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I'm standing in what looks like a doctor's surgery, arms strechted out before me. A woman in plimsolls is pressing down my forearms and giving me strange instructions : "Say yes", "Say no", "Think of something nice", "Think of something horrid".
Nicolette Peyre is demonstrating how a person's state of mind affects their muscles. This is a key principle in kinesiology, which she practices. My arms, she assures me, resist less when I say "No"than when I say "Yes",although I don't notice any difference."Ninety-nine point nine percent of people are weaker on 'No'", she continues. "I always advise people to shout 'yes' if they are being attacked - and then fight back."
A relatively recent alternative therapy, kinesiology ("study of mouvement" in Greek) is drawingever more enthousiasts (martial arts supremo Bruce Lee was an early fan). It's easy to see why : half-way between massage and cognitive therapy,it's simple, painless and quick - it is rumoured to show results after three hour-long sessions, sometimes less, especially with children, who respond particularly well. And it's said to be spectacularly effective in relievingproblems as varied as learning disorders, depression, allergies and multiple sclerosis.

A part-time conference interpreter, Peyre, 47, is also vice-president of the Belgian Association of Kinesiologists and presidentof the International Association of Specialised Kinesiology. She and her colleague Anne Duce share a practice in Ixelles, where they give consultations and train practitioners.
Peyre insists that kinesiology shouldn't be substituted for medical treatment, and will always ask a patient with serious complaints if they've seen a doctor. "But," she continues, "it can work well as a complement : to help relieve the side-effects ofchemotherapy, for instance".
A key difference with traditional medicine is that symptoms don't dictate the approach. "Whether it's a terminally ill patient, a new-born baby, an athlete who wants to improve their performance or a singer who would like to reach that impossible note, I follow the same steps."
The ideabehind the muscle tests is that the body keeps a record of traumas and tensions. "The body never lies," says Peyre. "Muscles speak a binary language, like computers. They respons strongly or weakly. A drop in tonicity signals tension."
One intriguing techniwue, "age recesion", involves exploring past trauma. Peyre performs muscle tests while pronouncing ages out loud - "25", "20", "10", often back to early childhood. Most trauma occurs in the first seven years of life, she says. "You'd be surprised how well people remeber banal incidents." Although similar to hypnosis in the sense that the subconsciuous is fully awake, in kinesiology the consciousnessnever switches off.
Once identified, a problem can be eased with massage, simple movements or acupressure, or through visualisation.
-"You imagine the scene as you would liked it to happen, putting in lots of sensorial impressions, like smells ans sounds, to make it as lively as a memory." The brain, she assures me, is easily fooled. "It can't telle the difference between something that really happened and something that's imagined".
Kinesiology grew out of experimental therapies developed in the US in the 1960s. The first of these, applied kinesiology, was the brainchild of George Goodheart, a chiropractor who established a table of corrsponances between the body's muscles, lymp nodes and meridians (the energy channels used in Chinese medicine).
"His idea was that if a muscle is sore or weak, the cause is often to be found in another, corresponding muscle. Muscles often work in pairs, like the springs of a swinging restaurant door."
Another American chorpractor, John Thie, used some of Goodheart's findings and popularised them in his hugely succesful 1973 book, Touch for Health. Thie believed that illness is caused by physical or psychological imbalance. "He thought that if everybody learnt simple gestures to restore their balance, no one would be ill,", says Peyre.
The notion of balance is central to the discipliner. Peyre's idea is that the body is "naturally healthy", but that stress, trauma and even education can wrench it from its state. "As children, we want to try everything, we're not afraid, we run until we fall over or get burnt and are taught new habits to curb our instincts." She compares us to circus elephants. "As babies, they're tied to a pole with a rope, which they are too weak to break. When they grow up, the same rope is enough to keep them from escaping - althoudgh they'd be strong enough to break it."
She also mentions an experiment with sharks in an aquarium. "Red meat was placed behind a glass pane. After banging against the glass for a while, they stopped trying to reach the meat - even when the glass was removed."
I ask Peyre if she's ever uncovered a hidden tragedy, such as child abuse. "We usually don't need to probe that far to see an improvement. A Woman under 'age recesion' once remembered an incident when she was eight years old and alone in a room with a fourteen-year-old boy. She recalle 'feeling uncomfortable'. We didn't go any further and just 'cleane' the memory."
De many of her clients break down during treatment ? "They're more likely to burst out laughing," she says. "In kinesiology, you don't neeed to relive the trauma to get rid of it. If you want strong emotions, go for a therapy like rebirthing.

"Emotions, in any case, usually last a fraction of a second," she continues. "Look at babies, who go from one mood to another with no transition. The problem with adults is that we have this habit of dwelling on things."
There are stories of kinesiology bringing about spontaneous recovery from life-threatening illness, but Peyre mainly sees people with milder conditions. She gets particularly good results with depression, mental blocks and learning difficulties. One of het best memories is of a Turkish schoolboy whose father was very strict and who had serious problems reading. After just one session teaching him basic hand and eye movements, he could read fluently.
Another case involved a brilliant youngwoman who had landed a good job but was terrified at the prospect of spending five days away with her future colleagues. It turned out she had grown up in Madagascar and returned to Belgium aged seven. She joined a schoolwhere she didn't know anyone, and on the first day the teacher asked the class to indicate one centimetre with their hands. She had never stduied measurement and showed about 50 centimetres. "She was dreading having to relive a similarly humiliating experience," says Peyre.
Kinesiology, Peyre insists, is not a lie detector. "It's important to reassure people about this, especially children. It's not as if someone, all of a sudden, was going to know the whole truth about them just by holding their arms. The body never says anything, but points to directions you could follow to feel better."
Neither is it a panacea, she continues. "Medication, verbal therapy, even singing or dancing can all achieve results. And going to see a kinesiologist doesn't mean that you'll feel good all the time. Life is made of ups and downs. But you'll be more lucid : you'll know where you stand. For years, before I discovered kinesiology, I felt terrible without being aware of it. Intellectually, everything was fine, but I was numb. Kinesiology has put me back in touch with myself."