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Muscle Testing--Repackaged Divination
Part 2 in "Christians Beware of Muscle Testing"
Like walking down a dark alley alone evokes wariness, a tremendous sense of unease enveloped me when I began my journey into the world of Applied Kinesiology (muscle testing). In the days following my first appointment that sense of unease motivated me to think and pray a lot about muscle testing and NAET (Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique). These branches of alternative medicine claim to be effective in determining allergies that cause illness by quickly testing muscles for strength and weakness and then eliminating those allergies through a simple treatment. If I had not been so desperate for relief and experienced such a dramatic "healing" of my thyroid as a result of an early treatment, I might have never gone back. The physical results, I'm ashamed to say, trumped that still, small voice. I'll admit that as a devout Christian some of the jargon used also troubled me. I saw two options for explaining why it worked. Either it was a purely physiological phenomenon or the results stemmed from spiritual forces. I knew the current understanding of science couldn't explain it. Perhaps, I reasoned, the explanation lay in the complexity of how God created the human body, which is yet to be fully understood. I pleaded with the Lord for insight but heard only silence. In light of James 1:17 which says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights...", I initially concluded that NAET and muscle testing were indeed good gifts. Looking back, I now see that my logic was akin to one concluding that heroin is a gift from God because it makes one feel so much better, at first. Although a simple internet search reveals many who warn of the demonic associations with muscle testing, I failed to research it at all. The concerns remain largely unknown or ignored by many. As a result, muscle testing gains ever-increasing popularity among Christians as the angel of light, the deceiver Lucifer, repackages divination in a palatable form that can mislead even the elect.
If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus Christ, then you should answer one pivotal question before getting involved or continuing involvement in anything that uses muscle testing:
If it works, does it work by purely physical means or
is its power spiritual in nature?
If there is indeed a purely physical explanation for Applied Kinesiology and its various branches, then the following should be true:
Certain "knowledge" it provides should be verifiable through physical measures such as blood work, traditional allergy tests, x-rays, etc. (This is often NOT the case.)
Double-blind studies should verify consistent results. (This is NOT the case.)[1]
The actual muscle being tested must itself show strength or weakness. If no pressure is exerted on the muscle (as in surrogate testing or phone testing), then there IS NO POSSIBLE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION. The explanation of transference of energy is nonsense and founded in the false teachings of pantheism.
Also, one must consider if it actually works? A number of scientific studies indicate that there is only anecdotal evidence that it does. (See the first post for specifics.) It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the power that muscle testing purports to wield is actually the result of:
Random chance or the placebo effect, AND/OR
Satan's limited power used to deceive and ultimately bring destruction.
Getting deeper involved in muscle testing
In the first two years of involvement with muscle testing and NAET, I came to the wrong conclusions because I failed to learn about what I was practicing. My early positive results convinced me that these forms of alternative medicine did work, and because they appeared to have brought benefit to me, I wrongly concluded that they must be a gift from God. So, in spite of the fact that certain things about muscle testing and NAET troubled me and my greatest mental gymnastics couldn't find a way to explain them away, one appointment turned into dozens. Before long, it occurred to me that what the practitioner was doing wasn't that difficult and much money could be saved if I taught my husband how to perform the treatment. When I did it at home, I "Christianized" it by eliminating the part of speaking to the body and instead often prayed. Surely if there was any cause for concern, praying made it alright--I thought. Before I knew it, allergy testing and treating took place every day in our home. The initial dramatic results were replaced by a constant need to retreat previously "cleared" allergies and to treat for the first time every conceivable thing I encountered in life in order to hold on to my new found, tenuous level of health. I reacted constantly to everything but found that a quick treatment could have me right-as-rain in a couple of minutes. The time spent testing and treating seemed a small price to pay for the great relief it brought.
Using my "gift" to attempt to help others
After a while I discovered that I had an uncanny "gift" at muscle testing and an intuition about what substance caused a particular negative reaction. As a mother, it seemed a marvelous gift as I could pin-point the cause and alleviate the symptom(s) of suffering for my child in a matter of minutes. As a result, I was soon treating my son daily as well, and many of his allergy symptoms seemed to disappear. Before long, he too seemed to have an uncanny "gift" for testing and treating, which proved useful to me during the day while my husband was at work. As long as we kept it up, both of us could function well with a carefully controlled degree of health.
Having suffered physically so much, I hurt for others who also suffered. I thought I had a powerful knowledge and ability to alleviate suffering. How could I keep such a "gift" to myself? I couldn't. So, I became a self-trained NAET practitioner of sorts, who spent much time attempting to help others who couldn't afford to pay someone for treatments. I saw this as my ministry, and praised God for leading me to what I was certain was a cure for most every physical problem. On a couple of remarkable occasions, the results were again dramatic while treating others, but in general the benefits seemed temporary, questionable, or even detrimental.
God brings true and lasting healing to me
Somewhere during all of this, God, in His infinite mercy, brought me true healing through His Word alone. (The details of that are told in "A Heart at Peace.") A dear friend, noticing how consumed my life was with NAET, insisted that I was in "bondage" to it. Indignant, I told her that that was ridiculous! She gave me a book, full of Scripture, that spoke of the spiritual roots of many illnesses. Although initially offended that my friend would insinuate that the physical suffering I had endured for almost two decades might be based in sin or a lack of peace in my heart and mind, out of respect for her, I read the book. Because every page of the book quoted verses from the Bible, I began looking up every one and reading each in context. Over the course of about three months, I reread almost the entire Bible from cover to cover trying to gain a biblical understanding of illness. As a result, I saw that throughout both the Old and New Testaments illness was often shown to be directly linked to either unrepented sin or emotional distress. I began to earnestly ask God to reveal to me any such areas in my life, and He faithfully did.
After a time of much emotional healing, confession and repentance for sin, I simply prayed in the quiet of my bedroom and asked God for physical healing. In a moment God miraculously healed me completely, separate from any NAET treatments. I no longer tested positive for a single allergy. For the first time in 19 years I was truly healthy and strong, and now over six years later, I am still well. Where once my days revolved around numerous physical constraints, suddenly there was glorious freedom. I can't begin to describe the change. I was like the lame man Peter healed, walking and leaping and praising God. My joy and thankfulness knew no bounds.
The demons make their presence known
However, as soon as I quit needing muscle testing and NAET treatments, my husband, who previously had no physical symptoms that might benefit from those practices, suddenly began to have numerous unexplained symptoms. I suspected "allergic" reactions, and so he complied with muscle testing and NAET. For a number of months I continued to treat him and others, while earnestly praying that God would continue to reveal any areas of sin in my life and to cause me to walk in holiness. During these months, some concerning and unexplainable things began happening. I believe that, as a result of my fervent prayers, significant spiritual warfare began taking place surrounding me. Just as in the Bible, when Jesus entered the presence of demons and they became agitated--doing things that made their presence known, so also their once quiet influence became noticeable around me. At least twice that I specifically remember, doors in my house slammed unexplainably while I was home alone. My son, who also had a tremendous ability for muscle testing, started having frightening "prophetic" dreams.
One particularly bizarre and unexplainable instance unsettled our whole family. We were on vacation in New York, and I wanted to mail out postcards to all my nieces and nephews from a local post office. After addressing the cards while sitting in the idling car, I exited and went inside. When I came back out of the building and again sat in the car, my son began telling me of the conversation he and my husband had while I was gone. I immediately interrupted and finished telling him in great detail about their conversation. In confusion, I asked them why they were bothering to repeat a conversation which I had already heard in its entirety. They were both perplexed and insisted repeatedly that there was no way that I could have known the details of their conversation because they both distinctly remembered watching me wait in line through the glass windows of the post office as they had that conversation. I kept insisting that they were wrong and that they most definitely had the conversation in the car while I addressed the post cards. With mutual expressions of concern and confusion they reiterated that they had waited in silence for me to leave the car before they began their conversation. How did I hear and know the conversation spoken in my absense?
With all of these occurrences in mind, I renewed my prayers that God would reveal sin in my life and whether or not I had opened myself and my family up to Satanic influences. I wasn't ready to admit it to anyone, but I was beginning to suspect that I didn't just have an uncanny sensitivity for muscle testing but that I had developed actual power that couldn't possibly be explained scientifically. I began noticing that I seemed to know without muscle testing, whether or not someone was "allergic" to something. I suspected that this foreknowledge matched up to muscle testing with 100% accuracy but was afraid to test the theory because the ramifications were too frightening. For the first time I understood how it is that practitioners could "muscle test" people on the phone. These clairvoyant abilities defied scientific explanation and pointed to the true source of power. However, I'm ashamed to admit that I liked this sense of power, and struggled with giving it up. Just as Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the garden with special knowledge, which brings power separate from God, so also Satan tempted me to hold on to the special knowledge and power that muscle testing and NAET brought. Eventually, however, I confessed my suspicion of "special knowledge" to my husband and told him that I feared muscle testing and NAET were accomplished by spiritual power.
I'll never forget the night of my confession. My husband, Seth devised a way to test the theory of "special knowledge." First, he named things in the room and simply asked me if he was allergic to them. As soon as each object was named an immediate and strong sense of the answer came to me. Perhaps one could compare it with reading a question on a test and immediately knowing, without a doubt, that you know the correct answer. The sense was so strong that it made me want to laugh at the absurdity of it. Before we did any muscle testing, my husband recorded my predictions to how he would test for well over 10 things. When we finished recording my prescient answers, I muscle tested him and found that 100% of the time, my foreknown answers matched the muscle testing results. It didn't matter how many times or how many different methods we used, I knew the correct answer 100% of the time before testing. (Keep in mind that Seth is a very strong man. When I muscle tested him however, and he was "allergic," though he tried to resist, I barely had to exert any effort to press his arm down.) After all of this testing, Seth calculated the statistical odds of having obtained such accuracy by chance. It was staggering! Afterwards, we both just sat, rather stunned. The odds were impossible for me to have guessed correctly every time. Our Christian faith has a term for such predictive power: divination. And divination, the Bible teaches, is never the result of good forces but always evil.
Blessed deliverance
Now please understand; we are not charismatic, and although I can be swayed by emotions, Seth is a, logic, fact-based kind of man. Although as Christians we knew and believed in spiritual forces, we were not of the This Present Darkness mentality that sees angels and demons behind every act. Furthermore, we knew that a true believer has the Holy Spirit indwelling them and therefore can't be possessed by demonic powers. Was it possible though for demonic forces to empower and influence me outwardly? In light of the empirical evidence of spiritual forces at work, we decided to renounce Satan and any influence we had granted him. We called our son in and explained to him what we believed to be the case. He indicated some concerns of his own that had him frightened as well. As the spiritual head of our home, Seth prayed for God's protection, and then in the name of Jesus verbally instructed any demonic forces present that they must get out of our home. When he did so, an indescribable and overwhelming presence of fear and evil encompassed me so great that I could hardly breathe, and I cried out. Seth again renounced any influence that Satan had on me and as he did so the fear and physical distress lessened.
Finally, after ridding our house of every last bit of NAET and muscle testing literature and paraphernalia, peace enveloped us all. I was afraid to try muscle testing again, but the next day I had to know if perhaps our conclusions about Satan's involvement had been wrong. If my ability was only based in science or if it was the result of God's, not Satan's power, then I should still be able to muscle test as before. So, I tried muscle testing one final time, and had absolutely no ability, nor did I have any sort of sense of "special knowledge." The temptation, however, for me to rescue the NAET stuff from the trashcan by the street remained powerful until Seth completely disposed of it all.
I would like to say that great peace and joy followed, but instead tremendous guilt and shame enveloped me, along with perplexing spiritual questions. How could I, one who truly loved the Lord with all my heart and sought after Him daily, be involved in the very power and work of Satan? How could I have been so deceived? In the light of truth, I could now see what I had been blind to previously--the devil's destructive purposes being brought about through me. A few others, whom I had treated, had been seriously harmed by what I had brought into their lives. A close friend had committed suicide, a family member had ended up in the hospital with serious consequences from eating food that I told her she was no longer allergic to, and others had become so ensnared by the deception of muscle testing that their lives became absolutely consumed by it. The consequences of sin can be so tremendous, and although the Lord forgave and delivered me and my family, my actions could not be undone. Oh how I grieved. With Seth's support and with tremendous, humble remorse, I began contacting the many people I had treated during the previous two years to ask forgiveness and to attempt to warn them. So many questions flooded my mind.
Since the time of my deliverance, Seth and I have done much thinking, talking, and studying in order to understand our experiences. Recently, Seth began to describe to me his thoughts on how muscle testing is Satan using the human body like a Ouija Board. His perspective, along with two books, brought the final answers that I sought, and I'd like to share them with you.
Muscle testing is simply using the body as a Ouija Board
If I ask you what comes to mind when you think of divination or fortune telling, things like psychics, séances, and the Ouija Board will likely come to mind. From the beginning of creation, people have desired to have secret knowledge, and Satan has obliged in many fashions. Muscle testing claims to reveal secret knowledge from the body about what will make it work best. Almost none of this "knowledge" is ever confirmed by accepted medical tests, and sometimes proves harmful (see first post). In my last post, I focused on the form of muscle testing that supposedly reveals allergies, but that is hardly the extent to which Applied Kinesiology seeks special knowledge. Some practitioners also use muscle testing to reveal knowledge about when the patient's next appointment should be, what supplements should be taken and how many, and what memories are at the root of various health problems. All that is needed is a "yes" or "no" question and a test of arm or finger strength and voila, one can "know" anything. I've even known Christians who struggle with decision making to use muscle testing to direct the choices for all sorts of things in their daily lives. That particular use is clearly attempted divination and requires repentance. God gave the Christian the Holy Spirit and God's Word to lead us, not the strength of our muscles. Muscle testing is often done through a surrogate for those who are physically unable to be tested themselves; i.e. infants, the elderly, or the infirm. No scientific explanation exists for muscle testing working when the tested person's muscle is not actually used or touched. All of these uses of Applied Kinesiology and many others are asking for "special knowledge" from a power that science doesn't measure. Does this not sound a lot like divination?
The origins of the Ouija Board
Most people know about the Ouija Board, and whether or not they believe it, understand its association with the occult. William Fuld patented the board in 1892, and by 1967 it had taken the place of Monopoly as the number one game in America. The clever name Ouija came simply from the combination of the French and German words for yes (oui and ja), but the idea behind the game was hardly clever. There is, after all, "nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9) but only Satan's repackaging of old evils. The idea for Fuld's board went all the way back to the Egyptians and other ancient peoples who also used sundry articles to gain answers through divination. Some included the letters of the alphabet. Another popular method of divination that many used in the Victorian era of Fuld's day was called table tipping. In this method people placed their finger tips lightly on a three legged table and asked questions that primarily had yes or no answers. Prearranged behaviors of the table for yes, no, don't know, or uncertain were stated at the outset.
Fuld combined table tipping with elements of other ancient practices to invent his own simple version that could be easily used and sold for profit. Fuld's rectangular board lists the numbers zero to nine and the letters of the alphabet, along with the words good-bye at the bottom and yes and no in the opposite, upper corners of the board. The heart-shaped message indicator is a mini three-legged table on which the two operators lightly place their fingers so that it can easily glide across the board pointing to or spelling out answers to the questions people ask. The instructions included with the board state that the operators should do so with concentration and seriousness. (This type of instruction is also common with Applied Kinesiology as practitioners sometimes require a spouse to leave the room because of the "bad energy" they bring.) Countless people through the years have claimed the Ouija Board's effectiveness at providing special knowledge, as well as reporting the dire effects on their lives from demonic forces that involvement with the board brought to bear.
The use of divination in medicine
Although Christians know better than to consider using overtly Satanic practices, those who deal with chronic health issues are often susceptible to questionable methods, if they seem to lead to results. There is no shortage in the medical or pseudo-medical world of examples of demonic power applied to medicine. Dr. Kurt Koch writes of one such example in Demonology Past and Present. He tells about the use of divination by a medical doctor who used a variation of the Ouija Board involving a disc and pendulum to diagnose and treat his patients and experienced surprisingly effective results. This doctor "applied" the idea of the Ouija Board to medicine, harnessing Satan's power, similar to the actions of many witchdoctors through the ages. Never forget, Satan does have limited power and therefore, is willing to apply it with effectiveness when it suits his purposes. The use of divination to determine unknown medical information and treatments is not new. It's called sorcery and is forbidden in the Bible (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
Earmarks of divination
What is done by practitioners with muscle testing and associated practices has the earmarks of divination. Divination is "the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means."[2] God allows man to know much truth by physical means (i.e., science) or by truth He reveals through Scripture. When answers aren't available by those avenues and man attempts to gain unknown knowledge outside of God's revelation, that is divination. If Applied Kinesiology reveals knowledge that can't be determined through physical means, it is seeking unknown knowledge. One indication of the nature of Applied Kinesiology's unknown knowledge is found in the origin of muscle testing. As discussed in detail in the first post, the very basis of muscle testing is pantheism and the occult. The founder of Applied Kinesiology, Dr. George Goodheart made the claim that at least part of the content of his detailed "charts showing the relationship between certain organs and zones of the body as well as to specific nutrients and herbs came from psychic powers."[3] If the foundation of these practices is evil, the practices will also be evil.
If it's divination, how does it work?
As previously pointed out, both the Ouija Board and muscle testing have only anecdotal evidence to support that they "work." Similar to how the Ouija Board seems to "work" for some and not for others and how its information or answers are sometimes disturbingly accurate, so also is the case with practices that rely on muscle testing. Obviously, if divination didn't ever prove accurate or insightful, then no one would bother with it. The big question through the years of the Ouija Board's popularity is how does it work? Parker Brothers, who bought the company and all rights in 1966 claims, "How or why it works is a mystery."[4] Some people have theorized that that the muscles of the arms and hands are affected subtly by the subconscious producing accurate information that has been locked away in the body's own version of a "black box." Many in Applied Kinesiology make the same claim in order to explain how it works; however, if the subconscious can be so readily relied upon, then the scientific evidence should confirm muscle testing's accuracy. Many believe in an alternate explanation of how the Ouija Board works, which is by the spirit world moving the pointer across the board through the operator. Likewise, I propose that in Applied Kinesiology, the muscles of the arm or hand are similarly affected by the spirit world.
How, then, does the spirit world (demons) influence someone's muscles?
Obviously, since I exist in the physical world without line-of-sight into the realm which demons inhabit, the following theory will be conjecture, but it seems to fit the phenomena I personally experienced during my era of muscle testing:
During muscle testing, “answers” to questions are revealed in a binary format, meaning that for every question asked, the muscle will give a yes or no (true or false) response. The muscle gives these binary responses by either being strong or weak in response to the question asked of it. When the muscle weakens during testing, there is no odd sensation as a precursor, warning the subject that his/her muscle has weakened. Nor is there any sort of external sensation, such as a sense that someone in addition to the tester is strength testing the muscle. There is only the sense that although the brain is sending signals to apply strength, those signals do not seem to reach the muscle in full force, and therefore the muscle does not respond as it should to the will of the tested subject. This phenomenon is quite startling to anyone experiencing it for the first time (especially to strong men), and inevitably, their first response to this sudden weakness is to exclaim, “Wait! Let me try that again.” So the test is repeated with the same results.
This sensation with its dramatic results leads me to believe that the mechanism through which spirits use muscle testing to commune with people is based upon an ability they have to restrict the passage of electrical signals between brain and muscle. This also seems to explain the evident power that spirits have to communicate through the Ouija Board. A person, sitting at a Ouija Board with finger tips lightly touching the pointer does not detect the subtle variations in electrical signals traveling to the muscles that maintain the arms’ position over the board. That person only knows or senses that without him/her willing it to do so, the marker begins to move, spelling out messages. (If you would like an interesting visual of this concept, check out this Ted Talk, "How to Control Someone Else's Arm with Your Brain." We know from the story of Satan physically tormenting Job that Satan does have the power to physically impact humans without possessing them. The next post will address the biblical aspect of this truth in greater detail.
Conclusion
Only two explanations exist for how alternative medicine practices relying on muscle testing work. It is either physical or spiritual. The evidence indicates that Satan has merely repackaged divination by making the human body a sort of Ouija Board. 1 Timothy 4:1 says, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons." As one who has learned the hard way, I plead with you to have nothing to do with anything that uses or is related to muscle testing. It doesn't matter if the chiropractor or practitioner you see is a devout Christian who combines Scripture and prayer with these practices. Satan masterfully used God's own words when he tempted Adam, Eve and Jesus. As Jesus promised in Mathew 24:5, Satan can deceive the people of God. Don't be one of them. Also, if you have previously been or currently are involved with muscle testing, I strongly urge you to verbally renounce all involvement with them as Seth and I did and seek the Lord's forgiveness today. "Do not give the devil a foothold" in your life for another day. (Ephesians 4:27)
Look for my next post in this series to find biblical answers to many questions regarding Applied Kinesiology such as:
Why would it work effectively at times and destructively at others?
Why does Muscle testing seem to bring "healing" at times, if it is empowered by Satan?
What harm is there in Christians using muscle testing or treatments based on the results of muscle testing?
How can it be Satanic if the practitioner is a Christian and prays before/after the treatment?
If you have a question or comment that you would like addressed in the next post, please send it to me through the contact page on this website.
Click here for the webinar "Energy Medicine & the Christian."
Click here for the audio lesson, '11 Reasons to Muscle Testing is Divination"
If you want to know what the Bible has to say about matters of health, check out the link above to the Bible study series Marci taught called Life to the Body--Biblical Principles That Bring Health & Healing.
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Footnotes
[1] Here are the sources of a few of these studies: Baggoley C (2015). "Review of the Australian Government Rebate on Natural Therapies for Private Health Insurance". /
"Applied Kinesiology". American Cancer Society. November 2008. Retrieved August 2013. /
Kenney JJ, Clemens R, Forsythe KD (June 1988). "Applied kinesiology unreliable for assessing nutrient status". J Am Diet Assoc 88 (6): 698–704.
[1] Wurlich, B. (2005). "Unproven techniques in allergy diagnosis". Journal of investigational allergology and clinical immunology 15 (2): 86–90
[2] http://www.gotquestions.org/kinesiology.html
[3] https://www.google.com/#q=divination
[4] The Weird and Wonderful Ouija Talking Board Set, p.2.
