Moshe Feldenkrais has been my mentor for years. His philosophy on movement and neuroplasticity never ceases to amaze me.
“Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself”. His words are the roots of my yoga practice and teachings. Looking for ways to improve my mental wellbeing, I followed my friends’ advice and booked an appointment to test something I had never heard of before: Kinesiology.
My first session with a kinesiologist
I love to meet new people whose lives/careers are totally different than mine. It stimulates my curiosity and fascination for all the other ways to be of service. I didn’t have any expectation when I entered the tiny office of Mrs Blanche, I was just curious to discover a new discipline and see how it could help deal with my current emotional flooding.
According to kinesiology.com.au, kinesiology may be understood as a system of natural healthcare which combines muscle monitoring with the principles of Chinese medicine to assess energy and body function, applying a range of gentle yet powerful healing techniques to improve health, wellbeing and vitality.
The incredible language of emotions
The muscle test was the most impressive: Kinesiology uses muscle monitoring (bio-feedback) to identify stresses or patterns in your body that may be causing dis-ease.
After a brief chat with Stephanie, I lied down and she explained that she will “partner with my arm”. If my muscles responded to her questions in a positive way, they were dynamic and remain engaged. If she got a negative answer, the muscle would weaken.
There is a language we speak in our mind that is governed by our brain. Like when you are unwell and a stranger asks you how you’re doing, you automatically answer “all fine”.
There is also the language of our guts (the infamous second brain) that we tend to mutter because it is not always politically correct to express sadness, worry or anxiety. This is the language of our muted emotions. A kinesiologist’s role is to listen to this one only, to let it express itself so we can get a deeper understanding of ourselves – and eventually balance the connection between our heart and mind.
She would ask me a question and my arm muscles would respond by either keeping their vitality and be able to move, or on the contrary feel so depleted of energy that they wouldn’t be able to resist even the slight pressure of her finger (as stress weakens the body).
The muscle testing actually activates the central nervous system and allows the body to tell everything. It’s quite impressive when your mind says something and your emotions say another in such an obvious way.
Stephanie would verbalise the questions to my body mostly when she’d feel a resistance. Some of my body answers were very surprising and I realized how deep stress was stored into my system. Obviously in my muscles but also the anger that was lingering in my liver (in TCM the liver happens to be the organ thats deals with anger, resentment and frustration). We worked on the stagnant energy of my liver through a simple guided meditation to release the stress that it had accumulated.
The wellbeing that resulted was very unique. At the end of the 90mn session, I felt much lighter and the whole experience gave me new perspectives that I couldn’t have reached by myself.
Want to check it from home?
I always want to understand and dig deeper into anything anatomy related to body and mind connections, so I found these interesting videos to share with you:
What is Kinesiology : simple and thorough presentation. Don’t expect your session to be just like this one- although you will have this kind of muscle testing and the checking of your internal organs. Some practitioners work with EFT, essential oils, even pendules and tarots. Just go with an open mind 🙂 .
How to test your muscles yourself ? We have a shorter version with a couple of techniques here and a longer one with 7 in total. Have a try and let me know what you think! I have tried the muscle test with holding food, and the answers you get from your body are pretty spectacular.
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