APPLIED KINESIOLOGY: IN THE BEGINNING
by GEORGE J. GOODHEART, JR., DC
The following is an exerpt from Dr. Goodheart’s August 24 th address to 2000 SOTO-USA Clinical Syposium edited by Robert Monk, DC, CSP.
Having left the Air Force in 1946, I resumed active practice in association with my father until his passing in the early '60s. My time in the Air Force had given me a taste for innovative opportunities and also had taught me a practical method of dealing with problems, and this was to stand me in good stead later on.
Not long after my father's passing, a young man presented himself at the office complaining of....[shoulder weakness]. When I applied myself to the book "Muscle Testing" by Kendall & Kendall, I found the muscle that pulled the shoulder blade forward on the chest wall was the anterior serratus. The method for testing it involved placing the patient's hand on the wall and then pressing on the spine in a forward direction. The shoulder blade immediately stuck out. When I palpated the muscle on the side of involvement, I found no atrophy of disuse. However, I did feel an unusual nodulation at its attachment to the anterior and lateral aspects of the rib cage, which I didn't feel on the other side. In an effort to identify their nature, I pressed on them. They were not painful and they seemed to disappear as I pressed. We later learned these nodules to be avulsive in nature, a tearing away of the muscle from the periosteum. Having pressed on all the small nodulations I then surveyed the muscle. It felt the same, but this time I noticed his scapula was now lying in a normal position on the posterior chest wall. The shoulder blade no longer popped out.
Emboldened by this unusual success, I began to test other muscles by the method of Kendall & Kendall. I found many patients showed muscle weakness. One patient had an unusual type of sciatic neuritis: severe leg pain when he tried to stand, sit or lie down, but it disappeared when he walked. We found a weakness of the fascia lata. Because walking relieved, I felt that this was an involvement of the lymphatic system, which drains the muscle due to the squeezing action of the muscles on the lymph system. I palpated the lymph glands on the lateral aspect of thigh and felt nothing unusual, however the patient looked up at me and said, "That's the first relief I've ever gotten." I looked at him and said, very bravely, "That's what you came here for," indicating that it was not the surprise to me that it was.
My secretary had suffered from sinus trouble, and would consistently show a head tilt. Despite the fact that I found a weakened muscle which I associated with the head tilt, the original technic did not produce any muscle strengthening, nor did it affect the sinus involvement. Thinking that one had to simply palpate and treat the muscle, I repeated the procedure that had helped the sciatic patient by palpating the sternocleidomastoid muscle, but without success. Then I thought, perhaps what I pressed on was something unassociated with the muscle itself, but possibly, some lymphatic circuit breakers (which had been postulated by osteopaths Chapman and Owens, who postulated the existence of a reflex called the neurolymphatic reflex -- a cutaneous visceral reflex). By trial and error, testing muscles and comparing areas, we found which circuits affected which muscles.
This success convinced me that there was a relationship between muscles and viscera. An Italian woman came to see me complaining of a headache for 30 years. Muscle testing revealed some muscles to be weakened on both the right and left sides of her body. I noticed that during testing of certain muscles, when she took a deep breath, certain muscles strengthened while others weakened. Letting the air out seemed to strengthen them. She also exhibited a rather unusual configuration in terms of analysis of the level of her head: one ear was lower, one eyebrow, higher. I had been aware of the work of William Garner Sutherland, an osteopath who had postulated the concept that the bones of the skull move as you breathe like the gills of a Fish. He developed the concept that there was a vestigial gill mechanism in the skull.
The concept that the bones of the skull had motion was contrary to my anatomical and osteological training, yet in an effort to understand the problems produced by the patient, I attempted to move the mastoid process on one side of her head in a forward direction with inspiration, and at the same time moved the mastoid process in a backward direction with expiration. After four or five deep breaths, she looked at me and her eyes widened, and she said, "That's the first relief I've ever gotten." Investigating the concept of imbalanced cerebral spinal fluid, I found that not only did the bones of the skull move in a predetermined fashion, but so did the vertebral segments: the tip of the spinous process tipped inferiorly with inspiration and superiorly with expiration. We also found a sacral motion: the apex of the sacrum moving forward with inspiration and backward with expiration. We found a reverse movement to exist in the coccyx. We also found a counter movement in the total pelvis, the pelvis moving backward as the sacrum moved forward and the pelvis moving forward as the sacrum moved backward, coincident with phases of respiration.
This new cranial theory aided greatly in the application of the cranial concept. The Sutherland's idea utilized topographical anatomical changes for cranial corrections, but the addition of respiration added a measure of diagnostic certainty and safety to this relatively new science. While lecturing in Rochester, NY, I was asked to treat a young boy who was suffering an acute asthmatic episode. In attempting to spread the cranial sutures in a very simplified fashion, I felt an insistent pulsation, very faint at first, at the rate of 72 beats per minute. I reapplied pressure and the pulsations became more evident in strength. Eventually the young man stopped his labored breathing. Simultaneously his foot rotated up into a parallel position with its opposite member. This was the beginning of my study into neurovascular receptors, first discovered by a chiropractor named Terence Bennet. The neurovascular receptor acts as a thermostat regulating the flow of circulation into the muscles.
The subject of acupuncture has long been a point of interest, but not much was known in America until the publishing of Felix Mann's book "Acupuncture, Ancient Chinese Art of Healing." He spoke about energy points which could be stimulated to tonify or sedate various organs. In an effort to relate the acupuncture points to kinesiology parameters, we attempted stimulating the points for muscle tonification and sedation with some success.
We now had five arrows in our quiver: we could shoot the arrow along the origin insertion, the neurolymphatic, the neurovascular, the cranial, and now the acupuncture path. Each of these develop their own special set of rules and special set of circumstances. Applied kinesiology is based upon the fact that body language never lies. Our ability to understand this language is enhanced by using the muscles as indicators. The opportunity to use the body as an instrument of laboratory analysis is unparalleled in modern therapeutics because the response of the body is unerring. If one approaches the problem correctly, makes the proper and accurate diagnosis and treatment, the response is satisfactory both to the doctor and the patient.
The "name of the game" is to get people better. The body heals itself in a sure, sensible, practical, reasonable, observable, predictable manner. "The healer within can be approached from without." Man possesses a potential for recovery through innate intelligence and the physiological homeostasis of the human structure. This recovery potential needs the hand, the heart, and the mind of a trained individual to bring it to potential being and allow the recovery to take place. This benefits man both individually and collectively, but it also benefits the doctor who has rendered the service and allows the force that created the structure of the body to operate unimpeded. This benefit to man can be compounded by knowledge with physiological facts and with predictable results.