What is Kinesiology - Part 5 - History

People often ask me where kinesiology came from, so I thought I'd address this in the next part of the series.

Although, it draws on some very ancient healing knowledge, it wasn't discovered until the 1960s.  A chiropractor, called Dr George Goodheart, found that when testing the integrity of muscles, the outcome was dependent on the state of the body at that time.  In this way, he realised that this "muscle test" could be used to find out information which could then be used in the treatment.

Before that, the word kinesiology was just used to mean it's literal translation "the study of movement" (from the Greek). It was a science rather than a therapy; you could become qualified in it, but not licensed.  However after Dr Goodheart's discovery, he went on to devise a therapy which he called Applied Kinesiology.  He taught this to medical doctors and chiropractors. Owing to the vast amount of anatomical knowledge required, he didn't feel it was appropriate to teach it to non-medically trained people.

Fast forward several years, and another chap called John Thie realised that this knowledge could be simplified and still be extremely powerful as a therapeutic tool.  He devised a simpler system called Touch For Health, which links 42 muscles to the Chinese meridian system and uses this to rebalance the body.  It is a very effective therapy and forms the foundation level training for kinesiologists.

Since then, various people have taken the therapy further and many branches of kinesiology have been set up, and submitted to professional bodies for accreditation.  These form the advanced part of the practitioner training and continual professional development.  They are all slightly different, with regard to what they focus on. 3-in-1 Concepts, which I practise defuses emotional stress around an issue (see part 3).  Information about some of the other branches can be found here.  Some are more weighted towards the emotional, some more structural and others more nutritional/biochemical.  Each is very powerful, but people will often find some suit them more than others according to the way they like to work.

I will be giving a talk at the Wellbeing Centre this Saturday (22nd September) if you'd like to find out more about kinesiology and how it can help stress.