What is Applied Kinesiology?
Applied Kinesiology (AK), is a system of manual muscle testing used to identify structural, biochemical and other imbalances. AK allows me to target a specific problem and identify the proper healing technique to correct the problem, such as releasing a chronic muscle spasm, making a structural adjustment to restore optimum joint movement or supplying a needed nutrient.
AK is a system of communication between doctor and patient that allows me to quickly determine what your body needs to get you to the next level of health. For example, you might have symptoms of low energy, weight gain, and depression that lead you to suspect you're having problems with your thyroid. A muscle test or other simple functional tests can show abnormalities that may be "invisible" on a standard blood test, and an additional series of muscle tests will let me know what nutritional supplement your body is missing and which reflex points to stimulate to encourage a more speedy and graceful healing process.
The best explanation of AK comes from the writings of Dr. George Goodheart, the developer of AK. In the foreword to the collected works of Dr. Goodheart's decades of research and clinical experience, Dr John. Diamond elegantly sums it up:
Kinesiology's major advance is that it allows the body to tell us what needs to be done. The body becomes our chief diagnostic and therapeutic tool in this system where we ask the body the questions and the body gives us the answers. How obvious and natural this approach seems; yet, how far we have strayed. Let us recall that the basic premise of all healing is that the body's innate wisdom knows what is wrong and that we as nature's helpers need only ask the appropriate questions to find out the nature of the imbalance, and then by giving the appropriate treatment witness the body's response if to say, "Yes, that's what is needed. Thank you."
Kinesiology is also a revolutionary approach to healing because it is showing us that we don't have to rely solely on the use of pharmaceutical chemicals to treat patients, nor on massive invasive techniques. The methodology opens up a more natural, simple, non-destructive, painless, pro-homeostatic treatment procedure. Here we have a system where the doctor works with the patient and with the patient's energies, and where the patient shares fully in the treatment and adopts a far greater attitude of responsibility towards his illness and recovery than is commonly witnessed in medical practice today.
With a kinesiology approach the day is perhaps gone where the patient submits to a doctor saying: "I, in my wisdom, know what is wrong with you and how to treat you." We are coming to appreciate that for those of us willing to ask, the patient can show us the therapeutic path to follow. Out of kinesiology flows a renewed reverence and respect for the person, for the human body and its mind and soul of the sort which is poorly sustained in the present-day orthodox medicine so geared to volume treatment using standardized drugs with but little concern for the patient's individuality. Applied Kinesiology promises to restore the "soul" and "heart" to what has become the cold and inhuman practice of much of today's orthodox medicine.
John Diamond, M.D. , excerpted from "You'll Be Better, The Story of Applied Kinesiology" by George J. Goodheart, D.C.