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MoonDragon's Alternative Health Information
Diagnostic Techniques
DOWSING
DOWSING & PENDULUM OVERVIEW
Dowsing is an ancient divining technique, focusing on the "vibrational energy frequencies" thought to pulse through all forms of matter, including the human body. In complementary medicine, practitioners dowse the body with a pendulum, which is claimed to swing in response to these frequencies and detect vibrational imbalances that could lead to physical or mental illness. Use as a diagnostic tool in several therapies, notably color therapy and radionics, dowsing has a long tradition in Europe. It is less common in Australia, and in the US its use for medical purposes is restricted.
BIOFEEDBACK & DOWSING
For centuries, healing systems been using a form of a biofeedback system to diagnose illness and discover hidden things. Its constant elements, the tester and the instrument, are the same as in applied kinesiology. The pre-agreed upon response is a little different; it uses a impulse of movement rather than resistance to movement. That biofeedback system is dowsing.
Dowsing is a form of clairvoyance and has the same appeal to scientists as people who bend spoons. But people find water, cure illness, and solve mysteries with it. Dowsers use the most elaborate diagnostic systems with homeopathy today.
Medical dowsers generally use a pendulum, which has been proven to work by providing an amplification of normally undetectable movements of the wrist muscle. Some use diagnostic machines. These movements are transferred into the motion of a weight on the bottom of a string or chain. The response of the pendulum is read as a direction for which pre-agreed upon lines of movement mean something. This is very similar to kinesiology's measuring the wrist muscle response by way of a baby scale. Dowsers also use the deltoid muscle group, as well as wrist and other muscles, to facilitate a response as in kinesiology. Others dowsers even use resistance to a muscle group exactly like muscle testers.
MoonDragon's Alternative Health Therapy: Diagnostic Techniques - Applied Kinesiology
DOWSING METHODS
Dowsing methods vary only by the tools that are used to produce a result. The only causative element is the mind itself. The dowsing rod, L-rods, the aurameter, the stick pad, the planchette, the pendulum, even parts of the body are all meters that gauge and report the response of the mind. The mind has such a variable control over how an expression of force is made that we have many books of methodology. They are valuable only in that they give a person some building blocks to work with. So when we talk of dowsing by a willow branch we are tuned in the same phenomena that a pendulum brings to a verification of a remedy.
More recent popular writings about dowsing have departed further from scientific method by combining a personal belief system with the basic elements that are necessary to dowsing. Some of the terms coined for the more esoteric systems of dowsing are Radiesthesia, Radionics, Bio-Energetics, Psycho-Metrics, Biophysics, and Psychotronics. They all are just different ways of dowsing producing the same results through different methods.
DOWSING VS DIVINING (DIVINATION)
Dowsing is only for finding out what exists or has existed. Dowsing does not attempt to predict the future. People who ask questions based on future events are diviners and not dowsers. They also use pendulums. Divining is for finding out what will exist. In divining, there are Biblical prohibitions that the French fathers who pioneered dowsing methods would never have crossed in getting support from the Vatican for doing what they did. Their instructions are concerned with dowsing only.
Divining opens up the gates to more confusion being that the future is never certain. It is open to subjective criticism and the questions can be of disputable construction. More than that it depends on your spiritual convictions more than the present does. Some believe that it cannot be altered and others believe that we have free will. The error of auto-suggestion will be a factor.
HISTORY
For centuries, dowsers have claimed to locate underground water and mineral deposits by holding forked stick or two parallel rods and responding to their twitches. This was often referred to as "water witching". The ancient Egyptians reportedly used the method, and it is also mentioned in a 15th century German manuscript.
A forked stick, often hazel, was traditionally used by dowsers.
Dowsing has been practiced in diverse cultures for thousands of years. Cave paintings in Algeria, dating to approximately 6000 BCE, are thought to provide the first record of dowsing. There are references by the Egyptians, circa 3000 BCE, by the Hebrews, circa 2000 BCE, and in the Bible. Some believe that Moses' rod was a divining (dowsing) rod. The Chinese used dowsing rods to promote beneficial energies and to avoid or change negative energies in both internal and external environments, this came to be known as the art and science of feng shui. Dowsing was known in the Roman Empire. In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth retained more than 200 German dowsers to find buried veins of tin needed for the armada. By the 1890s, dowsing had begun to be used in health matters by French dowsers called "sourciers" (from which the English word "sorcerer" derived). Medical dowsing became well established in Europe by 1900. Following the discovery of X-rays, the Abbe Alex Bouly coined the term "radiesthésie," literally "perception of radiation" to refer to dowsing. This term was Anglicized as "radiesthesia," which became the term used to describe dowsing for questions of health, or medical dowsing. A practice does not survive 8,000 years if it does not successfully meet a need.
In the 1920s, a French priest, Abbe Mermet, began to use dowsing in medical diagnosis. Exponents had long claimed to be able to detect whether an underground stream was malign and would affect the health of those living around it. Abbe Mermet argued that dowsing could be used to detect "malign vibration" in the body, and he "dowsed" patients using a pendulum to detect them. His theories became the basis for radionics, but they remain highly controversial. Mermet puts the subject of medical dowsing into perspective with the rest of medical practices by saying that he does not advocate pendular diagnosis as an exclusive method aiming at replacing all others, but only as a means of control giving supplementary knowledge and based on different principles.
Another priest, Father Jean Jurion, followed in the steps of his clerical predecessors, studied both homeopathy and dowsing, and was confronted with the same confusion that is still with us today. He found that, like kinesiology, there were many unnecessary elements that were imposed on the art of dowsing. He chose a crystal, which he liked because it reflected light and as he said, did not rotate any better or worse than any others he tried. After liberating himself from what he called a conglomeration of "self-imposed servitudes", Jurion found he could dowse anywhere, any time, under any conditions. When he began his own first attempts at diagnosis, he obtained excellent results which were confirmed by health care providers.
DOWSING USED TODAY
The mention of "dowsing" often conjures up the image of someone searching for underground water by means of a forked willow branch called a dowsing rod. That mental association is usually accompanied by skepticism or outright dismissal. What is generally not known by the average person is that on-site dowsing, or field dowsing, is remarkably accurate. It has been shown that experienced dowsers are twice as successful at locating underground water as are standard geophysical techniques. In a 10-year study led by Dr. Hans-Dieter Betz, a physicist from the University of Munich, dowsers achieved an overall success rate of 96 percent in 691 test drillings in Sri Lanka. Conventional methods of detecting water would be expected to be successful only 30 percent to 50 percent of the time.
While dowsing has been used historically to locate subterranean water or metal ores, it may also be used as a methodology for accessing information not readily perceptible. It can reveal information about virtually anything that exists or has existed, but it cannot disclose or predict the future. It can be used to find missing objects, pets, or people. It can assist in determining factors that affect health positively or adversely and what treatments or therapies will be most beneficial. It is useful for locating blockages or other disharmonies in the meridians, chakras, mind, or aura. Dowsing can help choose the foods, herbs, supplements, homeopathic remedies, or flower essences your body can use right now, as well as the best dosage and frequency. It can tell you if a particular substance will antidote a homeopathic remedy or if you have allergies or sensitivities to a substance. You can dowse past lives. You can dowse affirmations. You can check compatibilities with other people in a business or personal relationship. Dowsing may be used in determining the best feng shui for your home or office. Dowsing can literally be used to answer any yes-or-no question.
While anyone can learn to dowse quite easily and experience the phenomenon themselves, it is more difficult to explain what exactly is happening. One view is that the dowser is tuning in to some force that science has not yet identified. The noted physicist Albert Einstein wrote, "The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time." Some suggest everything has a unique energetic signature,3 and we have the faculty, if we pay attention to it, to sense these energy signatures. Applied kinesiology, or muscle testing, is a form of dowsing that is used by many chiropractors and other health professionals. That it works is clear but the truth of the matter is we do not yet know the "how" of dowsing. That is nothing new. Inventor Thomas Edison, who was responsible for creating a system for the generation and distribution of electricity, was once asked, "What is electricity?" He replied, "I don't know either but it's there so let's use it."
Dowsers in the US are prevented by law from offering a diagnostic service directly to patients, although some are consulted by health care providers to support conventional diagnoses. Outside the US, dowsing is now a well-established part of complementary medicine, most commonly used with so-called "vibrational therapies".
EVIDENCE & RESEARCH
Dowsing has been accepted in traditional practice for so long that some local councils, water authorities, and mineral companies employ practitioners to locate underground sources, occasionally with spectacular success. Various theories have been put forward to explain how dowsing works, but so far no scientific answers exist.
Pendulum dowsers have made little attempt to study the phenomenon under clinically controlled conditions, and there are no studies to support medical dowsing. Skeptics say that it is possible to change the rotational swing of a pendulum by mental intention, due to the unconscious action of tiny muscles in the arm and hand.
CONVENTIONAL MEDICAL OPINION
Conventional medical practitioners are very skeptical about theories of diagnosis and treatment that are based on vibrational energy. Dowsing "witnesses" to identify allergies is thought by the medical establishment to be particularly misleading.
THE PENDULUM
The pendulum is held over the patients body to make the diagnosis. The practitioner relaxes her body and clears her mind in order to be fully receptive to the reactions of the pendulum.
CONSULTING A PRACTITIONER
Practitioners say all matter, from people and objects to individual cells and atoms, vibrates at particular "energy frequencies". They compare the human brain and nervous system to a radio, and claim that those of dowsers are especially sensitive - either inherently or through training - to these vibrations. A pendulum is thought to enhance the "signal", allowing the dowser to tune into the body's energy frequencies and so detect disturbances that could cause disease.
Pendulum dowsing is sometimes used by practitioners working with "vibrational energies" or "vital force" - therapies such as color therapy, homeopathy, Bach Flower Remedies, and crystal healing. In these cases, dowsing is used to make or confirm a diagnosis or to check a suspected allergen or a remedy before treatment is given. Practitioners of color therapy may dowse an anatomical chart of the spine to detect problems, or dowse the chakras to assess their energy. Dowsers assessing geopathic stress (see Feng Shui and earth energies may use a pendulum over a house plan or map of the area. In radionics, a sample of a patient's hair or skin tissue, known as the "witness", is dowsed.
Midwives in Europe have used the pendulum for many years as a means of dowsing the unborn infant, often to determine the sex of the child and to determine its well-being.
USING THE PENDULUM
The pendulum must be of sufficient weight to swing at the end of a chain or thread. The practitioner holds the pendulum over the object or person to be dowsed, and mentally "asks" the questions that require a yes or a no answer; for example, "Is this organ underactive?" The pendulum will usually swing clockwise for yes and counter clockwise for no, although some dowsers have their own code of response.
There are three methods of dowsing: field, map, and informational. Field dowsing is best exemplified by searching for underground water, oil, or ore, where the dowser is physically traversing the territory being searched. In map dowsing, it is the representation of the territory of interest (a geographical location or a human body) that is being dowsed rather than the actual territory. Informational dowsing seeks information through question and answer.
Dowsing may be performed using any of a number of tools -- a V-rod, L-rod, wand, pendulum, or even the dowser's own body. For the purposes of this article, the focus is on the pendulum because it is versatile in its range of responses, and it is easy to use. Anyone can learn how to dowse. However, like any skill, it takes practice to become proficient.
A pendulum is a small symmetrical weight, called a plumb-bob, suspended from a fixed point (the dowser's hand) by way of a thread or chain. The bob can be made of almost anything -- wood, metal, stone, crystal, or glass - but it should be symmetrical so that it hangs and swings in a balanced way. Ideally, the bob tapers to a point on one end. The longer the chain is the slower the swing will be, which can be an issue when dowsing for buried objects because the dowser may already have passed the object by the time the pendulum's response can be noticed. A typical length for the chain might be between 3 to 6 inches.
Hold the chain or string of the pendulum between the thumb and index finger so that the pendulum hangs straight down and the pendulum's swing is not impaired in any direction. Some suggest, because of the body's polarity, it is best to hold the pendulum with the right hand (even if you are left-handed). Try to relax any tension, particularly in your arm and hand, and relax your mind as well.
The first step is to "program" the pendulum. Cause the pendulum to gyrate in a clockwise direction, saying "This direction means 'Yes.'" Then, make it gyrate counterclockwise: "This is the 'No' direction." You can then ask a test question you know the answer to, such as, "Is my name Barry?" or "Is my name George?" and the pendulum will respond with the correct answer. Some dowsers program their pendulums to oscillate forward and back for "yes" and side to side for "no." The pendulum is capable of more than mere binary response but yes/no is a good place to begin to work with your pendulum.
In medical dowsing, there is a short set of questions a practitioner always begin with, which they call "permissions." First, they ask, "Do I have permission to dowse now?" If the answer is affirmative and they are intending to dowse for information about someone else, they ask, "Do I have permission to dowse now on behalf of so-and-so?" It is very important when working energetically that you do not attempt to heal, or access information about, another person unless they have requested it or have given you permission to do so. You may have permission to dowse, but should you? Is there a need? Is it in the client's highest interest? So the question here would be, "Should I dowse now?" And the last permission they ask is whether their own energy is clear and balanced now. They want to have an affirmative response to all these questions before proceeding.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Informational dowsing consists of simply asking a question and receiving an answer. This is sometimes referred to as Q&A. You can initiate a slight forward and back oscillation of the pendulum, ask the question, and hold it gently in your mind as you wait for the pendulum's oscillation to shift to a clockwise or counterclockwise gyration.
Asking the right question is critical to receiving an accurate answer. The dowsing response is always correct but the question itself may not be asking for what we really want to know. As a novice dowser, it is often helpful to write the question and read it several times to verify that it is really asking what you want to know. Make it simple, as if you were talking to a child. Make certain the language is not ambiguous. The more energy you put into clarifying what you want to know and how to ask, the more accurate your answers will be.
While learning to dowse, stick to questions that can be answered "yes" or "no." Ask many questions, so as to arrive at as complete a picture as you can. If any answer seems not to make sense, go back and start over. Ask if you are asking the right questions. Ask if your inner dowsing self understands the questions or if more information is needed. Inquire whether you are allowed to ask that question. It may not be appropriate for us to have the answers to all questions.
It is useful to anchor your questions in the present - for instance, "Is massage beneficial to me now?" Simply asking, "Is massage good for me?" will probably always get a positive response, affirming that, generally speaking, massage is good for you. However, it may well be that, right now, massage is not the best choice for you and another therapy may be indicated. Try to be very specific in your questions.
One common use of medical dowsing is to find out whether a substance has a helpful, harmful, or neutral effect on the body. Holding a jar of vitamins, position the pendulum over the bottle and ask, "Is this good for me now?" "Is this the best brand for me?" Practitioners often use dowsing to select flower essence remedies. They usually have multiple boxes of essences, so they place their hand on one box, asking, "Is there an essence here that would be healing to me now?" and then do the same with the next box. When they have determined which boxes contain relevant essences, they hold the question, "Is this helpful to me now?" in their mind while they go down the row of bottles, touching each and watching for an affirmative response from the pendulum. Once they have selected the essence or essences they am going to use, they make certain their hand is contacting each chosen bottle and ask, "Is this the complete remedy for me now?" "Is there anything else I need to know now?" They can further dowse to ascertain the frequency and duration for taking this remedy. As you become more proficient at yes/no questions, you can begin to use lists or charts.
In addition to asking the right question, it is important to have the right intention. The proper intention in medical dowsing is to do good, to be of help, to facilitate healing, and to promote balance and harmony. Dowsing that is motivated by greed and personal interest does not work. You cannot dowse winning lottery numbers. The pendulum will not assist you to devise a strategy to win someone's heart. If you persist in trying to use dowsing for selfish purposes, your dowsing will become less reliable.
Focus and concentration are equally important. It is necessary to hold the question in mind but the more the conscious mind can get out of the way, the more accurate the pendulum results will be. It is important 'not to let your own thoughts, attitudes, and preferences encroach on your neutrality and to work in a state of receptivity. This resembles what in Zen Buddhism is referred to as "beginner's mind" (shoshin). The empty, spacious mind has not closed in on a narrow or fixed view of how things are or how you want it to be, but remains open to the potentiality of anything, receptive to whatever comes. Completely in the moment, each experience is as if "for the first time." Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki taught, "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." The dowser's discipline is to wait, relaxed and alert, for an answer to present itself. Scientific studies, such as those performed by Dr. Edith Jurka in the 1980s and Edward Stillman in 1996, show brain wave activity during dowsing is very similar to that of Zen meditation. While dowsing, a person achieves alpha, beta, and theta brain wave activity, indicating that dowsers become naturally reflective, contemplative, and restful, and this is the key to their receptivity.
This is but the tip of the iceberg. If your interest in dowsing has been aroused, read more. Join a local chapter of the American Society of Dowsers (www.dowsers.org). Most importantly, practice. This is a tool, so use it. Like any skill, the more you exercise it the more it will become a natural extension of your abilities. You will become more sensitive, you will develop confidence and trust in your ability, and your dowsing will become more accurate and reliable.
VARIED RESULTS
There is really no substantial difference between using kinesiology for a diagnosis or using dowsing like Father Jurion did to accompany his homeopathic prescribing. However, two people using the same materials, or one person in two different moods, can produce different results in dowsing. The ability of one dowser to be successful and not another leads to the belief that there is a natural, or psychic, ability that is not being measured. Experiments have to be verified through repeatability according to the scientific method and that is not possible when psychic ability is brought in.
Any form of medical dowsing on the outside looks like a new way to discover what is good for your body. But in reality, it is just another variation on tuning in on your brain's natural ability to know information and have it amplified through a part of your body. Dowsers have done this for centuries and used it with homeopathy.
THE PSYCHIC NATURE
In the diagnostic portion of homeopathy, only the observable symptoms of the patient are supposed to be used. It is not operator dependent. In Applied Kinesiology (AK) the reason that an arm moves or stays rigid is not perceived. All we perceive is the movement from the muscle group. We can reason back to assuming that the brain is the initial cause of the action for sending the muscle group the electrical signals to constrict or relax. Another possibility is that the tester has modified the response through limiting his strength somehow, but takes us back to the same basic spot. He is being electrically controlled by his brain. But how did the brain know?
As quoted in a conversation to the authors of The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird, Galen Hieronymus, a patent holder of a radionics device, said:Is the force and its manipulations basically in the realm of the psychic? We know that powerful psychics such as Frances Farrelly can produce results with no help whatsoever from a device, but other seem to be helped by a radionics instrument even when, like the De La Warrs, they have well-developed psychic powers... I can take an ordinary empty cigar box and mount a tuning dial on top of it... By properly setting the dial at a given tuning, some psychics have been able to cure a given disease. I think they do this because they believe that they are using the box, when, in reality, they are using only psychic ability.
Dowsers are fully aware of the muscle movements of their arms and wrists but rarely question how they are able to know about the results. The pendulum proponent consciously or unconsciously uses signals from the brain to control the weight's movement through their wrist muscles.
The Ouija board user assumes that his arm movements are spiritually controlled but are first of all controlled by commands from his brain. The Ouija board and kinesiology are in the same group of diagnostic devices because of the psychic element. Unfortunately, the Ouija board is not known for its diagnostic capability. It was too successful as a popular parlor game.
People fully believe in the ability of these people to achieve positive results even though they are relegated to the realm of psychic activity. Somehow, they are able to tune into their brain's natural ability to know information and have it amplified through a part of their body or another's body.
SYSTEM VARIATIONS
Many practitioners do not listen to anyone's preconceived notions about what to wear, which way to turn, what foot to keep on the ground and so on. Also the substance of the pendulum makes no difference to many practitioners. In fact it makes no difference whether they have the actual substance before them as a witness or not and the subject need not be present for diagnosis. They do find it helpful for sake of concentration to have something associated with the person. At times when their concentrative powers are stronger the need for a link is not as great.
About the only thing that they find that gets in the way of confirming their repertorizing work is fatigue. Sometimes they do not even know that they are very tired and it will show up a false movements that are contradictory in their pendulum. Other types of errors that they have found that seem to make sense are listed by Father Mermet in his text, Principles and Practice of Radiesthesia: A Textbook for Practitioners and Students:CAUSES OF ERRORS
- Lack of natural aptitudes, or training, or relaxation results in the reactions of a pendulum being unreliable.
- Radiesthetic work involves a certain degree of nervous energy. If it is prolonged without interruptions, it causes fatigue and exhaustion. Then one should rest, or else the indications will be unreliable.
MENTAL STATE ERRORS
- Auto-suggestion - One imagines, a priori, or owing to certain information, or because of another dowser's opinion, that there exists a treasure in a certain place. The pendulum will then give the figure of gold which exists only in the operator's imagination. One must remain calm, indifferent, and in a passive mental state, without any preconceived ideas, and submit to reality without trying to distort it. The art of dowsing consists in finding what actually exists, and above all in not finding what does not exist.
INTERPRETATION ERRORS
- Undertaking difficult researches for which one is not qualified. Though Radiesthesia has brilliant successes to its credit, there is no reason why one should lose one's sense of measure, and that other sense often wrongly called common sense.
- Generalizing rashly after a single experiment and putting forward premature theories on a meager basis of observations with the result that research work is carried out on principles which are not exact.
- Concluding hastily, without checking oneself, and without taking the trouble of repeating an experiment at a different time of the day.
- Being influenced by auto-suggestion; for auto-suggestion, and suggestion coming from outside, have a certain influence on interpretation.
- Hurry, negligence, distraction, inattention, chattering, various preoccupations, nervousness, all contribute to giving poor results.
- Attributing to the pendulum more than it indicates; reaching conclusions beyond given indications; showing self-assurance and giving precise information which neither the movements of the pendulum nor boring operations will confirm. Lacking sufficient intellectual humility to say: "I do not know."
PRECAUTIONS
Check any diagnosis with a conventional medical practitioner, since diagnoses obtained by dowsing can often be misleading.
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