Applied Kinesiology

The idea behind muscle testing

The premise of AK is that a muscle’s ability to hold against pressure reflects something about how the nervous system is currently regulating it, and that this response can shift when the system is under a stress it is reacting to. A practitioner introduces a variable, retests, and reads the change.

In practice this is used to explore three things: which structures are functionally weak and might explain why a joint keeps returning to the same restriction; which foods appear to provoke a response; and where nutritional support might be worth trying.

Where it fits with your adjustments

The most common reason patients here add AK is a recurring pattern — an adjustment that will not hold. If the same segment goes back every two weeks, something is pulling it there. Sometimes it is mechanical, which is what orthotics address. Sometimes it is muscular: a muscle that is not firing properly leaves the joint it should be supporting without support, and the joint resumes doing the work.

Muscle testing is one way of hunting for that weak link. Finding it changes the plan from “adjust it again” to “work out why it keeps happening”, which is a materially better plan.

Food reactions and nutritional gaps

Food sensitivity is the other common reason people book this. Not allergy — allergy is an immune response your physician tests for and it can be dangerous. Sensitivity is the vaguer category: the foods that leave you heavy, foggy, bloated or aching, without producing anything a test result would flag.

AK is used here as a way of narrowing a long list of suspects down to a short one worth actually testing by elimination. The elimination trial is what gives you the answer; the session is what stops you eliminating twenty things at once for two months.

Where the session suggests a nutritional gap, our trained staff will make a supplement recommendation. We carry a range, and you are welcome to buy it elsewhere.

What we will not tell you

That AK detects disease. That it replaces a blood test. That a muscle response tells you something a physician could not. It does none of those, and the practitioners who claim otherwise are the reason the technique has the reputation it has in some quarters.

What we will tell you is what the session suggested, what we would try on the back of it, and how you will know within a few weeks whether it was right. If nothing changes, that is information too, and we will say so rather than sell you another session.

Sessions are $50 and usually run alongside an adjustment visit rather than instead of one.