Muscle testing in the psychotherapy context is sometimes referred to as behavioral kinesiology, having emerged from the more comprehensive discipline known as applied kinesiology. Sometimes it is referred to as energy checking. Whatever its proper name, in working with clients, it is an indispensible aid to steer the ship safely and efficiently through stormy seas.
Did you know that most varieties of therapy orientations are variations of talk therapy? Ask any twenty counselors or therapists randomly chosen from the phone book how they conduct their interactions with clients and most if not all will tell you talk therapy. They may call it psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral or narrative therapy but essentially it falls under the rubric of talk therapy. There is always value in talking things out to vent, process your thoughts and feelings or generate some insight but it is often very difficult getting to the heart of the matter using these talk therapy approaches in any expeditious manner.
Then there is the whole issue of emotional trauma. Since our nervous systems store traumatic residue as sensations, feelings and threat-based behaviors, simply talking about a traumatic event and rehashing the specifics over and over often lead to a retraumatization that in the retelling, usually does not clear the traumatic residue since it is not accessible through our normal thinking processes. This is not just my experience. This evidence is becoming increasingly corroborated by trauma researchers, some of whom I quote in my first book.
Muscle testing accesses the living unconscious through the physical body. In essence, through muscle testing you have a direct pipeline to the repository of all the information you need to access and identify still residing in the client’s experience. In the DEH model, by using muscle testing we determine what aspects of the trauma still remain (by essentially constructing a map of the matrix of traumatic associations), and where the information resides. For example, an unconscious death wish or an over-identification with a specific emotion that is essentially stuck in an internal emotional loop may be held in the unconscious mind, in the body and among the chakras. Through the help of muscle testing, all of this traumatic residue can be identified and through energy-based interventions, the lingering and persistent information fields can be collapsed and released. Permanently.
The advantages to using muscle testing are many and with a skilled facilitator, homeostasis can be returned very quickly. It often seems like magic. It is actually a methodical and well-structured approach that is extremely efficacious. To understate this point, it works.
If you have not experienced DEH with muscle testing, I recommend you give it a try.
Howard Brockman, LCSW
April 8, 2013
Howard Brockman
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