Anshu Bahanda: This is Anshu Bahanda on Wellness Curated. Thanks for joining me on this podcast. My mission is to empower you with health and wellness so that you can then go and empower others. Today we have a chat for you on Kinesiology and how it affects the gut and immunity. I have today, Dr Sepp Fegerl, who is a general physician living and working in Salzburg in Austria. He’s trained in modern Mayr medicine and he uses it with a fusion of allopathic and holistic medical disciplines and techniques. He actually grew up in the Mayr methodology because his father is also a Mayr doctor. Dr Sepp Fegerl was at Viva Mayr Altaussee for seven years and he now teaches Mayr doctors and he set up his own clinic in Salzburg.
We’ll begin with a question that I always ask: what is wellness to you?
Dr Sepp Fegerl: That’s a big question, very important. And of course, something that is always answered very individually and subjectively. But for me, in my daily routine, and especially in times like that, I experience wellness to be this feeling of integrity, the feeling that I am still in control and in liberty, of action, of choice, of decision-making aspects in my life, in my routine. Another thing that I find to be essential is whenever I move, whenever I act, whenever I perform, I want my body and also my mind to execute that according to my will. And that if my body is making me sense feedback, that is reminding me okay, it would be necessary to either take care of this or take care of that. That I then also have space and time and also enough capacity to then take care of myself as well.
AB: Wonderful. Can you explain to us exactly what is Kinesiology?
Dr SF: A kind of diagnostic technique that is just giving us an insight. It is trying to identify stress factors, either internally or externally, that are putting a person into a state of either hypertension, hyperactivity like an angry child, or that is putting a person into the state of a victim, whereas all the energy literally seems to flow out of the body. What are the factors that are allowing a person to feel integral, to feel captain or commander of his or her state of strength? And this is where functional muscle testing comes in, which we therefore use as the tool for the diagnostic of the performance of single muscles. And therefore, the client sometimes has to act and perform in a very weird way, lying on the bed or standing in the room. Because we always try to bring an extremity in a certain position so that once the extremity is then moved, it is only moving with the help and the force and strength of a single muscle. And if this muscle is now showing states of weakness, that is already interesting to know. And if I combine that with activating the senses of these with special substances, with foods, for example, with trace elements, with metals, et cetera, the muscle is changing its performance, its state of strength. That is interesting to know.
AB: I know since it’s just you, you’re not going to be able to demonstrate to us, but can you talk us through what you do? Because I know you use the leg. Some people use the arm movement. So just explain to us the process.
Dr SF: People are coming to me because they want to receive either a pharmaceutical or medical or therapeutic strategy pathway to recover or to generate health. I place them normally on the bed. Then I’m using and testing different extremities on different sides. So, I place their extremities in a special way and ask them to push them in a special way.
AB: When you say extremities, can you explain that?
Dr SF: For example, someone is bending his or her leg 90 degrees at the knee, and pushing their knee towards their nose. This performance and this movement are done and executed just by that performance of a single muscle. The vastus medialis of the musculus rectus femoris represents a certain organ that is interesting, but for now, in the beginning, it is not so relevant. I just want to see if the extremities of the person are able to be moved, if this person is able to move in a special strength, and if this person is able to move the extremities in maximum strength. Because this is the only parameter that I want to sense. I want to sense the strength this person is able to perform at this moment with this arm or leg. And if I see differences between the left or right side, for example, that is telling me something about, okay, there might be an irritation on the left side or on the right side. And then I’m starting to trigger the person with different acupuncture points, for example, with different pressure points or touching meridians so that I bring in the topic of different organs.
AB: So, you test them without anything in their hand first?
Dr SF: No, initially just blame the body. Because if someone is suffering from hip pain, you can imagine this person will not be able to perform very well with a leg test. So, I want to find out if this person is able to move their arms free or if there’s a limitation. I want to see if it is working on the other side as well and the subtext of that is and of course with every performance that shows not a symmetric but asymmetric result that is already giving me diagnostic information that can then be put into a therapeutic strategy. But initially, I just want to test the person I want to see. Is there a warrior lying in front of me or is there a victim or is the person in full strength able to even relax?
AB: Okay. And then when people want to test for allergies for minerals or vitamins, then you will put those in their hand and test it?
Dr SF: I normally test by putting things on the tongue. That is important because your tongue is a massive and enormous ingenious sensing organ and by attracting it with little and small quantities of a substance, of a pure substance, you are informing the human body, the human animal, the human creature you wish immediately this is like the sense of vision or the sense of hearing. You have immediate information and get an immediate idea of what is going on.
AB: So, just to explain to the people who have not had kinesiology before, say you’re testing for a gluten allergy you would put a little bit of gluten on their tongue and then you would test their muscle to see if it’s affected before you put the gluten on.
Dr SF: Exactly. You explained it very well. There’s one little detail that I forgot to mention. It is always interesting and important to see that the muscle is able to perform at its maximum strength. That is the aim. But it is also important to be able to reuse or awaken the muscle.
AB: Yes.
Dr SF: So, if I press either acupuncture points, I use the classical and very physiological way of shortening the length of the muscle to make it perform weakly for a matter of one or two seconds. Those of you who played soccer, for example, in the past, or are passionate dancers, when you got the hit on your upper leg, for example, and the leg was relaxed, the hit was not painful because there was no massive resistance. But you mentioned maybe that for 1- 2 seconds you were not able to move your legs free and normal and powerful and elegant. Maybe, normally this muscle only knows about its state of strength by measuring its length. And if I make the muscle sense shortness, the muscle cell itself considers its actual state to be already a state of relaxation, a state of weakness. It is not possible for one to 2 seconds to be activated just by willpower. And this is something that I’m using in the testing. Just to recheck, if a muscle is a person now entering a state of warrior or again hard performance where it is just upset and always strong, always as strong as possible. But now following my invitation to please relax. If this invitation is followed by the person and the muscle suddenly shows weakness after the maximum strength, I know, wow. You have now arrived in your living room, for example, you are feeling safe, you are feeling confident. You are able to perform, but also able to deeply relax. And that’s a good thing.
AB: So, just to summarize, there are three stages to kinesiology. The first is to test without an outside substance. The second is to test with the substance. And the third is to weaken a muscle while you’ve got the substance to make sure that you can also relax with it, that you’re not in a mode of constant fight or flight.
Dr SF: Exactly. This is as if you are hiring someone, a new member in your team…in your professional team you want to hire. You want to make this decision as substantial as possible. So, you inform yourself about this person. You read, for example, the Gita. You invite this person, you talk with this person, you sense, and within a few seconds, or maybe minutes, all the information that you gather, all the information that you collected is melting into an instinctive feeling.
AB: Sometimes everything looks okay on paper, but then you have to make sure that you can work together. And that’s what the weakening of the muscle is about.
Dr SF: And you can imagine if you’re working with someone who’s a professional sportsman or woman that I would never be able to bend or to weaken. And I first found out, okay, look, that is your strength. And if I shorten the muscle, suddenly there’s the weakness that is already a moment of aha! And if I then test this person on a special food, for example, replacing the finger of an acupuncture point that is representing an inner organ, and suddenly all the strength is gone. You have someone who is listening to you, maybe not convinced, but it is not necessary to convince someone. I just want myself to know what is helping this person and what is irritating. So, to find and to choose the right thing.
AB: Now coming to the organs that you mentioned, can you explain what you do there and what that gives you? The result that gives you.
Dr SF: This idea that an organ is somehow connected with meridians. That means lines of energies or maybe also crossways of meridians on the body is a very old theory. You find it in traditional Chinese medicine as well. As you find it also in Persian medicine or traditional European medicine. You find it in shamanism as well. So, the observation of healers or therapists over many hundred years was that there are some points on the body that are related to an inner organ or an inner organ state. And so, if I am attracted to using such an acupuncture point, for example, like the liver and the person who is in a state of normal tension, that means able to perform, but also able to follow my recommendation to rest and relax. Suddenly, if we now attract this acupuncture point, this person is turning into a warrior, someone who is not able to give in anymore. And if this point is, for example, typically the thyroid in a man or in a woman living in a megacity, the pace is enormous and the pressure as well, and the thyroid is a pacemaker. And if this person is suddenly experiencing, oh, there’s such a performance there; and I attract the senses of this person, like the tongue, with a little bit of selenium, it could be that all the pressure, all the tension is suddenly gone and clear strength is performing and happening and following, and also a clear state of relaxation is possible. Whereas if I then put a little bit of caffeine on this tongue just to represent acceleration and I’m normally not telling my client what I put on his or her tongue so that their mind is free, not expecting something as well as I also try to be as open as possible not to have a predecessor. For example, if I put a little bit of caffeine on this time, push it as well and the person, without touching the thyroid, is performing strong but with touching the thyroid suddenly performing massively weak. That’s also very valuable information and signal to the person. So, I will recommend that or would recommend this person, for example, to take a little bit of selenium, not for the rest of his or her life, but for some time; that way we are also controlling the performance of the muscle testing. Again, choosing the thyroid as one of those trigger points that are causing or living at the moment as a state of stress. And I will also give a recommendation: please be careful with the cough that now sounds not like rocket science. And you are completely right, because it’s not rocket science. It is just when someone is spending time with me, he or she wants to receive advice. And the advice from the neighbor, the advice from the partner, the advice from the parents, the advice from the children, and then what he or she was reading in the magazine was not solving the problem for them. They want something individual and therefore the testing is a fantastic tool.
AB: So, tell me something, is this something people can do themselves? So, say, if I want to do some testing on myself.
Dr SF: It is of course possible, although I have to confess that I’m very skeptical about that. You can try to convince yourself. You can be already preoccupied in a performance and the strength of the mind is enormous. It is for sure possible that if you buy yourself, for example, a book that is explaining to you the basics about applied kinesiology. Or you are visiting a course in one of the bigger cities of your country and you will find there, for sure, courses that are offering training. You will get an insight if you have the feeling that in a lecture or in a training course, someone tries to convince you that this is the solution for everything. Get ears like that, you run away as quickly as possible or you just try to read out of the whole lecture what is maybe interesting and sounds logical to you and you are taking the rest aside.
AB: The other question that I have for you is I know that you were with Viva Mayr for seven years and before that you must have been testing and you probably teach kinesiology to the Mayr doctors. So, you have a lot of experience with this. When is it that you’ve been really surprised? Have you ever been really surprised by your findings?
Dr SF: Look, there’s no day that is not leaving me completely… No testing that is not leaving me at one aspect, completely puzzled and surprised because I, of course, try to be as neutral as possible when I’m testing, but with the experience that comes very often and kind of an expectation. And if with this test, suddenly an expectation is not coming true, it’s telling me something completely adverse. I always have to be very honest with myself that I say, okay, allowing this now results the space to most likely be really correct and true and I try not to force it into the way I exposed it, I expected it to be. If I then allow this result to be correct, my experience proved it to be the better decision because you treated them differently. And suddenly this person is experiencing success and my inbox is full of emails like that, for example.
AB: So, give me an example.
Dr SF: Yeah, I have a person here that was with me in the last two weeks. He is a very senior person in a worldwide industrial consultant with a lot of responsibility, with a lot of pressure, and he wanted to lose weight. People are visiting the gut doctor because they want to lose weight and get rid of the bloating. So, I tested this person and we went through a few things and nothing came out to be massively out of balance. So, he said, look, I’m with you and you are telling me everything’s alright. I said, look, let us have a look at the different foods. There was suddenly one thing that seemed to be a problem and that was the yogurt of the sheep. He looked at me and said, how do you know? Did I mention the sheep? I said no. I have no idea. He was eating every day in the morning a little bit of sheep yogurt. So, I asked him, okay, look, please take this sheep yogurt away because it is making you very weak, and that is remarkable. Chew very well, drink [water] between the meals, the whole Mayr medicine recommendations, the general ones, and we see each other again in two weeks time. Look, he lost 6 kilograms in those two weeks. Now, He is not living the ideal way of life, and he’s not feeling like a god. But he was able to get rid of a massive pro-inflammatory trigger of inflammation in his daily routine, and that is leaving him to experience more strength and more, again, freedom of choice when it comes to where I want my energy to be invested. He is now saying he will remove the yogurt for the rest of his life out of his daily routine. That is not the recommendation that I will give, but I will then recommend, okay, please for now three to four months, avoid it completely and then maybe reintroduce it on one day and just experience how you feel that particular day or maybe the day after as well.
AB: Wonderful. That’s an incredible story. Six kilos in two weeks. Oh, wow.
Dr SF: And this person was not massively overweight. That was someone who, if you see him on the street, you would think, a pretty fit guy. But looking at it from the point of view of my physician, you already saw signs of inflammation. And inflammation is always coming with swelling, with water retention.
AB: The thing I wanted to ask you is, I mean, Kinesiology is a whole way of testing. Does it replace other tests?
Dr SF: From my point of view, not completely. It is definitely a diagnostic tool that I value very much, a diagnostic tool that I’m executing and working with all my clients, or most of my clients from the very young ones to the very old ones. And if someone is not able to perform, like a six-month-old baby, for example, I’m using a surrogate test as well. That is leading to very good results. But I’m a physician. I’m a trained general practitioner. So, if the result of the Kinesiological testing is pointing me in one direction, I’m saying, look, we are testing now in your blood, for example, the hormones. But I now know which part of the hormonal activity I want to beat this blood to be tested for. Or if someone is showing a very strong reaction to a special food, I say, look, why don’t we take the blood testing as well, just to prove that it isn’t just the recommendation of a weird Austrian physician who was doing hocus pocus on you, but that you have something in your hands to be tested for. I was working with an Australian businessman. He runs a few restaurants in Austria, and he was very skeptical of my recommendation after this testing and for the food testing because it was very particular. So, we did the blood test as well afterward. It was right, and that was good.
AB: Fabulous. And tell me what scientific research has been done. Can you tell us about some papers or something?
Dr SF: It is in the US, International College for Applied Kinesiology. It’s not a university of course. There are ongoing trials and scientific data produced and also published with every paper that you produce, with every statistic that you create and trial that you are making. You are inviting, of course, also others to discuss the result, and those results are discussed a lot. I can only say as a physician, I promise that I will never harm someone. And not only that, but I also promise to improve someone else’s state of health. That is the aim.
AB: Lovely. That is absolutely lovely. You know how we’ve been talking about testing for food allergies and minerals and things that can be sorted by giving people something to eat and you can put that substance on their tongue as you said, and see like you were talking about stress and selenium and you could see that it calmed them down. But what about people who do kinesiology for emotions, for blockages, for events that have happened in their lives, in their childhood? How can you help with that?
Dr SF: I have to confess that this part or aspect of applied kinesiology testing is part of an aspect that I am blind to in my daily routine.
AB: Okay.
Dr SF: This is something I have huge respect for because again, it is two human beings that are working with each other and they are trying to sense just the performance of a single muscle, either to be strong, to be weak, or in a state of hypertension. Every emotional influence that is coming or is added to that trial is something that can be a bias or a continuously changing result. And that is not what the applied kinesiology testing, from my perspective, created for and good for.
AB: And do you have any other advice?
Dr SF: Even if you don’t have access to someone who is guiding you, doing applied kinesiology testing with you, please start trusting your gut feeling. Not necessarily the intestine, but your instincts. Your instincts are trying to assist you in making the right decisions, to stay healthy, to stay integral, to stay on the safe side. If you have in the back of your head something telling you, look, it would be better to run or just to resist or to avoid it. There is a massive organism that is talking with you and in dialogue with your sense of awareness at that moment. And following this advice is always valuable, is always good. Even if the advice seems initially a little bit curious or weird, trust it and see where it brings you to.
AB: Okay, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the chat, Sepp. Thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoyed the Wellness Curated podcast. Please subscribe and tell your friends and family about it. And here’s to you leading your best life.