Using a Testing Method
In addition to using your intuition or picking an essence based on the description, you can also use an intuitive testing method like a pendulum, dowsing rod or muscle test. With these tools, you can make information you unconsciously pick up visible. Unconsciously you can feel whether an energy suits you or not, but it’s a very subtle process that is mostly under the surface.
Using a tool to access your intuition can also help you when you get stuck in your head and start to waver. The pendulum and dowsing rod take some practice to work with, but once you’ve learnt how, they will help you get into a certain state of concentration that will help clear your mind. Then there are several muscle tests. Those are quick and easy to learn and you won’t need any tools for it. Apart from using a testing method to select essences, you can also use it to double-check certain things, like whether they are a good fit for a treatment you want to combine them with.
A prerequisite for any testing method is to remain as neutral as possible about the outcome. It’s all very subtle and therefore it’s easy to influence the outcome with any expectations, hopes and fears you may harbour towards the result. If you have trouble staying neutral, you can ask someone else to test for you, provided they are not invested in the outcome either.
Pendulum
A pendulum is a weight on a string that you can use to make unconscious information visible. A pendulum can be made out of metal, wood or crystal, depending on your taste. If you have no pendulum, a ring on a piece of cord will work just as well, but if you have a pendulum you like looking at, it helps. If you like your pendulum, it will be easier to connect to it, which in turn will benefit your testing results. Once you have enough experience, it really won’t matter what you use, though.
With a crystal pendulum, the crystal should appeal to you and be a good fit for you. Pink quartz and aventurine have a gentle energy and will be a good match for almost anyone. Clear quartz is a neutral choice as well, amethyst will aid your intuition, tiger’s eye will protect and ward off negative energy, and labradorite will ground and protect. Wood is grounding, and metal is neutral but has the capacity to retain energy, so that needs a bit more cleansing than other pendulums
Getting to Know Your Pendulum
Okay, on to the good stuff. A pendulum can be used in several ways. Before you start using it, though, it’s always good to hold it for a minute to let it absorb your energy and to make a connection with it. Then, if you’ve never worked with a pendulum before, you need to determine your ‘code’. This means that you agree with yourself (i.e. your subconscious/unconscious) on which movements mean ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘inconclusive/unclear’.
For example, my ‘yes’ is a north-south movement, my ‘no’ is east-west and my ‘inconclusive/unclear’ is a circular movement. I’ve also seen people who work with clockwise as ‘yes’ and counterclockwise as ‘no’.
You can determine your code by asking ‘show me yes’, or by asking a question that you absolutely know to be true. Then do the same for no. To get an ‘unclear’ signal, ask something that you can’t answer with a pendulum, like an open or two-part question (how many stars are there? / is a zebra black with white or is it white with black?). You can also try visualising the movement you want to mean yes/no/unclear. Don’t be too worried if you don’t literally see it in your head, though, it’s the intention that counts.
Using a Pendulum
Hold the pendulum in the hand that feels most natural. For most this will be the dominant hand, but you determine what works best for you. Hold it between thumb and forefinger without squeezing too hard. If you squeeze to hard you’ll lock your muscles and that’ll hamper the movement. Working with a pendulum relies on unconscious muscle movements and that works best when your grip isn’t too tight. You can vary the point where you hold the chain to make it shorter or longer. The longer it is, the slower it will be in changing direction, but when it’s too short it won’t have be able to swing wide enough.
Bend your arm about 45-90 degrees, depending on whether you’re sitting or standing and on what feels comfortable for you, and try and keep your elbow against your side for support, it’ll help you stabilise your arm until you get the hang of it. You can also rest your elbow on a table. The goal is to give the pendulum enough room to move without bumping into something.
The next bit is tricky: try and relax and let go of any expectations about the outcome of your test, a.k.a. try not to care about what answer you’re going to get in order to avoid influencing the result. At this point it doesn’t matter how big the movement is, that’ll come with time and practice. What counts now is the direction of the movement.
When you’ve figured out your code, you’re ready for the next step.
The Next Step
Next, you let the pendulum hang a few centimetres above the chart or object you’re working with. Let’s use the essences as an example, but you can do this with just about anything and everything. There are several ways to test something. You can use the physical objects, in our case the bottles of the essences you want to choose from, or a chart (you can find both empty charts and charts with names of all the essences on them here) or you can write a shortlist of essences in a circle on a sheet of paper. If you have the bottles themselves, you can line them up or arrange them in a (half) circle. Then you either hold the pendulum in front of the line or in the centre of the circle or the diagram you are using and you ask your question.
Now, questions are a bit tricky as well, and one of the things about working with a pendulum that does have rules. Questions need to be clear and simple. Ask yes/no questions with one subject, state them in the positive (a.k.a. avoid using ‘not’), and avoid using ‘or’ because that will make it two questions in one and will only get you the ‘unclear’ signal as a result. Use ‘which of these …. is good for me to use at this point’, ‘which of these … is best for me to use first’, things like that. For yes/no questions, you can think of things like ‘is this …. good for me’, ‘will this … benefit me’, etc. If you want to know which things are NOT good for you, phrase the question like ‘what should I avoid/stay away from’.
After doing all this, it would be nice if the pendulum started to move. Pay attention to the direction in which it is pointing and either remove the bottle from the line-up or write the name down if you’re using a chart. You can then ask follow-up questions to see if you need more than one essence or to determine the sequence in which you can use the essences you have if you don’t want to combine them. When the answer is ‘none’ you will get the ‘unclear’ signal in this case, because you asked an open question instead of a yes/no question (you could state in advance that if the answer is ‘none’ in this case you would like to receive the ‘no’ signal, but just keep that in mind for later).
Dowsing Wand
A dowsing wand is a cross between a dowsing rod and a pendulum and is also called a wand or a bobber.One is not better than the other, it’s just different, and like with any tool, it depends on what you want to use it for and what you prefer.
In short, it’s a flexible metal wire that has a handle on one side and a weight on the other side. There are several options regarding the material it’s made from and how simple or luxurious you want to make it. It’s usually made out of metal and/or wood, but the handle can also be made of cork.
There are even wands with a connector in the handle that you can connect a flexible wire to that leads to a pointer. This enables you to keep yourself outside of the testing circuit if you want to test for someone else.
You can use a wand to answer yes/no questions and do an energy compatibility test. Before you start working with it, hold it and let it take on your energy by sliding your fingers along the wire a few times. Again, for most holding it in their dominant hand will be the most comfortable, but try and see what works best for you.
Then, like with a pendulum, you determine your code for ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘unclear’. A wand is a bit more limited in its movements than a pendulum, so your choices are limited to up/down, sideways and a circular movement.
After that, you can hold the end of the wand above a bottle and ask your question. You can also point at it or touch it lightly with a finger to indicate it. If you don’t have the actual bottles, pointing at the name in a list will work as well. The key is to focus on the energy of the essence, and you do that by looking at either the essence or the name of the essence. Trust your unconscious to know what you mean.
The energy test works a little differently, as you don’t ask a question for this. You just stay as neutral as possible and hold the end of the wand between your hand and the object/matter you are testing, making sure you leave about 15 cm of room between the object and your hand.
You can hold your hand above the object, or rest it on its side on the table.
The end of the wand will start to move after a couple of seconds. when your energy field and that of the object attract each other, the end will make a connecting movement, meaning that it moves into both energy fields, like building a bridge between them.
When your energy field and that of the object are incompatible, however, the end of the wand will make a blocking movement, which means it will move sideways if your hand is above the object or up and down if your hand is beside the object, like building a wall between them.
Muscle testing
Another way of intuitive testing is muscle testing. The advantage of this one is that you won’t need any tools because you yourself are the tool. You may have seen the test where the subject being tested is holding an object (let’s say an essence bottle) in front of their solar plexus. Then they stretch out one arm and the person conducting the muscle test tries to push that arm downward. When it’s easy to push the arm down, the essence is either not the right one or it is just not needed. The energy weakens the system or doesn’t strengthen it. When it’s harder to push the arm down, it means the energy system is strengthened and the energy being tested is a good one for you.
With this kind of muscle testing, a certain amount of pressure is applied, which takes some practice as you need to be able to be consistent in that. It’s not a case of whether or not the arm can be pushed down because if you apply more pressure you will be able to push it down at some point, it’s a case of whether the arm can or cannot be pushed down using that particular amount of pressure.
The downside to this muscle test is that you need a helper that has some experience with this method.
Muscle Testing, Solo Methods
There is also a quick and simple test that you can do reasonably unobtrusively: assume a relaxed stance and hold whatever you want to test in front of your solar plexus. Next, you’re going to assign answers to the movements of leaning forwards or backwards.
It doesn’t really matter which way you want to mean yes or no, what matters is that you state it beforehand. Then you concentrate on the object you’re holding, ask your question and see what happens. You can also focus on a word or an object and do this test, if you like.
Another muscle test is the O-ring test that originates from kinesiology. Here, you make a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and an interlocking circle with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. Then you pull them apart and try to break the circle of one hand with the other while holding the object you want to test in one hand, if it’s small enough, or otherwise focussing on it.
Before testing, you can also state which results you want to mean yes and no. Usually, a strong muscle (circles stay interlocked) is a yes and a weak muscle (circle breaks) is a no, but as long as you state up front what you want you can change it around or even vary every once in a while. This test also requires a little bit of practice, because you need to get a feel for how hard you are pulling the circles apart. Ideally, you use the same amount of pressure every time and that may take a few tries. The testing methods above can be used to test just about anything you can think of, like food substances you think you may be intolerant to, crystals, you name it.
Not Foolproof
A word of caution, though: these methods are not 100% foolproof, as it’s a very subtle way of testing. Fears, hopes and expectations can, and often will, influence the results. That’s why when practising this, it’s good to try it out with things that you’re not particularly bothered about. Play with it, don’t take it too seriously, and try and be critical towards the results.
Double-check them if possible, see if the essence description resonates with you, for instance. If you were to try testing for something that you are particularly bothered about, I can guarantee you that you are going to get varying results every time you ask the question. Those results will alternate between the answer you are hoping for, the answer you fear hearing or the ‘inconclusive/unclear’ signal. You are asking your subconscious the question, and any emotional investment in the answer is going to create static in the connection, as it were.