I think it is important to start out with the understanding that I believe that God is the most potent healing force in the universe and that He has provided us with a powerful inexpensive healing tool that we have available to us at all times. That is a personal two-way communication with Him called prayer.

I am absolutely convinced, without question, that prayer is the most powerful therapeutic move one can do. I generally advise people to journal their prayers. You can do this by writing non-stop for thirty minutes. You can also type your prayers. It is not important to save the journal. In fact destroying immediately after writing may decrease the fear of not saying what one really wants to for fear of it being found. The healing comes in the writing not the reviewing of it at a later date.

However, it is my experience that either most people do not use this approach, fail to use it effectively, or their prayers do not result in the healing they seek.

I have learned that one of the most profound healing strategies next to prayer involves normalization of the body's electrical circuitry through testing the muscle strength in response to a challenge that is given to it.

I call this type of therapy muscle reflex testing (MRT), as that is how the treatment is performed. Our therapists generally use muscle strength as a guide to help them identify imbalances in your energy system. Yes, you do have an energy system that is every bit as real as your circulatory, nervous and immune system.

Unfortunately traditional medicine does not fully acknowledge this system and not much "scientific" research has been done on it. How do I know this? Medicine is my passion and my hobby. I also have been writing an international health newsletter for the last three years. Every week I review several hundred studies that were published, so I am quite familiar with what the current "scientific" understanding of health is.

The information discussed in this paper is probably ten to twenty years away from even being studied in traditional medical circles. You may ask, "why is that?" Most of this results from the fact that the original work was developed in the chiropractic profession. Although the profession overall does a marvelous job of training clinicians with a mindset towards natural healing methods, they do seem to fall short on publishing generating research in traditional medical journals.

This is also complicated by an intrinsic prejudice that most medical doctors have of chiropractic. They seem to view most of them as quacks who are hurting people more than helping them. Many of these doctors are on the editorial boards of the journals and would not be likely to publish a study, even if it were done properly.

Another issue is that the vast majority of chiropractors are more oriented to the practical aspects of medicine. They are interested in applying the results, not in documenting something they are doing that they know works. I believe this is the major reason that there really are currently no good books about this work.

My Initial Exposure To This Type of Work

Anyway, my journey in this alternative healing strategy began in 1998 when I took a training course in Thought Field Therapy. This course opened my eyes to the incredible healing power that God has provided in our brain and nervous system.

When I was in medical school, I became brainwashed with the drug model and would use them frequently for problems that primarily resulted from emotional wounding. The drug model has come up with some effective tools in saving people's lives, but in my experience they are nearly always a band-aid and rarely addresses the central foundational cause of the illness.

These techniques offer a completely different approach to healing. They rely on normalizing the abnormal energy blocks that develop as a result of the wounding that we all go through in life. These blocks tend to short-circuit the normal energy pathways with which we were born. This short-circuiting frequently results in the chronic health symptoms that most people have.

Muscle Testing

You may have heard of muscle testing before. There are many different forms of muscle testing one can use to achieve these results. It started in the chiropractic profession with Dr. Goodhart who had a technique that is widely used today called Applied Kinesiology. There are many variations that are around today.

The actual specific techniques are not critical but our therapists have taken many of the more effective hybrids of Applied Kinesiology such as Total Body Modification (TBM), Neuro Emotional Technique (NET), Applied Psycho Neurobiology (APN), Autonomic Response Testing (ART), Applied Psycho-NeurobiologyPsycho (APN), and Touch for Health. I simplify the naming by just calling it muscle reflex testing.

I once saw a 30 year-old computer engineer who had a meticulously perfect diet and had a chronic rash for ten years. He had spent thousands of dollars on tests and dozens of excellent doctors to try to improve his rash but all had failed. I performed a test for him that I do for all new patients called autonomic response testing (ART) and within two minutes I found out that his main problem was oatmeal. It turned out he was eating oatmeal for breakfast every morning. Within three days of stopping the oatmeal and doing the other diet recommendations, his rash disappeared. These techniques are absolutely amazing.

How It Works

I really don't understand how this works, but I can offer some suggestions as to speculated mechanisms. The technique's effectiveness seems to be related to using energy reflex points, somewhat similar to acupressure, at specific body sites to neutralize the energy imbalance in the body. There also seems to be a profound normalization that rebalances the autonomic nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system is frequently referred to as the master regulator of metabolism because in controls all the involuntary activities of the body, all the functions of the body that are not under your conscious control. This would include functions like your heart rate, digesting, breathing, tissue repair and rebuilding, regulation of your body temperature, immune system and countless other functions. Once the autonomic nervous system is rebalanced and improved, many physical aspects of disease have a corresponding improvement.

Depression and Emotional Illness-Most Common Cause of Disease

In the late 1980s, it became very clear to me that depression and other emotional wounding was the major reason why most people became sick. I can't tell you how delighted I was when Prozac first came out. I thought it was the magic bullet that would turn everyone's life around. This is because I was still operating under the brain washing I had received in medical school.

Well, we all know that truth eventually rises to the surface. Unfortunately, I did not realize this truth until I had put between one and two thousand people on this drug. I was one of the main users of Prozac, long before it became popular in the media.

If you listen to my audiotapes, you will hear the story of how I eventually came to understand the more basic tenets of natural medicine. But fortunately I did wake up to the fact that antidepressants, while useful for some, are never the long-term solution for these problems.

However, most natural medical doctors have no good tools to address these types of problems. Oh yes, there are many approaches one can have to treat emotional illness. There are symptomatic band-aids such as natural herbs or supplements such as St. John's wort, L-tryptophan or SAMe. These therapies are clearly safer than drugs, and frequently as effective, but they do not reverse the short-circuiting that resulted in the original symptoms.

Traditional Psychotherapy

When I started my initial energy medicine course work, it became very clear to me that it had incredibly profound healing potential. I started to use some of the techniques, but quickly realized that I would get into emotional wounding issues that I did not feel comfortable in addressing. It became very clear to me that the ideal professional for this work would be a competent psychotherapist.

Many of you may have had less than optimal experiences with therapists in the past, as this is quite common. Like any professional, there are good ones and bad. Like traditional medical physicians, most therapists are using simple cognitive tools that are only symptomatically helpful and rarely address the root causes of disease.

I am relatively prejudiced when it comes to traditional paradigms as I have seen so many thousands of patients who have been wounded by traditional medicine. They have removed millions of gallbladders that should not have been taken out, and millions more of ear tubes that have been inserted when simple dietary changes would have provided nearly instant relief in most all cases. Many also do not know that the fourth leading cause of death in this country is drugs that doctors legally prescribe. Trailing close behind that are accidental deaths in the hospital.

Fortunately, traditional psychotherapists are not as dangerous as doctors and generally do not cause harm. They frequently are able to help people feel better. But in my experience they rarely provide a permanent resolution of the unresolved psycho-emotional conflict and trauma that cause most chronic physical health complaints by short-circuiting the energy system.

Emotional Wounding

Some of us believe that we can "grow out" of our emotional wounds. I am not so certain. I once saw a 72 year-old woman who could not sleep at night for the last 66 years because of nightmares. When she was six years old she was several feet away from seeing a criminal shoot the face off of her father's best friend. This trauma stuck with her for 66 years and no therapy had been able to resolve it.

This is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and the muscle resistance testing worked beautifully to resolve this problem in one visit.

Just like this 72 year-old woman, many of us have been wounded in life. If we are stabbed with a physical knife we can see the wounds and sew them up. But if someone uses an emotional knife to wound us, the wounds are not visible to the naked eye; yet they frequently cause more damage by thoroughly disrupting the energy circuitry in the body.

After working with this program for more than one year, I am convinced that it is one of the most innovative, effective and exciting treatments currently available to improve your health. I have been studying health and medicine for over two decades and I have never seen results so consistently astounding.

Mechanics Of Psycho Emotional Treatments

The treatment sessions are 45 minutes long and generally once a week. There is no contract that is signed and one can attend as many or as few sessions as one sees fit. You determine when or if you want to return, preferably in consultation with the therapist. Some patients have only required one or two visits, while others, with more deep-seated wounding, require longer treatment. However, you are always in control and if you don't feel you are receiving benefit you can stop the therapy.

I would also appreciate you letting me know of any problems or lack of improvement you might have. The program seems to be consistently effective for most all who are serious about improving their health and committed to change. However, no system is perfect and I am always seeking ways to improve our treatment.

Allergies

The therapy also works phenomenally well for allergy elimination. For over six years, I performed a very sophisticated, yet effective, form of skin allergy testing called provocation neutralization (PN). The technique generally improved over 80% of our patients. This is in contrast to traditional allergy testing which generally only works on about 25% of patients.

The only problem with the PN testing is that is was time consuming, costly and involved needles. It was not unusual for a course of testing and treatment to cost over $2,000. However, this was still a far better alternative for most of our patients as their quality of life was so much improved, as their chronic illness would get better.

The allergy practice was a very important part of the revenues for my practice. But in January of 2000, I made the decision to stop the testing because in all honesty I could not continue to offer something when I knew I had a better alternative for people, even if meant losing practice income.

I have seen many miracles with the muscle resistance testing. One of our more dramatic examples involved a patient who had been through our PN allergy testing program with only minimal results. She had severe asthma and a life-threatening allergy to latex.

Since she was studying to become a nurse, this presented a major problem in her life, as she would frequently be exposed to latex and wind up in the emergency room very close to death. In one ten minute treatment, Jody, our main therapist, was able to clear her allergy to latex and she could now be exposed to balloons and latex gloves and be around rooms freshly painted with latex paint without having to run to the emergency room. This treatment profoundly changed this nurse's life.

The Mechanics of Allergy Testing

Our main technique to eliminate and deal with allergies is called Total Body Modification. The technique allows her to generally eliminate three allergens at each visit.

It is advised to not start the work though until one's blood sugar metabolism has been under control for two weeks. If you have been following the diet recommended, this is usually not a problem. There are generally 12 molds that can be treated, several types of dust, and about half a dozen each of grasses, trees and weeds. One is also invited to bring in samples of dust, molds, etc. from the living environment.

Food Allergies Can Also Be Eliminated.

We have had a fair number of patients who were chemically injured and could only eat several foods without getting sick. The treatments were incredibly effective at removing these allergies. You can bring the foods in to your session and can be neutralize to those foods.

This is a far more sophisticated and effective technique than skin or blood testing which only can diagnose the problem, but are in no way ever effective at eliminating the problem. Additionally, they are generally costly and frequently inaccurate.

The treatment for the allergies is generally permanent unless one develops another unresolved psycho emotional conflict.

Our Therapists

I have four therapists who perform the muscle reflex testing. The chief therapist is Jody who has taken all of the course work and who has been working at our center since January of 1999.

Does This Really Work? It Seems Too Good To Be True. What is the Down Side?

I was very skeptical for many years, but seeing is believing which is why I am so excited about this technique.

There are some concerns, but they relate more to the danger of the therapist taking credit for the healing. These techniques are so profoundly effective that some therapists fall into the temptation of letting the patient believe that they are responsible for the healing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The therapist merely serves to facilitate the self-repair mechanisms that God has given each and every one of us.

This is why care has been taken in selecting therapists who have a strong faith and are committed Christians. They are grounded in the understanding that they are merely making simple corrections in the body, which allow the normal healing mechanisms that God has provided for all of us to settle in and take the body to the next level of healing.