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Get Answers from
the Subconscious Mind
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
—commonly attributed to albert einstein
What is keeping me from feeling calm? Why can’t I get better? How come this person triggers me with every little word they speak? Why do I sabotage all my efforts to help myself ? What is it that makes me so overwhelmed with life? What is contributing to this illness or challenge?
If you recognize any of these questions, you already have the answers; you just haven’t been able to access them yet. There is an entire separate part of your being that’s really in control of your life—and that’s your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is like a human computer, recording everything that has happened in our lives. This includes programming we receive as children, through memories, messages, perceptions, and experiences. Our subconscious mind then makes “rules” to live by based on that data or programming. The subconscious mind is basically, in kid terms, the boss of us!
In this chapter, you’ll learn about the programming of the subconscious mind, the importance of tapping into that programming in order to heal, and exactly how to do that using a technique called muscle testing (sometimes called energy testing or applied kinesiology).
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 experiences 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 the 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 energy 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.
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.
As you’ll discover in the next chapter, itching is often the body’s message for someone or something “getting under your skin.” In order to try to find out what or who it was, I asked, “Is this itching linked to a specific age?” Again, it was a “yes.” Next, we started testing ages, breaking them down into 20-year periods (ages 0–20, ages 20–40, etc.), knowing his body had the recording of exactly when this energy imbalance began in his system. “Is this itching linked to an age between ages 0–20?” His body let us know the answer was “no.” “Is this itching linked to ages 20–40?” We got a “yes” and narrowed it down to the exact age by breaking it down to 10 years, 5 years, then individual years. His body told us through muscle testing that the itching was linked to age 32.
Tim and I talked about what had happened that year and came up with a few ideas. We had an idea of which one was linked to the itching, but suspended judgment. Tim had been working on this issue for quite some time, and I reminded him of the importance of being open to the option that made the least sense, just in case it actually was tied to this. And guess what? It was. Through muscle testing, his body confirmed that the itching was somehow linked to getting fired at age 32.
Here are the questions we asked his body to get to this conclusion. There is no specific formula for what to ask. We were just asking questions that we were wondering about and knew his body would have the answer to. “Is this eczema linked to a family member?” We got a “no.” We pressed on: “Is this eczema connected to a past romantic relationship?” Again, a “no.” Finally we asked, “Is this eczema linked to career?” We got our “yes.” Then we asked, “Is it linked to getting fired from the job?” We got another “yes.” This surprised Tim because he’d had a terrible relationship break-up at age 32, but apparently his body had discharged that old energy from his system. Realizing Tim was still allowing that experience to “get under his skin” (he felt he had been fired unfairly), we worked on clearing it using techniques you will be learning in Chapter Seven.
Tim saw great improvement in the itching in just the first few weeks and continued to improve from there. While there is typically not just one thing contributing to an ongoing problem, you can use this system of asking questions and narrowing down options to clear away all of the layers that might be linked to the challenge or ailment.
In this next session example, I helped a client identify a belief that was acting as a healing block. Ellen was having a very hard time with her self-esteem, which was causing a constant state of stress that was most likely exacerbating her physical symptoms and interfering with her healing process. When we talked about her challenges and the negative self-talk she struggled with, she said sadly, “I know what belief is causing all of this. It always comes down to me not feeling good enough.” Instantly we had something to work with.
Here are the questions we had Ellen ask her body: “Is my belief that I’m not good enough related to a specific person?” When we got a “yes” from her body, we continued. “Is it related to Mom?” We got a “no” answer. “Is it related to Dad?” We got a “yes” answer and made a note of it. “Is this belief related to a specific experience from my past?” Through these questions, we were able to gain enough information and insight that Ellen’s intuition kicked in and suddenly an idea popped into her head. We double-checked it with her body, asking, “Is the feeling that I’m not good enough linked to Dad yelling at me for not getting an A on Ms. Black’s spelling test?” Yep, there it was—the place where it all had started.
We were excited to have found such an important event that we could then clear for Ellen. We continued on over several sessions, clearing many similar unprocessed experiences being stored in her body, always playing on the “not good enough” belief—all by asking questions that led us to exactly what was contributing to her low self-esteem.
We then used the process you’ll learn in Chapter Eight for clearing harmful beliefs, such as Ellen’s “I’m not good enough.” That was the beginning of shifting this pattern for her.
In both of these examples, we were simply asking questions that we might already have been thinking or wondering about. We allowed our curiosity to lead us. We were just putting the questions into a clear, concise format in which we could ask the body.
Tips for Your Muscle-Testing Practice
Here are some questions you can ask to get some more practice identifying blockages. We are going to cover all of these types of blocks in depth soon, but for now, it’s a very curious process to play with. You’ll be able to clear the blocks later. So if you come up with any insightful answers, make sure to write them down.
• Is there energy from a specific age in my life that is suppressing my immune system?
• Is there a specific experience from my past causing a stress response in my body?
• Is there a specific organ or gland in my body that is storing unhealthy emotional energy?
Remember, if you pull forward using the Standing Test or your arm stays strong using the Arm Test, all your body is saying is “yes, this is true for me.” If that’s not working for you, there is no need to panic. We’ll be changing things in the next chapter.
Because I had such a difficult time muscle testing at first, I quickly learned all the tricks to make it as accurate as possible. Here are some ideas for you:
• Make statements or ask questions using only affirmative language. This means if you are trying to find out if you believe deep down that you can heal, you’d use the statement “I can heal” and see how your body responds, instead of using “I can’t heal.” It is confusing to the body to use negatives in this way while muscle testing. Another example is using the statement “My liver is functioning properly” instead of “My liver isn’t functioning properly.”
• Make sure you’re hydrated. Electricity requires water, and if you’re dehydrated, your electrical system won’t be working the way it should, making it difficult to get answers.
• Relax. Relax your body and your mind. Know that any answers you receive will only work toward helping you. There is nothing to be afraid of. I have never uncovered something scary during a session, and neither have my clients. You may have trouble testing if you are feeling doubtful, overthinking, or analyzing the process. I can’t emphasize enough just how important it is to let go during this process.
• Ask very clear, concise, and literal questions. The subconscious mind and the body will not interpret questions or statements for their meaning. Use only words that can have only one meaning. For example, it’s clearer to ask something like “Is there a specific experience from my past that is preventing me from healing?” rather than “Did something happen to me that’s stopping my healing?” The first question is very clear and clean, giving the subconscious mind and the body no reason to be confused in their response.
• Ask questions in different ways. Be creative. Nine times out of ten, altering or clarifying a question will yield a clearer answer. I believe, in part, that sometimes the body won’t respond if we’re not on the right track or our questions need to be tweaked slightly. Try to incorporate the following words into your questions: component, connected to, related to, triggered by/triggering, harmful, contributing to/contributing, and causing/cause. These are all words that are clear and have no dual meanings. Here are some examples: “Is this back pain connected to a current relationship?” “Is the primary cause of this back pain a belief ?” “Is there a person in my life triggering an experience from my past?” (Note: “Triggering” is my favorite phrase to use during muscle testing because it helps us to acknowledge that the present issue may not necessarily be the “real” issue, but rather that something from our past is getting activated by whatever is currently going on in our lives. This means we are getting a two-for-one clearing! We get to release the past and also improve the current issue at hand.)
• Make sure to take a deep breath and pause in between questions to allow your body and brain to recalibrate. Going too fast will cause a sensory overload and your system will freeze up, yielding confusing answers.
• A quick fix, if muscle testing doesn’t seem to be working, is to press the fingers of one hand into your bellybutton (this can be over your clothes). Hold them there while you test. This often corrects an energetic flow issue in the body that can make muscle testing difficult.
• Ask the questions slowly and take a few seconds’ break in between questions so you don’t overload your body. And do not keep repeat-testing the same question. This will overload your circuits and cause your testing to be less accurate. Just learn to trust the answer you get.
• Cautions: Do not use this testing technique to try to predict the future, win the lottery, make major life decisions based on your answer alone, or test yourself for medical diagnoses. None of the answers will be accurate—I and many other very proficient muscle testers can tell you that from experience! Generally speaking, the more attached you are to the answer, the less accurate the testing might be. We are simply using this as a tool to see what our bodies resonate with so we can change anything no longer serving us. Also, move away from electronics (remove your cell phone from your pocket if it’s on your body, or move away from your computer). They can interfere with your body’s energetic flow.
Again, you’ll have lots of opportunities coming up to practice this new skill. I teach it to all new clients, and while most are uncomfortable and untrusting at first, they are eventually glad I made them work through it. You don’t need to employ muscle testing to use the healing approach in this book, but it will very likely open you up to brand-new things that would be much harder to access without it.
Tip: Throughout this book, I teach you how to clear certain types of imbalances with specific techniques. That’s the most effective way to learn. But the truth is that almost any technique can clear almost any challenge. The techniques are widely interchangeable and flexible. Once you’ve gone through this whole book and understand all the concepts and techniques, you will be able to use your muscle testing to determine which techniques are most beneficial for you in various circumstances. I will teach you how to do this in Chapter Eleven.
You now understand the basics of muscle testing. In part three, I will guide you through using muscle testing to help you find and clear emotional energies that are getting in your way. Learning to understand your body’s language is a very different but truly effective way to gain even more knowledge. We’re going to dig into that in the next chapter. You’ll then be able to use both muscle testing and reading your body’s language as a powerful combination to gain more insight for your healing.