A Teacher
George Goodheart
Manual muscle-testing as a diagnostic readout of the body’s state
The transmission
George J. Goodheart Jr. (1918–2008) was a Detroit chiropractor and World War II veteran who founded Applied Kinesiology in 1964. A second-generation chiropractor trained at the National College of Chiropractic, he made a series of clinical observations about muscle strength and weakness that broke from the prevailing view of muscle spasm as the root of back pain.
His pivotal claim that year — correcting a patient’s chronic winged scapula by treating nodules near the origin and insertion of the serratus anterior — became the first technique of the new system. Over the following decades he fused chiropractic, neuro-lymphatic reflexes, nutrition, and the meridian theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine into a single diagnostic framework, and co-founded the International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK).
Goodheart matters to the mind-power lineage as the originator of manual muscle testing as a supposed readout of the body’s inner condition — the idea that a muscle’s momentary strength or weakness reports on hidden physical, nutritional, and energetic states.
This single procedure, however contested scientifically, became the technical seed from which the whole energy-psychology field grew. When later practitioners turned muscle testing toward emotions, beliefs, and meridian disturbances, they were extending Goodheart’s premise that the body “answers” inquiries the conscious mind cannot.
He is the procedural ancestor behind Diamond’s Behavioral Kinesiology, Callahan’s Thought Field Therapy, and Craig’s EFT.
What they gave
Manual muscle testing as diagnosis: Reframed the muscle test from a strength grade into a binary “yes/no” readout of the body’s state, the core tool later borrowed by every muscle-testing method.
- Founding Applied Kinesiology (1964): Built the first integrated system linking muscles, organs, nutrition, and acupuncture meridians.
- Meridian–muscle linkage: Imported Chinese meridian theory into a Western clinical method, seeding the energy-psychology bridge between body and “life energy.”
- Institutional grounding: Co-founded ICAK, giving the technique a teaching lineage that carried it into psychology-adjacent applications.
In their words
The opportunity to use the body as an instrument of laboratory analysis is unparalleled in modern therapeutics because the response of the body is unerring.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: The chiropractic tradition; neuro-lymphatic reflex work attributed to Frank Chapman; the meridian theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
- Influenced: John Diamond (Behavioral Kinesiology); Roger Callahan (Thought Field Therapy); Gary Craig (EFT); John Thie’s Touch for Health; the broader energy-psychology movement.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Applied Kinesiology Research Manuals1964-1998