A chiropractor explains how the body detects incongruence before the conscious mind catches up, and why authenticity registers differently in the nervous system.
The character in Poker Face on Peacock has one ability: the moment someone lies, she knows it. No analysis, no hesitation. Just an instant, unshakeable read. Natasha Lyonne plays her like a human tuning fork — the bullshit detector is on, always, and it gets her into serious trouble when her organized-crime-connected boss figures it out. She's on the run for the rest of the show, town to town, solving crimes with the same gift that made her a target. It's basically a rock and roll version of Quantum Leap.
I watch it with my wife Christy because she's into true crime. I'm halfway watching, scrolling through my phone. But the reason it actually caught my attention is personal. I can sympathize with that character. I kind of just know when something isn't true, because of the way it feels.
Early in my practice, I'd be working on a patient and I'd start to feel what they were feeling. If they had pain, I'd feel it too. If they were sick, I'd start going off balance. The strange part was that they'd get better, and I'd take all that in. I was actually making myself physically sick sometimes.
So I learned how to shield, and it worked. But shielding created its own problem: it also blocked the sensitivity, and I always felt that was wrong. I wanted to feel. I needed a different way.
What I do now is connect to something bigger. Call it God, universal intelligence, whatever word works for you. I imagine setting up a little antenna, a small tether — like Benjamin Franklin with the kite — and just feeling all the energy in the universe flowing through. When I'm connected to the biggest source of energy there is, I'm protected. The key difference is that I can now feel without absorbing. Whatever someone is carrying passes through my awareness without sticking.
Connect to something bigger, and you can feel without absorbing what someone else is carrying.
In that connected state, when I'm talking to somebody, I can tell when something doesn't line up. When something isn't congruent. And it's not analysis — truth just has a particular vibe. Their system is saying one thing and their words are saying something different.
You can lie to your friends, your family, your spouse. But you cannot lie to your chiropractor, because I can feel the stuff. Your nervous system always, always tells the truth.
The body does not lie.
A standard polygraph measures maybe four things: galvanic skin response, heart rate, a couple of others. You are unconsciously measuring a whole range of things — energetically, physically, behaviorally — and your nervous system is processing all of it. The polygraph is a crude instrument. You are not.
I came across a study once — I don't remember the exact source, so take it as a concept rather than a citation — where scientists were measuring brainwave activity and trying to identify which emotional state produced the most coherence. Love, connection, calm: all the obvious candidates. And every now and then, something would spike about 40 times above the baseline. Way above love, way above calm, way above connection.
They associated that spike with authenticity. When someone was saying something fully true to them, no mask, no internal conflict, fully congruent, the readings lit up in a completely different way.
"When somebody was saying something very true to them, fully congruent, there was no mask, no internal conflict — their nervous system showed it."
Whether that specific study holds up under scrutiny, I can't say. But I see it clinically, working on people every day. When someone is being truly real, their nervous system is different. Less noise, less internal resistance.
A lot of times I'll ask a patient a simple question, like "are you happy?" or "is everything okay at home?" and they'll answer immediately, faster than you can think. That speed tells me something. A real answer needs at least a moment of genuine consideration. When the response fires off reflexively, it's usually protective, not honest.
When someone has a lot of physical symptoms and chronic pain, it's often tied to internal conflict. They're saying one thing and feeling another. Suppressing what's actually true creates stress in the nervous system, and over time that stress shows up physically. Everything starts in the mind. Everything is energy: thoughts, feelings, all of it. If you're only treating at the symptom level, you're missing a large part of the picture.
One simple technique I use to calibrate this: I ask someone their name, then tell them to say a different name. You immediately feel the incongruence. Once you have that baseline locked in, you can start asking other questions and use the contrast to pinpoint where the real disconnect is.
Authenticity gives off a vibration. And there's very little of it out there anymore — everything's planned, everything's scripted. So when people hear something genuine, they crave it. They can feel when somebody is real.
That's also why people will follow someone who is clearly wrong but clearly believes what they're saying. The congruence is real even when the content isn't. And you can just as easily feel the inverse: someone feeding you a line that sounds plausible but doesn't vibe. It almost registers as an offense to your nervous system, because your nervous system knows the difference.
People don't follow information. They follow congruence.
People follow those who are aligned, whether or not they agree with them. Because at least it feels real.
You already have a built-in lie detector. It's you. Your nervous system is doing it constantly, on an unconscious level. The work is learning to tune in, listen to what it's already telling you, and be honest enough with yourself to trust what you feel.
