By John Diamond, M.D.

        I wrote these comments on Applied Kinesiology back in 1975, some two years after meeting and studying with George Goodheart, D.C., the humanitarian healing genius.

        I was honored – and still am – that some years later he chose my remarks as the introduction to his You’ll Be Better: The Story of Applied Kinesiology,[1] a major general overall introduction to his work. Unfortunately incomplete, for he was ever-evolving.

        George, I think of you every day, and thank you for all I learned of healing – and of life.

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FOREWORD

        Applied Kinesiology may turn out to be the most therapeutic advance of this century! It has already revolutionized many practices including my own. I would venture to say that in the next few years it is going to cause tremendous changes in all branches of the healing professions open to change and improvement.

        Applied Kinesiology's major advance is that it allows the body to “tell” us what needs to be done. The body becomes our chief diagnostic and therapeutic tool in this system where we ask the body the questions and the body gives us the answers. How obvious and natural this approach seems; yet, how far we have strayed. Let us recall that the basic premise of all healing is that the body's innate wisdom knows what is wrong and that we as nature's helpers need only ask the appropriate questions to find out the nature of the imbalance, and then by giving the appropriate treatment witness the body's response as if to say, “Yes, that's what is needed. Thank you.”

        Applied Kinesiology is also a revolutionary approach to healing because it is showing us that we don't have to rely solely on the use of pharmaceutical chemicals to treat patients, nor on massive invasive techniques. The methodology opens up a more natural, simple, non-destructive, painless, prohomeostatic treatment procedure. Here we have a system where the doctor works with the patient and with the patient's energies, and where the patient shares fully in the treatment and adopts a far greater attitude of responsibility towards his illness and recovery than is commonly witnessed in medical practice today.

        With an Applied Kinesiology approach the day is perhaps gone where the patient submits to a doctor saying: “I, in my wisdom, know what is wrong with you and how to treat you.” We are coming to appreciate that for those of us willing to ask, the patient can show us the therapeutic path to follow. Out of Applied Kinesiology flows a renewed reverence and respect for the person, for the human body and its mind and soul of the sort which is poorly sustained in the present-day orthodox medicine so geared to volume treatment using standardized drugs with but little concern for the patient's individuality. Applied Kinesiology promises to restore the “soul” and “heart” to what has become the cold and inhuman practice of much of today's orthodox medicine.

Dentistry

        Applied Kinesiology offers dentistry the strongest holistic arguments for the practice of this medical specialty; for, it alone is able to show the wide-ranging effect on the total mind and body of minute changes within the oral cavity. Many dentists today use Applied Kinesiology in their practices accompanied by a complete reevaluation and reunderstanding of their role in the patient's overall health and well-being.

Psychiatry

        Applied Kinesiology can do much to revolutionize the practice of psychiatry. No longer need the psychiatrist become burdened by the daily bombardment of the sorrows of his patients; for, he may now take a more active role employing the methodology of Applied Kinesiology. Having been a psychiatrist for some 15 years I speak from personal experience. No longer am I depressed or weighed down by the sufferings of my patients; for, I now treat them with hope as I work with them physically as well as psychologically in a way that has been proven much more effective, quicker and more gratifying than ever before.

Nutritional Therapeutics

        Applied Kinesiology has at last made more sense of nutrition. It enables the body to communicate what nutritional supplements are required. We are no longer left guessing in the dark so much or referring to this authority or that authority in an age where so little is really known about nutritional science. When the body itself becomes the determiner of treatment the results are most gratifying!

Preventive Medicine

        If one is not practicing Applied Kinesiology, then I feel one is not fully practicing preventive medicine, because only Applied Kinesiology enables us to diagnose and treat accurately and thoroughly before major biochemical and pathological changes have developed in the organism.

Other Fields

        The range of divergent areas in which Applied Kinesiology has already been able to shed new light ranges from schizophrenia to acupuncture; from new light on psychosomatic medicine to a new appreciation of the effects of music, and so forth. It seems also to be an incredible research tool in addition to qualifying as a powerful therapeutic modality. This burgeoning new healing art is also opening up numerous other areas of knowledge, e.g., to do with language and the effects of speech and gesture and biological sounds on the body in ways that are begging for exploration. The field of research seems infinite to me at this time. It would seem that anything that has a mental or physical effect on the human body can now be explored through the responses of the human employing Applied Kinesiology. It has led to the evolution in my own research and practice of the new discipline known as “Behavioral Kinesiology,” in which I have attempted to integrate Applied Kinesiology, psychiatry, and preventive medicine in order to achieve a higher synthesis.

Conclusion 

        In conclusion, there are a million discoveries still to be made on the human body, and I find that every day of Applied Kinesiology practice is full of excitement and challenge for me as new discoveries are made and as patients are helped in ways that we never thought possible even a month ago. I urge my readers to give this exciting and promising new healing art serious consideration.

John Diamond, M.D.

By John Diamond, M.D.
Excerpted from The Muse and the Ego

Ethics is the study of morality, and “the general study of goodness and the general study of right action constitute the main business of ethics.” It is my firm and passionate belief that each and all of us can always act rightly, out of “goodness,” for we all are inherently “good” – we all are Gods, we all are Buddhas, we all are Perfection. Our most basic drive is Love, but we also have the capacity to harm and kill in life-threatening situations. This has been essential for our survival throughout our evolution.

“Badness” is nothing more than the inappropriate employment of this defense mechanism. And it is activated by what I call ego-misprocessing: we believe, but wrongly, that our lives are threatened and then act accordingly.

If we did not misprocess the incoming information, we would always be “good,” we would always act ethically in accord with the God within, the Muse of Love. No one wants to be “bad.” Through misprocessing what is “bad” seems to him to be “good.” Misprocessing, and thus the "badness" that stems from it, is in a sense an illness, and "goodness" will prevail when the "illness" is overcome.

The cause invariably goes back to birth, and even before. Especially to the uncorrected bodily distortions created by the birthing process. These distortions lead to mental distortions, to misprocessing. Faulty body usage and faulty mental usage are one and the same.

Then superimposed on this are all the myriad psychological and physiological traumas of living; faulty nutrition, environmental assaults, and so on, and so on – all of them. The more these are controlled and overcome, the more Man is revealed as he really is – ethical. And only when ethical can he love, and worship.

My writing creativity was destroyed when I was eleven years old. My father had enrolled me at the same small grammar school where he had been a pupil, and where he became a "dux," which is a top honors student. The headmaster and teacher was the same man who had taught my father, but who was now, of course, quite elderly. He was highly respected for the outstanding academic achievement of his students. Every year, from his small school, more achievement of his students, and more scholarships to the major secondary schools were obtained than from any of the larger primary schools. He was an amazing man. He conducted three classes simultaneously. Each class had twenty students, and we were in three blocks of desks in one long room. He was able to teach each class in rotation. It was quite an extraordinary performance.

But he was also a very cruel man. He always wore a tightly-buttoned waistcoat and was a very short man with a very determined walk. What I remember about his facial features now is the same as impressed me then, and that was the prominence of his lower canine teeth.

Every morning we waited outside the school for him to arrive. We would watch him as he walked across the park and with his pocket knife cut off a series of branches from a palm tree to be used as his punishment sticks for the day. Regularly after morning assembly and at the morning break, and usually after lunch and any other time that he felt it was required, punishment would be inflicted. This was usually what he called "six cuts"—three to each hand. The boys would stand before him with their arms outstretched and their palms out. He was shorter than most of the senior boys, and he would jump to get extra height so he would be able to bear down forcefully with the stick as he would "cut" them. This punishment spectacle became a regular part of our school experience. Some of us, like me, were extremely frightened of it. Others seemed to take it as a test of manhood and seemed almost to encourage him in his attempts to "cut" them. He ruled by fear, never by love; and taught by fear, never by love.

For some reason he always seemed to be worse on Fridays. One Friday a number of the boys purchased some glass tubing from the local pharmacy and were using it as pea-shooters. This really incensed him, and after the lunch break he lined up all the offenders in front of the class at the large flat oak table in the middle of the room, and put all the glass tubing on the table and proceeded to smash it into slivers using one of the sticks. And he then proceeded to give each of the students "six cuts" with that stick. And this time they were literally cuts because pieces of glass were embedded in the stick. They all had bleeding cuts on their hands and obviously were in great pain. They spent the remainder of the afternoon with their handkerchiefs wrapped around their hands and were unable to write.

The following Monday we were assigned to write an essay composition describing a view. This was to be written at home and brought in on Thursday for correction by him on Thursday night. The results would be announced on Friday. I remember extremely well my composing that piece, and in fact I can clearly see myself sitting at my little study desk writing it, and I can very clearly re-create exactly the feeling that I had at that time. It was a feeling that I had never had before in my life.

We had been assigned to write a composition on a country scene. And when I wrote it, I was in that country scene. I could hear everything around me, smell it, and see it all so vividly. It was all real. I was totally one with what I was writing. Before I knew what I had done, I had written three pages. It seemed to flow straight from my fountain pen. The experience was new and very, very exciting. I can still bring up the scene, which was an imaginary scene, in my mind today as I saw it in my mind then. I knew I had done something wonderful and exciting, and I was awed by the experience. I was also very proud of it, and I read it out to my family, a rare event for me. They all complimented me on it (which of course they would have done regardless of its quality) and I knew that something very special had happened to me.

On Friday after lunch, usually the headmaster's worst time, he returned all the corrected essays and announced the marks—all except mine. I thought that he was holding mine back until last because, like me, he was so pleased with it. And at the end, when he had announced all the other fifty-nine results and passed comment on each of them, he called me up to the front of the class. I thought that he was going to shake my hand or reward me in some way. Instead he turned on me and grabbed me and shouted out, "Where have you stolen this from?" I could not believe what I was hearing, and I mumbled that I hadn't stolen it, I had composed it myself. He said, "It's too good for you. You have stolen it from some book. Which book is it?" I could not believe what was happening. I was totally surprised. Instead of receiving congratulations I was being attacked. This was not what I had expected; this was not what I deserved. I could not believe it. The man that I trusted was accusing me of something completely untrue.

He then pushed me forcefully into a chair (and he was smaller than I) which he had pulled up at the oak desk. He put a piece of paper down in front of me at the same place where at the same time the week before he had laid all the glass tubing when he smashed them to pieces. He said to me in a very sarcastic, mocking tone of voice that if it was really my own work, then I should be able to reproduce it all from memory.

So in front of fifty-nine students, at his punishment desk, with him standing beside me and forcefully rapping his cane on the table just inches from me, I had to re-create on demand. I did the best I could. He pulled it from me and compared it with the original, and he was then convinced that I had indeed written it, as they tallied. He rolled up the second version and threw it into the corner. In a large scrawl he wrote "95%" over my essay. He spat out, "Nobody's perfect, and no one is getting 100% from me!" And then he said, "You say in the description that you can hear the bees buzzing, but from your viewpoint you are obviously too far away to hear them. Therefore I am not going to give you 100%."[1]

That was the last time I ever wrote freely and creatively. The transcendent experience was gone, destroyed by this envious school teacher. I tried to retaliate in my own way, but it was a complete failure. For the next composition we were assigned, I chose as the central character a vicious, destructive, punishing German whom I called "Kerr Von." It was a play on German brutality, (this was just after the war) and also a play on "cur"—because I was impressed with his doglike teeth. But it failed. He was not hurt, and he probably did not even understand what I had written. Nor did it overcome my feelings of having been destroyed. My writing creativity was extinguished then and there. That is the devilish power of envy.

All during secondary school, as previously, I loved literature, but I never again tried to write. The feeling that could have transformed my whole life was gone. Through all my years in medical training, that sort of feeling was never encouraged, as the writing that we did was what is called "scientific" writing. There was no feeling of passion of the evoking of emotion, or of being at one with what you were writing about. It was cold and detached, like the organs of a post-mortem subject being weighed on the scales in the autopsy room. It was not possible to have that transcendent feeling again.

After I graduated, whenever I wrote I was unable to re-create this feeling. But it was not called for, as my scientific papers had to follow a predetermined format. I was continually told by editors and committees that I could not write. But just like with my school teacher there was something else involved. For example, I presented a paper at a meeting of our College of Psychiatrists on a completely new way as looking at patients' communication. The key note speaker was a world-renowned professor of psychiatry from the United States. He commented most enthusiastically on the originality and merit of my paper, which received a very warm reception and standing ovation when it was delivered. I then had the task of sitting down and re-writing it in a "scientific" way so that it would be accepted by the editor of the journal of the college. But the paper was rejected on the grounds that it was "dangerously speculative." One member of the journal's review committee thanked me for how much he had learned by reading the paper and then said he regretted that it could not be published. The work was original, it was creative, and it was probably valid, at least it has remained so on repeated testing for the last twenty years. Yet my own college rejected it, or rather the editor of the college journal did. Another headmaster?

At that time I discussed the problem with a very wise old psychiatrist who had written a number of books. He advised, "You should do like me. Don't be concerned about your professional colleagues, because they don't want to know the truth. And they don't want you to write with feeling. Write for the layman. They are the people who matter. They are the people who will change the doctor when the doctor will not change by himself. And when you write for the layman you can forget about the narrow confines of peer review and write from the heart, write what you believe." And that is what I try to do now. Whenever I write now I try to re-create that feeling I had when I wrote the description of that scene when I was eleven years old. I try to be as creative as I can. Sometimes it is successful. Many times it is not. But at least I know that what I am writing is my true feeling. I am writing from the heart, writing with what I believe is passion.

We were always told how wonderful it was that the Lancet published Krebs' revolutionary paper on the citric acid cycle after it had been turned down by the British Medical Journal. But how many thousands of other creative papers have been turned down, denied the readership they deserved, because of the envy in the judgment of one's so-called peers? It is envy that destroys creativity, as that headmaster destroyed mine for so many years.

What I write now may not stand the test of time. You may not like it. But it is written from the heart. When one writes from the heart there should be passion in what one writes; a deep concern. And this frightens an editor. Passionate concern does not survive in the stainless steel and white tile of a hospital of a post-mortem room or in the sterility of most editorial offices. I would like to think that I have finally overcome the near-fatal attack on my expressive creativity inflicted by the schoolmaster. I suppose time will tell.

What can we learn from this? What basically matters is that what is written is creative. Then see if it meets the criteria of what we call "right" or "wrong" or fact or fiction. My evocation of that country scene was creative. Whether I could hear the bees was not the point. If there is true creativity, unstressed dual-hemisphere activity, then the writer and perhaps the reader will gain by it. Collections of facts are of course important, but we must also nurture that creative leap beyond the "norm"—and thus perhaps encourage a major breakthrough in the understanding of the human condition and its treatment.

[1] I am here reminded of a manuscript of mine which was recently rejected by a publisher. The final criticism was that I had quoted Meister Eckhart when I should have realized that Meister Eckhart was merely paraphrasing St. John and thus I should have quoted St. John. I am reminded, too, of the time some years after the grammar school incident when I wrote at secondary school that Abraham Lincoln was a very humane being. The work was returned with the "e" deleted.

John Diamond, M.D.

Just what do we mean by “holistic”? More and more holistic health centers are springing up around the country, and they proudly announce that they offer professional work in many different areas – yoga, meditation, biofeedback, reflexology, nutritional counseling, patterned exercises, relaxation therapy, massage, acupressure and so on. But simply offering all these forms of therapy does not necessarily make a clinic holistic.

“Holistic” in our framework encompasses the way you treat the person. It is your attitude toward the patient, the manner in which you assess all factors influencing him – spiritual, mental and physical, as he goes through his daily life. This can be done by one person or by a team of professionals and para professionals. But when it is done by a team, the team should know what each member is doing with an individual patient. The person should not be fragmented.

We are delighted to see holistic medicine and holistic therapy on the upsurge. But do not be discouraged if your practice does not boast a large staff offering many different aspects of holistic therapy. With your attitude toward the individual, and the goal of enhancing the Life Energy and creativity within him, you might surprise yourself at just how “holistic” you can be!

By John Diamond, M.D.

I went to sleep last night thinking about Metanoia and had this dream.

I was in a far northern country and it was a bleak midwinter. I stood in the back yard of a house and commented to the local inhabitant on how totally dark and black it was. He reassured me that in a moment it would all change. We went inside and walked through a passageway to the front of the house. I opened the front door and we stepped outside into full brilliant glorious sunshine.

That is Metanoia, it can be as quick as that. The preparation may take a long time, the act is instantaneous.

I used to have the privilege of studying with two highly gifted spiritual healers. Many, many times I watched them work with a woman partially crippled with polio, and one day I saw the woman walking—a very obvious great improvement. How long did it take to make the change, I asked them? They replied that it took only a second—but eighteen months of preparation.

By John Diamond, M.D.
Excerpted from Path of a Doctor

Over the years I have made quite a number of psychological discoveries. Whether they are valid or important is not relevant for the moment, although I do believe that the system of testing that I have developed gives us the deepest and, at the same time, the most direct access to the unconscious. As a result of this method I have found a great many "problems" - specific meridian-related negativities that interfere with the flow of Life Energy. Some of these findings relate directly to the psychoanalytical literature, some seem to go beyond it, and a very few are at variance with it. I have accumulated quite a large storehouse of knowledge, or at least what I hope is knowledge. It now fills many filing cabinets and the sheer volume renders it almost impossible for it ever to be published.

There is so much, yet helpful as it may be in one sense, it is of but the most limited value. Therapists ask me for the information that I have not yet published and it is difficult for me to oblige them. I do not know which bits to give them and I cannot possibly give them all. Or they want me to teach them how to do the testing more accurately. The testing is deceptively simple and thus requires a great deal of training. Obviously, I try to give this when I can. But ultimately, the myriad research findings, the test procedures, the test patterns, the affirmations, and the muscle testing itself are not really essential except for research and for the most difficult cases.

I have come to the happy realization that the vast majority of my research findings are unnecessary, although I had to find every one of them in order to reach this conclusion. I had to find all of these problems to come to the ultimate answer, Cantillation, the belief in the constant, never-ending, never-changing love of the Mother, of God. All the research, all the testing comes to that. This is all we need to know.

The cantillatory state triumphs over all problems. I needed to find those problems in order to find the solution, but do you? I could not, or would not, accept the teachings of the great cantillators such as Shinran, Nagarjuna, and all the others. If you can, then you do not need my help. If you cannot, then perhaps I can help you to accept them openly and gratefully as I now try to do. And I hope you can do that without having to go through the long process that I went through to get this far. You only need to openly accept their teachings. It really is that simple.

Therapy is helping the students to find the pulse of life, the wellspring of Life Energy and love, the fountain of healing. To be able to help them do this, the therapist must himself feel the pulse and love it, and want them to welcome it as he does. The ultimate help that he can give is to assist the person in finding his Cantillation, to encourage him to experience it and then to generalize it into all aspects of his daily life. That is all and that is everything.

My old psychiatry teacher used to define psychotherapy in the following way: "We all stumble through life as best we can. The mark of a good therapist is that he stumbles a little less than others and can help those who stumble a little more." I would like to take it farther than that and say that the truly healing therapist is he for whom the act of therapy is his Cantillation, and through it he encourages and inspires others to achieve their Cantillation.

(Excerpted from The International Journal of Applied Kinesiology and Kinesiologic Medicine, Volume 12, Winter 2001-2002)
John Diamond, M.D., D.P.M, F.R.A.N.Z.C.P., M.R.C. Psych., F.I.A.P.M., D.I.B.A.K.

Dr. John Diamond is a pioneering figure in alternative and holistic medicine. His development of Life-Energy Analysis in the 1970’s (originally called Behavioral Kinesiology) and his discovery of the link between the meridians and the emotions, are just two examples of a remarkable body of work embracing a wide range of disciplines, the result of over forty years of research and clinical practice. He began his career in psychiatry but expanded from there into holistic medicine with an emphasis on looking at the totality of the sufferer. This led him to develop an individual method of healing with a unique spiritual and eclectic approach. Today he practices as a Holistic Consultant and blends his experience in medicine, psychiatry, complementary medicine, the humanities, holism, applied kinesiology, acupuncture theory, and the arts, especially music, to help people overcome problems relating to body, mind and spirit.

Dr. Diamond graduated from Sydney University Medical School in 1957, receiving the psychiatry prize, and was awarded his Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1962 from Melbourne University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, a Foundation Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK), a Member of the American Holistic Medical Association, and is a Fellow and past President of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine (USA). He is a Member of the International Society of the Study of Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine, the International Arts-Medicine Association, The Society for the Arts in Healthcare, the American Holistic Health Association, and the American Physicians’ Poetry Association. He has held numerous senior clinical and university teaching appointments in clinical psychiatry, the basic sciences and the humanities, has lectured extensively throughout the world and is a widely recognized author of many best-selling books based upon his work in health and healing.

Dr. Diamond was the first medical doctor trained in AK to become a Diplomate of the International Board of Applied Kinesiology (1976) and he is the only doctor trained in AK to have studied personally with Dr. Florence Kendall, publisher of the muscle testing book that first inspired Dr. George Goodheart.

Over the course of his long career in the healing and creative arts, Dr. Diamond has undertaken a significant amount of research into many healing modalities, which form the basis of his understanding of, and unique approach to, the nature of disease. At the basis of his method is the recognition that there is within each of us a great healing force, Life Energy. Under different names, Life Energy has been recognized by various cultures including the Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiians as well as by scholars including Hippocrates and Paracelsus. For example, acupuncture is based upon the same premise that Life Energy flows along pathways or meridians in the human body and that blockages along these pathways, which can come from a physical, emotional or spiritual problem, result in illness.

Since founding Life-Energy Analysis in the 1970’s, Dr. Diamond has spent over twenty-five years working with the emotions and meridians, refining the role the unconscious plays in disease – both mental and physical. He has delineated the major positive and negative emotions associated with each acupuncture meridian, thus establishing the foundation for psychosomatic medicine – the acupuncture system as the communicating link between the emotions and the organs and muscles. Every disease, every bodily imbalance, every muscle problem – and even every gesture – will have an emotional component which can now be accurately determined by its mediation through the meridian system. This approach has opened up many new lines of treatment.

Although there are many different modalities which can be used to actuate the Life Energy including herbs, nutrition, minerals, homoeopathy, massage, chiropractic, osteopathy, and others, Dr. Diamond has found that one of the most effective means of raising the Life Energy is through the practice of the high creative arts, particularly music. “For years,” Dr. Diamond explains, “I have used many forms of music, including jazz, classical and folk to help identify each person’s individual and highly personal harmony.” He believes that music, performed in the right way, is highly therapeutic, and that each person has his or her own individual “song of the soul.” Dr. Diamond has founded The Institute for Music and Health to train those interested in learning how to use the arts as a therapeutic modality.

The following is taken from The Work of John Diamond, M.D. and Applied Kinesiology, printed with permission © John Diamond, M.D., 2001

I first became aware of Dr. Goodheart’s work, Applied Kinesiology, back in 1973 after I had already been practicing as a psychiatrist for many years. From the very beginning, I was interested in the psychological and the psychiatric aspects of Applied Kinesiology as I realized it could give us instant access to the unconscious. We have known through thousands of years of Chinese medicine that there is a relationship between the acupuncture meridians and the organs. But it took the genius of George Goodheart to show a relationship between the organs and the muscles and to connect all three, to develop a system in which a particular muscle and an organ are connected to each other through the acupuncture meridians.

Over some years, starting about 1975, I delineated precisely which particular emotional state was associated with each acupuncture meridian, and I eventually wrote up this work in my book Life Energy (1). Where that book was also very valuable is that it was, to my knowledge, the first time that these basic emotions had been accurately defined. (There is some mention of them in the early Chinese acupuncture writings, but it’s not comprehensive, nor is it necessarily applicable to us in our language). If you examine the dictionary definitions, they switch back and forth: for example, if you look up “sad” it will say “unhappy,” if you look up “unhappy” it will say “sad.” But neither of them tell you what these two emotions really are. The clue to their underlying meaning was in the etymology of the words. I had studied etymology at that time for nearly thirty years and was able to use my experience of the field to define the emotions for each of the acupuncture meridians.

So now we had this wonderful connection of muscle, organ and emotion: the three sides of the triangle were there. We already knew from Goodheart’s work that if somebody had an impaired liver function, then the related muscle would be involved. And vice versa: if the person had an impairment with this muscle (from a physical trauma, for example), then there would be a corresponding energy impairment of the function of the liver, mediated between the two by the liver meridian. But my work showed that whether there was impaired function of the muscle or the organ, there would will also be an impairment of the specific emotion that is part of the meridian. In this case of the liver, the emotion is happiness. So, if the pectoralis major sternal division is strong and the liver is functioning properly (as Goodheart showed the two are connected at some level), then there will always be the state of happiness. But if there’s some impairment of the muscle primarily and secondarily of the organ (or the other way round) there will also be an impairment of the “happiness” associated with the liver meridian, so that now the person will be in a state of unhappiness. It worked the other way, too. If the problem is primarily with the emotional state, then it’s going to have this effect on the muscle and this effect on the organ. And furthermore, you could treat the emotional state by working with the associated muscle or organ.

That’s where the work was about 1976–77. We now had an understanding of psychosomatic medicine: organs and muscles, and emotions connected by and relating to the associated meridian. It all went together. The triangle was complete.

There are what I call “attributes” associated with particular acupuncture meridian points. Over the years I have found about 250 such attributes. I use the term “attributes,” rather than problem, because the emotional aspects of each of the meridian points can be either positive or negative. For example, if someone’s large intestine 4 is not negative at a given moment, then it means that they do not regard themselves with low self worth.

The 250 or more acupuncture points are like stars in the firmament all around the person who comes to see me, as they start to metaphorically communicate, verbally or nonverbally, be it in their walk, their gestures, their speech, or their facial expression. All of the sudden, one star will start to twinkle brighter and then another and another. Very quickly I will have half a dozen or more problems to deal with. I work with the most basic of these and then assess the Life Energy at the end. If it is high, I leave it – if not I do some more work.

All these particular stars are old friends to me because I know them so well. I know how to play with them and to use them. I do not regard them as indictments. I almost regard them as fun or as things to overcome. I don’t take them too seriously. As George Goodheart says: “Find it, fix it, forget it.”

I do not put any particular moral judgment or indictment on the fact that someone has a problem, it is just a problem to be overcome. These problems are just follies, or stupidities, or wrong thinkings, or misprocessings, and not to be regarded as any assault on the person, or as an indictment. Very often, when you see them clearly, you can just laugh them away. The sum total of all such glitches (meridian problems) at any one moment, and the sum total of all the non-glitches (meridian virtues) at any given moment adds up to the assessment of the Life Energy of the person at that instant. And we may have many glitches. We can then correct them and see how much of the Life Energy has gone up in the process.

There are many ways to correct these problems. You can treat the particular acupuncture point, you can give a supplement or herb to improve the functioning of the organ associated with the particular meridian, or you may work on the muscle linked with that meridian. There are affirmations to say, there are visualizations, and, most important of all, there is giving the patient/student the knowledge of what is in his unconscious. Very often, that knowledge itself is enough, for, if given just the right way, it should be enough to make the change that overcomes the problem.

Some meridian problems are more important than others, more basic. For example, there is a particular circulation sex meridian problem that I call the body shell problem. People who [have this problem] are frightened that somebody will get inside them through an orifice and harm them. Such people are stressed, that is they test weak, if you put your finger, or they put their finger, in their mouth (taking care not to touch anything, however, as that is a different test). The same thing applies if you put a pencil tip just outside their ear and then just inside: as soon as the pencil would go inside the ear, invading that space, they would test weak. This has all sorts of relevance their sexual difficulties.

However, underneath the body shell problem, there is a heart meridian problem which I call the pane of glass problem. People with this problem will test weak when you say to them “I love you,” or any other positive remark addressed to them. But put a pane of glass between you and them and say the same thing, and they will now test strong, that is they are no longer stressed by the remark. It is too much of an invasion: they feel as though someone is threatening them with a display of love. They feel naked, vulnerable and hence the need for a pane of glass to protect them. Treating the body shell problem will not correct the pane of glass problem, but treating the pane of glass problem will correct the body shell problem, as the pane of glass problem is the more basic of the two.

Now, there is an even deeper problem that lies under the body shell problem. It is another heart meridian problem, which relates to what I call fusion. That is, wanting to open your heart to become one with another the person with whom you love. This is one of the basic problems in marriages: the inability to fuse and to come together to create a new, single entity. (This is incidentally, I believe, also one of the causes for attention deficit disorder. The parents do not want to fuse with each other: they want the child to be disturbed so that they can use this disturbance to keep them apart from one another). If you correct the fusion problem, by whatever means, for example, awareness, affirmations, the specific acupuncture point, and/or the specific herb and supplement – and music, then you automatically correct the more superficial pane of glass and body shell problems. So I don’t bother with those, I just go straight to the fusion.

You well may ask why I don’t reveal the acupuncture point and the herb and supplement. The reason is I do not want “instant fusion correction” to become part of the Meridian Therapy rubric. It should only be taught to those dedicated, appropriately qualified, practitioners who, have first had their own fusion problem dealt with. And more – to those who have been healed so that their desire is only ever altruistic and never for self-aggrandizement.

There are some basic topics fundamental to my work that I must mention. The first is the concept of Life Energy – the healing power within. Although I believe I coined the term, the concept of Life Energy has been around for thousands of years. Hippocrates, for example, called it the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, the healing power of nature, while Paracelsus spoke of it as Archaeus. Elsewhere it is called Prana or Chi. It is Spirit, it is Love. Life Energy is intimately connected with health in the broadest sense, in that underneath the specific symptoms of any particular illness we will always find a diminution of Life Energy. Therefore, if we want to help overcome the root of the disorder, whether mental or physical, we have to raise the Life Energy of the patient. In other words, the only true healing comes from within, by raising the Life Energy. This principle is basic to my work.

A very effective way of assessing the level of Life Energy is by analyzing the specific meridian problems that the person has at a given moment. Having delineated them, the person is able to overcome them by applying any, or a combination, of the techniques I have already discussed (affirmations, visualizations, herbs, supplements, etc.), so that his Life Energy is raised. Once that happens, his innate healing power is free to do its work.

One vital issue is the fact that about 95% of the people who come to see me do not want to be healthy (and this is a finding that many therapists confirm). Though the patients want to be rid of their particular pain, they do not really want to be healthy. They do not want to embrace health, love, and life (they are all basically the same thing). Until this problem is addressed, the therapist always has an uphill battle. His focus is not on fighting the disease, but rather on fighting the unconscious desire of the patient to be sick. The patient is not on side with him, working with him to overcome the problem. Indeed, the patient cannot really be said to be cured until this desire for sickness is turned around.

Another major topic is one that I introduced in my first book Your Body Doesn’t Lie (2). It is that everything outside us and inside us, at both a conscious and an unconscious level, is impinging, influencing, and affecting our acupuncture system and therefore our emotional state, our organs, muscles and tissues. A facial expression, a note of music, a thought, a symphony, a conductor, a performer, a trumpet, a color, a shape: everything has its effect – however subtle – on us. Once you realize this, a whole world of research opens up before you. That is why I have spent so many years researching, among other things, art, photography, music, dance, musicology, anthropology, etymology, and philosophy. Every thought, every desire, every word – each and every stimulus that we ever encounter in our lives – has its effect on us. And we can assess all of these stimuli via the testing, for each either raises our Life Energy through a specific enhancement of meridian emotional states, or does the opposite. The potential for this mode of Applied Kinesiological testing, done correctly, is enormous.

An example comes to mind. I remember many years ago being asked by an anthropologist, who had just come back from South America, to help try to work out, through the artifacts they had found from an unknown tribe, whether this tribe was related to two other known tribes. Virtually all the artifacts from this unknown tribe had the same meridian attributes as the artifacts from one tribe but not from the other. Therefore, I was able to tell them, as they later confirmed, that these two tribes were related but the third one was not. The scope of what is open for investigation is limitless. The consequences for knowledge obtained by testing, used correctly, could be the basis of a whole new discipline that could collaborate with almost any academic department at any university.

One remarkable feature of AK testing is that it has given me immediate feedback of my intuition. Usually in psychiatry, when the patient says something, you form some idea of what it means and then decide what to do with it, but you have very little feedback to ever tell you whether you were right. In psychoanalysis, for example, the whole process is the endless interpreting of the person being analyzed: what the analyst believes the person is really thinking. However, you have no way of knowing whether you were right except by observing over time, and even then you very rarely sure whether or not other factors have caused the changed. But with the testing I can get an idea of whether this is what the patient was really feeling, and instantly find out whether I was right in my hypothesis or not.

Over the years I suppose I have done about seven million tests and with virtually every one I have formed a hypothesis and then seen whether it was correct or not by instant feedback. The testing is a tool that no other psychiatrist in the world has ever had, as far as I know, although when I tried to talk to psychoanalysts about this, nobody would believe me (even though my findings to a very large extent confirmed the deepest teachings of psychoanalysis). Nevertheless, I believe that ultimately the technique will be of enormous benefit to those psychiatrists who really want to refine their clinical intuition, for every clinician functions at his best with his clinical intuition at its highest peak.

I do not feel the same way if I work only physical Applied Kinesiology on the person’s body by correcting the muscles. I don’t get this same thrill, obviously because this is not my background. I would not expect someone who is coming at the psychology primarily through the bodywork to have the same experience, but I do doubt whether they get the same thrill working physically.

I feel that working with someone’s self-worth problem is somehow more exciting than working on his tensor fascia latae, neuro-lymphatics, and neuro-vascular reflexes and so forth, because I think I am getting deeper into the person and learning more about them as a totality. I think I am getting closer to his innermost workings, closer to his vital core, and that’s where I love to be – in that deep, deep area, at the very essence of the person. To me this is very thrilling, very exciting, and very humbling, in that it’s such a great privilege to be so deeply inside him.

Many years ago, when I was working in a hospital, there was a teenage boy who died in the operating room after about 14 hours of open-heart surgery. Because he died under anesthesia, the case had to be reported to the coroner who wanted to examine his heart. In those days, the coroner’s court was right at the other end of the city from the hospital. I was given the job of taking the boy’s heart to the coroner’s court. It was wrapped up in newspaper and I sat on the bus going to the coroner’s court holding this boy’s heart in my hands.

In a way, this is how I feel whenever I work in terms of finding out people’s meridian attributes or meridian weaknesses. It is like I am so close to their heart. It is like their heart is in my hand. I understand them. I understand at quite a deep level the very essence of them. That to me is the beauty of this work, which is the great gift I have been given, on the one hand by George Goodheart and Applied Kinesiology and on the other hand by all the wonderful psychiatrists I have known personally or through their writings over the years – all coming together.

When you really get to the heart of a person’s problems, when you go through whatever number of glitches, it always comes down in the end, at the acupuncture level to the lung meridian, the first meridian, the most basic: and it also always comes down to the mother. The basic problem, the basic misprocessing, whatever word you want to use, is not feeling beloved by one’s own mother. So all of my work, comes down in the end to this basic core problem of not feeling beloved by one’s mother. This is not to be confused with the issue of loving one’s mother. That is easy. Much deeper than that is believing that she loves you and loves you always. Overcoming this problem is the essence of life. The end point of all of this work, I believe, has to be of overcoming this anguish of the human condition. All the meridian points, all the little stars in the sky, come down to this one blazing sun, which is our own individual mothers.

I am frequently asked what I think about a certain technique that is now called Meridian Therapy. Well, I started Meridian Therapy! My work is based on proper Applied Kinesiology testing of the meridians. I personally have no experience with any of these other Meridian Therapies. None of these innovators have ever approached me to show or ask me about their work, which is always derived from mine, and I am always curious as to why they do not. So, I have stayed categorically disassociated from all these other Meridian Therapies because I do not know them.

I love the unconscious and have worked there, lived there, for many years, and I have not only a great belief in it but a great respect for it. I believe that you have to approach it with awe, respectfully, admiringly, and lovingly because to me it is the very heart, or essence, of the person. It is not something to be trampled on or approached without deep respect. I must stress that testing for the emotions is far different from Applied Kinesiology testing for other muscles. It is another mode of testing with many variables to be controlled in the subject, the environment, and most particularly within the tester. At the very least, the standards for good psychotherapy should be maintained. The minimal criterion before one can practice psychotherapy are most importantly, that one has one’s own unconscious examined and understood, so that you come relatively free to the patient or client.

There must be at least the same rigor of self-improvement before one goes to work with someone in meridian therapy. There needs to be more control of the therapist than in psychotherapy because the results can be so dramatic, so immediate, so powerful, and therefore so potentially damaging if not done correctly. It seems to me therefore only fair that there has to be a minimum standard. All good psychotherapists have themselves been in good psychotherapy, and that must be the standard. This is much more than a 100-hour basic course. It has to be seriously looking at oneself, at one’s motives and one’s own meridian problems. This is very important, as the essence of good therapy is the deep unconscious intention of the therapist. It has to be examined, refined, and encouraged.

This is the basis of all good treatment regardless of the modality. But it is nowhere more important than in this particular work. When the sufferer comes to you with his very heart and soul offered openly, trustingly, courageously, to you for you to help, there must be the greatest respect, the greatest humility, the highest aspiration, the highest of intention.

References:

John Diamond M.D., Life Energy: Using the Meridians to Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Emotions, New York: Paragon House, 1985.

John Diamond, M.D., Your Body Doesn’t Lie, New York: Warner Books, 1979.