Ever feel like you’re catching every cough or cold going? Or, that your energy levels are not as high as they used to be? Kinesiology could help set you back on track
In times of high stress and especially towards flu season, many of us reach for the multi-vitamins or echinacea and hope they will cure all ills. But, what if your body is craving some other nutrient or reacting negatively to certain elements in your daily life? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to tap in somehow and find out what you really need? Kinesiology (pronounced kin-easy-ology) offers the chance to do just that. Rose-Marie Finlay has been practising kinesiology for more than 15 years. She tells marmaLADYa.com about her own experience with kinesiology, exactly what it is and how it can help cope with the everyday stresses and strains of modern life.
How did you discover Kinesiology?
Kinesiology was part of my healing journey. In my early 30s I lost my darling daughter when she was five months old. I’d had a ‘healthy’ pregnancy but she was born with multiple birth defects. My doctors told me it was “just one of those things” but when I began to think about getting pregnant again I was terrified. Then I heard about a charity called Foresight involved in pre-conceptual care and I went to see one of their listed doctors who referred me to a kinesiologist. It was one of the most remarkable experiences I have ever had. I had always thought I was pretty healthy but we looked at my diet and found that I was eating quite a lot of refined foods. The kinesiologist did various muscle tests on me and we discovered that I had various heavy metal toxicities and some nutritional deficiencies. So I continued having treatments, took supplements that the kinesiologist found I needed, I changed my diet and I subsequently got pregnant and had a very healthy young boy.
Why did you decide to get involved in practicing kinesiology yourself?
Aside from being able to create a healthy baby, I was amazed by the difference I felt in myself. I had more energy than I’d ever had in my life, my eyes were bright and my skin was clear and glowing. After losing my daughter I wanted to change career and do something more worthwhile than the job I had previously done so I started training with the Association of Systematic Kinesiology. At that time, having studied massage and reflexology I also took courses in counseling because I was very aware that when you work with the body, often there is an emotional component. Until I discovered Kinesiology I hadn’t found a therapy that brought the mind and the body together and one of the reasons I love kinesiology so much is that it does just that, there’s no separation, mind, body and energy are one system.
So, what is kinesiology and how does it work?
Kinesiology works as a biofeedback system through the testing of muscles. Each muscle is related to an organ, and also to an energy pathway called a meridian. Together the muscle, organ and meridian form a circuit. If there are chemical, emotional, structural or energetic stresses affecting the circuit, the muscle will feel weak when tested, indicating an imbalance.
The Kinesiologist then uses the muscle test again to get feedback from the person's body about what factors are aggravating the imbalance, and what will help to treat them. For, example, if placing a certain nutrient on the body, gives a strong muscle response, this indicates that it is relevant to the rebalancing process. Placing Homeopathic Vega Test Vials on the body help me to determine if there are any functional problems, identify toxins, food sensitivities and virus or parasitic infections and I also ask the person to make a series of ‘finger modes’ to help us to find the body’s priorities. We may discover an imbalance that is a ‘compensation’ the body has made in its attempt to solve a problem; the body has its own agenda and is naturally programmed to achieve homeostasis and good health. Treating the compensation would be a mistake, as it is not a cause but a response. Testing for the priority helps to find the root cause of a problem, and allows us to assist the body’s own healing pattern. The way we do that might be by gently manipulating energy in the meridians using pressure points, or it may be a more dynamic intervention like giving herbs, nutrition, physical manipulation. There may be a more deep-seated mental/emotional issue, which I would normally address using a Flower Remedy counseling or working with NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) techniques.
What can kinesiology be used to treat?
I take a holistic view when treating people. I believe that a health problem is a ‘flag up’ to something in the mind/body/energy system being out of balance. With kinesiology you are having a dialogue with that mind/body/energy system which enables you to treat almost anything because you can ask what it is, where it is and how it wants to be rebalanced.
For example, look at a digestive problem such as bloating and discomfort. This may be due to a lack of necessary enzymes required for the breakdown and absorption of food. The enzyme deficiency may in turn be caused by a deficiency of certain vitamins and minerals. The person may be suffering from high levels of stress which cause the body to shut down some of the digestive mechanisms, thus reducing absorption of these vital nutrients. In this situation a person’s immune system could become compromised and vulnerable to invasion by unfriendly bacteria, parasites or yeast infections. Kinesiology helps to identify the priorities, and work with the body step by step to correct all these imbalances, including working on lifestyle issues, some of which may be compensations which will disappear when the root cause is addressed.
How does it differ from other complementary medicines in terms of what it can achieve?
I think the benefits definitely spring from the holistic approach you can have through dialogue with the body and working with priority. If you go and see an acupuncturist they will treat your energy system; a nutritionist will look at diet and nutrition; a herbalist will prescribe herbs, or a counsellor will engage you emotionally. In other words, the practitioner approaches the problem form the bias of their discipline whether or not your body actually wants that. But with kinesiology, the wonderful thing is that we ask the body what it wants and we can find out where the priorities for healing are.
For instance, sometimes nutritional testing may say “Cut out these five things and you’ll be fine”. I don’t believe in that. I believe that if someone is intolerant or sensitive to certain substances there is probably a reason for that within the body/mind energy system so I will always screen through their internal functions and systems to make sure they are processing their foods properly and they are not deficient in anything. I take a very holistic approach and sometimes people can get over their intolerances.
Can anyone benefit from Kinesiology?
I would say that anyone seeking help can benefit from kinesiology. For anyone turning to complementary medicine for the first time it takes a leap of faith because it’s not saying ‘here is a magic bullet’ in the way that allopathic medicine does. There are often lifestyle changes to be made. Yes, I will give my clients vitamins and minerals, herbs or flower remedies but most of the work is really done outside the treatment room and it’s the clients’ willingness to listen to their bodies and what they need to do that makes the difference. But in terms of whether or not you need to take a leap of faith in order for it to work, no, you don’t, it works.
I consider my field to be complementary to traditional allopathic medicine. I believe there is benefit from working together. Kinesiology is not a subsititute if you need a kidney transplant but it might help stop you getting to that chronic state of illness and it would certainly help your recovery. There are many areas of health care where traditional medicine can’t help. People are told that there is nothing wrong because medical tests show no pathology , but someone who has a pain, or gets chronic indigestion knows that something is not working properly. I am here to help them.
For more information about kinesiology visit www.systematic-kinesiology.co.uk or www.rose-mariefinlay.com/kine or contact Rose-Marie by emailing Rose-Marie@zen.co.uk or calling 07766 685785.
