PRACTITIONER VOICE
Studying Kinesiology
How do we decide what to balance in an energetic kinesiology session?
Natalia Gavrilova | www. kinesiologywithnatalia. com. au
How do I know what to do with a client? It’ s one of the most common questions I hear from kinesiology students and new practitioners— and it’ s the one I’ ve spent the most time thinking about. When you’ re studying kinesiology, everything feels clear in the student clinic— each session follows the curriculum, and the focus is set. But once the course ends, reality kicks in. Every person is a tangle of desires and limitations, struggles and ideals, body aches living side by side with emotional pain, past baggage, and fears about the future.
A simple strategy is to ask the client what they want from the session or muscle test for an answer. However, the client may not be able to decide. And muscle monitoring is not always a reliable technique because the practitioner’ s confusion affects the results. In my experience, deciding what matters most— therapeutic priorities— is often the bulk of the work. That decision alone can take you halfway toward achieving the therapeutic goals. There’ s no one-size-fits-all formula. In this article, I want to reflect on what helps us decide how to help a client— and why that decision matters as much as the techniques we use. Having awareness of these factors can give you more clarity— not only about what to do, but more importantly, why.
Why it matters: what guides a kinesiology session
There are two polarities in therapeutic thinking: mind over body and body over mind. In other words, if you’ re working with a client experiencing depression, do you focus on their biochemistry— or talk to them about their childhood? I’ m not suggesting there’ s one right answer. Both approaches have value. Both are deeply specialised. And kinesiologists, more than many other practitioners, are frequently asked to choose between them— because our modality spans both.
Mind over body. This approach aligns with the metaphysical belief that we create our reality with our mind. Neuroscience supports this to some degree: perception is highly subjective. We don’ t passively receive reality; we edit what we hear and see, forget things that don’ t fit our current emotional state, and interpret events through the lens of belief and desire. Taken to the extreme, this approach promises that you can think your way to happiness. While there are benefits to this outlook, in practice, it doesn’ t always deliver on that promise.
Body over mind. This is the view that when the body functions well, the mind will settle. And it’ s often true. Digestive distress, parasites, joint inflammation, poor sleep, and nutritional deficiencies can all put the nervous system on high alert, creating constant anxiety. But not all anxiety has physiological roots. Some clients— especially young, physically healthy ones— experience profound psychological distress stemming from trauma or existential crisis. In these cases, chasing down environmental or immune culprits might miss the point.
Of course, these are polarised examples meant to clarify the extremes. Our real task as practitioners is to find the shades of grey, and choose a starting point tailored to each client. That choice depends not only on your client, but also on your own lens— your beliefs about the body-mind continuum.
My approach to structuring a kinesiology session
Here, I’ d like to share how I personally approach therapeutic decision-making. This is not a universal formula— it’ s grounded in my values, my training, and my instincts. My style leans toward the mind-over-body end of the spectrum. It’ s based on three principles:
1. being client-centred, 2. being non-directive, and 3. being relational.
Below are the detailed explanations of what it means.
Client-centred rather than problem-centred kinesiology approach
I don’ t see symptoms as existing in isolation from the person experiencing them. And often, the real problem isn’ t the symptom itself— it’ s the suffering caused by it. That might sound like splitting hairs, but it’ s not. There’ s a profound difference between an event and the experience of that event. The event belongs to shared reality— it can be measured, diagnosed, labelled.
168 | vol31 | no3 | JATMS