An Introduction to Pendulum Testing for Food Sensitivities
It is not known when or by whom the use of a small, handheld pendulum was first used to detect the sensitivity of the body to particular foods. Nor is it well understood exactly what the mechanism is that translates our subconscious knowledge of food sensitivities into the subtle motion of the pendulum that allows us to “read” that knowledge.
The purpose of this paper is not to debate history or mechanism, but to expose the method for use by those persons who suffer from food sensitivity ailments and need a method of detecting what foods are causing the reactions.
It seems that the pendulum acts as a simple amplifier to subconscious movements of the hand in response to simple yes and no question that the practitioner asks of himself and this is sufficient enough an answer for the beginner to start using the pendulum.
I do not believe that there is any metaphysical or spiritual connection to the pendulum and the user must remain disciplined that they do not start to believe that the pendulum is anything more than a tool to expose reactions that remain hidden beyond our conscious thought. The pendulum cannot expose things that are not part of the user’s subconscious and should never be used in an attempt to foretell the future, or ask questions about the lottery, our personal lives or the lives of others. All such uses are considered a misuse of the process by practitioners who use the pendulum method.
In the same way, the pendulum cannot answer questions about which the user has no knowledge. To ask a user whether they might be allergic to a food that they have never ingested, cannot be accurately answered by the pendulum method.
The pendulum can only give a reliable response to yes or no questions.
The Process
There is a process that has evolved around the use of the pendulum in testing food sensitivities. The process is loosely that of any scientific testing:
· one must have a tool that works: in this case a simple pendulum.
· the tool must be tested to make sure it is functioning and adjustments need to be made if it is not.
· the testing must be done in an orderly way so that the results are meaningful
· the results must be assessed.
The Pendulum:
The pendulum used in food sensitivity testing is a simple affair. Any weight weighing an ounce or two will work. It should be dense, like a marble or a stone so that it swings with good inertia and is not affected by air resistance. There is nothing magic about the shape or the material. One does not have to have a “natural” material such as a crystal. A machine nut or a marble will work fine. A very simple pendulum can be made by wrapping a smooth stone with some wire and tying a string to it.
The weight should be suspended from a sturdy but supple string that is six to eight inches long. The string is attached to the weight in any suitable manner. The suspension string must not be stiff; the pendulum must be free to swing without being affected by the stiffness of the suspension.
Since the pendulum is really an amplifier of subtle physio-mechanical motions of your body, the length of the pendulum may be critical to getting reliable answers. Try different lengths between 5 and 8 inches until you get the best results. When you find your length, tie a knot in the string so you always hold it at that length.
Calibrating the Pendulum:
Hold
the string of the pendulum gently between the index finger and thumb of either
hand let it hang in front of you with the length of the string between your
fingers and the weight being about six inches. The suspending arm should be
away from the body from the shoulder down and not resting on an armrest or
table. The full length of the arm should be suspended from the shoulder.
Swing the pendulum in a small circle, no larger than two inches in diameter, close your eyes and say out loud, “Give me a yes answer.” Keep your eyes closed and concentrate on making sure your hand is not moving. After about five seconds, open your eyes. The pendulum will most likely be swinging in a line, toward you and away from you.
Repeat the test by saying “Give me a no answer.” When you open your eyes, the pendulum will probably be swinging right to left.
Do this several times until you are sure that the motion of the pendulum in response to your questions is clear and repeatable.
If the response is erratic, or if the response to the questions are reversed, try taking a drink of water. Sometimes our polarity can get reversed and a simple drink of water will set it straight.
Simple Testing:
On a piece of paper, write down several foods which you would like to test. Later, this list can be expanded to a full “food ingredient list” with all common dietary ingredients, but for now just a few will be fine. Start with foods that you consume all the time and that are familiar to you. Remember that the pendulum is only an amplifier for your subconscious knowledge and cannot test foods with which your body has no knowledge.
Calibrate the pendulum as described above. Before any testing, practitioners always ask the following questions, using the pendulum to ascertain the answer:
1) “Can I test for food sensitivities using the pendulum method?”
2) “Should I test for food sensitivities using the pendulum method?”
3) “Should I test for food sensitivities using the pendulum method now?”
It the answer to any of the three questions is “No” then you should not do testing. It is important to do this step. If any answer is no, your body is telling you in advance that any testing you do will be unreliable. To continue testing will give spurious results.
Assuming that you can proceed with testing, do the following:
Hold the pendulum in front of you and ask the question: “Should I eat ________ ?”, filling in the blank with the first item on your list. Wait for the pendulum to give you a clear indication and simply write “Y” or “N” on the list beside the food. You must be fair and resist the temptation to make a judgment about the implications of the answer. Continue the test with the other foods on the list. You can deal with implications later.
The test will not work if you have never eaten the item you are testing. If this is the case, simply put a sample of the test item on your tongue and your body will then recognize it.
Assessing the Results:
You will find at the end of a testing session, that some number of foods got a “No” response. You may find that they fall into categories such a “dairy products” or “onions, garlic, leeks and chives”. Sometimes there are families of things such as the nightshade family (green peppers, red peppers, tomatoes) and you may notice that cooked onions are okay, but not raw ones.
You must keep in mind that it is still up to you about what you are going to do with this information and you must be aware that the pendulum is not the final arbiter, it is simply an indicator. Becoming a slave to the pendulum test will not serve you well, however, it is likely that if you do nothing, that the test will haunt you.
Armed with this “preliminary information”, select several of the foods that got “No” answers and lay a plan to test them more thoroughly. The simplest way to do this is to simply remove them from you diet for one to two weeks. This is more easily said than done, particularly if it is something like wheat or corn where nearly every manufactured food uses them as ingredients. Remember, you do not have to do anything, if it is too overwhelming, but you also must consider what it is worth to understand how the food you eat is affecting your health. In short, what is it worth to you?
After completely removing a particular ingredient for at least a week, you may notice that simple things about your life are better: You are sleeping better at night or you wake up earlier and have more energy in the mornings. Perhaps a soreness has disappeared or you have more clarity in your thinking.
Now you must confirm your test by selecting a day when you allow yourself to overindulge in that particular ingredient. If you are truly sensitive, you will be able to tell immediately or within a few hours. It is not unusual for your body to react more severely than before you removed the ingredient from your diet. For instance, if you were having mild headaches and they went away for the week you removed potatoes, you may find that you have a more sever headache when you reintroduce them. This is a clear indication that that ingredient was a culprit.
After a while, you will find the pendulum to give results that you can rely on without further testing.
Other
Testing:
What is remarkable about the pendulum test is that you can do it on yourself and it can be used to test complex foods about which you have no immediate knowledge.
Complex
foods
Suppose you have decided to remove wheat from your diet and you are confronted with a wonderful beef stew about which you have no knowledge. Perhaps some flour was used in the ingredients, but perhaps not. Simply dip a spoon in the stew and then touch it to your tongue. Your body now has knowledge of whether that stew is “safe” for you to eat. Do a simple pendulum test (after calibration) and ask, “Can I eat this stew?” You do not need to know the ingredients for the pendulum to give you a reliable read.
Many times you will be confronted with complex prepared foods where the ingredient list has been discarded or is not available. There is no ice cream store that knows what kind of sugar is used in their products. Simply ask for a small sample and do the test. You do not have to know the ingredients to know the results it will have on your body.
Medicines
and herbal supplements
I have met practitioners of the Pendulum Method that use it to identify dosages for herbal supplements. The test is simple:
Take a single capsule and hold it against your naval and ask the question: “should I take this supplement?”
If the answer is yes, then ask “Should I take one or more capsules?”
If the answer is yes, then ask “Should I take two or more capsules?”
Keep progressing upward in the numbers until the answer is “No”
This gives them an accurate reading
of how many capsules to take, if at all. Most practitioners of herbal medicine
know that supplements must be considered differently depending on what time of
day it is: morning,
Backward
Testing
Occasionally, you will find that
you have an unexpected reaction and you can go back and test food you ate
earlier and accurately identify what particular ingredient caused the reaction.
Simply cycle through what you ate over some period of time, asking whether a
particular food was the culprit. The pendulum will accurately identify or at
least bracket the food that caused the problem. “Was it the stew we had last
night at
Surrogate
testing
Many practitioners use a method for testing others called surrogate testing. Surrogate testing is done by the practitioner holding the hand of another person, or resting their hand on the other person’s head or shoulder and then testing by asking the question of the patient’s condition. This is often done when the person being tested is too young to use the pendulum reliably. I have never personally done this and cannot vouch for it efficacy.
If you try it and find that it works, please inform me of your experience.
Practical Daily Use
I carry a pendulum with me wherever I go. It fits easily in my pocket and can be retrieved in an instant to test if necessary. I find it best not to make a spectacle of my testing. It unnerves a lot of people and those who do not understand the process are suspicious. I often will sneak a taste of a dip, a pie, or a stew and then slip off to the bathroom or some other quiet place to do a test in private. Sometimes I can do it under the edge of a table where others cannot see what I am doing.
This may seem strange at first, but the consequences to me of eating certain foods are migraine headaches that can ruin an entire weekend of workday, skin irritations that take days to heal or run down energy that makes life hard and sleep bad. The price of the test is inexpensive in comparison to the penalty of foods I am sensitive to.
I make it a habit not to share the test with skeptics. If people ask what I am doing, I am careful to test the waters by asking simple questions about their sincerity or by demanding that they not laugh if I share with them. Be cautious, there are a lot of very close minded people out there.