What is Kinesiology?
Kinesiology combines Western muscle testing methods – like your doctor, chiropractor or physiotherapist uses – with the holistic Eastern medicine approach to wellness.
Eastern medicine maps out lines of electrical flow throughout the body – called meridians – and matches these to organs and systems within our bodies.
Applied kinesiology takes this one step further – matching specific muscles with each meridian.
We use these muscles to detect stress in the corresponding meridian. Stress indicates a disrupted connection between the brain and the associated body system.
This connection provides a feedback loop: for example, our body needs to know whether to make more – or less – of a hormone to maintain optimal bodily function.
Sub-optimal hormone levels can have enormous impact on our health and wellbeing, for example:
- sleep (melatonin)
- sense of wellbeing (dopamine, serotonin)
- fertility and reproductive health (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, etc)
- digestion (insulin, gastrin, ghrelin, etc)
Muscle testing allows us to ‘talk’ to the body, detecting which systems are affected by specific stressors, and asking what needs to be done to bring those systems back into balance.
The corrections are usually a combination of gentle acupressure, Bowen massage, simple movements to reintegrate brain fibers, minor nutritional adjustments and home support to empower you to take charge of your wellness.
As each body system is returned to balance, symptoms ease and quality of life improves.
How are seemingly random symptoms connected?
Anxiety, neck pain, and digestive discomfort may seem unrelated, but these are just some of the symptoms you might experience if you’re constantly in survival mode — a fight, flight, or freeze response that keeps you alert and tense.
When you’re constantly busy, your nervous system eventually learns that this is ‘normal’, and adjusts your delicate bio-rhythms in order to cope.
Survival mode was never meant to be your every day state.
If survival mode has become your new normal, you’re probably feeling some effects of this ongoing stress on your system:
- fatigue
- anxiety
- depression
- muscle tension
- aches and pains
- digestive issues
- food, contact, or environmental sensitivities
- hormone imbalances
- immune system dysfunction
- and more.
Kinesiology gently guides your body back towards balance — helping you shift from survival to safety – and from tension to freedom.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens during a kinesiology balance?
1. Your Case History (for initial appointments) or Follow Up Discussion
Your initial appointment begins with taking a full case history – this includes physical, social, emotional and environmental factors – to create a full picture of everything that has brought you to where you are today.
This is one of the most powerful aspects of kinesiology – the truly holistic view which takes into account everything that’s ever happened in your life which may be relevant to symptoms you are experiencing today.
In a follow up appointment, your session starts with a brief check in to see how you have been since we last met, and to discuss any new concerns.
2. Priority Testing
Then, gentle muscle monitoring is used to uncover what today’s focus should be.
3. Pre-assessments
A series of pre-assessments provide more information about the nature of the stress, and a baseline to assess what has changed at the end of the session.
4. Corrections
We ask your body what corrections are required today in relation to the priority issues. This is often a combination of acupressure, craniosacral techniques, Bowen therapy, gentle movement, etc.
5. Post-assessments
We run through the pre-assessments again to check that the stress has been resolved.
6. Home support
Finally, you are provided with some easy take-home tools to help you maintain balance in your body.
Where does imbalance come from?
Imbalances are caused by an initial stressor, such as:
- a food your body isn’t processing appropriately
- an activity which creates imbalance
- a situation
- a thought
- an emotion
The imbalance itself causes further stress on your body, creating a snowball effect of symptoms.
Through gentle muscle testing, we can find those imbalances and determine what your body needs to return to balance and ease.
How long does it take to notice a difference?
Occasionally these shifts can be felt after one or two sessions, but often it can take a number of sessions to create meaningful change.
I recommend being prepared for around 4 to 5 sessions, depending on the complexity and severity of your symptoms.
It can take some time to unravel what has taken years to accumulate, as these systemic disruptions are a cumulative response to all of our life experiences. Rome wasn’t built in a day 😉