Neuro-emotional technique or NET is yet another example of an unscientific approach to healing “emotional blocks” that allegedly cause illness in the body. It combines techniques and principals from traditional Chinese medicine, chiropractics and applied kinesiology (muscle testing) to rid the body of unresolved emotional blocks that are allegedly stored in the body’s memory.

As this practitioner explains, “Think of unresolved emotions stored in your body as similar to a computer ‘glitch’ that can short circuit your desires and affect your health.”

The inventor of this approach is a chiropractor named Scott Walker of Encinitas, California who describes NET as a “body-mind way, a non talk-it-out way, of dealing with emotional aberrations.” He claims everyone has these aberrations that “replay” old memories which adversely affect health.

According to this article in Quackwatch, “when chronic patients do not seem to get better over a course of treatment . . . NET practitioners look for a ‘Neuro Emotional Complex (NEC)’ that they feel is preventing healing.”

The practitioner then relies on another unscientific method of diagnosis known as muscle testing aka applied kinesiology to “isolate a troublesome event”. The patient is then instructed “to hold in mind a ‘snapshot’ of the emotional state while the chiropractor adjusts the patient's spine and acupuncture points; and prescribes supplement products and homeopathic remedies.”

We all know that emotional issues can have a negative effect on a person’s health, but there is no scientific evidence to prove that the body has a memory in which these traumatic events are stored. In other words, because the underlying premise of NET is unsubstantiated, whatever beneficial effects may seem to result from this therapy are either coincidental or due to the placebo effect.