Throughout most of the 20th century, Osteopaths and their progeny (Chiropractors, Applied Kinesiologists, etc.) exerted significant effort placing a moat around their knowledge, permitting entry only to the initiated. The last 3rd of that century witnessed the beginning of “jailbreaking” these moats. In the myofascial arena, Travell and Simons published “Trigger Point Therapy”. Dr. John Upledger started the Upldeger Institute, with a low bar to entry, and in Applied Kinesiology Dr. John Thie published “Health from Within“, opening access to this synthesis of Eastern and Western touch therapy modalities (this is far from a complete list). The last 40 years have seen an explosion of modalities refining these foundational tools for specific use cases, a more general acceptance of touch therapy by the public, and research on the underlying mechanisms of efficacy that would be less likely to be undertaken while these techniques were “siloed” behind a moat.
As a Touch for Health (TFH) instructor and consultant, I can speak about this specific modality. TFH is founded on muscle testing – monitoring the body’s response to a challenge by evaluating how a muscle reacts – whether the muscle function inhibits, or not.
You are essentially engaging with the non-conscious, intuitive, pre-primate attributes of the client. The conversation is about whatever has been offered as a challenge. This can be anything from questions like “Is this food good for me?” to “Is this the right career choice for me?”. With time you develop a much better understanding of these intuitive aspects of yourself, and even self-testing, where you apply muscle testing to your personal questions, becomes automatic and instinctual.
Muscle Testing
Technically the test monitors the rate of change(∆) in acceleration as the muscle opposes pressure relative to some challenge:
Low or high ∆Accel = muscle exhibits an inhibited/stress response to the challenge.
Median ∆Accel (+/-10%) = muscle exhibits a strong/OK response to the challenge.
Another way to say this is the muscle either communicates a “distress” or “eustress” response to a challenge as discussed in this post: ADAPTIVE CAPACITY
Touch for Health Manual
It takes some practice in muscle testing to discern these three states. Doing so opens up a myriad of guided therapeutic opportunities that are illuminated in this book:
TOUCH FOR HEALTH – THE COMPLETE EDITION
which is packed with ideas for things to try. The great thing about muscle testing is once you have tried a correction, you can verify that it worked by retesting the muscle! The book is formatted as a work manual to be used alongside a session – to be learned as you use it.
Versions of this book have been translated into at least 23 languages, with over 1 million copies printed (ChatGPT), which speaks to how significant jail-breaking the Manual Therapy silo has been throughout my lifetime.
TFH is a great introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine, Kinesiology, Kinematics, Energy Medicine, Nutrition, Psychology, and Osteopathy, as it is a fusion of all of these modalities. It truly puts the “whole” in Holistic. If you are new to touch therapy this is a highly recommended place to start – buy the book and experiment with your partner and friends.
The techniques are widely accepted as beneficial even if not precisely executed.
TFH will likely be for you, as it has been for many therapeutic innovators, a springboard to specific use cases you can offer as a therapist, from sports medicine to personal coaching. One of the roots of my work on Kinsegrity and Sprike is TFH.
TOUCH FOR HEALTH CONFERENCE JOURNAL ARCHIVE
As a function of my participation in the TFH community, I took on digitizing 40 years of TFH conference journals, which are available to explore at this link:
TOUCH FOR HEALTH ARCHIVE
SF BAY AREA TALKS AND CLASSES
If you have a group that would like to share a talk or a class on TFH, please contact me. It makes a valuable addition to many forms of Holistic conferences or training programs.