Muscle testing, applied kinesiology, and just plain being wrongheaded

by JimmyPage 20 Replies latest jw friends

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  IsaacJ22

  My wife has an aunt who has sold the whole family on alternative cures. She has shelves of vitamins, drops, and pays out hundreds per visit to go see quacks instead of real doctors who only charge half. Even things that claim to have a spiritistic explanation she's into, despite the Society's warnings.

  The worst thing is that she can just as evangelistic about her alternative cures as she can be about the WTS. She keeps trying to suck my wife into the vortex! And then she uses my mother-in-law to help too.
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  breakfast of champions

  It seems to me that the percentage of JWs into homeopathy/Kinesiology/alternative medicine is well above average. My feeling, and I wish I could prove it, is that it has do do with a person's "belief threshold" which is exceptionally low for JWs. For instance, a highly religious person is more likely to see god in a cloud, or Jesus in their toast than someone not so religious. Or they are more likely to correlate certain unrelated events and attribute a nonexistent "meaning" to them.

  Just my opinion.
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  sir82

  I believe it's a holdover from Rutherford's time, when the medical profession was widely viewed as quackery by the editor of the "Golden Age".

  You also see it when some JWs are highly suspicious of childhood vaccines and cooking in aluminum pots - more, similar Rutherford wackiness.

  It's odd how stubborn this "doctors are quacks" meme is among JWs.

  It may have something to do with the blood transfusion issue as well.

  "Doctors are evil - they know blood transfusions are bad, but they don't tell the public, and they want to force them on innocent JWS!"

  So JWs look for all sorts of "alternative" medical treatment.
• 

  designs

  sir82-

  You know its bad when Plumbers and Janitors on the Society's Hospital Liason Committees 'tell doctors' their business...
• 

  BluesBrother

  A sister from my last congo was Kinesiologist. She was furious when the WTS ran an article against it since a lot of her clients stopped coming.. But business picked up again. I just checked her web presence and she still does it - and trains budding practitioners - seems quite high in the world of wacky meds. (Perhaps we should not be so dismissive - some here might swear by it)

  Actually I am not saying that all such things are going to be bad but I have never seen any real evidence. I can remember though when osteopathy was viewed as strange but now it is pretty mainstream.

  I digress.... The point is that Sister X is still in good standing, in defiance of the WT teaching..

  As to the popularity of such things among dubs?/ I think that their ingrained suspicion of "The World" makes them susceptible to fringe thinking..
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  Band on the Run

  Janet Travel helped bring kinesiology into mainstream medicine when she treated JFK. Facial neuralgia wracked my body with muscle spasms. I never heard of it until I was out of the witnesses for 20 years. In a previous post, though, there are evidently different forms of kinesiology. I tend to be mainstream and not New Age. I also had Qi Chong done. It did not help my pain but there is definitely something going on that is valid.

  Muscle testing for spasms and knots makes sense. Using it for more than muscle testing sounds far-fetched. When I was doing Qi-Chong and Chinese herbs I consulted with a friend who grew up in Hong Kong. She said that most Chinese use western medicine and only use traditional methods when they are too poor to get Western medicine. I don't have the scientific training to evaluate.
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  JimmyPage

  Many JWs act shocked when they have to be in the hospital and the staff treats them nice. It's like everything they've been told about the medical community was a lie. :)
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  Wasanelder Once

  I wouldn't worry about this issue, the majority die from the illness they are trying to improve by taking the perscribed herbs and spices. Thus they see how little it does to help. I had a relative who swore by coffee enemas. Then again she was a widow.
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  JimmyPage

  LOL... my in-laws are big on herbs too. There was a sister in the cong I grew up in who was into the coffee enemas... and these kind of people always try to drag others into it too.
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  Band on the Run

  Why do people think the Witnesses downplayed the medical profession? My mom forged my father's signature so my brother and I could get the polio vaccine. It does not seem like an intrinsic part of the WT theology. Maybe they fear any authority figures. What do they say about lawyers and legal advice?