What If Your Body Knows?
In a world of misinformation, this is the compass I trust.
I taught Ted how to muscle test.
He wanted to learn, and it made me seem (a little) less weird—I do it alllll the time.
I use muscle testing to navigate just about everything. It’s a way of tapping into the deeper intelligence of the body—my body’s yes or no response to a question. If you are familiar with using a pendulum or kinesiology, it’s similar. I use it all day, every day: to decide what to wear, what to order off a menu, whether to say yes to an invitation, which supplement to buy, where to go on hikes. I use it in the kitchen when I’m cooking. I use it to pick practitioners, to understand weird energies or messages I’m picking up, to know if it’s the right time to reach out to someone. It’s the quiet voice of truth underneath the noise.
So anyways, Ted (my partner) started with the finger-loops method (there are many ways to do it), and he could do it well—his answers were actually pretty clear—not clouded by wishful thinking or self-doubt, and he was good at asking the right kind of questions—but he didn’t fully trust it. Skeptic at heart. He found it hard to believe that it was true, that it was real.
He’s like most of us—taught to doubt his own knowing, to outsource trust to someone or something else. But in our world today it’s hard to know who or what to trust. So he'd use it sometimes, but hadn’t yet had one of those real-world, undeniable moments where you find you suddenly just know that it’s real.
Then life got… complicated.
We were camping on a friend’s land and there was a wildfire—it was far enough away, we thought…at first. But it kept advancing and then we had to help her evacuate her cabin—we worked calmly, thoughtfully, packing what we could, trying to grab the important things, but underneath we all felt the desperate urgency. We left with 5 dogs and only 3 cars-full of a life, hoping it was just an exercise, that we’d be back in a few days. The air was full of drifting flakes of ash—once I caught a whole ashen aspen leaf out of the air that disintegrated at my touch. We watched the advancing line of orange fire from the ridge behind her house the night before we left. It was beautiful. And terrible.
The fire burned her cabin and 133k acres of surrounding ponderosa pine, sagebrush and snowberry to the ground, home to skunk and coyote, deer and great horned owls, a place sacred and precious to so many.
Meanwhile, we had just moved out of our place and put all our things in storage. Our plan had been to camp on her land until our new rental opened up in about a month. That was now off the table.
We were effectively houseless for a month.
So we camped at another friend’s place for a week and then decided to go camp up in the North Cascades somewhere. And that’s when my muscle testing went completely offline.
I couldn’t get a yes or a no about anything. Even basic stuff—like “my name is Annika”—nothing. It was like someone cut the wire. Dead line.
It was a really weird feeling. Like losing one of my senses. I felt adrift, unmoored. How was I supposed to navigate my life? Would it come back? I couldn’t even use muscle testing to ask if it would come back. I had to trust—with no evidence—that it was okay. That I was okay. That it would return.
It made me realize how much I rely on that connection—not just for little decisions, but to navigate the world at all. It’s the inner compass I count on, releasing me from the confusion and uncertainty of the rest of the world.
So I told Ted, “You’re gonna have to do all the muscle testing on this trip.”
He was like, “Oh my god, really?”
But there wasn’t another option. I was offline. And we had nowhere to stay.
You see, when we go on road trips, we don’t reserve or even look for places to camp in advance. We pick a general area or direction and set our intention for where we want to stay—it’s really always the same: we want a campsite that’s beautiful, safe, dark, quiet, and free—and then we navigate relying entirely on muscle testing—we test our direction at every option: left, right, or straight?
It’s kind of an unnerving way to travel, to be honest. No certainty, no control. But there’s also a beauty and innocence in it.
Sometimes the muscle testing takes us on wild goose chases that don’t seem to make any sense—driving around for hours in one area and then ending up somewhere else entirely. I’ve never quite figured out why that happens, but it does. Maybe those places only reveal themselves at night—because what we’re asking for is rogue, hidden, sacred. Maybe the Earth is protecting us.
Anyway, that’s our usual method. And now it was all up to Ted.
I don’t remember exactly what I said to him, but it was something like: “We’re gonna be fine. You’ve got this. You’re good at this, and for some reason, this is what’s supposed to happen. Maybe it’s a test. You can do this.”
He agreed, a little reluctantly, and we set out, navigating the mystery.
One night as we drove, it was pouring rain. No moon. No cell service. Dense forest on both sides—North Cascades dense—towering evergreens, thick understory of salal and salmonberry. We’re on a two-lane forest road we’ve never been on, headlights flashing off the wet blacktop and driving rain. Occasionally, we’d pass a dark little opening on one side or the other. Ted muscle tests each of them: this one?
No.
No.
No.
Finally, after hours of driving this winding narrow road through the dark, oppressive rain, he gets a yes.
He turns left.
It’s one of those old forest roads that’s been decommissioned—there’s a trench and a berm across the road to keep vehicles out. It doesn’t look good. We grab our rain jackets and climb over the berm to take a look. To our great relief there’s this little flat spot with an old fire ring, and just enough room for a tent.
We throw the tent up in the pouring rain and crawl inside.
In the morning, the storm has passed. The sun is shining playfully through the trees on the hill above us, glinting off wet branches. It’s quiet, only the music of water dripping from wet green needles onto wet green moss below, and the lilting melodies of song birds. We take a little walk on the decommissioned road. There’s nobody around for miles. Just us and the wet ferns, mist breathing up from the damp earth.
And then we pack up and muscle test which way to go next: back the way we came. And this time we can see.
As we drive, we peer in at every single one of those little openings that got a no the night before.
Each one the same: completely unusable. Too steep, too small, blocked off, just a wide shoulder—zero viable campsites. The only one that would have worked at all was that first one that got a yes.
That was when Ted finally believed.
For me, it felt like: Thank god someone else can muscle test besides me.
I trusted his muscle testing. I knew he could do it. I didn’t know why I’d gone offline—but it felt like a test. Not just for me—to trust that I’d be ok, that it would come back, to surrender control—but for him too.
That morning, he was kind of stunned. “That’s crazy! Every no was totally unusable. And the first yes was the first possibility! How?”
I was amused. Because of course it was.
And I was relieved. He needed that experience. It settled something in him. His doubts had been like a tiny pebble in my shoe—nothing major, but irritating. After that, not only did he trust his own muscle testing more, he trusted mine more too.
Because it’s about more than just camping. It’s about learning to listen to the wisdom of your body. To feel what’s true. We need that now more than ever—something unshakeable, something that doesn’t change with the news cycle or the algorithm.
We are so flooded with information. Conflicting advice. Competing truths.
Eat this, not that.
Exercise more, relax more, meditate more, sleep more.
Care more. Speak out. Be quiet. Do better. Do less.
Support the Earth, your health, your community, your nervous system.
Which cause matters most? Which path is yours to follow?
There’s no clear answer—not from the news, not from your social bubble, not even from your wisest friends.
But you don’t need to look outside yourself.
You have all the answers within you. Your answers. Your truth.
Muscle testing gives you access to that. To the wisdom of your own soul, spirit, and cells. Reliable, accurate, clear, sovereign access. So you can stop wasting time and energy wondering and confused. So you can take action or wait for your moment with confidence.
I know that everyone has access to this true innate human ability—it’s only a matter of relearning, or maybe it’s unlearning our insane cultural conditioning. And I want you to have access to this essential tool, your birthright. If everyone lives by their own truth, then we remake the world together.
Your truth lives in your body, and if you can hear it, you can live that much closer to your purpose.
If this sparks something in you—if your body is already buzzing with I want this—I’ll be offering a course in muscle testing soon. I’ve been doing this for 22 years and I live my life by it—I know all the pitfalls and how to work around them and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned.
Epilogue:
We went back after the fire to see, to grieve. There’s more to the story, maybe I’ll tell it another time.
