What is 'Wellness Kinesiology'?

Over the years as I worked with clients, I consistently found that one of the simplest techniques - the emotional stress release (ESR) technique – was in fact one of the most powerful. It had many applications and my client’s benefitted greatly. However, I found it wasn’t always complete. Sometimes after doing ESR the indicator muscle would lock indicating that the stress was gone but the person would tell me they were still feeling some discomfort within the body. I added some modifications to the basic procedure to increase its effectiveness and put together a workshop called Stress Release based on the book Stress Release which I published in 1985.

About 1989, I believe, a Touch for Health instructor from Las Vegas, Nevada, Dr Jim Reid created the Touch for Health Synthesis Tree. The trunk of the tree was Touch for Health with its roots in applied kinesiology and chiropractic and the numerous branches feature numerous people and the kinesiologies or classes they had developed that have sprung out of TFH. I was put up on the tree under Stress Release. I had not wanted to create my own branch of kinesiology initially because I saw that as creating separatism. However, I realized that people were going to put a label on the classes I was teaching anyway. So, I could create my own branding or others were going to do it for me.

I considered what already existed: A = Applied Kinesiology; B = Behavioral Kinesiology, also Biokinesiology; C = Clinical Kinesiology, also Creative Kinesiology… You get the idea. I thought it better to see which letters of the alphabet still remained unclaimed: U, V, W, X, Y, Z, maybe a couple of others. Slim pickings indeed. Then it jumped out at me: WK = Wellness Kinesiology. It had a nice positive orientation. It was broad and not limited like Electromagnetic Kinesiology to a specific area. It was comprehensive enough to include classes in the physical or structural area, the nutritional, and the psychological.

Over the past four decades I have taken workshops from about 30 developers of kinesiology courses – primarily to give myself a broad perspective of this rapidly developing field. However, most of my training has been in Biokinesiology and Touch for Health. I maintain a passion for Touch for Health so have been a member of the International Kinesiology (IKC) faculty since 2000, at first representing the United States, then Russia and Hungary after moving to the United Kingdom in 2010. I remain active in this area. Plus, I continue teaching a number of classes shaped primarily from my training in Biokinesiology.

Under the umbrella of Wellness Kinesiology I have developed a number of classes originally from my own research. For example, in acupuncture they recognize 12 regular meridians and eight extra meridians (central and governing and six others). In Touch for Health we work with the 12 regular meridians and central and governing. There are superficial and deep pulses at the wrist that relate to the 12 regular meridians. Then I read a book that described three levels of pulses – superficial, intermediate and deep. I was already aware of pulses on the pads of the thumb for the central and governing meridians. Could it be that the remaining six intermediate pulses were related to the other six extra meridians? My research confirmed this hunch. In Biokinesiology we worked with all 20 meridians. John Barton had already correlated 368 muscles, tendons and ligaments associated with the eight extra meridians. I sorted through these and settled on 35 to research further. In TFH we used massage points and holding points as ways to balance muscles. I set about discovering where these points were for the 35 tissues I had chosen. In my book Balancing the Body’s Energies, I presented information from Biokinesiology, discovered the location of TFH-type reflexes for these muscles, and created my own synthesis of how to work with these muscles. Thus my research was a continuation of the research of my two major mentors, John Barton and John Thie.

Other WK classes have developed out of areas of stress management, resiliency, allergies, addictions, weight management, energy management, etc.