What is Muscle Testing?

Welcome to Real Food RN! A blog with the mission to empower you to live your healthiest life possible, starting today.

Muscle testing is an increasingly popular technique with proponents saying it can help with everything from clearing emotional blocks to helping with business planning to improving your health. Basically, muscle testing is used to receive information from the body and subconscious mind, like a natural feedback system.

Let’s dig down to discover how this tool can benefit every aspect of your life.

Muscle testing is based on the principles of applied kinesiology used by natural health practitioners to tap into the biomechanics of the subtle energy of the body. Using the concept of Chi, or life energy, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a trusted Kinesiologist can determine the cause of a variety of issues a person is having, from emotional challenges to relationship problems to health complaints. Kinesiologists use muscle testing to determine where a patient’s Chi is stagnant, sluggish, or imbalanced so it can be restored.

According to TCM, particular muscles in the body are linked to organs and glands. By determining a muscle’s strength or weakness the practitioner gains clues as to what parts of the body and mind are being affected and why. This “body map” is called Meriden Lines in TCM. An understanding of this system is integral to discovering the insights needed to get the patient’s Chi moving and flowing again, thereby, relieving their symptoms. If you’ve ever visited an acupuncturist or reflexologist, you will be familiar with how manipulating the body’s Chi can improve a multitude of concerns.

By applying pressure with a specific intent in mind and asking the client a yes/no question, the practitioner can ‘read’ the muscle and discern a problem depending on the strength or weakness of the muscle resistance. A strong response equates to ‘yes’ and a weak response to ‘no.’

The electrical network that runs through your body can be affected by your emotions and reactions to events. Your muscles react to this shifting energy: where things are positive, the energy flows freely, and the muscle reaction is strong. Where there may be blockages or other problems, the energy flow is weaker and the muscle correspondingly weaker.

What Can Muscle Testing Work for?

There is currently limited scientific evidence that muscle testing is useful for diagnosing illness and making decisions about your physical health. But anyone who has attended sessions with a trusted Kinesiologist knows muscle testing is amazingly accurate. Practitioners are finding that it can be a useful tool to help with

Providing emotional healing
Breaking unhelpful thought and behavior patterns
Dealing with mental blocks
Resolving issues from your past
Discharging unhelpful and negative beliefs
Releasing past traumas
Restoring imbalanced energy that is preventing you from making a decision or moving forward
Revealing best decisions for an individual in all areas of life
Discovering food allergies
Locating organ or system weaknesses
Providing supplement recommendations
Determining food sensitivities that are impacting emotional, mental, and physical issues

As muscle testing is essentially tapping into your energy field, the technique can be used as a shortcut to tap into your subconscious mind and find what might be at the heart of your issues.

Is Muscle Testing Safe?

Muscle testing is a completely safe, non-invasive technique. It is probably best used for working with unconscious beliefs and thought patterns or for consulting your intuition as part of making decisions. Although it can be used for a variety of physical health issues, I don’t recommend you use it as a replacement for medical tests or diagnostic procedures, particularly for serious medical conditions.

Should I See a Practitioner or Can I Muscle Test Myself?

The International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK) is the certifying body for applied kinesiologists. It is generally a postgraduate qualification for healthcare practitioners. As with any healthcare professional, you should check your practitioner’s credentials before booking sessions. I also recommend getting recommendations from friends or family members. It’s important you feel comfortable with the practitioner and are able to trust their recommendations.

It is certainly possible to muscle test yourself, and a good practitioner will encourage you to develop the skills for self-testing. It may take some experimenting to find the right muscle testing technique for you, and some practice to be able to ‘read’ your muscles.

How to Do Self-Muscle Testing

There are many resources available to help find and develop the right way of muscle testing for you. Have a look around the internet for detailed how-to articles and videos to take you through the various methods.

Here are three of the most popular tests to try. Whichever method used, before you pose the yes/no question, breathe deeply and let your mind become calm. You can also frame your question as ‘is this good/not good for me?’ The important thing is to take it slowly and calmly.

Do a test run first by trying some yes/no questions you absolutely know the answers to. For example, try using your name which should test as strong. Then choose another name, preferably of another gender, that should test as weak. Once you’ve warmed up and tuned into your body’s responses, you can move on to other questions.

The most common ways of muscle testing are:

1. Single Finger Press

Rest your hand palm facing downward on a table, firmly pressing the fingers and thumb down. Think of someone or something you love and try to lift one finger. It should stay pressed to the tabletop. Think of something or someone negative and try again. This time it should lift easily. Now you are ready to being asking yes/no questions.

2. Body Sway

Stand straight but relaxed with your feet hip-width apart, and your gaze focused on the middle distance. Breathe, center your mind and ask your yes/no question. Your body sways forward for a strong response and backward for weak.

3. Interlocking Finger O

This method tests your finger strength to tap into information from your body’s energy field. Form a circle or O with the thumb and forefinger of your non-dominant hand. Use a finger from your dominant hand to try and break the circle. If you can’t break the O easily, it’s a strong response. If the O breaks, it’s weak.

Muscle testing can be a useful tool to help you tune into your intuition and your body’s wisdom. Kinesiology is based on the belief that your body is able to heal itself but sometimes needs assistance to bring its energy back into balance. With the use of muscle testing, you or your practitioner can fix energetic blocks that are negatively impacting your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.