I attended a class last weekend on using herbal teas as a home pharmacy for treating common complaints. One of the keystone skills presented in this class was a form of muscle testing that anybody can do without any training. I had not been reminded of this technique in years and thought that I would share it with you because it is so very useful. Let’s say you are in the store and want to buy a particular supplement and you want to know which brand is best. As I wrote about in the last newsletter, every person is different in how their body responds to the various nutrients. Different brands will test differently for different people. The question is what brand will test best for you, and how much do you need?
To perform the test you simply hold the question you are asking clearly in your mind and pick up each bottle one at a time and see what way your body sways – forward or backward. The nearly universal body language we have unconsciously learned is that we sway forward, toward something, when we are attracted to it. We sway back when we do not like something. We lean toward things we like and push away from things we don’t like. As all of you know who are patients of mine, your body knows a ton of stuff that your conscious mind is not aware of. The truth is less than 1% of the sensory input from the body ever makes it into our conscious mind. There is simply too much data for us to process consciously. So it is processed in the unconscious brainstem region and lower midbrain. This is where the body consciousness lives, as well as most of what we call our intuition. With training we can become aware of this part of our brain, but for most people it runs on automatic. It deals with such stuff as regulating our heart rate, controlling our breathing and blood pressure, managing our thermal regulation, and so on.
Well this area is far more aware of what our body’s needs are than our conscious self. It knows what we need to function well, as well as what we do not want or need to be healthy. I thought what a great Christmas gift it would be to empower you to be able to ask this part of your body’s inner intelligence what you need to be healthy. Chiropractic was founded on the belief and working knowledge of what we called the innate intelligence of the body. We developed many techniques for accessing this source of body wisdom, such as leg length checking and muscle testing, over the years. But most of these techniques take years of practice to get good at getting reliable information. But the simple sway test is really easy for anyone to do for use with attraction/repulsion based questions. To use this testing method you have to be willing to stay in an open and curious mindset. If you want to control the answers, then this testing will not work for you. This requires you to start with a completely neutral frame of mind – one in which there are no preconceived notions about what the answer or outcome should be. Many people will force the answer they want to believe is the “right” answer, then be disappointed in the poor results they get when the try following the answers they get. Start with the utter knowledge that you have no idea what the body will want in any moment, and then just ask.
How does your body know what is in the bottle you are holding? Interestingly the answer to that is the same as how does your eye know what is in front of you? Your skin has electromagnetic nerve receptors similar to the ones in the back of your eyes scattered all over your skin. They pick up electromagnetic waves, just like your eyes pick up the visual light portion of the electromagnetic band. Everything gives off a unique electromagnetic field that acts as a signature for that substance, and the skin cells can read those signatures. This is part of the ton of data that never makes it to the conscious mind. I believe that our early ancestors used this sensing ability to determine what plants they could safely eat as they hunted and gathered anything they could. This skill would have given them a survival advantage. They could probably feel in their gut when an edible plant was picked up versus a poisonous plant.
You can use this on any food and even on cosmetics, medicines, or anything that might interact with your body. For instance you might pick up your deodorant and see if you lean into/forward to say your body likes that brand or back/away from the product telling you that the product is not good for you. Sometimes the answers will totally surprise you as you find that things you thought were super healthy test up bad for you. Test things on different days, as how you react might change from day to day. One day your body may say it does not want eggs and the next it might say they are fine. You can choose your dinner this way. Grab stuff from the fridge and see what your body wants to eat. After you have eaten half of what tested up good for you, retest it to see if your body still wants it. At some point it will say that it has had enough and does not want any more. This process can be quite a bit of fun. Ellen and I are constantly testing things with muscle testing. So I thought that if you were interested in a little deeper understanding of this thing you call your body, that actually asking it what it wants would be a good first step.
In the Tea class the idea was to start with a complaint you had and check what herb teas would help that condition. Usually there were five to ten herbs that would help, so we could sway test which one was best and then make a tea out of that one. We would pull out plastic baggies of the different herbs and then one by one we would ask, “Is this the best herb for taking care of this particular condition?” On one bag we would lean forward automatically and on the rest we would either get a “no” sway or we’d sway backward. For some people the sway was only a few inches either direction – forward or backward. With other people the sway was very dramatic, with them almost falling over in the response. There was one fellow that got no sway at all. The teacher said “Ah, a control freak.” The idea was that he would not allow his body to respond without his being in control. For this testing to work, you have to let go of control. You have to be at ease and simply curious about what you will discover.
So Merry Christmas! Play with this easy way to access your body’s innate wisdom to help you make better decisions for your life. Don’t get all super serious, as that literally inhibits the flow of information in the brain. The brain works best when it is relaxed and open. As you play with this newly found door to secrets inside your own body, you might find all sorts of other doors of wisdom become available to open.