Supercharge your personal growth with Kinesiology!
By Tania O’Neill McGowan
Human beings are amazing, but they are also complex and messy. While we have times in life when we are flying high and everything is going well, we also have times when we are struggling and feel lost or confused. It is important to be gentle on yourself and remember that everyone needs help and support along the way as they navigate this journey we call life. While embarking on study as an adult can feel daunting, studying Kinesiology is not your normal training experience and rather than focusing on mastering new skills, you can embark on studying Kinesiology simply for your own personal growth and development.
Energetic Kinesiology practice is grounded in the idea that adults can grow and develop across their lifetime. A Kinesiologist works with the understanding that it is possible for people to have changes in how they perceive the world and therefore how they behave and experience life from that point forward. Over the last 50 years much research in developmental psychology has explored this way of understanding human development and the stages through which adults develop have become a useful tool to aid in human flourishing. As discussed by Sandra Ellison:
“The stages of adult development, like ever expanding rings of a tree, offer people the chance to
grow into bigger and more complex versions of themselves, while still holding on to the inner rings
or earlier stages through which they’ve already grown.”
The Concept of Adult Development
In the 1980s there was a popular belief that the human mind reached its fullest development after adolescence, however, research in developmental psychology demonstrated that adults are able to evolve whole patterns of increasingly complex and agile ways of comprehending the world. The way one sees themselves and interacts with their world can change over time, providing them with the capacity to act more effectively in life. What the research has shown is that development is not linear or connected to one’s age. Rather, humans evolve through ‘leaps’ in psychological complexity and after each leap, one will plateau and maintain a particular way of operating for some time.
This widening of one’s perspective and growth in ability to handle complexity is often termed vertical development. Vertical development is the development of increased capacities, as compared to horizontal development which is the acquisition of more knowledge and skills.
Horizontal development is like adding more apps to your phone, whereas vertical development is like upgrading the operating system, it makes it possible to run more and more complex apps.
What is so unique about learning Kinesiology is that you get both types of development, so you grow and expand your capacity to handle the complexities of life, while learning new skills and
knowledge, something not common in adult education. The main intent behind both adult development theory and Kinesiology is to support individual and collective flourishing – we aim to support people in reaching their fullest potential in life. While most models of healthcare in the modern world are focused on understanding the commonalities between humans, Kinesiology is focused on each person’s uniqueness, because
people are tremendously diverse and there is no default human.
Fostering Development via Energetic Kinesiology
To fully grasp the usefulness of Kinesiology muscle monitoring, one must first understand the way that the conscious and subconscious brain processes interface with each other. While most people feel they are consciously in charge of their body and the choices they make throughout each day, actually there are millions of bits of information being processed by their subconscious every second and only a small amount of that data is passed to their conscious awareness. In a sense, what you perceive consciously is only a summary statement of everything that is happening subconsciously. Our subconscious programming is extremely powerful and when deemed necessary it will supersede one’s conscious instructions. For instance, when it comes to survival or protecting oneself from harm, the subconscious rules, even if that means one is unable to fulfil a consciously desired goal. While these neurophysiological processes are extremely helpful for physical wellbeing, they can become a powerful impediment to personal growth and the desire to change.
The connection between muscle monitoring and subconscious processing means that one of the core components of a Kinesiology session is to uncover suppressed material and discover deeper patterns that have given rise to client’s unhappiness or ill-health. By gently uncovering and releasing subconscious material a small piece at a time, Kinesiology is continually aiding people on their personal growth journey. This can be achieved by having regular sessions with a qualified Kinesiologist, but it also happens when you study Kinesiology too.
