“Symptoms do not appear until the body’s ability to compensate has been used up.” — Frank Lowen

We all intuitively know that robust physical health – generating a surplus of energy – is foundational to accomplishment, satisfaction, and joy in our lives. At Dynamic Self Integration (DSI) we begin with a general physical evaluation of each of your organ systems’ many parts, assessing for both strengths and weaknesses.

Many physical weaknesses or deficiencies don’t exhibit symptoms for months or even years, and the best time to address them is before they cross the symptom threshold and become full blown medical problems.

However when symptoms do appear—be it specific (a pain in the back), or more general or vague (tired all the time)—it is definitely time to take a look!

We have over 40 years of experience assessing, testing, and locating the SOURCE of physical imbalances, and together with our clients creating treatment plans that restore energy and rebuild resiliency and health.

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Individual approach: Though we respect the general design of the human body that we all share, this is not a “one size fits all” approach. We begin with a comprehensive assessment, that is customized based on your physical condition, what brings you to us, and most importantly, what you want from your life.

Causes: Rather than focusing on symptoms or problems and what to do about those—which can lead to superficial unsatisfactory solutions—at first we begin with a general look into your background, and how you are currently living.  

Next, we engage a general assessment of your physical well-being. This includes your organ systems, muscles, basic chemistry, and structure. Depending on your needs and reasons for coming it may also include a more detailed postural analysis. We are very interested, when we find weaknesses and imbalances, to track these back to their inception—where and when did they start, and how did they develop. As explained above, these may be part of something symptomatic or not.

Tracking a weakness back to its original cause is very helpful when considering treatment solutions. Our aim is to restore physical balance to all weaknesses that have developed, so that the body can again achieve its optimal function as a whole unit.

The work really begins when we teach your body to hold this balance through how you are actually living on a daily basis. And this is also where knowing the cause(s) of the imbalances comes into play. Causes that are still operative and influencing daily health – such as unmetabolized emotional trauma, poor diet, improper or lack of exercise, and various body tensions (see Patterns below) are then where the work needs to happen in order to maintain and hold balance.

Patterns: We are generally our most open, brain-wise, as young children in our behaviors and choices. As we grow and develop, some choices seem to “work” better than others; in other words they are more harmonious within our specific family dynamic. As the years pass these favored behaviors get built into our brains, nervous systems, and bodies simultaneously influencing our perception, cognition, and actions. Thus formed within a specific environment growing up, and well practiced and automatized, these choices may or may not continue to serve us well as adults.

One hallmark of a patterned response is that it’s an inherent bias which may limit personal freedom. And besides the tendency toward automatic operation, patterns can be problematic in other ways. Somatically, patterns of action and reaction can impair your body’s tissues and organs, causing tensions and constrictions in some places, over-reaching and stretching in others; these are just two examples of the myriad ways patterns can take a person further from neutrality and self at his very core.

A few of the many specific examples of problematic patterns include: use of any substance addictively to soothe or sedate feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, trauma, etc; compensating for a deep sense of guilt by over-giving; recurring physical symptoms from “stress”— the list is virtually endless. Patterns tend to weaken the body over time by causing internal conflicts within your nervous system. When this is chronic, particular structures can wither from disuse, causing others to compensate, making them more vulnerable to breakdown from being overworked.

DSI helps you identify patterns that are problematic, and understanding their origin is the first step. The road to healing, that is, lessening any negative hold a pattern has over you, is usually very individual and many-faceted, involving both physical and psychological work. The key lies in creating a strategy that is complete enough in its application and timing to break the chains. 

Less is more: Revering the healing axiom “first do no harm,” we believe in doing the least possible in terms of interventions, using the most natural and non-intrusive ways available to bring about change. We respect that the body has its own intelligence built through evolution and experience over millions of years. We know that even non-invasive interventions can have undesirable ripple effects on the body as a whole. We consider how any recommendation might affect the whole person, and not just whatever it is that we are proposing to adjust. We make sure to prepare the ground, and take the time needed so you can assimilate the treatment.

We have also seen that giving the fewest possible instructions to the body at any given time tends to produce optimal results. We also like to offer suggestions for further exploration you can do on your own, so that you can better understand at a somatic level what you did to improve, and fully own that change in your own being and way of life moving forward. 

To sum up we don’t rush in. We ask, study, consider from varied angles. And whatever “ain’t broke,” we don’t fix. 

About muscle testing


Also known as applied kinesiology, muscle testing is a valuable and non-invasive way to access information from the body. Along with interview, observation, and other common health assessments, we use it here at DSI to assess whether specific parts of your body are able to respond as needed when commanded to do so by your brain and nervous system.

Muscle testing involves pushing on a particular muscle (we usually use your arm or leg), while specifically targeting the function of some other muscle, meridian, or other part of your organ system. If you are unable to resist that push, it shows a weakness. 

Muscle testing measures how something in your body is functioning against a 60% efficiency baseline. So it is essentially a pass/fail system. If you pass any particular test, you’ve got 60% functioning or higher. If you fail one–that is for whatever is being tested, it tests weak, then its function is below 60%. So why is this important and what is its significance?

When any part of the body, be it a muscle, a nerve, a meridian or whatever, falls below 60% efficiency, that is when other parts of the body must step in and at least temporarily help to do that part’s job. Which means that this other part is now doing two jobs instead of just that one it’s designed to do. It must continue to do its own job, while also pinch hitting for the failing part. 

This happens all the time in the body which is why we don’t usually die so fast if one part fails. It is called compensation. In fact our bodies are set up this way for survival. It is only when several parts are failing over a longer term that there is concern. Then this situation contributes added stress to whatever stresses are already there in life, and a negative momentum can take hold, and become locked into your cells and tissues over time.

Muscle testing can be an early warning system. Often the first few parts that go weak are asymptomatic at least for a time. There is a well known axiom in healing that symptoms do not appear until the body’s ability to compensate has been used up. Usually something has been going downhill for some time before you are in a doctor’s office inquiring about it.

Therefore regular muscle testing can detect changes before they become symptomatic or cause dysfunction requiring medical procedures—at least a good part of the time. There are many ways to adjust the body to reawaken and restore these turned off parts and get them doing their jobs again. A balanced body with all parts working to at least 60% efficiency handles life stresses better because your entire team is showing up on a daily basis —like the proverbial well-oiled machine – and no one part is bearing an overload.

At times tired, injured, and previously overloaded parts can grab some of the body’s surplus energy— which is much more likely to exist when the body is functioning at 60% and higher— and begin a deeper healing, especially with the right techniques and a compatible lifestyle for that body. This is ideal and what I want to see happen for every client; however just maintaining balance in the body circuitries is more effective than letting easily adjustable imbalances continue, causing damage over time.

A common question we hear from some clients, and have often asked ourselves is “Isn’t muscle testing too subjective to be trusted as accurate?” The short answer is sometimes when it is improperly used. Jonathan and Ann both have years of experience looking for what can go wrong with the testing. We also independently verify our results with blind testing, and cross check our results with medical tests when those are available. Most often what we learn from testing is helpful detail, a step beyond our powers of observation and ability to sense alone, as well as what our clients can share from their own sensing and observing. So we have found it to be a helpful additional tool.