Shaun Tucker is an Integrative Personal Trainer and Kinesiologist with a degree in Health Sciences. He co-founded Desiderate Culture with Nichalus Bergmans – a full concierge service that blends Eastern and Western philosophies to allow the best possible health outcome for their clients.
Firstly, I must state that we do not diagnose or prescribe. Our treatments are purely designed to help that person at that specific time. We are integrative practitioners, meaning that we compliment who you’re already working with, to come up with a holistic approach to your individual health.
Is it possible to keep up in this fast moving, highly stressed world?
Many people would say no – but there may be some truth to the alternative medicine field of kinesiology that could change all of that. Kinesiology is a holistic approach to health that uses gentle, yet effective techniques to restore balance within the body. This can be done through muscle testing, which detects dysfunction and imbalance within the body and helps to correct it. Kinesiology is a great way to help with chronic issues, such as lower back pain, as well as acute problems.
For anyone who has ever experienced debilitating back pain, they may not believe me when I say that it is probably not your back that’s causing the problem. In most cases, the lower back is not the root of the issue but rather a symptom of something else going on in the body. This is where kinesiology can be such a great help. Kinesiology can use the symptom as part of the puzzle piece that is the source of your chronic back pain.
So where do I start when looking at someone’s chronic lower back pain?
Before we do any muscle testing or anything of the like, we look at the person from an orthopaedic and movement standpoint. We use a range of orthopaedic tests to discover what could be causing the lower back pain and note down which ones come up positive (which indicate dysfunction).
These dysfunctions are more pieces to the puzzle that is your lower back pain, and they help to uncover the root cause. Here, we arrive at muscle testing. Muscle testing is not a strength test. It is an energetic test that allows us to see which muscles are compensating for the dysfunction that we found in our orthopaedic testing.
This is where the power of muscle testing is limited to the knowledge and understanding of the human system by the practitioner. In kinesiology, the best practitioners are generalists. They have a wide understanding and knowledge base of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and nutrition, endocrinology, emotions and electromagnetic fields and how all that interacts with one another to create the human system.
Knowing this, I always get excited when treating someone, because I never know where it’s going to go, or how far the rabbit hole goes to discover the root cause of someone’s health complaint or back pain in this case. Once the end of the rabbit hole is reached – the practitioner can paint a picture as to where and when the stress first originated, and what were the effects as a result. In most cases, there are several layers that intertwine and interweave affecting and incorporate all four areas that we test. The four areas being physical (or structural), biochemical, emotional and electromagnetic.
Unearthing the back story
You’ve presented with lower back pain. Orthopaedics aside, there was a stress or trauma that occurred during your childhood. You were three years old, and it was an audio trigger from your mother. You won’t remember it, because it is a deeply rooted stress in your subconscious mind, which is programmed to help you ‘forget’ this painful memory. Whatever your mother (or father) said (or yelled) at you, cascaded a whole bunch of reactions in your body, and threw your entire system out of balance.
The stress affects multiple layers that include physical, biochemical, emotional and electromagnetic changes in your system. The physical change was a pain response that your body created in the lower back to help you get away from the situation (or person) as quickly as possible. The biochemical response was the release of cortisol and adrenaline, which helped to give you more energy to get away. The emotional response was feeling scared, alone and helpless, with the electromagnetic response being the feeling of being energetically trapped.
So how do we bring back balance?
This is where the corrections come into play. We use muscle testing to determine what corrections are needed to support the entire system and balance your whole system to bring back a good state of health. Corrections may include orthopaedic adjustments, acupressure, flower essences, holding or massage of specific reflex points, neurolymphatic points and specific dietary recommendations. In the case of lower back pain, we would look to support the adrenal glands, calm the nervous system and help to release the emotional trauma.
This is just one example of how kinesiology can help to resolve chronic lower back pain. It is a holistic approach that considers all four areas of the human system and helps to restore balance and health. For some people, this may be all that is needed, and for others, it may be just the beginning of a longer journey to health and well-being.
