Kinesiology and its Applications
The word ‘Kinesiology’ comes from the Greek word kinesis, which means ‘movement’. In the medical sciences this is the name given to the study of muscles and the movement of the body (biomechanics or traditional kinesiology). Kinesiology research and development can be traced back thousands of years to Aristotle (384-322 BC); Leonardo da Vinci (1429-1519) famous for his studies of human structure and function; Luigi Galvani who in 1780 discovered that muscular contraction was caused by electrical impulses produced by nerves.
In 1964 Dr George Goodheart, an American chiropractor from Detroit, Michigan, used muscle testing, devised by Kendall, Kendall and Wadsworth in the 1930s, to evaluate his chiropractic treatments. Later, together with a team of likeminded doctors, known as the ‘dirty dozen’, a working party was formed and in 1974 they founded The International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK). Membership of the college is restricted to people who have completed at least three years of a basic medically oriented degree and are qualified to diagnose and write prescriptions.
Goodheart was inspired by his earlier successes to conduct further research and incorporate acupuncture into AK linking organs and glands of the body with meridians and the muscles of the body. He later incorporated nutrition, lymph drainage and treatment modes such as Chapman’s reflexes and Bennett’s reflexes etc.
FIve Element Chart
Dr John Thie, one of the founder members and first president of ICAK, used to teach AK techniques to some of his patients to use at home. He found that their recovery was faster and greater than those who didn’t use them. Inspired by these results Thie wanted “to spread health to the general public through natural means” (TFH 1973) and help them save money on soaring costs of healthcare. In 1973, assisted by Mary Marks, Gordon Stokes and Richard Duree, he wrote Touch for Health, a book of AK techniques for lay people.
According to Frost (2002), thanks to TFH, more than two million professional therapists and lay people worldwide have now been introduced to Kinesiology muscle testing techniques. In 1976 Brian Butler went to the USA, became a TFH instructor and introduced Kinesiology to the UK. He went on to develop Balanced Health and founded his own school.
Since then over a hundred and twenty different specializations of Kinesiology have developed worldwide, not all of which met with approval. David Walther, ICAK Diplomate (Walther 2000) stated: “Unfortunately, ‘kinesiology’ has… grown in use by lay persons who are failing to correlate the results of manual muscle testing with standard methods of diagnosis. Much harm can come from the application of ‘kinesiology’ in this manner.”
Dr John Thie (1988) was cited in the The Advanced Communication Training (TACT) workshop manual by Brian Butler: “Muscle testing is being used to help people use their intuition, which is knowing something without the use of reasoning. This type of activity is dangerous, if it does not accompany reasoning and knowledge about the seriousness of life”.
Training
Proper training is vitally important. Accurate muscle testing is a skill that takes time and dedication to develop and cannot be learned from a book, video or correspondence course. In April 2003 Kinesiology National Occupational Standards were published to provide a benchmark for all Kinesiology training in the UK. These standards have been designed to offer protection to clients so that they can be confident that the practitioner treating them has been adequately trained. Practitioners can be confident in the training they receive as long as it is mapped to the standards which include being taught by a professionally qualified and experienced teacher who is also a professionally qualified and experienced Kinesiologist.
Courses recognized and accredited by an external body also testify to the quality of that course. To achieve accreditation is no mean task. It means that a school, its tutors, training materials, equipment and resources including its financial viability, where the classes are held, its syllabus and, most importantly, methods of assessment, have all been inspected by an independent body and deemed to have met the requirements of the National Occupational Standards.
Muscle testing combined with Kinesiology techniques enables the practitioner to find out which systems are out of balance i.e. mental, chemical, structural or energetic – which could be one, several or them all. For someone to be truly healthy all four systems need to be functioning well and in harmony with each other. In my opinion Kinesiology is the only treatment which addresses all four areas and as such is truly holistic.
Kinesiology obtains positive results when other modalities including orthodox medicine have failed. The longer someone has had a problem the more likely it is that all the systems will need to be treated. More importantly is to find the underlying cause and to identify the factors which may be contributing to such imbalances.
Once you have all this information, then corrections can be applied to all four areas. Restoring this balance can have profound effects on people’s lives.
Kinesiology Treatment
Goodheart (Frost 2002) states that Applied Kinesiology is based on the fact that the body never lies; the prime diagnostic device is still the original muscle testing of Kendall et al. to determine muscle function. So all Kinesiology treatments will involve at least one muscle test. Most muscle tests are conducted while the client is lying down, usually clothed, on a treatment couch. Some tests involve movements for which they may be asked to stand e.g. eye tests.
The Kinesiologist will move the client’s limb into a position to contract a specific muscle. They will be asked to resist light pressure on the limb in a particular direction for a few seconds. This is to assess the functional integrity of the nervous system involved with that muscle. If the client can keep the limb in the same position it is considered to test ’strong’; if they can’t, then it is considered ‘weak’. Some muscles lock easily and others may give way.
Correction Techniques
Methods of strengthening a weak muscle may include firm massage to the tendons at its origin and insertion. If this method strengthens the weak muscle it may also benefit the muscles’ related organ and health problems. For example, the pectoralis major clavicular muscle (PMC) is related to the stomach meridian and the stomach.
If the PMC tests weak, it may indicate digestive problems or emotional upsets.
Bilateral weakness may indicate a spinal fixation at T5 or T6.
In the 1930s American osteopath Frank Chapman discovered reflex points, now known as neurolymphatic reflex points (NLs), found on the front of the body in the intercostal spaces between the ribs and where they join the sternum and on the back where they meet the vertebra. Other NLs have since been discovered. When massaged they stimulate the elimination of excess lymph and may strengthen weak muscles. This is a very common correction used in treatments as most people have a sluggish lymphatic system due to lack of exercise.
Chiropractor and clinician Terence Bennett researched and mapped out vascular reflexes now known as neurovascular reflex points (NVs). These points are located mostly on the head and many are bilateral. They are treated by gently pressing them and tugging in different directions until a pulse can be felt, under the fingers. Once this pulse is felt, the points are pressed for about 20 seconds or until the pulsation stops. These points stimulate the vascular circulation to a specific organ and its related muscle. For example, NVs for the PMC are located bilaterally on the forehead halfway between the eyebrows and the hairline. Holding these points stimulates the circulation of the blood to the stomach and strengthens a weak PMC and can be extremely effective when used to treat emotional distress.
Kinesiologists are trained to test approximately 50 different muscles. Any one of these muscles which tests ’strong in the clear’ (without stimulus) can be used as an indicator muscle to test for other things. Known as therapy localization, this is done by testing the indicator muscle at the same time as the client touches the site of an injury, for example. If the indicator muscle now tests weak it indicates a lesion, and further muscle tests will be undertaken to ascertain what corrections are needed.
Other correction techniques include holding or massaging acupuncture points, repeated muscle activation (RMA), reactivity, stretch weakness, testing for nutritional support or substances which weaken or strengthen the body. ICAK-approved techniques are only those that they have clinically researched and work for anyone who uses them.
Thanks to muscle testing and AK, a treatment is totally client led and will differ for each individual. People may have the same symptoms but the underlying cause may be different and therefore the treatment needed will be different. For example, ten clients could complain of headaches but there could be ten different reasons why.
Usually at the end of a treatment a client will be given advice of some kind which may include nutritional requirements, dietary changes, exercise or simple techniques to reduce stress.
The Benefits
The greatest application of Kinesiology is in dealing with everyday complaints for which no permanent cure has been found. The assessment techniques are good at identifying the causes of problems and can be very useful in pinpointing the sources of general unwellness and fatigue that have no obvious medical causes. As Goodheart said, “The body never lies”. Kinesiology lets the body reveal precisely where the problem is and exactly what it needs in order to be healed, enabling problems to be corrected at source often permanently. Kinesiology is also ideal for preventative healthcare.
In more serious conditions, Kinesiology enables people to function as well as possible under the circumstances and to be supported towards better health. Sometimes different types of treatment may be needed at different times. For example, initially there may be structural problems to be dealt with, and once these have been treated emotional problems may surface. Emotional problems and stress can be treated very quickly without any need for in-depth psychoanalysis.
Specifically Kinesiology can help people with many common conditions including: allergies, chronic fatigue, asthma, eczema, candida, IBS, migraine headaches, insomnia, anxiety, phobias, low mood, weight problems, fluid retention, digestion problems, muscular and skeletal pain, arthritic pain, hyperactivity, breast congestion and much more. Because Kinesiology does not focus on specific symptoms, the list of health problems which it can help or alleviate is endless. By improving posture and coordination people have more stamina and less pain.
How Long Does it Last?
The number of treatments required varies depending on the condition being treated. Some problems are short term and can be sorted fairly quickly, some are chronic and may take much longer.
So, for example, if someone has had a health problem for years it may take longer to relieve than something that has developed fairly recently. Treatment lasts until whatever the stress on the body was that caused the imbalance recurs. Kinesiology assessment will try to discover what the stressors are and re-educate the body to stay in balance.
Is it Safe?
When practiced by people who are properly trained, Kinesiology cannot harm anyone. The techniques used for correction are simple and gentle. They work by enhancing the clients’ energy, following the dictates of the clients’ own body as to what is energy enhancing and what isn’t. It is suitable for adults and children (including babies). People who are very sick or disabled in some way can be treated by using a surrogate.
Are There Any After-effects?
Treatments are powerful and deep-reaching and can bring about major energy changes which may make one feel tired or sleepy or other slight symptoms such as a headache or cold. Withdrawal from foods or substances causing intolerance or toxicity may cause unpleasant symptoms as the body detoxes. Fortunately they don’t last too long, and can be seen as a good sign that healing is taking place. Healing effects can continue for days, weeks and even months after treatment.
Kinesiology Can Enhance Other Therapies
Kinesiology is the link, the lynch pin, which brings together all the different modalities which are currently taught in a fragmented way and often in competition with each other.
Combining therapies with Kinesiology can significantly enhance their efficacy and speed of recovery. Structural therapies such as physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathy, massage, reflexology can be enhanced by being able to treat, for example, emotional problems and stress which can cause tension in skeletal muscles which in turn can cause subluxations and postural imbalances.
Recurring structural problems may be caused by food intolerances or nutritional deficiencies. There is also the added advantage that using Kinesiology with its gentle muscle tests and corrections will also reduce the ‘wear and tear’ on the practitioner.
Mental or emotional therapies such as counseling, hypnotherapy, NLP, psychology may be enhanced by being able to test for food or chemical sensitivities which have been linked to hyperactivity and schizophrenia and other mental disturbances (Mackarness 1990) and headaches or migraine. Emotional traumas that could take years to treat in some instances can be resolved in minutes (Callaghan 2001).
Depression may be treated by addressing pain, structural problems or nutritional imbalances.
Healing in therapies such as nutrition, homeopathy or herbalism can be speeded up and enhanced by being able to muscle test to find the most appropriate remedy(ies). Problems with poor absorption or toxicity can be easily identified and treated. When symptoms have subsided, tests can be done later to evaluate whether a remedy is still relevant.
Dentists use Kinesiology in their practice to reduce stress or phobias in clients, and to correct TMJ subluxations which can cause back pain, sciatica and digestive problems. Nutrition can be recommended to eliminate anesthetics from the body after surgery.
Acupuncturists have found that when they use Kinesiology in their treatments they are able to find the underlying imbalance much faster and a successful outcome is more likely. Bach Flower Remedies and Aromatherapy essential oils can be quickly identified using muscle tests. Chronic chakra imbalances may be rectified by correcting spinal fixations.
Educationalists and parents can do much to help children and adults with learning difficulties using Brain Gym exercises and by recommending testing for nutritional deficiencies and food sensitivities.
Case Studies and Testimonials
Low Back Pain
Dorothy, 64, complained of increasing pain in the lower back and knees, various aches and low energy. The first treatment included a correction to the TMJ and sacrum, nutritional support and intolerance to wheat. Energy levels had improved significantly within a month.
Migraine
Sue, 47, a health worker suffered from lifelong crippling migraine headaches which began to fade within a month of her first treatment. Kinesiology testing found Sue had sensitivities to orange and wheat, and needed digestive enzymes.
“I have been a migraine sufferer for 35 years. My relief of headaches started a week later. After four months I had no headaches or migraines. I stopped feeling dizzy when bending down and I now have boundless energy. I have also lost two stone in weight. I was overweight as I used to have a very sweet tooth.”
Arthritis
Nicky: “…for the past few years I have suffered from arthritis in both knees. Having undergone extensive hospital treatment I was told there was nothing more that could be done until I was 60 years old, so come back in six years time when they would consider knee replacements… after two sessions there has been a dramatic improvement. For the first time in many months the pain has virtually disappeared. A walk in the town was an effort, but is now enjoyable again.”
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Letting Go of Being Right
Recently I found myself fiercely determined to be ‘in the right’. As I tried to maintain my argument I became aware that I was feeling off balance, hot and bothered. As I stuck passionately to a favored theory I realized that I was now breathing rapidly from my upper chest, and I was starting to feel exhausted! By wanting to be right I was cultivating self-importance and tying myself up in knots. I could feel the chi rising to my chest and head, and by my strong desire to win my ‘opponent’ over to my point of view, I was constricting the free flow of my energy, and risking my health and wellbeing.
Chuang Tzu the Daoist Sage described the true Daoists in this way:
‘Minds free, thoughts gone
Brows clear, faces serene.
Were they cool? Only cool as autumn.
Were they hot? No hotter than spring.
All that came out of them
Came quiet, like the four seasons.’
From these words we see that the Sage has let go and is empty of self. He is not concerned with being right but with living in harmony with Nature.
Being in harmony with Nature, the Daoist aligns with universal chi – the innate intelligence of the universe. There is nothing particularly mystical or ‘airy-fairy’ about this. All living organisms live in accordance with the life force. A flower closes on a cloudy day and opens when the sun shines – it obeys its instinctual, intelligent nature. When we are furiously determined to be right and cling to a viewpoint, we distance ourselves from the here and now because we are so caught up in defending our position. In this way we lose touch with our life-force, our innate intelligence. When we lose touch with our inner harmony we are no longer able to respond appropriately to what is happening, and end up feeling overheated, scattered and drained.
Being Yourself
When we are determined to be right this means we are afraid of getting it wrong and looking foolish. By being open to making mistakes, accepting our flaws, and being able to laugh at ourselves, we relax and allow the chi to flow. Being yourself and not worrying about being right, you lighten up in an argument and ask ‘tell me what you think?’ and respond ‘How interesting, I never thought of it in that way!’ Interested and open, quiet and cool, you learn more about yourself and the person with whom you are having the discussion than when full of bombast and self importance.
Even though empty of self, you can still feel deeply about a cause, have an opinion, and feel strongly about something. Chuang Tzu said that “The true men of old were not afraid when they stood alone in their views”.
The mark of the wise Daoist is that even though she may hold a point of view she does not cling to it, and is not interested in being right if it means creating an imbalance in the life-force. The balanced mind is never for or against anything – it remains unperturbed, quiet and cool in its reactions and responses, accepting and relaxing.
Being inflamed with the need to be right encourages an imbalance in Fire and Water. Firstly be aware of your breathing – if you are breathing rapidly from the chest then allow your abdomen to expand as your diaphragm moves down in a full breath, then let your abdomen relax as you exhale completely. Try the following to quiet and cool the fiery heat of self-importance:
Awakening the Kidney Chi
* The acupuncture point Kidney 1, known as ‘Bubbling Spring’, is on the sole of the foot between the second and third metatarsal bones in the crease formed when the toes are flexed. Allow two thumbs to meet at this point, press firmly and rub each foot in a clockwise direction for at least three minutes;
* The point Kidney 3, known as ‘Greater Mountain Stream’, is just behind the inner anklebone. Press firmly and rub each ankle in a clockwise direction for at least three minutes;
* A point associated with the Kidneys can be found on the Bladder meridian, running down the back on either side of the spine. Place your hands on your hips and bring your thumbs to rest about three inches on either side of your spine. Press firmly and rub each side in a clockwise direction for at least three minutes.
As you relax affirm; “Letting go of needing to be right I align with the life-force, feel relaxed, cool and quiet”.
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Creating a Sacred Space
There is a beautiful poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado and translated by Robert Bly, in which the jasmine-scented wind calls to the poet’s soul, offering its perfume of jasmine in exchange for the scent of the roses in the poet’s garden. The poet confesses: ‘I have no roses; I have no flowers left now/in my garden … all are dead.’ After the wind has left, with its cargo of dead leaves and dried-up petals, the poet weeps. ‘. . . I said to my soul / “What have you done with the garden / that was entrusted to your care?”’
Matthew Fox, the radical theologian, in a talk at St James’s Church in Piccadilly a few years ago, asked:
“How well are we humans doing at celebrating creation?”
How well are we humans doing at celebrating creation?
Following on from this I’d like to ask: How well are we looking after the garden that was entrusted to our care? Is it virgin wilderness or manicured and straitjacketed? Mixed woodland? Or have we exported all the exotic and slow-growing hardwoods in exchange for some pieces of silver?
Do we pay attention to the seasons and their differing needs? Do we allow the abundance of harvest to be followed by a period of rest? Do we till and fertilize and prune dead wood, sow the seed and water it? Or do we consider it only of use as a harvest, uprooting what we want when we want?
Do we strip all the fruit, leaving none for the birds or to reseed? Do we plant sustainably, manure and mulch and water with care, harvest judiciously? Do we leave wild spaces for nature to inhabit, birds to nest, children to play in? Do we take time out to simply sit, watch the grass growing, smell the roses, listen to the birdsong?
Or do we never even go into the garden? Do we even know that we have a garden?
I am, of course, not talking only about our front lawns, nor even about the larger garden of the world, but also about our inner processes; for inner and outer affect and reflect each other. If our inner garden is neglected, unexplored, unclear, ignored, what does this say about our outer lives? Equally if our whole time is spent in a frenzy of busyness, being in control, cutting, clearing, regimenting, organizing, then what space is there for silence, for roses, for thrush song, for sunrises?
One of the things that a garden has always symbolized is sacred space; a place set apart from the mundanely and busyness of the routine tasks which constitute everyday life. So what space do we make for celebrating the sacred in our lives? (By sacred I mean that which inspires and uplifts us, which fills us with awe, with joy, with wellbeing; that which adds meaning to our lives.)
There is, I believe, a deep impulse in the human psyche for fulfillment, for unity, for a sense of connectedness. Rather than simply seeking pleasure or happiness, at a more profound level we are seeking wholeness, integration, freedom, meaning. Mystics would call this union with the divine; I’m wary of naming this impulse, as by the very act of labeling we create dis-union, division. However, I am talking about what could be called soul, or spirit if you prefer: – the ineffable; that which is beyond quantifying materially, measuring scientifically, beyond structure and form but which in a way is the heartbeat of the universe. The connecting tissue. The light in the eye. The great leap we need to take when our explanations are not enough. There’s a moment in sub-atomic physics, for example, when we come up against the fact that we are unable to identify the point at which the particle becomes a wave, and the wave a particle; the moment where matter and energy are indistinguishable from each other. In this, in front of this, beyond and all around this, is the sacred. So close we don’t even have to reach out to touch it; so far away we may not even get there in a lifetime.
In talking about soul. I’m talking about anima mundi, world soul, as well as our portion of it, our part in it. In this language, in fact, there is no difference. We are interconnected, and like the hologram, the whole is seen in the parts. Soul is a word that is difficult to use in our culture. Either it is identified with a rather proselytizing form of Christianity or it has become diminished, outmoded, marginalized, sentimentalized, and in a very real and literal sense, denatured. It is no coincidence that soul has traditionally always been seen as feminine, and therefore in a way constantly wrongly appropriated and often, even usually, undervalued. In a patriarchal reductionist society there is little place for its values, which are somewhat antithetical to the status quo. Along with imagination and meaning it has become an endangered species in a world that above all values factual information over and above wisdom; and bigger, better and faster in its consumer products, whether these are buildings, cars, roads, genetically manipulated pigs or tomatoes.
Matthew Fox talks about the multi-billion computers that are so much a part of our Western lifestyle and exist purely to store information. By contrast, in his view, the “. . . wisdom that has accumulated since the Renaissance could be probably fitted onto a cigarette packet.” T. S. Eliot said, along the same lines, that we have lost wisdom to knowledge, and then knowledge to information.
What room is there for soul in all of this?
Since the Renaissance, give or take a decade or two, we have lost our sense of inhabiting an ensouled universe, a world where everything is alive, everything has its place. And with this loss has come the loss of our sense of belonging, of being part of a greater whole. Without this sense of the sacred inhabiting matter, our world becomes merely a two-dimensional resource, to manipulate and plunder as we, collectively or individually, see fit. The results of this are obvious; apart from the destruction of whole cultures and forests the size of Africa, we have lost our eye for shape, for form, for color, for grace, for appropriateness. In short, we have lost our feeling for beauty.
The structures we create can only reflect this. In the majority of purpose-built functional buildings of this century economy and quantity have taken precedence. Who considers it worthwhile – as someone before me has already asked – to invest the millions of pounds and tens of thousands of working hours to build the equivalent of a St Paul’s, a Chartres, a King’s College? And maybe there’s rightness in that, too; with issues of starvation and homelessness and poverty and healthcare cuts the money is more needed elsewhere.
But the heart needs its food too. Ugliness and squalor have become the urban or suburban norm; a kind of outer reflection of the junk-food diet that is, or was until very recently, also an urban norm. So, too, what we feed into our minds. To misquote Matthew Fox (again from his talk at St James), looking for soul in the twentieth-century urban landscape is like looking for chastity in a brothel.
We live in a lopsided, fragmented, pillaged world. Many of us feel alienated, dislocated, isolated; our lives feel profoundly meaningless. We have become like limpets, each stranded on the tip of our barren, dry, infertile rock, clinging on for dear life and watching the waters recede.
But, though the outer causes may be different, this is not entirely new. Humankind has been here before; it is part of the universal “human condition”, to one extent or another. There is a legacy of wisdom teachings from which we can learn, if we bother to look.
During the early years of this millennium a remarkable body of European literature grew up, myths transcribed from an earlier oral tradition, concerning the Quest of the Holy Grail. The myt