Kinesiology

Traditionally kinesiology refers to the study of muscles and movement in the body and is widely used in this context by physical educators, coaches, physiotherapists and fitness specialists. Now, through worldwide use for over thirty years, a new meaning has evolved for the word, which is to describe a natural health system used by therapists based on manual muscle testing. This is not surprising as kinesiology is very much a 'hands on' therapy and it is far more tangible for the person to feel for themselves what a muscle test is, experience the difference when a change happens, learn how their body is responding to the daily stresses and strains, than it is to provide a string of words to impart the same information.

Kinesiology evolved from the innovative and inquiring mind of an American chiropractor, George Goodheart DC. In 1964 Goodheart started to use muscle testing to evaluate the effectiveness of his treatments. He would test a series of muscles before and after a spinal adjustment which gave him valuable feedback on how effective a manipulation was for the condition that he was treating. This also led him to look further into the nature of muscle spasm. One of the recurring problems Goodheart encountered was that when some patients returned to their normal life style their muscle spasm would also return along with the stiffness and pain.

His first insight into the revelation that there were other ways of relieving pain and restoring muscle balance came when he was working on a patient who was suffering from severe pain, whose outer thigh muscle (tensor fascia lata) consistently 'unlocked' when tested. Out of frustration, Goodheart massaged firmly all along the outside of the thigh. Much to his surprise the muscle held its position when retested and the pain disappeared. Excited by this initial success, Goodheart started massaging other 'weak' muscles but was unable to produce the same result. It wasn't until much later on in his research that Goodheart learned that he had rediscovered a strengthening technique associated with the lymphatic system.

The first real breakthrough came when he was testing a shoulder muscle (anterior serratus) of a young man who was having problems keeping his job as a manual worker because his shoulder blade kept 'popping out'. Goodheart found tender spots along the area where the muscle attaches itself to the bones, which he proceeded to massage. What he felt under his fingers were nodules (tiny lumps) which seemed to disappear as he pressed firmly. When he retested, strength had returned to the muscle and it remained firm. Goodheart shared this information with other chiropractors and this method of strengthening muscles became known as origin and insertion massage.

Goodheart continued experimenting. He noticed that when muscles became weak, the corresponding muscle (muscle on the opposite side of the body) would be tight and when the weakness was corrected, the other muscles that were tight or in spasm relaxed even though they had not been worked on directly. From this he concluded that it wasn't the muscle in spasm that caused the problem but the 'weak' muscle which caused other muscles to become over-tight or strained. One analogy for this is to think of a swing door held in place by two springs; as long as there is equal tension everything works well. When you push the door open, one spring gives as the other compacts and then the door swings back to its normal position. If, however, one spring becomes loose, the opposing spring tightens, tangles up and the door no longer swings freely. Oiling or working on the knotted spring will not rebalance the system. You will have to replace or strengthen the weak spring to restore balance.

And so it is with muscles. For each movement a muscle makes there is another muscle or group of muscles which is involved with that movement, one muscle contracting and the other relaxing. If you rest your hand on the table and tap your fingers you will be able to observe clearly the muscles on either side of the forearm relaxing and contracting in sequence to bring about the movement of your fingers.

This simple finding -that one needed to work on the opposing weak muscle and not the tight muscle to restore balance - was revolutionary. At the time it was common practice to work only on the over-tight painful muscle, using massage to relax the muscle and manipulation if necessary to realign bones; treatment was then considered complete. This temporarily relieved the pain and relaxed the muscle, but the spasm would return because the underlying problem of the weak muscle had not been addressed. As a tent needs all the guy ropes to be working equally to sustain a firm structure, so the body needs all the muscles to be performing well to maintain balance. Goodheart had presented us with a new way of working with muscles to relieve pain and tension but as yet he was still unaware of what caused the muscle to weaken in the first place.

Using this premise of working on the 'weak' muscles, Goodheart continued to look for other techniques to restore balance to the body. In 1965 he observed that muscles would strengthen dramatically when seemingly unrelated areas of the body were massaged firmly. These areas were often tender and the tenderness would disappear after the massage. He discovered that these points were part of a wider collection of reflex points that had been identified by an osteopath, Frank Chapman, and helped to improve the function of the lymphatic system. Goodheart soon realized that these reflexes related to the ones he found quite by accident when working on the man whose fascia lata muscle wouldn't strengthen. This was the beginning of the correlation of various strengthening techniques for the correction of weak muscles which included working with blood flow, nutrition, emotions, meridians, acupuncture points and energy flow.

Goodheart developed this science, shared the knowledge with other chiropractors and demonstrated his findings at seminars, workshops and conventions. He called this new system Applied Kinesiology and founded the International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK) in 1973.

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