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For the clinician struggling with micro-disturbances in the cranio-sacral mechanism, once the methods of AK cranial diagnosis are mastered, the whole field opens up and the division, so vehemently argued about in osteopathic circles, dissolves into irrelevance.

An important example of a world-famous osteopath explicitly influenced by Dr. Goodheart and AK is Dr. Leon Chaitow. Before his recent death, Dr. Chaitow was a practicing osteopath, naturopath, and acupuncturist in the United Kingdom with over forty years clinical experience, as well as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (The official journal of the International College of Applied Kinesiology).

Dr. Leon Chaitow

In Chaitow’s books, Goodheart’s and Applied Kinesiology’s methods are seen as precursors to a “universal manipulative approach” that Chaitow suggests will cross professional boundaries and offer the safest and most versatile methodology for the treatment of patients with acute and chronic illness.

In at least five of Dr. Chaitow’s books, the work of Goodheart and Applied Kinesiology is presented and praised.

• Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques, Volume 1: The Upper  Body (2nd Edition;2008)
• Naturopathic Physical Medicine (2008)
• Cranial Manipulation: Theory and Practice: Osseous and Soft Tissue Approaches (2nd Edition; 2005)
• Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques, Volume 2: The Lower Body (2nd Ed; 2002)
• Soft-Tissue Manipulation (1988)

Dr. Chaitow was also invited to lecture to the ICAK USA in Detroit, eight months before Dr. Goodheart passed in 2008.

Hidden Nerve Entrapment

Perhaps the greatest usefulness of AK diagnosis is in the area of subtle mechanical disturbance. With the insight of the ‘body into distortion‘ idea, Goodheart opened up the common sense idea that patients do not always display their signs and symptoms conveniently for us, while lying comfortably supine on a treatment table, but rather must sometimes be placed into a more challenging position to reveal their patterns of dysfunction. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the field of hidden nerve entrapment. Hidden in the sense that they are often subtle and inaccessible to instant diagnosis – except with the use of the MMT.

Peripheral nerve entrapment was introduced into Applied Kinesiology in Goodheart’s discussions of the carpal tunnel (1967) and tarsal tunnel syndromes² (1971). Walther’s early review of peripheral nerve entrapment in 1982 broadened the subject in Applied Kinesiology and served as an outline for a comprehensive AK textbook on this subject, with over 200 pages covering peripheral nerve entrapments of the lower body. In this text standard orthopedic examination and treatment procedures are integrated with AK and thoroughly cover the lower extremity.^19-20

Cranial nerve entrapment syndromes, treated with Applied Kinesiology methods, have also been discussed in the recent peer-reviewed literature.²⁰ Since muscular weakness found in routine Applied Kinesiology examination may be due to peripheral nerve entrapment, it is particularly important that the physician be aware of and able to differentially diagnose different types of the condition. Failure to return muscle weakness to normal function may result from undetected peripheral nerve entrapment. Because applied kinesiologists routinely test muscles to evaluate function, it is not uncommon to come across the more subtle types of peripheral nerve entrapment. Subtle entrapment may cause major symptoms to the patient that interfere with normal function and create remote problems.

MMT offers newfound precision to clinical examination by uncovering what is often hidden from view if palpation alone is used, and that is the dynamic evaluation of muscle function and its effect on structures that must pass through areas of nerve entrapment or irritations.

Goodheart’s insights into the extraordinary potential power of the MMT to uncover hidden dysfunction and link it to a wider vision of the whole, through the potential of AK to see the broader picture, the delicate richness of potential overlap and interpenetration in the triad of health, gives the clinician a new found access to the holism, often aspired to but less often truly accessed without AK.

To perceive and then to verify through accurate and objective dynamic assessment the way in which structures, such as the knee,  are highly dependent on full normotonic muscle function, leads to uncovering a treasure trove of discrete malfunction that, if left unresolved, may set up the body for later breakdown. Many knee problems are the direct result of improper support to the knee from the muscles that attach above and below it. Without the level of sophistication in application of MMT that Goodheart introduced, a myriad of hidden factors will be missed. AK attempts to identify these altered states of integrative function insofar as they impact on the person’s condition.

Applied Kinesiology in Functional Medicine

The majority of doctors in the healing arts have directed their attention toward pathology and trauma that are demonstrated by significant abnormalities observed in the laboratory, on X-ray, and by standard physical diagnosis. The great strides that have been made in these fields are commendable, yet there remains the patient who complains of headaches, chest pain, or joint disturbance—among numerous other “lifestyle” or “stress- related” symptoms—but who is pronounced “healthy” after a thorough diagnostic workup. These subjective symptoms are often diagnosed as psychosomatic or frankly ignored because no objective findings are present. Limited diagnostic procedures in modern general medicine cause the physician to only occasionally be able to evaluate the cause of these symptoms.

There is frequently an absence of laboratory findings because these conditions are usually functional rather than pathological. Although it has been difficult to evaluate this type of condition in the past, systems of diagnosis for these functional patterns of body malfunction have arisen. Applied kinesiology has been picked up and used by more and more medical doctors around the world because it enables physicians to find the basic underlying cause of these previously enigmatic symptom complexes about which a large percentage of the population complains.

Most illnesses in industrialized societies are due to functional rather than pathological processes; most pathological illnesses are preceded by a chronic period of functional illness. Health is not an accident; it is the outcome of the interaction of an individual’s genetic constitution and environment. Many people “get by” throughout their lives without optimal organic or biomechanical function and yet remain asymptomatic. This may depend on the goddess Fortune as well as the world-view and impulses of the person in addition to their inherited characteristics, nutritional status, psychosocial factors, life history and more—in other words, the entire context within which the Applied Kinesiology triad of health is experienced and embraced. If one of the objectives of work in this field is to prevent illness and ameliorate the burdens of the living patient and to help them realize their full potential, then what has been discussed in this chapter will become a part of the health care approach physicians and knowledgeable patients around the world embrace.