Neurokinetic Therapy (NKT) reprograms dysfunctional muscle patterns in your body. It’s these incorrect muscle patterns that cause you pain, so when the pattern is corrected, your pain goes away. It really is as easy as that.

Created by David Weinstock, Neurokinetic Therapy uses muscle testing similar to that of a chiropractic practice called Applied Kinesiology. In Applied Kinesiology, muscles are generally tested to determine weakness. For example, with my arm straight in front of me, my chiropractor told me to resist and pressed down. My arm stayed firm. She put a kernel of corn in my hand, and told me to resist. Then, she pressed my arm down by my side. I have a sensitivity, or weakness, to corn.

How Neurokinetic Therapy Works

Let’s say you’ve had an injury. It doesn’t have to be horrible like a car wreck. Perhaps you sprained your ankle really badly when you were a kid. With your ankle in pain, you probably walked in an altered way. To make it through this painful time, your cerebellum (part of your brain) asked other muscles to pick up the slack of the ones that were out of commission. A new movement pattern was created.

Imagine this: Your boss is out on short term disability. There are certain things your boss does that are important and, while your boss is wonderful, other people can perform those tasks just as well. So the big boss comes to you and says, Do you think you could do this one task while so-and-so is out sick? Well, sure you can!

So you start doing this task and, while it adds to your workload, you can manage for a while. Then, your boss comes back but, for whatever reason, you’re still doing this task. That’s when it starts to become stressful. Your boss is back, ready to work, but you’re still doing part of his or her job.

You keep doing your job and that one part of your boss’s job. Then finally, one day, it’s too much. You’re stressed out and you’re in pain.

This is exactly what it’s like for muscles in your body. Until they are notified that they don’t need to do that task any longer, they will keep going. As they keep going, they get worn out because they’re overworked and that causes pain.

For more information on Neurokinetic Therapy, check out advancedbodymechanics.com. I thought this article was very informative and interesting.

A Neurokinetic Therapy Session

To begin, the NKT practitioner will use muscle testing to find the compensation pattern. Next, the practitioner will perform a muscle test to alert your body to the weak muscle. The practitioner tests the weak muscle, and the muscle fails the test. This sends a message to your cerebellum, which automatically puts you in a learning mode. The practitioner now has 30-60 seconds to retrain the muscles for a correct movement pattern.

In this short window of time, the practitioner massages and stretches the incorrect working muscle to get it to relax. With the incorrect muscle all relaxed, the correct muscle should be able to fire when retested.  If it doesn’t, more muscles are tested and relaxed until the correct muscle fires. Once the correct muscle fires, this ends the learning process in the cerebellum.

To fully reverse a dysfunctional muscle pattern may take several sessions. If you’re working on reversing serious damage (like injury from a car accident), it could take even longer. The therapist may give exercises to be done at home between sessions. However, once the correct muscle patterns are restored, you should be pain-free.

Neurokinetic Therapy Training

An individual can be certified in Neurokinetic Therapy as a Level One, Level Two, or Level Three practitioner. To begin, you take a 15 hour Level One course. Then, you must practice for at least a month before you present 3 written case studies and complete an observed and graded session of NKT practice. This will certify you as a Level One NKT practitioner.

After you are certified at Level One, you are allowed to take the class to begin the process to advance to Level Two. The requirements are the same for Level Two and Level Three certification as they were for Level One.

For more information on certification, click here.

Find a NKT Therapist

To find a NKT therapist, click here. This link should take you to a database of practitioners on the Neurokinetic Therapy website. Since NKT is being taught around the globe, it’s possible to find a therapist no matter where you live.

NKT Video

Here’s a video from a therapist training, but it gives you an idea of what a therapist might be thinking or doing in a therapy session. Plus, since many people have low back pain, this QL testing could be appropriate for lots of us.

Have you ever had NKT? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.

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