by Amy B. Scher
For most of my healing journey, I was using my conscious mind to try to unravel my challenges, and I wasn’t getting very far at all. When I learned how to access my subconscious mind through the easy process of muscle testing, my healing increased tenfold.
The information I found in my subconscious mind was totally surprising, hugely helpful, and also a little bit crazy. Some of it made no logical sense and shocked me to the core. I soon learned, though, that the emotions are not logical. I never would have linked many of my challenges to the things that they were actually connected to, especially at first. But that was the good news. I suddenly had access to information I had never known about, worked on issues I had never been aware of, and subsequently got results I had never gotten. Now that I’ve been doing this for a long time, I think of muscle testing as training wheels on a bicycle. So many things come to me naturally now, but muscle testing was the first way I learned to tap into the body’s infinite wisdom. When I first learned muscle testing, I felt like I had just been given the equivalent of a never-ending ladder in a child’s board game. I’m about to give you that pass too.
The subconscious mind will do anything to protect us or do what it thinks is good for us, according to its rules or programming. In terms of neurological processing tasks, the subconscious mind is more than a million times more powerful than the conscious mind. It’s actually pretty awesome how the subconscious mind works because so much of our life is on autopilot. We don’t have to think about how to do mundane tasks or bodily functions. It’s not so awesome, though, if there are rules in your subconscious mind that strongly oppose everything your positive-thinking conscious mind is trying to attain—like your well-being. Let’s be honest. When you’re wrestling with something a million times more powerful than you, what will most likely win? In order to change the programming or rules we live and react from, we need to actually identify the rules first.
The Subconscious Mind Is Programmed
Scientists have discovered that the subconscious controls up to 95 percent of our lives. Only 5 percent of our memories and other data reside in the conscious mind, which leaves that giant 95 percent in charge. You see the predicament here. Our lives are basically being run by the subconscious mind, which is functioning using a set of rules that were created during early childhood. When you find out exactly what these rules in your subconscious mind are, you will see why you’ve been stuck for so long.
Getting answers from your subconscious mind is essential to your healing because you can’t change what you aren’t aware of. And, if you’re anything like I was or like many of my clients are, you aren’t aware of most of the things that desperately need to be changed so that you can heal.
For instance, you might feel like anger is causing a huge stress on your body and you might contribute your anger issues to, say, your mother. Oh, how we love to blame our mothers, right? However, that is your logical mind and its reasoning putting that together for you. Your mother issues might not be your mother issues at all, but with only your current knowledge, you could spend years working on them from that angle. In essence, you’d be chasing the wrong train and not have any clue. I often see clients who have been going to therapy for twenty years working on something like anger at their mother, only to find out later, through connecting to their subconscious mind, that their challenges are linked to something completely different, like a classmate in second grade who called them names. This is often surprising, but true! When they clear the energy imbalances connected to that, change happens.
While you may jump to connect your challenges to specific ex periences or ages, there is often no logical rhyme or reason for what might actually be connected. I often find that experiences will come up through muscle testing that my client has no conscious connection with. I do tend to see patterns of certain ages and experiences pop up for significant times in people’s lives, such as the start of school or a sibling being born. The actual experience may seem insignificant now, but a lot of how an experience affects us is connected to our capacity to handle it and process it at the specific age it happened.
I’ll show you what I mean in this example. When Emily came to me to clear the energy behind daily panic attacks, she told me she had always connected them with her parents’ divorce at age ten. However, as we worked with muscle testing, as you’ll learn to do shortly, we learned that this issue was actually tied to age three. The only thing she remembered happening at that time was that her uncle moved from across the street to a neighborhood about fifteen minutes away. Now, to our adult brains, that seems like no big deal, right? And Emily still saw her uncle very often. But at age three, it is huge if your best friend and a source of security is no longer a daily presence. Perhaps that was the original source of the panic that got retriggered later when her dad moved out of the house during her parents’ divorce. The original experience or event could be seemingly small in the larger scope of her life, but the age or time in her life was a big influencer in how it affected her.
Access Your Subconscious Mind with Muscle Testing
Let’s talk about how this testing works, and more importantly, how this can get you to your next level of healing.
There is just one basic concept you need to understand before I can teach you how to get answers from the subconscious mind. As you know now, the body has within it and surrounding it an electrical network or grid, which is pure energy. This encompasses the energetic interaction between our physical body and our subconscious mind. Our nervous system is like a very long antenna, picking up on energetic frequencies that directly affect our body—energies too subtle for even scientific instruments to measure. That electrical system, which is connected to your subconscious mind, responds to both positive and negative influences or energies. If anything impacts your electrical system that does not maintain or enhance your body’s balance (in other words, it doesn’t feel good to your body), your body’s energy flow will temporarily “short-circuit,” affecting the energy running through your muscles. Things that might have an impact on your electrical system are thoughts, emotions, foods, and other substances.
In order to find out what your subconscious mind and body are congruent with, or “agree” with, we can ask them questions directly. We’ll then decipher the answers depending on the response of your body’s muscles to those questions (hence the term muscle testing).
If we make a statement that your body and your subconscious resonate with, your electrical system will continue to flow and the circuits will remain strong, allowing your muscles to retain strength. If we make a statement that your subconscious mind considers false, your energy system will temporarily short-circuit and your body (muscles) will quickly react by weakening or locking up.
Each of those reactions will give us a way to read what your body is saying. It’s simply a really cool way we can ask your body questions and get clear answers—like a telephone to the subconscious mind.
Two Ways to Muscle-Test
The Standing Test (Muscle Testing)
One way of muscle testing that is typically easy for beginners to learn is called t he Standing Test . It works on the following basis. Your thoughts and emotions produce a certain response in your nervous system, which is connected to your brain, affecting your motor response (movement of your body). The unconscious part of you that isn’t relying on logic and rational thought will naturally be drawn to something it sees as positive or the truth, and will naturally be repelled by something that it doesn’t read as truthful for you.
If you ask questions when your body is in a relaxed but standing position (but still able to move without obstruction), you will involuntarily sway—either slightly backward or slightly forward—which will help you decipher if your body agrees with something you say or rejects it. Remember, words are really just energy.
If you have trouble standing, this can be done in a chair. Through this technique, we are essentially using the body as a pendulum.
To make sure your e
nergy is balanced, which is an important part of accurate muscle testing, you’re going to perform the Thymus Tap and Eye Tracing exercises from Chapter Four . This exercise will help ensure that your energy isn’t scrambled and can also be used as a quick energy-balancing tool.
Stand or sit up straight with your feet about shoulder-width apart, pointing directly forward. Ensure both feet are directly forward and neither is slightly turned in or out. Relax your body, with your hands down at your sides. Close your eyes if you are able to stand safely with your eyes closed. Take a big, deep breath.
Now you are ready to ask your body some questions. Your energy system will be picking up on the energy of what you are saying and reacting to the questions involuntarily.
First, you’re going to make sure you get an accurate base test. This is just to make sure your body is responding properly so you can trust the rest of the testing and know it’s accurate.
Say this statement out loud: Show me a yes. Your body should involuntary tip slightly forward, meaning “yes.” It is showing you that it’s in agreement or in resonance with what you are saying. Next, say this statement out loud: Show me a no. Your body should involuntary tip slightly backward, meaning “no.” It is showing you that it is rejecting or is repelled by what you’re saying.
Alternatively, you can do a base test using your name. Say this statement out loud: My name is _______. Your body should involuntary tip slightly forward, meaning “yes.” It is showing you that it’s in agreement or in resonance with what you are saying.
Next, say this statement out loud: My name is frog. Your body should involuntary tip slightly backward, meaning “no.” It is showing you that it is rejecting or is repelled by what you’re saying.
You might experience some personal variations to the standard forward or backward responses. For example, I have a few clients who kind of swing and lean to the left for “yes” and stay pretty neutral for “no.” We figured out this was just their body’s own variation and we embraced it. We get accurate answers now that we know exactly how their body gives us a yes or no. Be open to your own variations, too.
If you are getting the total opposite responses to what you should (meaning backward for “yes” and forward for “no), it is most likely because your energy is not balanced enough. Repeat the Thymus Tap and Eye Tracing exercises, take a few deep breaths, and relax. It would also be very beneficial to do a grounding exercise. Being too cerebral interferes with the process of letting your body respond naturally. You’ll get it. Just keep trying.
Let’s play around with this technique just a little bit more now so you can see how helpful it can be.
Say this statement out loud and notice your body’s response: It is 100 percent safe for me to heal. Alternatively, you can ask it in question form and notice your body’s response: Is it 100 percent safe for me to heal? The format you use to ask the question has no bearing on how your body responds, so choose whatever feels more natural to you—either a question or a statement.
Just relax and let your body either “sway” forward gently or sway backward gently, which is how it will answer you. This will happen without you consciously doing anything. Your only job is to relax enough to let it happen. If your body pulls slightly forward, your subconscious mind and body are essentially saying “yes,” meaning you are in alignment with that question or statement. You do, at a core level, believe it’s safe for you to heal. You agree with it at a subconscious level. That’s excellent.
If your body tips or pulls backward, moving away from the statement, your subconscious mind and body are saying “no,” it’s not safe for you to heal. Don’t be alarmed, though. That answer is actually the norm, and new information can help you. You’ll be learning how to clear this belief, along with lots of other beliefs that might be blocking you, later in Chapter Eight . We need your body to agree at a core level that it’s safe for you to heal, or your supersmart subconscious mind will do everything in its almighty power to keep you from healing.
When muscle testing, you need to relax, detach from the outcome or answer, and focus only on the question. Because your body will respond to the energy of thoughts, emotions, and more, you want to make sure you are focusing only on the issue you want answers about. It’s human nature to want to analyze and resist what doesn’t make sense, but if you can really let go and stay open, this tool will change your life.
Now let’s use this same testing for another purpose: to see how bringing a stressor to mind affects your energy system. Get in your muscle-testing position. Check to make sure your feet are pointing forward and then close your eyes. Think of something negative, such as the break-up of a relationship, a fight you had with someone, a fear you have, or a time when you were belittled by your boss. Notice if your body sways forward or backward.
Your body will most likely sway slightly backward, which means your electrical system has temporarily short-circuited because that energy is having a stressful or negative impact you.
Now think about what it would be like if that specific stressor was not only introduced into your energy field temporarily but was there all the time—a belief that convinces you that you are unsafe, or an experience from the past that you can’t seem to let go of. Your body would constantly be in a state where your energy flow is disrupted and affecting all your tissues, organs, and just the general function of that supercool body you have.
Can you see how, over time, if you don’t release these energetic imbalances or your reactions to these stressors, it could take a serious toll on you?
I consider muscle testing to be an energy-detection technique rather than an energy-healing technique, but it’s one that is unparalleled to anything else you’ll learn because it can give you endless clues as to which experiences, emotions, and beliefs to clear (which we’ll be digging into more in part three).
You should be aware that there are many muscle-testing techniques available out there to explore on your own. While the Standing Test is often the easiest to teach, it is important to know that there is much more you can learn on this topic.
The Arm Test (Muscle Testing)
I’m going to share one more muscle-testing method with you quickly. I call this the Arm Test . To start, stretch your non-dominant arm out in front of you as if you’re reaching for something. Now bend at the elbow so your forearm and hand are at a 45-degree angle. Your palm will be facing out. It will look like you are doing a lazy version of the “stand back” or “stay away from me” hand gesture. Next, take the pointer and middle fingers of your dominant hand and place them just behind the wrist bone (toward the elbow) on your other arm.
Exactly as you did with the Standing Test, you’re going to formulate “yes” or “no” statements or ask your body “yes” or “no” questions. After you make the statement or ask the question, you’ll use your two fingers to press against the other arm, right behind the wrist (toward the elbow). You want to use only about two pounds of pressure here (this would be considered a light to medium pressure). Allow your non-dominant arm to resist slightly without fighting. When you press with your two fingers, after verbalizing the question or statement, you’re going to gauge your body’s response to figure out what answer your subconscious is giving you.
When we did the Standing Test, tipping forward was your body’s “yes” response and tipping backward was your body’s “no.” With the Arm Test, your body is saying “yes” or “I’m in resonance” with the question or statement when your arm has no problem resisting the gentle pressure of those two fingers (your arm stays strong). This means that you do not feel any “give” in the arm. If your arm feels like it loses a bit of strength and wants to give way under the pressure, your muscle is temporarily short-circuiting, like we talked about at the beginning of this chapter. Your body is saying “no” or “I’m not in resonance” with the question or statement.
Muscle testing is not a fight between your two arms. You are simply noticing if your non-dominant arm weakens with
the slight pressure from your two fingers. The key is not to make your non-dominant arm too rigid and not to press too hard or lightly with your two fingers. It’s like getting the flame on a gas stove just right. You’ll find the sweet spot that works for you.
If you have trouble performing the Standing Test and the Arm Test, even after lots of practice, I encourage you to discover and learn other self-testing techniques until you find a fit for you. I can’t stress enough the value of this technique. I almost gave up on it out of frustration when I couldn’t get the hang of it at first, which would have caused a delay in my healing.
The following examples will give you a sneak peek of the types of blocks that you’ll be able to detect for yourself with muscle testing. I’ll be walking you through exactly how to do this for yourself in part three, but for now, I just want to give you a quick glimpse into the world you are going to open up to.
Muscle-Testing Example Stories
Tim came to me for help with severe eczema. He itched constantly and had no idea why. He had been to psychotherapists, dermatologists, acupuncturists, and more. As always, I suspected there was an emotional component to this itching. I taught Tim the basics of muscle testing and walked him through several questions.
First, I had Tim ask his body through muscle testing if it believed the itching was beneficial for him in some way. I was testing to see if his body saw this problem as a benefit to him in some way, which is very common. I knew that until we cleared that belief, it would be difficult to clear the itching. We got a “yes” response. I then thought of beliefs, or reasons, his body might have for not wanting to let this go. We asked his body in first person, “Do I need the itching as a distraction from something scary?” Tim’s body signaled a “yes.” We knew we were on the right track.