What is muscle response testing?
Muscle response testing is one of my main tools I use during client sessions to locate weakened areas of the body and put together a program for their healing path. However, I often get asked, what even is muscle testing and is it even valid?
To understand muscle response testing or applied kinesiology, one must understand that the body is entirely electromagnetic. For example, when a hospital patient’s heart stops, it is shocked with electricity to power it back up. The nervous system is electrical in nature and allows the entire body to communicate with one another. In fact, Traditional Chinese medicine doctors understood this thousands of years ago with the finding of meridian lines. These are lines of electricity that move at an extremely low voltage throughout the body which connect to differing organs. When these electrical lines are disrupted from too low or high of energy, it directly impacts the organs correlated to that line. Think of acupuncture where needles are placed on very specific points of the body - they are placed on meridian lines to allow energy to flow smoothly and return order to the system.
Simply put, muscle response testing is a tool that gently measures muscle strength to various stimuli which provides insight into what the body attracts or repels which easily located weakened organs and provides specific solutions.
I like to think of it as a lie detector test.
There is a physical reaction to hearing truth in the human body. Just as a polygraph test used during interrogation tracks bodily reactions to truth or a lie, we are doing this with muscle strength when testing the strength of organs, nutritional points, and even toxicities. There is a reaction within the nervous system - nerve endings have a gap between them called a synapse where a nerve impulse jumps across it to finger-like receivers called dendrites. The moment that the body hears truth, every dendrite at the end of a nerve ending rises and makes the tissue rigid. On the contrary, when the body hears a lie, the dendrites become soft and the tissue follows as well.
Putting it together, a naturopath touches specific meridian points on the body to test their strength. If the flow of energy is smooth, the muscle should test strong; however, if the energy is blocked, the muscle should test weak, indicating to the practitioner to look deeper into why. There is no guessing with muscle testing because with the right test points, a practitioner can find the root cause of any ailment. For example, a client may come in with chronic headaches but their head seems to test strongly. Upon further testing the practitioner actually finds the root cause is the liver and will recommend strengthening the liver to heal the headaches.
Solutions such as herbs or cleansing programs can be tested for as well but we would then be looking for a strong muscle response because that demonstrates that the body is being magnetized to it for healing. If a solution creates a weak muscle response, we know that the body for some reason is repelled by it. Opposed to most other forms of testing, muscle testing is quick and incredibly accurate, providing highly personalized programs for clients.
