Harnessing chi energy makes the body become soft, pliable, and strong,” Zimmerman says.

His cutting-edge technique is a synthesis informed by 20 years practice of the forms of Daoist Tai Chi/Qigong and Shaolin Kung Fu. It combines the knowledge of the flow of energy throughout the body with the physical application of that energy, creating the most efficient way of transferring energy throughout the body. It allows for the synchronization of the physical body, fostering the proper redistribution and realignment of chi energy, the vital life-force that flows through all living things.

Pursuing the Dream

A career in health care was not anything Jeff Zimmerman ever had in mind; that was always music.

In his first year at the Royal Academy of Music, Jeff entered the school’s top symphony orchestra. While a student, he played double-bass in two London shows: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Stop the World-I Want to Get Off.  Toward the end of his second year, his professor told him that his music teacher was coming to town. That teacher was the esteemed Stuart Knussen, director of the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada and, at the time, considered the world’s greatest living double-bassist. After Jeff played for Knussen, he was offered a full scholarship. Next thing he knew, Jeff was on a plane to Canada. After three months of weekly lessons, Knussen switched gears, teaching Jeff every day.

Knussen’s mentor when he was principal bassist of the London Symphony Orchestra had been the great conductor and orchestral innovator Leopold Stokowski, who collaborated with Walt Disney on Fantasia, the 1940 film whose music Stokowski conducted with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestrea. From Knussen Jeff learned that Stokowski, who lived 95 years, was ahead of his time in his knowledge of energy and the body: he ate health foods, was a devotee of Alternative and Chinese Medicines, practiced yoga, got massage, and regularly had acupuncture.

When the Banff year ended, Knussen returned to Britain; Jeff followed. To support himself, Jeff began studying and practicing Oriental bodywork and Hoshino therapy, a technique combining massage and acupuncture. He also explored macrobiotics through a disciple of Macrobiotic diet founder George Ohsawa and he discovered Daoist Tai Chi/Qigong, whose movements and discipline intrigued him.

In 1982, when French horn player Barry Tuckwell founded the Maryland Symphony Orchestra, he recruited Knussen to manage it. Knussen, in turn, offered his protégé principal bass while Knussen, in the old school tradition, would be Jeff’s assistant.

‘There’s Some Thing Greater…’

Playing principal bass in the Maryland Symphony with Knussen assisting him, Jeff was living a dream. After one concert, Knussen whispered, “I wish I could play like you.” The next morning at breakfast, Jeff could see something was on Knussen’s mind. “Look at my life,” said the master, somberly, stunning his prized student. “Look at me,” he said. Then with tears filling his eyes: “You don’t want to end up like me. Don’t do this. This is not your life. You have too much talent. Be a doctor. There’s some thing greater for you.”

“I didn’t know it until then because I was so focused,” Jeff recalls, “but up to that moment I really wanted to be Stuart Knussen. He saw that and talked me out of it. I knew Stuart knew what was best for me.” His dream shattered, 21-year-old Jeff Zimmerman headed home to find a new career.

One Hand in Front of the Other

In New York City, Jeff started investigating other forms of bodywork, expanding his repertoire to include massage therapy and shiatsu while delving deeper into knowledge of the East. Most importantly, he began studying Oriental medicine and martial arts.

He earned his living playing bass in musical theatre, criss-crossing the U.S. in national tours, summer stock, and Off-Broadway in some 20 shows including: A Chorus Line, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Annie, Annie Get Your Gun, Cabaret, Chicago, Evita, Fiddler on the Roof, Godspell, La Cage Aux Folles, Little Shop of Horrors, Oklahoma, The Music Man, This Was Burlesque, and West Side Story. Touring and playing, between shows, Jeff “worked” on all the performers, doing massage, Hoshino, and Oriental bodywork.

Everything would come together in New York in the late ’80s. First, Jeff found a master teacher in martial arts and began formal study of Daoist Tai Chi/Qigong. As he did in music, he applied the same focus and diligence, learning the Daoist principles of lining up energy points while moving his body slowly, gracefully, and purposefully with awareness, simplicity, and economy.

Then, after landing a job in Les Misérables, he enrolled in acupuncture school. Before he graduated, he married the former Irene Rupelli, then a dancer (and now a teacher of ballet and a NIA instructor). Finally, after earning his degree, Jeff left Les Misérables, retiring from music and moving to Connecticut to launch his practice. That was 19 years ago. (They now have two daughters, Tessa, 13, and Olivia, 10.) For several years afterwards, Jeff continued to travel to New York three times a week for Tai Chi/Qigong, finally adding to his program the physicality of Shaolin Kung Fu (Wushu), which he’s been studying for the last decade in Connecticut.

“First There Is A Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then There Is…”

Science has been the unifying thread in Jeff Zimmerman’s life: from the science of music to the science of Oriental medicine to the science of martial arts to the science of energy medicine.

“Alternative medicines deal with the body’s energy,” heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, told an audience on “Oprah,” which, he said, “traditional Western medicine does not recognize – yet.”

Moving energy, “moving the chi,” is precisely what Jeff Zimmerman does. Whether it is unblocking, activating, or manipulating trapped energy, or recharging a low-energy system, Zimmerman’s pioneering sync work is all about organizing the body’s energy and redirecting it so that energy flows throughout the body where it can be maintained, maximized, and then employed to excel in life’s endeavors.

The effects of his work are both subtle and dramatic: those who experience it have difficulty explaining it; those who hear of it have difficulty believing it. Zimmerman says that he “educates” his patients and their bodies.

He also remains on a quest to document the power of sync. One of these proving grounds has been Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In a 2003 experiment conducted at Columbia Presbyterian’s Sleep Lab – to see if his work could affect brain waves – E.E.G. leads were connected to the head of Cathy LeVasseur of Fairfield, Conn., as she sat surrounded by several highly skeptical scientists and medical personnel. As Jeff worked, measurements were taken and recorded. Reports LeVasseur:

We were all surprised when my standing alpha brain waves went from normal to theta in less than half a second. When Jeff took away the application of his energy technique, my brain waves went back to a normal alpha state. Immediately upon application of his technique, the brain waves went into theta again in less than half a second.

Jeff has also used Medical Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging to demonstrate the unique power of sync: Moments after Jeff’s applied his technique inflamed areas of the body (both in humans and horses) have shown significant reduction.

Jeff has also been invited into the operating room by Dr. Oz to provide Medical Qigong during numerous surgeries, including a heart transplant. On one occasion, as Joseph Hooper wrote in “Surgery Goes Alternative” (Alternative Medicine Magazine, March 2004), after Dr. Oz had done a bypass he went into an adjoining OR where a protégé was performing a transplant, removing the old heart and sewing in the new donated one:

… Oz had us don surgical gloves so we could feel the original heart… But even [Oz] looked surprised when the disconnected heart began to warm and twitch in Zimmerman’s cupped hands. “It’s the Qigong!” Zimmerman exclaimed. “It’s not supposed to do that,” Oz said calmly. But he was, [Oz] later admitted, “Intrigued.”

On “Oprah” Dr. Oz also said: “We’re beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true, but could never measure. As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine is energy medicine. … understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel.”

Jeff Zimmerman’s Sync energy work is bringing that new frontier here now.

Zimmerman’s World

Entering Jeffrey Zimmerman’s Westport office the first sight is his well-traveled double-bass, imposing and elegant, parked upright in the vestibule. Inside, the feel is distinctly ancient Chinese. The centerpiece is his green leather table, where he conducts. Lying on it, one is not only soothed by the energy of the work, but also by the softness of the light-blue ceiling, painted ever so softly with barely visible clouds. But, after looking at the ceiling for a while, a golden glaze of free-formed scrolls suddenly appears, ornamental fretwork made of swirling figure-eights – the same circular movements that characterize the graceful forms of Tai Chi, the same circular movements that resemble Zimmerman’s energy synchronization work. In the world of Jeff Zimmerman, everything is interconnected and looking to sync.

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