EVER been diagnosed with the help of a pendulum? Ahmedabad-based alternative therapy consultant Asha Patel uses radioeasthesia, (a rare diagnostic method of pendulum dowsing) to tell her clients what is wrong with their body. No blood tests, no MRIs, just a finger placed gently on your pulse, a swing of an ornate, small brass pendulum and a set of four wooden plates, charged with electro-magnetic radiation. And voila! Without a long rant about your ailments from you, she can tell if you are suffering from a case of nerves, excess sugar, or a thyroid problem.

What's It All About

Pendulum-dowsing is based on understanding the auras around a human body. Therapists believe we emanate five different kinds of auras: Physical, ethereal, astral, causal and mental; these are the magnetic and auricle energy fields of the body. This whole energy circuit is channeled by cosmic energy, which is flowing, clearing, changing and generating the rebalance. According to Patel, "Every human body has a microwave frequency sensitivity which is also reflective, so that any changes in the inner or outer field is picked up immediately by the swing of the pendulum. Dowsing can also detect disturbances in the auric energy fields, assess the root cause of the disease, its progress or recovery."

In fact, therapists claim that advanced methods of aura reading and teletherapy have made it possible to treat a patient even before the disease makes itself apparent in the body. While Patel uses pendulum-dousing for diagnosis and clinical evaluation, her remedies for the ailment vary from flower and herbal preparations to homoeopathic medicine.

"Like other alternative therapies, vibrational medicine also believes in unorthodox healing methods like Bach flower remedies, homoeopathy and teletherapy. Alternative medicine believes in holistic healing, not just the physical aspect of it." Though Asha Patel fights shy of sharing the names of her celebrity clients on grounds of privacy, her popularity can be gauged by the fact that she has branches in Delhi and Mumbai where she visits at least twice a month.

Blind Date With The Doctor?

Alternative medicine, according to Patel, is, finally, a matter of faith, "You have to trust the practitioner and her methods and that faith comes out of experience and much-honing. For lifestyle and stress-related ailments like hypertension, insomnia, etc, it is best to use natural antidotes rather than pop OTC (over the counter) pills. At the same time, if one wants to double check, I always ask my clients to verify with modern diagnostic methods like MRI scans. If the disease is detected early, the treatment can be Nature-based."

Bach Flower Remedy - At A Glance

The Bach flower remedy, often prescribed by alternative therapists, and discovered by Dr Edward Bach is directed at a particular characteristic or emotional state. To select the remedies, some therapists believe, you only need to think about the sort of person you are and the way you are feeling. Then you take the remedies you need.

Here are some of remedies and their indications (there are 38 in all).

• Agrimony - mental torture behind a cheerful face

• Aspen - fear of unknown things

• Beech - intolerance

• Centaury - the inability to say 'no'

• Cerato - lack of trust in one's own decisions

• Chestnut Bud - failure to learn from mistakes

• Chicory - selfish, possessive love

• Crab Apple - cleansing, also for self-hatred

• Elm - overwhelmed by responsibility

• Hornbeam - procrastination

• Mustard - deep gloom for no reason

• Olive - exhaustion

• Scleranthus - inability to choose between alternatives

• Vine - dominance and inflexibility

• Walnut - protection from change and unwanted influences

• There is also a combination remedy called Rescue Remedy.