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5 Ways to be a Good SK Teacher
I am happiest when teaching a Specialized Kinesiology class. (Don’t tell my husband!) Any of them. All of them. Touch For Health, GEMS (Goal, Element, Mode Stack), SIPS (Stress Indicator Point System), TFH Instructor Training Workshops – I don’t care, they are all ridiculously fun to teach in their own ways. In the last year I have been given the responsibility to train instructors for various classes. While helping guide new instructors and assessing those teaching for their ability to progress to other levels, I find myself asking, what makes a good Specialized Kinesiology teacher? While there are many resources and guides for how to be a good teacher in…
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On the Shoulders of Giants – a scientific model for kinesiology ethics
The IASK (International Association of Specialized Kinesiologists) forum this year brought forward a question of ethics. Specifically, how we can move forward as an industry while respecting the intellectual property of course writers and authors. As you can imagine, this sparked some pretty interesting responses! The forum is supposed to allow each person who wishes to, to speak briefly on the topic but without referring to the remarks made by anyone else. This gets a little intense when you have a lot of people speaking a variety of languages who are all passionate about their craft. The responses ranged from rants about the sanctity of copyright laws, to how to…
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International SK Week
Every year it becomes a little less weird. Specialized Kinesiology is becoming more mainstream, but we still have a long way to go to increase public awareness. At the 2nd Meeting of Associations in Portugal, 2015 (hosted by IASK, the International Association of Specialized Kinesiologists), we decided to declare a week for just this. Seven days when, as kinesiologists all over the world, we will all make an effort to bring muscle testing out to the public and educate as many people as possible. International SK Week is March 13-19. I encourage all my peers to find a way to talk about their work with as many people as possible.…
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When muscles won’t act like they ‘should’
It’s all about accurate muscle testing. Finding an accurate indicator muscle is the absolute most important thing to teach Specialized Kinesiology students because, if you can’t trust what the muscles are telling you, there is no point to moving ahead. One of the most frustrating things that can happen to a new SK student is when the muscle just won’t do what it’s supposed to. I remember way back when I took my first Touch for Health class. I can home super-excited because I loved it so much. In class, everything was easy and I felt like this was something I could be really good at. And then I tried…
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Matthew Thie on Touch for Health Basics and Why They Matter
Originally published in Specialized Kinesiology Magazine, Winter 2017 Back to Basics issue. Photo credit: Jan Cole, 2016 TFHKA Conference Growing up with the creator of Touch for Health for a father, the system seems to be in Matthew Thie’s blood. Any conversation with Matthew about kinesiology work eventually makes its way back to the core tenants of self-responsibility and why basic, simple techniques are the best ones; and he has made a career out of travelling the world speaking on this subject and teaching others. And so for this issue, Matthew and I sat down for a long-distance conversation about the basics of kinesiology, what has changed and why it…
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Is kinesiology ‘Un-Christian’?
Every once and awhile I get questioned by someone who believes that kinesiology and muscle testing are not Biblical and should not be sanctioned by true Christians. As this has come up for myself and a few of my students recently, I thought I would take a minute to write about it. If you believe in an almighty and benevolent Creator, it makes sense to think that He would make our bodies in a way that would allow us to heal ourselves. We have brilliant systems for self-healing in place; the procedure your body goes through to close up an open wound for instance, platelets, plasma and fibrin working to…
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Why SK Magazine?
Why put together a magazine? I love to write. When I was a little kid, I figured I would be a poet and fiction writer when I grew up. When I was in high school and began to understand that poetry may not be a lucrative field, I decided I was going to be a journalist. That career path was unceremoniously tossed aside when I fell in love with the natural health world, but I have always kept my toes in it. Over the years I have written for newspapers, magazines and websites as a freelancer, usually on the topic of health and wellness, trying to demystify subjects like kinesiology…
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Specialized Kinesiology – What I Wish I Knew Before I Started
Lately, as I have been attempting to navigate my way through new adventures in homesteading, I have been reading a lot of blog posts. Many of these have had similar titles of the, “5 things I wish I had known before getting goats” or “10 things you should know before buying chickens” variety. This has lead me to think a lot about one of the most common questions I am asked as an instructor of Specialized Kinesiology – what do you need to know before you start? The truth is, looking back, I am embarrassed by how little I knew when I started out. I had a background in nutrition…
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What is Kinesiology?
If Specialized Kinesiology isn’t the coolest thing you’ve ever experienced, then you probably don’t understand it. I have been working with it for over ten years and it still rocks my world with its’ power, simplicity and scope. Here is a quick answer to the question: what is kinesiology? Kinesiology is the study of movement, and most of the kinesiologists out there have gone to university to study muscles, how they work and how to train them in order to treat and avoid injury. Specialized (also called energetic) Kinesiology is a little different. Here, a muscle test is used as an indicator of what is happening on a deeper level…
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Beyond Massage – Muscle Testing for RMTs
No doubt about it, few things in life are as amazing as a good massage. How would you feel about a tool that would allow you to take your business as a massage therapist to another level? I fell in love with massage as a practitioner first, before I started muscle testing. I loved the immediate change in a client; the way I could literally feel them relaxing and healing themselves under my hands and the exchange of energy involved. And yet, massage has its limitations. It can be frustrating for instance, when you realize that the basis of the issue is stress-related, but you don’t have any techniques that…
