What is muscle testing?

Muscle testing is a noninvasive way of evaluating the body’s imbalances and assessing its needs. It involves testing the body’s responses to the application of slight pressure to a large muscle, which provides information on energy blockages, the functioning of the organs, nutritional deficiencies, and food sensitivities, among other things. Muscle testing is part of a medical discipline known as applied kinesiology.

The study of kinesiology first received scientific attention in the 1960s. Dr. George Goodheart, DC, pioneered the specialty he called applied kinesiology after finding that benign physical stimuli — for instance, beneficial nutritional supplements — would increase the strength of certain indicator muscles, whereas hostile stimuli would cause those muscles to suddenly weaken. The implication was that, at a level far below conceptual consciousness, the body “knew” what was good and bad for it, and through muscle testing was able to relay this information.

In the ’70s, Dr. John Diamond refined this specialty into a new discipline he called behavioral kinesiology. He discovered that indicator muscles would strengthen or weaken in the presence of positive or negative emotional and intellectual stimuli as well as physical stimuli. A smile will make you test strong, while a scowl will make you test weak.

In 1975, the well-known psychiatrist and physician David R. Hawkins began research that has taken Dr. Diamond’s work several steps further, through the discovery that muscle testing can reflect a human’s capacity to differentiate not only positive from negative stimuli, but truth from falsity. This phenomenon occurs independently of the test subject’s own opinion or knowledge of the topic, and the response has proven cross-culturally valid in any population and remains consistent over time.

Two books I highly recommend on this subject are:

Your Body Doesn’t Lie by John Diamond, MD

Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD