What Is Muscle Response Testing?

Author: Connie Kelly

Naturopaths are natural healers of suffering. When your body is in pain or discomfort, it is giving you a signal that something is wrong. I relate it to your car when the check engine light comes on. When you see that engine light, you take it to a mechanic, who diagnoses the problem and fixes it. Muscle Response Testing is a tool that Naturopaths use to get to the root cause of the problem. We assist the body to do what it is already attempting to do, and we get in there to rebuild and repair the organs that are having trouble. We use things like herbs and whole food to replace what you are missing from your diet.

We believe that given the right nutrients, the body should function very well. You would not fill up your car with anything other than the correct gasoline, would you? Yet, we do that all the time with our bodies. We treat our cars better than we treat our bodies, and our cars are replaceable. Over time, our bodies become depleted of nutrients, and our organs begin to exhibit dysfunction, which causes stress on the body. This stress depletes more nutrients, and the cycle continues.

We put a stop in this cycle by adding in the nutrients our body is desperately missing. The organs begin to heal, and the symptoms start to go away, because the body no longer needs to give us that signal that something is missing.

Your discomfort could come in the form of headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, weight gain, weight loss, acid reflux, hot flashes, PMS, bloating, gas, heart palpitations, moodiness, brain fog, achiness, joint pain, numbness, tingling, kidney stones, gall stones, constipation, diarrhea, sore throat, cough, hiccups, hormone imbalance, menopause symptoms, pain of any kind (even a Charlie Horse)…these are all symptoms, or “red flags” that your body is telling you something is not quite right.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, around 600BC, believed in doing no harm. So do I. Naturopaths use non-invasive techniques such as Muscle Response Testing, Herbology, Homeopathy, Essential Oils, Iridology, Reflexology, Bodywork, Craniosacral Therapy, Sound Therapy, Meridian and Magnet Therapies, Light Healing Touch, and more. Using Muscle Response Testing as a tool, we can get in there and correct imbalances by rebuilding and repairing the body.

To understand muscle testing, we have to first understand that the body is electrical. The earth has an electromagnetic field, and so do we. Our nervous system is a complex system of electrical “wiring”, so to speak, not unlike the wiring in your house. If an appliance or light switch doesn’t work, you may call an electrician to come out to diagnose the problem. He will first look at the outlet to see whether it is receiving the proper communication via the wiring. Your organ reflexes on your body are kind of like the outlets, and the wiring is like your nervous system. I am the electrician. I am able to determine whether these outlets are functioning properly, i.e. organs and organ systems.1

We use your arm as a strength indicator for how strong your organs are, and we can ask a multitude of questions to determine what is going on in there. We can also determine which foods, herbs, homeopathics, essential oils, flower remedies, or other modalities will help to begin the healing the process. Given the correct remedy, the body will heal itself. We try to assist the body to do what it is already attempting to accomplish.
​
One more thing. The body responds to truth. Every nerve cell in the body becomes more rigid, or stronger, when your body hears truth. When it hears something false, the nerves become less stiff. This is how the polygraph test works. The tissue becomes stronger with truth. Therefore, we can ask any true statement of the body, and it should give us a strong muscle response. Or conversely, if we ask a false statement of the body, it will give us a weaker response.1 Muscle testing is only as good as the questions you are asking, so let’s get in there and ask the right questions, and work on helping your body heal, naturally.

1 Baker, Dr. Bessheen. Herbology and Muscle Response Testing. Naturopathic Institute of Therapies and Education. 2017.