The Emotion Code

Health & Healing Involves So Much More Than Just Our Physical Bodies

In clinical practice, Kirsten’s focus is always on identifying the true underlying cause of symptoms — not simply replacing pharmaceuticals with supplements. Over 25 years, she has found that effective midlife care requires looking deeper: beyond hormones alone, and into the emotional and physiological patterns that shape a woman’s wellbeing.

This led her to incorporate The Emotion Code and The Body Code alongside her naturopathic foundations. These methods help identify and release emotional imbalances that may contribute to physical discomfort or symptom persistence, offering a more complete pathway to healing. By integrating these tools with evidence-based natural medicine, Kirsten supports women at both the physical and emotional levels, creating more sustainable and transformative outcomes through perimenopause and menopause.

A technique developed by Dr Bradley Nelson that explores how unresolved emotional experiences can contribute to physical or emotional discomfort. These “trapped emotions” can influence mood, behaviour, stress responses and even the way the body holds tension. For many women, this becomes particularly relevant during perimenopause and menopause, when the nervous system is more reactive and long-held patterns often rise to the surface.

Dr Bradley Nelson is a Chiropractic Physician and holistic health practitioner who has spent decades studying the relationship between emotional experiences and physical wellbeing. Through years of clinical observation, he developed The Emotion Code — a method designed to identify and release “trapped emotions,” which he believed could influence a person’s health, behaviour and overall sense of balance.

Dr Nelson’s work centres on the idea that unresolved emotional energies can continue to impact the body long after an event has passed. Many people recognise this intuitively — the sense of carrying something heavy from the past, feeling held back by old patterns, or experiencing physical symptoms that seem linked to stress or emotional load. His method provides a structured approach to uncovering and releasing these patterns, often leading to greater clarity, ease and emotional resilience.

Many women carry emotional residue from past experiences — the “weight” of moments that were stressful, painful or unresolved. While invisible, these emotional imprints can continue to influence mood, stress responses and even how the body holds tension. Over time, this accumulated load can feel heavy, affecting both emotional balance and physical wellbeing.

In The Emotion Code framework, a trapped emotion is understood as the lingering energetic imprint of a past emotional event that the body didn't fully process at the time. These patterns can settle into different areas of the body and may contribute to issues such as discomfort, tension, anxiety, low mood or a general sense of feeling “stuck.” Rather than viewing emotions as abstract or purely psychological, this approach recognises that emotional experiences have physical correlates. Stress chemistry, neural pathways and the body’s protective mechanisms all play a role — which is why unresolved emotional patterns can continue to be felt long after the event has passed. By identifying and releasing these trapped emotions, many women experience a shift in emotional steadiness, clarity and physical ease — often describing it as finally putting down a weight they’ve carried for years.

Muscle testing is a gentle, non-invasive assessment method used in the Emotion Code to help identify stress patterns, emotional triggers and areas of imbalance within the body. It works on the principle that the nervous system responds differently to stimuli that feel “congruent” versus “incongruent” to the body. When something is stressful, unresolved or out of alignment, the body may momentarily lose strength or stability. When something feels safe, supportive or true, the response is often stronger and more steady.

In this process, subtle changes in muscle tone are used as a feedback tool — helping to highlight emotional patterns the body may still be holding onto. This can include unresolved fear, guilt, resentment, anxiety or other emotional experiences that were never fully processed at the time they occurred. Over time, these stored patterns may contribute to unexplained emotions, repeating behaviours, feelings of being “stuck,” or even physical tension and discomfort. Muscle testing offers a structured way to access this information so that trapped emotions can be identified and released.

In perimenopause and menopause — a stage where old patterns often resurface and the nervous system becomes more sensitive — this technique can provide valuable insight into what the body is carrying, what it’s ready to let go of, and what may be contributing to emotional or physical symptoms.

Proxy testing is a method used within the Emotion Code that allows muscle testing to be performed on behalf of someone else when they are not physically present. Instead of the individual being tested, a practitioner (or another person) stands in as the “proxy” and uses their own muscle response as the feedback mechanism.

This approach is based on the idea that intention and focused connection can allow a practitioner to tune into another person’s emotional patterns for the purpose of identifying trapped emotions. It’s commonly used in remote sessions or when the person being supported is unable to participate in the testing themselves.

In practice, the proxy acts as the testing point, and the practitioner uses muscle testing to interpret where imbalances or trapped emotions may be present. It’s a gentle, structured process designed to offer clarity and insight without requiring the client to be physically in the room.

The Body Code is an expanded version of the Emotion Code developed by Dr Bradley Nelson. While the Emotion Code focuses specifically on identifying and releasing trapped emotional patterns, the Body Code widens the scope to explore additional categories of imbalance that may be contributing to physical or emotional discomfort.

These broader areas allow practitioners to investigate factors such as structural stress, nutritional imbalances, toxicity, environmental influences and other contributors that may be affecting the body’s ability to regulate and repair. In this way, the Body Code provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding what may be underlying a woman’s symptoms — particularly during perimenopause and menopause, when multiple systems in the body are shifting at once.

By using this structured method, the aim is to gain clearer insight into what the body may need in order to restore balance and support steadier emotional and physical wellbeing.