Touch for Health
_
Touch for Health is a system of balancing life energy, posture, attitude and to relieve aches, pains and stress. It is a process to help you feel and function better, be more effective, clarify and achieve your goals and enjoy your life to the fullest! This system of natural health care combines muscle monitoring with the principles of Chinese medicine to assess energy and body function, applying a range of gentle, yet powerful healing techniques to improve health, well being and vitality. Simple yet powerful corrections are applied to create balance within the meridian system of the body - on all levels. Touch for Health addresses the structural, nutritional and emotional stresses common in our everyday life.
Perceiving the body as a multidimensional, wholistic creation makes Touch for Health an effective instrument in allowing people to explore and harmonize these dimensions.
The concept of the "Triangle of Health" (Fig. l) sums up this philosophy. This paradigm presents humans as existing, in addition to Spirit, in structural, chemical and mental/emotional dimensions.
When the triangle is equilateral, the sides are obviously in balance
and the person represented exists in a state of optimal life-force
and health. The truth is, no one ever quite achieves this perfection
as the body in its wonderfully adaptive way compensates and compromises in order to survive in this world of challenge.
Within the dictates of our genetic inheritance (nature), and the conditioning we have received (nurture), we emerge as unique creatures. This uniqueness, our humanness, complete with its
obvious imperfections maintains a balance or homeostasis that
reflects distortions in the triangle.
Touch for Health is a system of balancing life energy, posture, attitude and to relieve aches, pains and stress. It is a process to help you feel and function better, be more effective, clarify and achieve your goals and enjoy your life to the fullest! This system of natural health care combines muscle monitoring with the principles of Chinese medicine to assess energy and body function, applying a range of gentle, yet powerful healing techniques to improve health, well being and vitality. Simple yet powerful corrections are applied to create balance within the meridian system of the body - on all levels. Touch for Health addresses the structural, nutritional and emotional stresses common in our everyday life.
Perceiving the body as a multidimensional, wholistic creation makes Touch for Health an effective instrument in allowing people to explore and harmonize these dimensions.
The concept of the "Triangle of Health" (Fig. l) sums up this philosophy. This paradigm presents humans as existing, in addition to Spirit, in structural, chemical and mental/emotional dimensions.
When the triangle is equilateral, the sides are obviously in balance
and the person represented exists in a state of optimal life-force
and health. The truth is, no one ever quite achieves this perfection
as the body in its wonderfully adaptive way compensates and compromises in order to survive in this world of challenge.
Within the dictates of our genetic inheritance (nature), and the conditioning we have received (nurture), we emerge as unique creatures. This uniqueness, our humanness, complete with its
obvious imperfections maintains a balance or homeostasis that
reflects distortions in the triangle.
For instance, a triangle such as Fig. 2 shows that a deficit at the mental/emotional level adversely affects both biochemistry and structure. This scenario is only too common in our society.
The person depicted here is under excessive ongoing emotional stress which negatively influences biochemistry, chiefly by way of the nervous and endocrine systems which in turn further unbalances the psychological state and impacts negatively on the structure, leading mainly to tension of the skeletal muscles and smooth muscles of the vital organs.
This in turn, of course, pathologically influences the other two sides, and so on. The person exists in a balance or homeostasis, as we all do, but with an obviously distorted triangle giving rise to various signs and symptoms of dis-ease.
To many people, such scenarios are normal in that they have no medically diagnosed disease, yet they suffer at the "subclinical" level. Whether or not a person has a diagnosed condition is irrelevant, as kinesiology works toward balancing the non-physical energy - the blueprint - and not in treating the categorized symptoms of medically diagnosed disease which is the realm of the physician.
Touch for Health, in its simple non-invasive manner, influences directly all three sides of the triangle, enabling a homeostasis reflected by a triangle significantly closer to the equilateral.
During the development of Applied Kinesiology, Dr. Goodheart and associates adapted concepts of both Western and Eastern healing philosophies. They demonstrated that the body's energies may be addressed by harmonizing the acupuncture meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine through tactile stimulation of the reflex points of Chapman (Neurolymphatics) and Bennett (Neurovasculars) and by the acupuncture points themselves.
As a development based on this paradigm, Touch for Health enables people to "balance" the acupuncture meridians with a variety of simple and effective methods thereby directly addressing the non-physical blueprint in a subtle, noninvasive way.
The person depicted here is under excessive ongoing emotional stress which negatively influences biochemistry, chiefly by way of the nervous and endocrine systems which in turn further unbalances the psychological state and impacts negatively on the structure, leading mainly to tension of the skeletal muscles and smooth muscles of the vital organs.
This in turn, of course, pathologically influences the other two sides, and so on. The person exists in a balance or homeostasis, as we all do, but with an obviously distorted triangle giving rise to various signs and symptoms of dis-ease.
To many people, such scenarios are normal in that they have no medically diagnosed disease, yet they suffer at the "subclinical" level. Whether or not a person has a diagnosed condition is irrelevant, as kinesiology works toward balancing the non-physical energy - the blueprint - and not in treating the categorized symptoms of medically diagnosed disease which is the realm of the physician.
Touch for Health, in its simple non-invasive manner, influences directly all three sides of the triangle, enabling a homeostasis reflected by a triangle significantly closer to the equilateral.
During the development of Applied Kinesiology, Dr. Goodheart and associates adapted concepts of both Western and Eastern healing philosophies. They demonstrated that the body's energies may be addressed by harmonizing the acupuncture meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine through tactile stimulation of the reflex points of Chapman (Neurolymphatics) and Bennett (Neurovasculars) and by the acupuncture points themselves.
As a development based on this paradigm, Touch for Health enables people to "balance" the acupuncture meridians with a variety of simple and effective methods thereby directly addressing the non-physical blueprint in a subtle, noninvasive way.
It is this that has differentiated TFH from other forms of physical therapy. Physical therapy and various forms of massage focus directly on the hypertonic “tight” muscles that are in "spasm". At the energetic level, TFH addresses the imbalance that is within the hypotonic or "weak" muscles, thereby allowing the excessively shortened muscles to relax into an appropriate state of tonus.
This is clearly illustrated in the simple representation of two opposing muscles acting on a body part (Fig. 3). The shortened muscle pulls and holds the body part in its direction. If the energy of the opposing weak muscle is balanced, so too will be that of the over-energized muscle, allowing the structure to normalize.
This is clearly illustrated in the simple representation of two opposing muscles acting on a body part (Fig. 3). The shortened muscle pulls and holds the body part in its direction. If the energy of the opposing weak muscle is balanced, so too will be that of the over-energized muscle, allowing the structure to normalize.
Origins of Touch For Health
In the 1960’s a Detroit Chiropractor, Dr. George Goodheart, began combining acupuncture theory with a variety of western discoveries that involved touch reflexes and muscle testing. He discovered that there was a relationship not only between meridians and major organs but also muscles. He called his system Applied Kinesiology. Today it is taught exclusively to MD’s and Chiropractors.
One of Dr. Goodheart’s earliest students, Dr. John Thie, saw its potential and developed a simpler system for lay people. He called it Touch For Health (TFH). Dr. Thie’s goal was to empower anyone interested in self care to be able to use these simple techniques to help themselves, their family and friends. In 1970 Dr. Thie decided to make practical and effective methods of balancing the body's energy available to the non professional public.
Dr. Thie realized the merit in taking from AK some of the more basic techniques without the deep theoretical component, and teaching them to people from all walks of life. Since that time, literally millions of people on a global basis have benefited from Touch for Health and from the many professionally focused forms of Specialized Kinesiology that it has spawned.
People of today's world are better informed, compared with a generation ago when Touch for Health had its inception. We truly exist in the information age. For the average person, it is no longer a secret that the body exists as both a physical and non-physical entity; that we have an energetic "blue print" that directs the grosser manifestations of the body in its incredibly intricate workings.
Although so-called primitive cultures around the world have been aware of this concept for thousands of years, our Western society has, in some ways, been a victim of its own mechanistic scientific dogma influencing modern medicine to view the body in an almost totally anatomical and physiological way. Fortunately, this is now rapidly changing.
One of Dr. Goodheart’s earliest students, Dr. John Thie, saw its potential and developed a simpler system for lay people. He called it Touch For Health (TFH). Dr. Thie’s goal was to empower anyone interested in self care to be able to use these simple techniques to help themselves, their family and friends. In 1970 Dr. Thie decided to make practical and effective methods of balancing the body's energy available to the non professional public.
Dr. Thie realized the merit in taking from AK some of the more basic techniques without the deep theoretical component, and teaching them to people from all walks of life. Since that time, literally millions of people on a global basis have benefited from Touch for Health and from the many professionally focused forms of Specialized Kinesiology that it has spawned.
People of today's world are better informed, compared with a generation ago when Touch for Health had its inception. We truly exist in the information age. For the average person, it is no longer a secret that the body exists as both a physical and non-physical entity; that we have an energetic "blue print" that directs the grosser manifestations of the body in its incredibly intricate workings.
Although so-called primitive cultures around the world have been aware of this concept for thousands of years, our Western society has, in some ways, been a victim of its own mechanistic scientific dogma influencing modern medicine to view the body in an almost totally anatomical and physiological way. Fortunately, this is now rapidly changing.