When a body system that is malfunctioning, or under stress, is accessed in any way, a muscle that previously tested strong will test weak.
So, if you held your arm out straight to the side and I tested it by applying about 2 kg of pressure just above the wrist, we'll say it tests strong. (As I am about 250lbs of bone, sinew and muscle I can probably overpower your arm, but what I am checking for is not how strong you are, but whether your muscle locks. So 2 kg is plenty.)
If you now think about some stressful event, or if, say, I held one of those whiteboard markers under your nose where you could smell it, and then tested your arm again, most likely the lock on your arm muscle would fail. The muscle would give way completely or go wobbly or rubbery.
I have been around kinesiology circles for about thirteen years now, and have never found a completely satisfactory explanation for why muscle testing works. The earliest I know of it was a Nebraska chiropractor, Bertrand de Jarnette, in the thirties. He called it mind language. George Goodheart picked it up and developed a system called Applied Kinesiology, also a branch of chiropractic. John Thie turned it into a form of chiropractic first aid for his clients and called it Touch for Health. From there it has spawned dozens of specialist kinesiologies.
Muscle testing as an indication of a stressed system is variably reliable. You need to experiment. Goodheart always insisted that muscle testing diagnoses by chiropractors be backed up by appropriate confirmation, lab tests etc. Most kinesiologies have routines for minimising muscle test error.
There is an aspect of muscle testing called surrogate testing. It is used for babies, horses, patients recovering from surgery etc. To check if a horse system is under stress, I ask someone to rest a hand on the horse, then test an indicator muscle on that person. If the system in the horse is under stress, the human "surrogate" muscle will now test weak.
Example. "Tigger" typically spots someone coming with a saddle a mile off, and heads down paddock as far as possible. No-one is going to put one of those things on him. We hide the saddle, catch Tigger, and set up a surrogate person touching his side or wherever. The saddle is introduced quietly at a distance and brought closer while I test the surrogate. As soon as Tigger spots the saddle, the surrogate tests weak. We swiftly remove the saddle to avoid further stress.
Using (on the surrogate)a system of diagnosis developed by Leibowitz, yet another chiropractor, we can determine which acupuncture meridian in the horse is being affected by the stress, and we can then rub appropriate points on that meridian (on the horse). We now reintroduce the saddle, and retest the surrogate. If the test is weak, more than one meridian is involved, and we repeat the previous routine. If the test is strong, we bring the saddle a little closer, and test as we go. Typically I would stop about a couple of feet off, to the front of the horse, and wait. Usually. if the destressing is successful the horse will now come over and sniff the saddle, rather than taking off down the paddock. Ditto other stressors.
Some practitioners I have seen use muscle testing to determine which supplements a horse requires and how much to give him. I am a bit sceptical in this territory, especially when the practitioner is selling you the supplements.
You can also have a surrogate touch the horse while you, say, run your fingers along each vertebra, testing the surrogate for each vertebra that you touch. I am not a chiropractor and I prefer to work on the muscles around each vertebra rather than slamming an elbow or a fist into the offending bit as I have seen happen, which seems, even though often effective, to be a bit drastic. (Horses tend to react in much the same way as I do, as far as I can see.)
This is nothing like exhaustive, and you can perhaps see how much room there might be for experiment. I have even had success with persistent lameness by checking the aura surrounding a damaged foot. This is for many people well outside their safe limits, and most of the kinesiologists I have watched working horses tend to do this sort of thing only among adults they know are not going to freak, or scoff.
(My own experience began when a human client asked me, "Does this stuff work on horses?" "I don't know," I said. "I have a horse. Would you like to find out?" And so we have been, on that and many more since then. Good luck.
Dave Woodward
(Sec, NZ Touch for Health Assn; Member: Kinesiology Practitioners
Accreditation Board (NZ), Chartered Natural Therapies Practitioner (TFH)
My small offering here (RE: testing) is this (since someone else is already in the works describing the process):
1. Ask a horse what they NEED, not what they WANT. (like asking five year olds what they want...pizza, chips, pop...)
2. Then ask if the horse can TOLERATE the thing they need. Sometimes a horse might need a certain product, but cannot tolerate it at this time. Best to check the liver on this one, as so many horses are on toxic overload these days. If you've ever been through a horrendous detox or heavy healing crisis yourself, you probably wouldn't want to do that to your horse if there was a gentler way.
3. If using a surrogate, check that person's polarity beforehand. If their polarity is reversed, either switch them back or find another surrogate. This happens a lot with people using a lot of magnets, especially wearing them in their shoes/boots.
4. When you've finished asking the horse what they need for vaccine, wormer, work, nutrition, whatever...ask them if there is anything else you need to know. THIS is where it gets interesting, as you become a detective and really begin to tune into to horse as spirit individual, as well as opening up your intuitive receptors.
5. HAVE FUN. Many people don't *trust* themselves with this type of thing at first. I tell folks to test everything all the time and then you get comfortable with the process and your results. Not just with your horses, but what your own body wants for food, rest, which route to take driving, any and everything.
Candi Johnson, L.M.T., the HorseWorks (equine massage)
well I started out with 3in1 concepts in the late 80's then dabbled in TFH and then when back to 3in1 and now have worked with some friends to develop a biochemical system. Was originally only brave enough to test which oranges to buy at the amrket for a long time .. or if the milk was off in the fridge ...
What attracted me to 3in1 concepts is you are working on '3' levels .. the physical mental and emotional and using processes to clear out negative patterns ... they have a wonderful series of workshops on structure/function which shows you the relative ways of relating and how phyical features can help you see where a person is coming from in realtion to yourself .. if they are more expressive or if they need time to consider what you are saying .. etc .. and then what you do in the process is diffuse the Negative Emotional Charge to meeting someone with those characteristics ... or those characteristics in yourself so there is no longer a negative effect then reflecting back into your body and upsetting its functioning. (Oh and these people are US based so easier for most of you to find out more - I think they are in Burbank CA, but will have to search the many piles - or muscle test - to find the exact place and pass on lol)
This is also useful for clearing out negative emotional charge to old events ... what the brain tends to do when we are placed in a stressful situation is flip back to when it first felt this sort of stress, now as a 50 year old woman flipping back to how a 3 year old would handle an emotional upset, you can see how much easier it would be if you could clear the negative emotional charge and bring yourself up to the age of maturity so you could deal more effectively with problems, instead of carrying on like a 3 year old .... hmmmmmmm
I keep my muscle testing to myself when working on the horses and self test .. however I just bend my forearm and test that muscle ...
And like Dave find I usually know the answers and use the kinesiology to back me up ...
my main focus is esoteric and biochemistry requirements, however not to flog supplements. I made a decision not to sell any products with my work, the puritan in me felt it would compromise my integrity ~~~ so if the horse actually needs a product .. then I recommend it ... and the owner then takes the responsibility to actually purchase and just doesnt buy it off me to sit on the shelf unused as well...
Often I find a horse is getting what it requires but it doesnt have the ability to utilise ... so what I do is use the tools I have and clear the pathways ... basically it may need a mineral or vitamin kickstarted and released from a locked meridian or organ or there is a miasm triggered because of a transverse flow in an emotional meridian, or there may be a body bridge needing to be rebuilt between organs, or a meridian (physical or emotional) may be knotted with another one etc. basically correcting the ciruits in the body that have been affected by some sort of stress
One thing that comes up a lot in my work is the horse taking on the stresses or surrogating the owners crap for them .. to be of service ... but in reality they are not being of service and just suffering ... this is why I use the Bach flowers a lot .. because they relate to very definite patterns and I have as et of statement with each one .. so I can test for which bach is appropriate and which of the statements highlights what the horses is carrying for their owner ... and then the picture is easier to pass onto the owner ... then using muscle testing again .. deciding what can be used energetically to release the negative energy the horse has taken on etc.
What I find is if I energetically infuse 'whatever' it trips the release or utilisation and there is no need to actually add a further supplement to the feed. OR I use symbols colours and the energy of crystals or essences ...
I also find that horses respond visibly quicker than most people do to the same processes, unless the person has worked extensively onthemselves, there is no questioning from the horse, they just want to feel at ease and healthy.
I operate on the premise that everything that has been is accessible through a cellular intelligence and all is stored in our cellular memory and muscle testing is a way to access this information. The only time I find it unreliable is if I have an emotional attachment to the outcome, and then I refer to other means.
Though it is often a process of peeling an onion ... these things come up in layers and you think you have cleared an issue with a process, and then a while later the same context reappears .. what has happened is a deeper level of the issue has now surfaced to be addressed, some people think 'oh no I did it wrong' or 'havnet I dealt with that', but what they did was very effective and now the next level is there to be worked on.
I also test for yes/no answers and then use a change of indicator to check those answers ... a change of indicator usually goes weak on the correct answer ... a yes stays strong and no goes weak ... however you have to be very careful on how you phrase your context, this is the real key ... if you ask the correct questions then you are going to get excellent answers but if you are not clear on what you are asking or are not asking in the appropriate context then you may not get the answers you need.
One of my basic questions is "does this horse have enough available energy to make full use of my massage" if the answer is no .. then I test to see what will bring up his available energy ... it may be an essence or a sniff of an eo or he may need a colour infused into a protal or vortex in his body ...
If a horse is not responding to my massage ... for goodness sake lol ... then I often test to see if there is an essence or something that needs to be infused to clear the block to healing and then find the muscle will respond ... (in horses the block is usually not theirs, but their owners)
This sounds awfully complicated but it really is quite simple and I do it within minutes, often with out the client noticing I am doing anything, mind you the horses often turn their eye to see what I am up to ... or slip into a sedative pose ...
If I have been working on a stubborn area on a horse then I also test if I have worked that enough for the visit or if it needs more work, or if there is something else I ahve not thought of that can assist.
Catherine
http://www.hartingdale.com.au/~happyhorses
Randwick Australia
No. Some people, who are particularly sensitive, can even act as surrogates when they are some distance from the horse.
"Does it matter which muscle you test on the human?"
No. Usually an arm muscle as they are easiest to reach.
"Does he move his hand over the horse to test for different muscles?"
No. Mostly the surrogate (human) simply makes a contact with the horse, and provides, usually, an arm for me to test, and tries vainly to keep out of my way.
"Do you move your hand over the horse?"
Depends. If I am testing for physical problems or auric problems linked to physical disability, I will move my hand around both on and off the horses body to locate areas where there may be problems. If I am checking for stressors, such as inappropriate gear, white plastic bags, jingling bridle, owner's deodorant, etc, then I may not be touching the horse at all.
"What is an "indicator" muscle?"
If I am testing a muscle for information about that muscle, that's fairly straightforward. When I use that same muscle to test for problems in other systems, then it is functioning as an indicator muscle. A surrogate is really an indicator muscle one step further removed. Indicator muscles are not to be trusted 100%. If you ever need brain surgery, do not trust the surgeon who uses muscle testing to find out where to make the incision and start drilling. Most systems of kinesiology have routines to make sure that the answers given by an indicator muscle are as accurate as possible However, the mechanism by which an indicator muscle provides information about stress is not yet fully understood, and the best we can do is tell our own stories about it at this stage and listen to others.
"Does the muscle you're testing on the horse have to correspond to the muscle on the human?"
If I am testing muscles in their own right, I would as far as possible test the same muscle in the surrogate (human) as I want information about in the horse. A kind of analogy. I have been invited to be present at a number of home births. When the dust has settled, I ask the father to lie down near the mother, and I test a few muscles - abdominals, adductors, quadriceps, psoas, and so on. So long as he is not touching her, these muscles in a healthy younger male are likely to be strong. Then I test him again, this time with him touching the new mother. Typically the muscles might as well not be there, and a new dad gets (the pale ghost of) a personal experience of what it feels like to have just given birth. (Incidentally, kinesiology can get Mum's muscle tone back in shape again very quickly.)
Lastly, get out there and start playing, and I think you will generate questions faster than your word-processor can cope. And you will start making your own picture of what it is all about. There don't appear to be "right" answers in kinesiology in the same way that Mathematics has answers.
Example. I am quite certain that at least some of what Candi and Cath are doing will be outside the border of my maps. I'm looking forward to hearing more from them.
Dave
