Natural Health

Dowsing for underground water or oil has been around for centuries, with reports of its use possibly going back as far as ancient Egypt. Traditionally, a forked stick – usually made of hazel – was used for dowsing.

Metal divining rods are an alternative. It was only in the 20th century that some dowsers began to use their skills to identify health problems and their causes. Modern dowsers use a pendulum for this work.

In the 1930s the Abbe Mermet, a French Roman Catholic clergyman, claimed that dowsing could be used to detect natural vibrations coming from the body, and that it could identify disease through picking up ‘bad’ vibrations. But the evolution of modern dowsing has led to areas that can’t be explained by ‘radiations’ or any other known physical forces. Dowsers have accurately dowsed maps to find underground streams and ‘energy lines’; they have also dowsed ‘secondhand’ by getting someone else to walk across land for them while they stand still and watch the movements of their pendulum or divining rod. Either all dowsing is a delusion, or existing scientific theories don’t cover all the forces at work in and around us.

How Can Dowsing Work?

There is no rational explanation for dowsing but it is thought to be associated with changes in brain rhythms and muscular responses. The dowser’s rod or pendulum is simply a tool to amplify these changes in the mind and body. It is unconscious movement of the body that makes the pendulum move in a certain way. For this reason, dowsers have to be aware of the ‘wishful thinking’ effect. Dowsing is used to pick up the location of water, oil or a hidden object, to identify ley lines (lines joining two points in the landscape which are thought to be prehistoric tracks), energy lines, to detect illness, or – even more extraordinary – to give answers to the questions posed by the dowser.

What Happens During Dowsing?

The practitioner will ask you about your current health problems, then probably ask you to lie down while they ‘tune into’ you.

They will then dowse with a pendulum, either to identify imbalances in the body, or to get the answers to their own questions about you and your state of health. They might use the pendulum to swing clockwise for yes, and anti-clockwise for no. The questions may relate to toxins in the body, emotional upsets or the state of various organs. What happens next will depend on what other therapies the practitioner uses. These can include nutrition, homeopathy, herbalism, flower remedies, crystals, magnets, reflexology and aromatherapy. Some practitioners even dowse a list of remedies to find the right one.

Arthur Bailey, a veteran dowser, recalls a man coming to him with a painful swelling in his foot, having been told it was bursitis. “I dowsed him with my pendulum from head to foot. I could find nothing wrong with his foot but his back was out of line two-thirds of the way down. I gave his back some chiropractic manipulation and soon his foot was cured. Later, talking to an acupuncturist, I found that the problem in the back had been at the point where the autonomic nerves left the spinal cord to go to the kidneys – and that the swelling had been exactly at the point on the foot supposed to relate to the kidneys”. So dowsing may help a practitioner locate the real cause of a problem – rather than focusing on the symptom.

Geopathic Stress

Arthur Bailey has dealt with many cases of ‘geopathic stress’ in which people’s health has been affected by lines of ‘negative’ energy running beneath their homes. Bailey says that one house he was called in to dowse ‘felt dreadful’. “The woman living there had been feeling under par for some time and was thinking of selling up. I found a line of negative energy and neutralized it. I later heard that she was skipping around and full of energy.” Bailey neutralizes such lines by driving long metal rods into the ground. “Some people call it acupuncture for the earth. I don’t know how it works – it just does. We’re dealing with an energy form but I can’t find out what it is that is actually happening – it’s frustrating.”

Underwater streams also appear to be able to carry negative energy and these are dealt with in a similar way. Adds Bailey, “Steel rods are best for neutralizing the effects of water, and copper rods are best for ley lines of negative energy.”

Dowsing Is Good For:

• Chronic illness
• Depression
• Food allergies
• Food sensitivity

Dowsing:

AVAILABILITY – Limited

MEDICAL EVIDENCE – Sparse

MEDICAL ACCEPTANCE – Limited

SELF HELP – Possible