Kerryn  Franks-Sedgman has been a kinesiologist since 1981 and is one of the senior kinesiologists in Australia. Kerryn represented Australia through the International Kinesiology College as a Touch For Health Faculty member and more recently as an Australian Transformational Instructor. Kerryn has developed her own streams of Kinesiology called Sacred Kinesiology and Health Sciences Kinesiology.

Kerryn currently serves on the Australian National Board for Kinesiology and is her state president.
Kerryn was instrumental in setting up the first governmentally accredited College for Kinesiology, possibly a world first in 1996.

From  Weekend Worksshops to a Government Degree in Kinesiology

Part one: The Early Years.

A friend called Robbi Zeck first introduced me to Kinesiology in 1981. We had journeyed together in the late 70’s through the exciting times of discovery of alternative or natural medicines. I had completed an iridology and herbal medicine course and was living in the country growing food and honouring the principles of a natural and healthy lifestyle.

Robbi came to visit me on the farm and showed me a large green book with a stone hand on the front. She exclaimed it was called Touch For Health and was so excited about its prospects we embarked on an eight day workshop and set off in my Combi Van to go to Canberra, our country’s national capital to find out what it was all about.

These were the pioneer days of new age workshops and we were full of anticipation and optimism at the prospect of learning about this mysterious health modality.Our teacher was Gordon Stokes and Philip Crockford shadowed him, and they were both members of the Touch For Health Foundation in America. I believe it was Gordon’s first trip to Australia.

Our fellow classmates included a New Zealand Doctor called Bruce Dewe who was in training himself to teach these workshops on our side of the world. What a mix of amazing talent and great people and my introduction to Touch For Health was a life altering experience as I discovered its awesome abilities.

We had a wonderful time and made great friends with Bruce and Gordon and Phillip.
Robbi and I were now Touch For Health Instructors. So anyone or anything now needed to know how to muscle test. I thought I had found the key to all the secrets in the universe and would never be sick or have any more stress in my life. Unfortunately we all need to evolve, and as a twenty five year old I was naïve but however felt the personal benefits of this amazing system and got myself balanced on a regular basis. My posture and health improved and so did the people I also balanced. A well-known story throughout the world for all those who discovered the healing power of energy. In the year of 1982, Robbi and I went and sought the Holy Grail of Touch For Health, when we travelled to America and San Diego to attend our first TFH conference. There we met the actual gurus of this world and my neck cricked back as I was introduced to the extremely tall and powerful man called Dr. John Thie.

He was very charismatic and I felt dwarfed by his stature. We were just green kids from Australia but we experienced great hospitality from everyone we met from around the world. I first met Alfred Schatz, Coby Shasfoort, Wayne Topping at this Conference, and many other great people who were to be major influences and colleagues friends for me in the future. John Thie was to become a great influence, mentor and wonderful friend in my life, and of course to so many others. I do not think I shall ever feel that he has truly gone, and I do miss him very much and the power he exerted in what was to become a major force in the world of healing, from the inception of the weekend workshop system, he, Mary, Richard and Gordon pioneered in the early 70’s.

I returned to Australia six months later, and left the farm to continue studying natural therapies. I completed a three-year degree in sports medicine in 1987, and then began to work with Andrew Verity in his practice with Robbi, Don Viney, Jose Van Rooy, and Gordon Dickson - and later Chris Rowe. We were teaching TFH Workshops every weekend and I soon became a Three in One trainer in 1990. Transformational Kinesiology hit our shores in 1993, when I sponsored Grethe Fremming and Rolf Hausboel to Australia. We met at the International Kinesiology College. They represented TFH for Denmark.

I had experienced many roles in the Kinesiology community as a member for various kinesiology committees, and it seemed when I really looked around that I married, breathed and worked kinesiology. I met my first husband Chris Rowe on a Kinesiology Retreat in Bali in 1988.

Our group of kinesiologists opened a second clinic in 1989 and our business was very successful. We began to study whatever kinesiologies we could and set about to learn as much as possible and pass it on to others in workshops. As our business grew we saw the need for a training programme which would cover more than our personal skills, so people could experience a wider range of kinesiologies and find their niche within them, or possibly have a grasp on many systems and be capable of applying an integrated approach in a healing situation.

The number of kinesiology workshops being developed was abundant and we felt our practice needed to represent the best and most clinically verifiable systems on offer.

The workshops we felt mostly aligned to, was of course TFH, Three In One, PKP, Applied Physiology and Transformational Kinesiology. As members of our clinic taught various workshops, I noticed that students would favour one over the other, which was fine, however I felt that they were missing some amazing skills from their clinical repertoire. We all tend to work within our comfort zone, but I was gradually seeing the need for some sort of integration of skills.

Chris Rowe and I came up with the idea to start a College in Spring of 1994. The idea was very exciting and like a parent one looks back at a birth and wonders how we ever got through it and how it grew to become a major educational force for Kinesiology in Australia. Next time I will go into the history and birth of the first Government recognised Kinesiology Course in the world. It was given its title in 1996.
Holistic Kinesiology.

Will be continued