Autonomic Response Testing (ART)
Your body knows what it needs to heal.
What is Autonomic Response Testing (ART)?
Autonomic Response Testing (ART) is an advanced biofeedback assessment that:
Helps identify chronic infections, organ imbalances, and toxicity in your body.
Helps identify the proper remedies or therapies to clear the imbalances.
Helps prioritize your current issues and the most effective treatments for your body in real time.
ART was developed by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, M.D., PhD, along with Louisa Williams, MC, DC, ND and Yoshiaki Omura, MD, as an advanced form of muscle testing.
Evaluating the Autonomic Nervous System
ART is an accurate and efficient way of evaluating your autonomic nervous system’s response to a variety of stressors.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is the part of our nervous system that functions automatically and requires no conscious thought. The ANS controls the beating of your heart, blood pressure, detoxification of toxins, digestion, and brain function.
There are many stressors both inside and outside your body that can interfere with the proper function of the ANS. Autonomic response testing identifies which stressors are interfering with ANS function. These stressors could be:
Infections – bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi
Environmental toxins
Allergies
Hormonal imbalances
Neurotransmitter imbalances
Scars
Dental issues
Testing For Problems With ANS Regulation
ART can detect when the body’s innate regulatory abilities have been compromised. Testing these very basic regulatory processes, and correcting them when problems are found, is critical for receiving accurate information from the body.
There are 2 regulatory problems that ART practitioners look for before beginning a full ART exam:
Neurogenic Switching
Neurogenic switching occurs when there is neurological disorganization in your body.
Just like the earth, your body has electrical currents running through it.
That’s why we can measure the electrical activity in your brain with an EEG and the electrical activity of your heart with an ECG.
Anything with electrical currents running through it has positive and negative poles (think of the + and - signs on a battery).
Switching occurs when the poles in your body become reversed. When you are switched, your brain and nerve cells cannot communicate properly with each other.
Blocked Regulation
Blocked regulation occurs when your cells lose their ability to produce coherent light.
Every cell in your body produces biophotons – bits of light generated spontaneously by living cells. These biophotons carry information to every other cell in your body. This allows your cells to communicate with each other and allows your body to work in harmony.
Light coherence is a term used to describe lights’ ability to focus clearly. The light produced by your cells is more focused and clear than any laser. As long as the light remains this way, your cells communicate with each other seamlessly.
But sometimes your cells lose this coherence and the light emitted becomes more diffuse like a flashlight. This is blocked regulation and it means your cells have lost their ability to communicate with each other.
Your ART practitioner will assess for both neurogenic switching and blocked regulation. If found, your practitioner will correct it before continuing your ART assessment.
How Does ART Work?
Once you’re comfortably laying on the treatment table, your physician will ask you to raise your arms over your head. You don’t need to do anything but relax.
Your physician will test the regulatory status of your autonomic nervous system and correct any problems with blocked regulation or neurogenic switching.
Your physician will then test your body’s reaction to a variety of different stressors, checking for interferences and imbalances.
Your physician will test different treatments and determine an individualized protocol to clear the stressors and restore your body’s balance.
Why Not Just Rely On Lab Results?
While laboratory tests using blood, urine, stool, and saliva are invaluable in diagnosing patients, there are many cases where this testing doesn’t give us a complete picture.
For example, the gold standard test to diagnose parasites is stool analysis. But stool analysis has been found to miss as many as 40% of parasitic infection cases. Even direct blood analysis to diagnose infections can often result in false negatives.
This is especially true for stealth infections. Stealth infections are microbes like mycoplasma, viruses, and some bacteria that can hide inside human cells and tissues, evading detection by your immune system.
Essentially, they set up house in your cells and live happily there, hidden from view. In fact, more and more research is finding that stealth, chronic infection is contributing to many types of chronic illness and is vastly under-diagnosed.
ART gives us additional, valuable information about what’s going on inside your body.
We use ART, along with lab testing, to guide and prioritize treatments. So we’re only proceeding to certain treatments when you’re ready for them.
The Five Levels of Healing
The Soul-Mind-Body Connection
The 5 levels of healing is a treatment model proposed by Dr. Klinghardt that combines Western and Eastern knowledge about our bodies, health, and energy. He suggests that we have 5 levels or layers that influence each other and directly affect our health.
According to this model, our bodies make visible what’s happening at the soul level. So if there is unresolved trauma in our past, it will eventually manifest as a physical condition or pain. Likewise, when emotional healing occurs, positive changes are seen at the physical level as well.
The model helps us understand the different layers of healing that may be required in order to get better. There are specific treatments recommended for addressing each level, which we’ll outline below.
The Five Levels of Healing
1st Level (Physical Body)
The physical level is what most of us envision when we think about health. It pertains to our physical body and biochemistry. Treatments addressing this level include diet, herbal medicine, exercise, osteopathic manipulation, medication, supplements, and surgery.
2nd Level (Energy Body)
The energy level pertains to our nervous system and energy meridians. It also includes how we process our emotions and life experiences. Treatments addressing this level include acupuncture, neural therapy, meditation, qi gong, and unplugging from electronic devices.
3rd Level (Mental Body)
The mental level pertains to our attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs that influence our perception and reality. Treatments addressing this level include mental field therapy, applied psycho-neurobiology.
4th Level (Intuitive Body)
The intuitive level includes the collective unconscious, dreams, and intuition. Treatments for addressing this level include psychotherapy, applied psycho-neurobiology, color and sound therapy.
5th Level (Spiritual Body)
The spiritual level is the highest level and the practitioner cannot intervene in it. It’s up to each individual to explore their relationship with the Spirit through prayer, meditation, and innate healing.
The 5 levels of healing were designed as a tool for integrative medicine practitioners, but many of the treatments recommended are self-care practices that can be done on your own.
