If Muscle Testing and Consciousness Had A Baby (2 of 7)
How to do muscle testing and consciousness scale introduction
This post is part 2 of a 7 part series on my personal experience working with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and David Hawkins Map of Consciousness.
These posts are not my prescriptions on how you should live your life or make decisions. I share these thoughts and experiences not to gloat or cast judgment, but rather to feel the joy of creatively expressing myself and to potentially help others on a similar journey.
In part 1 of this series, I shared how muscle testing helped me determine that I had a parasite and subsequently reclaim my health.
In this post, I’ll provide an overview of the practice of applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and start to describe how I use it in my own life. The ideas in this post are reports of my own experience alongside my interpretation of the work of Dr. David Hawkins. David is one of my favorite authors and his work aimed at illuminating the bridge between the secular, linear dimension (form) and the spiritual, non-linear dimension.
The practice of muscle testing today is kind of underground, but seems to be popping up in my life more and more. It’s most commonly used by functional medicine doctors and chiropractors to diagnose illness and find potential root causes of health issues.
This practical area of application sparked my initial interest, but it was David Hawkins whose work applied these concepts in the realm of consciousness that really captivated me.
The History of Muscle Testing
Originally applied kinesiology first gained interest when Dr. George Goodheart noticed that certain muscles would reliably react strongly to a certain stimulus and weak to others such as artificial sweeteners1.
A few years later, this line of study expanded when Dr. John Diamond observed that in the presence of certain emotional stimuli such as joy vs. hatred the body would also reliably go strong or weak2. The most fascinating thing was the repeatability amongst patients of the corresponding positive or negative response. Not shockingly, many practitioners thought this phenomenon was worth investigating further.
Dr. David Hawkins, who at the time was running the largest psychiatric practice in the country, began to employ and experiment with these techniques with his patients. He was astonished at the reliability and repeatability of the testing. This propelled him to begin to study the kinesiologic response as it relates to truth vs. falsehood, and eventually the expansion of human consciousness.
Power vs. Force
Let me start out by saying that there is obviously an entire series of books written by David Hawkins on this concept that do a much more thorough job of explaining what I attempt to summarize below.
In his practice, David set out to determine whether you could use the body’s physiological response of strength vs. weakness to determine the truth about any statement. He found that in a high percentage of his patients' cases there was reliable accuracy.
If a statement was true, the patient’s physiological response would be strong. If a statement was false, it would go weak.
Over the course of 20 years and experimentation across thousands of patients, David then expanded this work by the creation of an accompanying scale he called the Map of Consciousness. I have highlighted excerpts of the formation of this scale in his own words in order to preserve the integrity as well as linked further details here:
The testing technique just described is that recommended by Dr. Diamond in Behavioral Kinesiology. The only variation introduced in our study was the correlation of responses with a logarithmic scale to calibrate the relative power of the energy of different attitudes, thoughts, feelings, situations, and relationships.
The numerical scale elicited spontaneously from test subjects ranges from the value of mere physical existence at 1; up to 600 in the ordinary worldly realm, which is the apex of ordinary consciousness; and then from 600 on up to 1,000, which includes advanced states of Enlightenment. Responses in the form of simple yes-or-no answers determine the calibration of the subject.
With repeated testing—using either individuals or groups—a consistent scale emerged, which correlates well with human experience, history, and common opinion, as well as the findings of psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, medicine, and the famous Great Chain of Being. It also correlates quite precisely with perennial philosophy’s strata of consciousness.
Here is a rendering of David’s original map I had a designer create. I will do into more depth of how to interpret this in the next post.
When I first encountered this information, I was beyond fascinated by the potential to be able to quickly determine the truth about anything and chart my personal consciousness. It also seemed useful to understand the energetic calibrations of people, substances, media, and ideas that I encountered. If these methods were reliable in revealing the integrity and energy of any object, the conceivable applications were endless and the amount of people that could find use in such tools would be extraordinary.
Mechanism Explanations
In the 1970’s Carl Jung first presented a theory of collective consciousness that he called “The Collective Unconscious”. Jung believed that all humans had a unified shared knowledge of history that people could tap into. These often presented themselves as archetypes that humans naturally understood despite limited exposure in their actual lifetime.
How could one know to avoid danger and react spontaneously if they had never been exposed to a certain stimuli? These innate abilities were the foundation of his belief that there was some type of inner knowing grounded in a collective consciousness that humans seemed to be able to call upon when they absolutely needed it.
Jung felt that the human mind had limited abilities to tap into the collective unconscious in everyday situations. But during unique situations like crisis or life threatening moments, some mechanism would emerge that would allow humans to access this innate intelligence.
Hawkins also was a proponent of the notion of collective consciousness. He expanded upon the idea believing that collective consciousness was like the ultimate historical database for everything that has ever happened. Every idea, every thought, every action for all of time is recorded and stored in this database.
For all intensive purposes, the typical human mind does not access this database.
But Hawkins believed that this intelligence could be called upon through the mechanism of muscle testing. Specifically, that the nervous system response of the body, uninhibited by the conditioned mind, was a reliable way to access any information.
This theory means that you could find out the factual truth about anything that has ever happened or applies to present day conditions.
Do I have this suspected allergy?
Did we actually land on the moon?
Is meat nourishing for this body?
The applications are endless. And in a media & agenda driven world where deciphering truth has become increasingly difficult, such a skill would be infinitely valuable.
The Test Itself
When I learned about this potential, I began to experiment with it heavily. I’m pretty sure my girlfriend thought I was possessed as I paced around testing things 🤣
To have accurate information, Hawkins provided a few different conditions. Again, these were not based the readoffs of scientific instruments, but rather his own experimentation over the period of 30 years:
The first condition was someone had to calibrate over the energy level of 200 on his scale of consciousness pictured above. I will discuss the scale and my experience working with it in greater depth in a subsequent post, but the level of 200 is the paradigm where people move out of survival based emotions and into the level of integrity. At this level, people are more concerned with truth and honesty vs. self-service.
Other criteria required for accurate testing, are:
A commitment to truth vs. any personal agenda during testing. This means coming in with a clear mind not wanting any particular outcome of tested statements
A commitment to the highest good vs. personal gain…I’m looking at you everyone whose mind is racing how they might be able to use this to get rich ; )
When finding the energetic calibration of a specific subject, one must ask permission to ask about what subject you are holding in mind to test. This means prior to testing, asking “do I have permission to ask about x?” and noting whether you go strong or weak
You must be open to the test working. Overtly strong skepticism will not provide consistent results
The primary ways I used the test were to test specific statements (True vs. False) as well as measure the energetic consciousness calibrations of people, books, statements, and ideas on David’s scale.
Simple True vs. False Testing
To perform a test, one must say a statement vs. ask a question and then apply pressure to gauge whether the body is able to maintain its strength or goes weak. The most common approach is someone pressing down on your arm. Here’s a pic of my girlfriend helping me perform a test which can be done seated or standing .
The test cannot forecast future events since they have not happened or respond to hypothetical statements. Remember we are using the response of the body to access a database of all events that have happened up until this moment.
Example correct muscle testing statement:
The United States Government knows about UFOs
Example incorrect muscle testing statements:
Does the united states government know about UFOs? (question)
If the united states government knows about UFOs, do they plan to tell us (hypothetical)
The two person arm strength test can be cumbersome given that it relies on having someone else present, so I investigated a few different ways to perform it solo.
I found many different techniques on youtube and tried them all until I found one that felt most comfortable for me.
This is the way I use this test solo:
I simply hold my thumb and index finger in almost a C shape and use the other hand to apply gentle pressure, like a vice grip to the fingers making the C. The finger position holds during true statements, and then goes weak when false.
Ideally with a blank mind, I provide a statement and then my hand will either be able to withstand and even open further indicating a strong response from the nervous system or it will contract indicating a weak response of the nervous system. Simply being able to maintain the pressure without closing, indicates a strong response. The technical term for this type of test in applied kinesiology is a break test.
My initial tests were confirmatory in nature.
My name is Scott
I was born in 1988
I went to Princeton University
And then I stated some false things. During my initial testing phase, the body responded accordingly to all my planted true/false statements.
I then started to ask many things I was not sure of about my own life and the world in general. Some readings were as I suspected and some were quite surprising. Nonetheless, I was incredibly fascinated by the phenomenon and started to keep a running log of all tests and calibrations.
If you get a false positive it might be for a few reasons:
You are skeptical and don’t think this work
You calibrate below 200
The statement was phrased incorrectly or in a way that could be misconstrued
You are in an stressful, agitated, or depressed state impacting your thymus gland
Your intention is greedy and non-integrous
You did not ask permission
Practical Applications of Muscle Testing
Asking what are the ways you can use is like asking what information have you ever wanted to know about.
Here are various areas of inquiry I tested across hundreds of tests I performed on myself:
Questions about my health and diet
Daily supplementation and food needs
Validity of certain books and ideas
Historical truths and known conspiracy
Questions about my business and general opportunities
Scale calibrations of certain religious and world leaders
Questions about the nature of reality
In Power vs. Force, David outlines many applications beyond what I have described above.
How I View This Information
I am still on a journey of investigation of muscle testing. I liken it to how I view intuition vs. reason…both are data points to form a holistic picture that can inform a reaction. Consider this data point #3!
Part of the reason I’ve wanted to create a dedicated log, beyond testing repeatability and universality (other people getting similar results), is to have a historical log of how I’ve used it to adapt my decisions. Did this information and subsequent action prove to serve me or not?
So far, it seems to be serving me quite well which is why I am continuing to explore it.
In the next post, I will be discussing David’s Scale of Consciousness and what I have observed in experimenting with it in my own life.
This post is part 7 part series on my personal experience working with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and David Hawkins Map of Consciousness.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9200049/
Thanks for sharing. I was using the Theta Healing practitioner's muscle test, but the method you shared is much easier. The next level of this is pendulum dowsing. I also recommend learning and using it. You can ask the same questions as in the muscle test, and also use charts like the ones at https://www.subtil.net.
Hey Scott, about 2 months ago I discovered the work of David Hawkins, and it has transformed me. I have been waiting to learn a muscle testing technique from a practitioner, and just tried the one you demonstrated as your 'go to', and I think it's working for me! I have already calibrated a few things, and the calibrations seem to make sense. Thanks heaps bro :)