Self Muscle Testing 101: Getting Started with Applied Kinesiology

Muscle testing, also known as applied kinesiology, energy testing or muscle response testing, is a form of energy work that allows us to get yes or no answers to a multitude of questions from our body. Muscle testing if often used to test if different foods or supplements are a good fit for us at a particular time. With a little bit of practice though, it can be used for much more than just foods and supplements, as you'll see later in this article.

The premise for muscle testing is that deep down our body and subconscious know all and are connected to the entire universe. Muscle testing is a very efficient way to connect to that knowledge. When you say or think a statement that is false, your nervous system will become weaker for a split second and this is registered by a weakness in our muscles. When we train ourselves to become sensitive enough to feel for a weakness in our muscles, we can therefore assess if the answer is a yes or a no.

Let's dive right in!

Some Key Pointers

Muscle testing can do a lot, and can often seem magical, but there are still things to consider to be successful at it:

• Muscle testing works best in the absence of personal bias. For example, if you're testing if a supplement is good for you and deep down you really don't care either wya, that's a good frame for muscle testing. On the opposite, if you're testing yourself to try and se if you have XYX serious condition, you likely won't get an accurate answer, as your mind will inevitable influence you and impact the result.
• Even when there's no bias, there's still a margin of error and answers are not to be relied on with absolute certainty. Don't do anything foolish based on an answer!
• Muscle testing only works well for questions that have an objective yes or no answer. For example, "Is XYZ food beneficial to my health now?" will have an objective answer, but "Should I wear this red dress?" often does not because it's a personal choice and it doesn't matter either way. In other words, muscle testing won't make decisions for you.
• Muscle testing only works well for questions that benefit the universe as a whole. That means that muscle testing doesn't work well for questions based on greed or fear, for example.
• The choice and precision of your words for a question really matters. For example, "Is XYX food safe for my health?" is very different from "Is XYZ food beneficial for my health?". A food could be safe to eat, yet not provide any health benefit.
• With enough precision in your questions, you can even get granular and ask questions to find what quantity of a food or supplement would be most beneficial.
• Muscle testing only works for questions about the now, it can't tell the future. What is true for you now might not be true in an hour. You might be surprised to realize just how much your body is in constant flux.
• Better accuracy with muscle testing comes with constant practice and some days you'll be more in tune than others. It's also a great idea to be well hydrate and eat a clean diet to help create an environment that's more prone to accurate answers. Don't beat yourself off on your off days, it's all part of the learning process!

Muscle Testing: Preparation

For accurate self muscle testing, we need our mind (our monkey mind) to be as centered and still as possible. That's because, with muscle testing, our body and subconscious should be running the show, not our mind.

There are many effective ways to still the mind, and you get to pick and choose what works best for you, Here are a few examples:

• Meditation: Do a short (or long, your choice) meditation right before asking a series of questions through muscle testing.
• Deep breaths: Just taking a series of deep breaths before doing some muscle testing can be enough to still the mind.
• Soothing music: Listening to binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies or soft classical music for a period of time can help still the mind.
• Exercise: Doing some moderate exercise before a muscle testing session can be very effective.
• Right upon waking up in the morning. Our mind is often still enough and hasn't fully kicked-in yet.
• In general, just looking at beautiful artwork or a beautiful sunset. Anything that makes our heart strings vibrate will often be good enough to still the mind.

Obviously fee free to mix and match and to incorporate your own favorite practices. In time and with enough practice you'll find that you can get in that space more more quickly and easily.

Thymus Tapping (Thumping)

Another trick that helps tremendously is to do some light tapping right around where the thymus glad is located right before muscle testing. Taht would be on your sternum, about 2 inches lower than where a tie know would sit. Just tap there gently for about 30 seconds while taking deep calming breaths.

Now that we are in a good head space for muscle testing, let's go over how it's done!

I'll cover two popular techniques for self muscle testing: the sway test and the interlocking finger test.

Muscle Testing: the Sway Test

This is my favorite way to muscle test and is a great technique for anyone just beginning.

• Have the foods and/or supplements you want to test in front of you and easily accessible. When testing multiple supplements, it can be a good idea to shuffle them and not look at which one you're picking, to eliminate a potential bias even more.
• Stand straight with your feet together so that you are wobbly and can easily fall off balance.
• Alternatively, you can also do it effectively with your feet apart, especially as you gain more experience for the feeling.
• First let's do a control test to see what the answers feel like and to ensure that you're correctly in tune with your body. Just say out loud "My name is YOUR NAME" and then let you body relax and be pulled in the direction it wants to go. You'll notice that your body is slightly incline to pull forward, and that's the answer for a yes. Now go back to your starting position, be calm and still again and say "My name is SOMEBODY ELSE'S NAME", and notice how your body is pulled back slightly for a no answer.
• I recommend doing that control test at the beginning of every muscle testing session, to calibrate yourself. If you're not getting a clear answer with that control affirmation, you're not in tune and I'd recommend walking away and trying again later. Your answers wouldn't be very accurate.
• With the control test out of the way, go back to your starting position, puck up a food or supplement, place it against your solar plexus, take a deep breath and say an affirmation like "This supplement is beneficial to my health now". Now just let yourself be pulled forward or backward for a yes or a no. In cases where you don't get pulled either way or tip to the side instead, that usually mean's there's no answer or it's neutral. It could also mean a no in your particular case. You can test for that actually by saying something like: "When I tip to the side it means no", and seeing the answer you get. The exact manifestation of a yes, no, or no answer for you might be different than the usual, so you can test to see what your answers look like.
• Once you have an answer for a food or supplement, place it back where it was and repeat with the next item, if any.
• With enough practice, you can even start asking for dosages: "The most beneficial quantity of this supplement for my health is 1 Tbsp or more", "2 Tbsp or more", "3 Tbsp or more",... And as soon as you hit a no you'll know that the previous yes was your dosage sweet spot.

Interlocking Finger Test

This is another technique that works very well for muscle testing. It's especially useful when you're out and about and standing or swaying back and forth wouldn't be very practical:

• Make a loop using your thumb and index finders on one hand.
• Now make another such loop with your other hand, intertwined with the first loop. Picture it like 2 chain links.
• One hand will be used to try and pull the thumb + index finger connection apart from the other hand.
• Say your affirmation or question and try to pull the chain connection apart. For a yes answer, the connection will stay strong, and for a no answer, the connection will be weak.
• You don't have to hold on too tight to start with, the important is to hold with the same amount of force between each question and noticing the difference between a yes and a no.
• With practice it can become almost like second nature and can be performed very quickly.

Muscle Testing Tips and Tricks

Here are a few tricks that can help with muscle testing:

• Keep in mind that a supplement can be beneficial for your health, but still trigger unpleasant symptoms. If you suspect that, you can test with "This supplement does not trigger unpleasant symptoms".
• Holding a clear quartz or a piece of copper (e.g.: a penny) in one hand while testing can help improve the strength and accuracy of your answers.
• Make sure you are well hydrated when muscle testing.
• Be gentle to yourself and don't try pushing for an answer. Your subconscious and nervous system won't communicate with you if you're barking at it.
• I find it better to say something like "This food is beneficial to my health now", an affirmation, rather than "Is this food beneficial to my health now?", a question. Both forms can work, but with an affirmation you'll be saying either a truth or a lie, which is more direct.
• You can even get really granular and test how beneficial something is on a scale of 1 to 10. "This supplement is beneficial to my health on a scale of 6 to 10 out of 10", yes, "7 to 10 out of 10", yes, "8 to 10 out of 10", no, then you know it's a 7. This way you can prioritize what's most beneficial to you at any given time.
• You can get as specific as you'd like and I'll often test something like: "This supplement is made even more beneficial to my health when taking it with this other supplement".
• You can compare two options: "The supplement in my right hand is more beneficial to my health than the supplement in my left hand".
• You don't have to worry about taking the capsule out of its bottle or the food out of its packaging. Your body is smart enough to know that you don't mean to consume the packaging.

Testing a Group of Potential Answers

Let's say that you have a number of potential therapies you'd like to consider. An easy way to test for which one would be the most beneficial would be to write them out on a sheet of paper into groups, with a few therapies in each group. Then you can test with: "The most beneficial therapy for my health now is in group 1", no, "Group 2", yes. Then you can find which one it is from group 2: "Group 2, 1st one", no, ...,"Group 2, 3nd one", yes, and bingo!

Personally, I have all my supplements arranged into rows and I'll often test for which is most beneficial to me starting by row number.

Muscle Testing for More Than Just Foods and Supplements

Once you get a good feel for self muscle testing, you can start testing for almost anything that has an objective yes or no answer. For example, in her excellent book How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can, Amy B. Scher makes use of muscle testing to help find the root causes of energy blockages and negative thought patterns.

Further Reading

If you'd like to learn more and dive deeper, here are 2 short book that really helped me out:

• The Art of Self Muscle Testing by Michael Hetherington
• Muscle Testing: Obstacles and Helpful Hints by Tessa Cason

Wrapping Up

Oof! That was a lot of words, but I hope this will be helpful to you. I know for me that self muscle testing has been instrumental and continues to be for my own healing.

Remember to be gentle with yourself, to relax and stay centered and to remind yourself that with practice it will become easier and easier.