As I review these six factors of Applied Kinesiology, I am reminded of the parable of the six blind men who are all touching a different part of an elephant and describing the beast that they feel.  It is only when the seeing man comes that they get a full picture of all the parts of the whole elephant. In comparing this analogy to AK, right now we are only seeing six different parts of the body, and while there is evidence to support the benefits of all of them and their implementation, we are still waiting for the seeing person to connect it all together. I’m sure with additional time, learning, and advances in science, this will eventually happen and there will be a unification of the entire body that simplifies the practice of AK. In the meantime, as I await the seeing man, I will embrace what I know about the body, acknowledge what I do not know, and persevere, being open to further development and knowledge that results in better health for me and my patients.

I remember the way I perceived muscle testing when I first witnessed its practice, I thought it was a total sham! My thought was, the variability in force is so broad spectrum that it would be impossible to replicate the same amount of force to get a reliable scientific observation. If our observation was measured by force alone, this would be true. But the force alone is not the primary metric, what is actually being measured is a muscles ability to lock, and hold that position of lock.

This was an important lesson to me that pain does not necessarily lead you to the source of the problem. Pain can be deceiving, but this is not always the case, sometimes the pain is exactly where the problem is. Thankfully, through the use of a myofascial technique I was able to find relief, and subsequently my retro patellar knee pain disappeared.

In our society, as soon as we are able to leave our parents, we go into the public school system, one of the first most important lessons learned in a school setting is being able to sit quietly for a long period of time. The students that are able to do this are rewarded with high praises from their teachers. The students that are unable to do this (typically boys), are labeled as problem children from a young age and given prescription drugs to sedate them. In a culture where academic achievement is highly valued, is it a mystery that sitting quietly is one of the first lessons we learn in school? We use sitting for reading, listening, and writing, and we are taught if you want to succeed you just have to sit still. Find me a student that can’t sit still, and more likely than not you will find a child that is an academic failure.

You see, I had too much water in my body, and essential nutrients were no longer being pumped to my vital organs and tissue. As a result, my body began to shut down. I felt my limbs begin to go numb and was stumbling around. I was told to drink more water…