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.
John Diamond M.D. graduated from Sydney University Medical School in 1957 and was awarded his Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1962. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, a Foundation Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Diplomate of the International College of Applied Kinesiology and is a Fellow and past President of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine. He is an Honorary Advisor to the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation and their Japanese sister organization, the Koushikai Foundation.
One of the foremost holistic healers, Dr. Diamond’s remarkable body of work, which includes his discovery of the link between the acupuncture meridians and the emotions, embraces a wide range of disciplines, the result of over fifty years of research and clinical practice. He began his career in psychiatry but expanded into holistic medicine, concentrating on the totality of the sufferer. In his fifty years of practice, his work has increasingly focused on the activation of a person’s Life Energy, the healing power within, as the basis of true health. With his increasing involvement with this concept, his research has led him to concentrate on the enhancement of the sufferer’s Life Energy so as to actuate his own innate Healing Power.
Dr. Diamond has held numerous senior clinical and university teaching appointments in clinical psychiatry, the basic sciences and the humanities, and is a widely recognized bestselling author of over thirty-five books, including Your Body Doesn’t Lie, Life Energy: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Your Emotions to Achieve Well-Being, The Diamond Color Meditation, Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer and numerous books on music and healing. He has a large international following, and his books have been translated into a number of languages including German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Greek, and – most recently – Russian.
Dr. Diamond lectures and teaches throughout the world and has given over 1000 seminars, lectures and presentations to numerous medical associations, dental associations and societies as well as other professional organizations in the U.S. and abroad. He has recently conducted seminars in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Bologna, Tokyo, and London.
Dr. Diamond now practices as a Holistic Consultant and blends his experience in medicine, psychiatry, complementary medicine, the humanities, holism, applied kinesiology, acupuncture theory, spirituality and the arts to help sufferers overcome problems relating to body, mind and spirit. He has also used creativity for many years, regarding it as an essential and major component of healing, and has founded The Institute for Music and Health and The Institute for Life Energy and Creativity to train those interested in learning how to use the arts as a therapeutic modality. He resides in New York.