Muscle testing is, perhaps, the most widely noticed and least understood technique in the Alternative Medicine lexicon. Many of us have seen the mysterious phenomena of your arm becoming weak when a practitioner pulled upon it. This has been used to demonstrate everything from sugar being bad for you to telling you your future. As a technology goes, it remains a bit in the formative stages.
Dr. George Goodheart developed Applied Kinesiology beginning in the sixties. Through his genius, a very rational and scientifically verifiable protocol using muscle testing has been established. Rather than pulling on your arm and touching reflex points to elucidate your problem, Goodheart recommended isolating specific muscles with anatomically verified connections to organ systems. The observation being, that a dysfunctional organ will produce an observable weakness in the muscles that share nerves with it. Through judicious examination of the muscles of the body one may determine associated dysfunction in related systems. One may also use this system to identify nutritional supplements that would facilitate the healing of the organ in question.
AS opposed to Clinical Kinesiology or John Brimhall’s work, AK is very reproducible in clinical settings. While the therapeutic effectiveness of both CK and Brimhall has been well-established, the detailed documentation possible with AK is appreciated by most Insurance companies who have yet to embrace CK or Brimhall. AK has another advantage over its progeny, it yields its data without the direct interpretation of the Practitioner.
The principle weakness in all forms of Kinesiology is interference by the Practitioner in obtaining an objective result. The information is derived by an interaction between the patient and the practitioner where the practitioner stresses the patient’s arm and detects the response. In all forms of Psychology, the presence of “Investigator-induced Error” is well established. So much so that most reputable testing is performed “Double-Blind” where neither the subject nor the tester know the answer. This frees the testing to present the objective answer without the concern that the doctor or the patient in some way influenced the result. Most Kinesiology ignores this possibility. The weak arm result is interpreted as indisputable fact. Unfortunately, the Practitioner can readily influence the result. Whatever the opinion of the doctor, the muscle will agree. Clinical Kinesiologists and Brimhall practitioners are aware of this and strive to be “Blank” when they do their testing so that they will not influence the result. While this is a necessary step for objectivity it is also very difficult. The subtle exchange of information that occurs between the doctor and the patient on non-verbal levels will influence the result.
The advantage of Applied Kinesiology lies in the complexity of testing many muscles on both sides of the body. The sheer number of possible combinations of responses precludes the Doctor from maintaining a preconception about what the result should be.
AK not only diagnoses muscle dysfunction, but offers the remedy as well. The basic concept in AK is that there are principally five domains of influence that can produce a “subluxation.”( Here subluxation is used in its original Chiropractic sense as a “blockage in the expression of the Life Force” or, in more contemporary terms, an obstruction in the expression of homeostasis.)
The five areas or domains of influence are:
The Neuro-vascular dysfunction which obstructs normal blood circulation.
The Neuro-lymphatic dysfunction that obstructs normal Lymph circulation.
The Nervous system problems with either sympathetic or para-sympathetic.
The Acupuncture Meridian: problems with the circulation of Qi
The Biochemistry of Homeostasis in the body
And I add:
The Cerebro-spinal fluid dysfunction resulting in diminished circulation of the CSF
These six potential areas of dysfunction can be treated with touch, nutrition, electrical stimulation of acupuncture points, and even the standard chiropractic vertebral adjustment.
The precise documentation of AK results has been achieved using the new digital read- out Dynamometers. This device measures muscle strength using a pressure sensor that digitally records the pressure necessary to collapse a weak muscle. Engaging this technology in performing AK analysis has demonstrated its utter reliability in producing accurate data.
At the Healing Experience, we use Applied Kinesiology as a primary diagnostic tool. The combination of AK –derived information with standard neurologic and orthopedic testing has proved itself to be reliable and accurate. So much so, that we have ceased performing routine x-rays, preferring to x-ray only those patients that our testing indicates require a deeper investigation of their structural abnormalities.
Another advantage of AK is that every visit we begin anew. The patient is not treated according to the data from a previous analysis, we analyze the patient afresh every visit and compare our findings with those from before. So we are always renewing and refining our diagnosis. After all, the more precisely one defines a problem, the more efficient one is at correcting it. It is this advantage that, combined with our other strengths, that explains the speed and ease of our successful treatment of the multiple issues patients have brought to us over the last twenty years.
5150 Roswell Rd.