Abstract:
Every muscle imbalance has an emotional aspect. Even after successful application of AK muscle correction techniques, thinking of the associated emotion will re weaken the muscle. When normal AK methods fail to provide adequate and lasting correction of imbalances, psychological problems may be the cause. Techniques for determining and eliminating the psychological problems that prevent lasting AK corrections are presented in this paper.

I began my therapeutic career as teacher of Alexander Technique (training in optimal posture and movement, how to “use oneself” correctly) in a medical clinic in Basel, Switzerland. In this clinic, all the patients that were unresponsive to the interventions of the medical doctors were passed on to me. Although during any one session I could often assist my clients to release their excess muscular tensions, improve their posture and thereby relieve their pains, they often returned one week later with the same patterns of misuse. Through careful inquiry, I determined that only a portion of the cause was physical habit. The patterns of tension that returned to plague my clients were caused mostly by their mental and emotional states.

When in sudden physical danger (falling from a tree, seeing a car approaching swiftly, etc), the physiological “startle” reflex causes the head to be pulled back and the shoulders to be lifted. This reflex protects the area of the medulla from being struck, which could cause the heartbeat and respiration to cease. In a true situation of physical danger, this reflex can be life-saving. However, observe someone entering his place of work five minutes late and you will see the same postural response. It appears that humans react to psychological dangers, fears, with the same tensions observed in situations of genuine physical danger. In our modern society, with its unrelenting demands and pressures to succeed, most people live in a more or less constant state of fear. This continual fear produces excess tensions throughout the body but especially in the upper trapezius and the intrinsic muscles of the cervical spine. The rigidity of the body produced by mental and emotional causes was first described by the Wilhelm Reich around the turn of the century. He called this phenomena “character armoring”.

In order to be a more effective therapist, I realized that I would have to become proficient in altering the psychological state of my clients. However, this profession has its dangers. In America, psychiatrists and psychologists are among the occupations that most often commit suicide. It seems that after constantly hearing the severe and tragic problems of their patients, many psychotherapists no longer want to live in such a world as this. I decided that I wanted to produce effective psychological change, if possible, without having to hear the depressing stories of my clients. I researched the field and decided that I could most swiftly and effectively produce lasting psychological changes, without having to hear the details of their problems, through a variant of behavioral therapy, Neurolinguistic Programming. I spent 250 hours with Robert Dilts, Richard Bandler and others learning these skills. And as hoped, I subsequently had much greater success in altering the patterns of excess tension in my clients by working upon both the body and the mind.

Then I was introduced to Applied Kinesiology in the simplified and popular form of its offshoot, Touch for Health. Through such techniques as the strengthening of weak-testing muscles, fascial release and reactive muscles, I found that I could make progress in improving patterns of posture and use in a single session that would have taken weeks or months with Alexander Technique alone. During this time I made an important observation: After strengthening a weak-testing muscle, a client spoke emotionally of his problems. Immediately afterwards the freshly strengthened muscle again tested weak. I experimented and found this to be true in all cases. Every strengthened muscle will re-weaken when the specific underlying emotion is determined and considered. And the predominant emotional stressors in the client’s life will weaken most any indicator muscle.

As Goodheart wrote for the forward of my book, Grundlagen der Applied Kinesiology (English version Applied Kinesiology - A Training Manual and Reference Book of Basic Principles and Practices to be published in September, 2001), “Applied kinesiology is based upon the fact that body language never lies. The opportunity of understanding body language is enhanced by the ability to use muscles as indicators for body language”. As with physiological imbalances, disturbing emotional factors may also be revealed by muscle testing.

This discovery is of great value in psychological diagnosis: Factors which are emotionally stressing to a client will weaken normotonic testing muscles or cause them to become hypertonic. It remained next to locate therapeutic techniques to resolve these kinds of problems. I swiftly learned that any neurological disorganization (switching) would produce inaccuracies in psychological diagnosis so I made it my policy to test for and correct switching before proceeding.

I founded that having the client mentally consider and enter into the tested emotion while repeating the same strengthening technique provided a more robust correction. Immediately afterwards, the same emotion no longer had the power to weaken the muscle. However on subsequent sessions, the same problem often returned. I next experimented with combining techniques of Applied Kinesiology and Neurolinguistic Programming (success stradegies, reframing and changing history). When a disturbing emotion was determined with muscle testing, I assisted the client to devise a strategy to solve the underlying problem and to visualize implementing this while I performed AK muscle-strengthening techniques. This proved much more successful in preventing the return of the muscle weakness. But in some cases, the problem still recurred.

In these more difficult cases, it was clear that I was not getting to the cause. As Freud so clearly demonstrated, the cause of psychological problems usually lies in a traumatic experience in the past. I found that I could use muscle testing to determine the year in the client’s life when the presenting problem began. To do so, I say aloud, “When I state the year of your life when this problem began, the indicator muscle will test weak”. Then I begin at the client’s current age and count back towards birth, testing first groups of ten and then, when the indicator weakens, I test individual years. When the year of the cause of the problem has been so determined, I ask the client what occurred during that year that may relate to the present problem.

If the client does not remember, which is often the case as traumatic memories often do get repressed, I say, “When I state the person, circumstances or emotions involved, the indicator muscle will test weak”. Then I state and muscle test, “Parents, relation, group of people, individual person, man, woman, friend, acquaintance, authority figure” etc. until I have determined who was involved. Then I similarly test the circumstances and the involved emotion using the Five-Element Emotions chart. Then I test who had the emotion and how it was directed; from the other person toward the client, from the client toward the other person, or from the client toward himself. Usually while testing all this information, the client remembers the situation. If not, the tested information may be used to create an “imagined remembering” which is adequate for the following treatment.

When the original problem situation has been revealed, I ask, “What resource did you need then that would have prevented or solved this problem?” “When in your life have you had and used this resource to solve a similar problem with success?” If they do not remember, I may muscle test to determine when they used this resource. If he has never had the needed resource experience himself, I assist him to integrate the needed behavior by modeling another person who can do what he can’t. I then ask him to amplify the positive feelings associated with the successful application of the resource. When all the pieces are gathered (the resources needed and the positive emotions associated with them), I have the client imagine the stressful situation of the past and apply the resources to imaginatively re-live the situation, but this time with resolution and success. During this process, I hold his emotional stress points (frontal bone eminences), guide him to follow my hand with his eyes as I trace a large circle in front of his face, and urge him to continue to breathe deeply. We continue until he has completed this process and relived the traumatic situation but this time mastered the problem situation with the satisfaction of great success. Then I ask him to stay with this feeling of success and bring him back to present time, anchoring the steps of ten years with muscle testing.

Although one cannot really “change the past”, such a process as that outlined above, if vividly imagined, gets firmly planted in the brain and becomes a resource for dealing effectively with any similar situations that may arise in the future. For me, “elegant therapy” in psychological change work means that the new desired behavior is automatic and does not require that the patient consciously try to change. To this end, when back in the present, I ask him to imagine when, in the immediate future, situations with similar content might occur. Then I ask him to imagine applying his new strategy to those situations with success. Simultaneously I hold his forehead, guide them in eye rotations and encourage deep breathing. This step prepares him for automatically reacting in new desired ways to the stimuli that formerly caused his problem behavior.

If performed correctly, this process will identify the past psychological causes of present problems, prevent them from having the same effect upon present behavior, and prevent them from causing the previous muscle imbalances to recur.

It is clear that physical causes of weak-testing muscles must be attended to first. No amount of psychological work will replace a trace-element that is lacking. Single corrections of weak-testing muscles may be adequate and not need to be repeated. But if muscle weaknesses or more complex imbalances recur, and you are not able to eliminate them with standard AK techniques, attention to the underlying psychological causes as outlined in the article may well provide the missing piece of the puzzle and produce lasting correction of the problem.

Muscular imbalances (weak or hypertonic muscles) may be have psychological causes. If structural and chemical corrections do not hold, the techniques discussed in this paper may be very useful.

If performed correctly, the processes described in this paper will identify the past psychological causes of present problems, prevent them from having the same effect upon present behavior, and prevent them from causing the previous muscle imbalances to recur.

It is clear that physical causes of weak-testing muscles must be attended to first. No amount of psychological work will replace a trace-element that is lacking. Single corrections of weak-testing muscles may be adequate and not need to be repeated. But if muscle weaknesses or more complex imbalances recur, and you are not able to eliminate them with standard AK techniques, attention to the underlying psychological causes as outlined in the article may well provide the missing piece of the puzzle and produce lasting correction of the problem.

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Robert Frost, PhD, Psychologist, Alexander Technique Teacher