THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF DOWSERS

SEPTEMBER '26 NEWSLETTER DOWSING SKILL BUILDER

ASD DIGEST

VOLUME 48, NO.2 SPRING  2008

SCIENCE CORNER

By Ronald F. Blackburn, Ph.D

• How do you become a great dowser? What does it take to be great? Research shows that the lack of natural talent may be irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work. Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine recently asked the following questions: "What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? Conventional wisdom would say: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was 'wired at birth to allocate capital.' It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't. However, this may not be a complete answer to the secret to success."

  Let's consider recent comments by Chuck Stevens, M.D., Ph.D, Professor, The Salk Institute and External Professor, Santa Fe Institute. “We All have the same brain in the sense that we all have the same body: every normal human has the same parts with the same general design, but there is a lot of variability from one individual to the next. About 100 distinct regions are recognized in the human cortex, and each of these regions specializes for a specific function (like hearing or recognizing faces). Furthermore, neural circuits have the special property of being scalable, which means that bigger regions perform better. The limits of human performance for any given set of abilities, then, are set by the size of the brain regions available for those abilities, and this limitation is especially obvious in those situations where we operate at the edge of what is possible for a human to do.”

   Below are some additional thoughts from Robert May, a member of MENSA, and an adjunct professor at the University of Louisville.

  The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It's nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great from day one, but it doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.

  The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition. 

  Evidence crosses A remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists, the best group (judged by Conservatory teachers) average 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It's the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.

  The real question then, why should it take so much time and effort to learn key skills? Are additional attributes required beyond: 1. a burning desire, 2. disciplined approach, 3. decisive attitude, and 4. specialized knowledge? Possible insights on how to be great at anything comes from Play, a sports magazine published by the New York Times. The secret melee in the nerve fibers and the myelin sheathing that covers the nerves.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  The myelin provides the insulation between nerves. The greater the insulation (myelin sheathing), the less likely that the nerve impulse will leak out. Think of the myelin sheathing as electrical insulation – the thicker the insulation, the stronger the signal to the nerve fibers. Therefore, if we could thicken the myelin surrounding the nerve fibers used in dowsing, we would likely increase our accuracy. How do we thicken the myelin sheathing?

  Here's the great secret. The only known method to thicken the myelin sheathing is through repetition – practice, practice and more practice. It is thought that by repetition and practice, we can build up the insulation covering the nerve fibers. Increased myelin covering the nerves results in less noise and translates into higher signal fidelity. Each time we practice, we generate a little bit more myelin which will increase our dowsing skill level. The following practice plan is suggested. Practice dowsing 4 times per day for 30 days. This practice will structure a great learning tool. This will provide a powerful way to build up the thickness of the myelin layers on the dowsing nerve fibers. Why not demonstrate dowsing rather than just talking or thinking about dowsing?

  It is suggested that track record of the dowsing be maintained. This will help develop good dowsing discipline and will provide a record that will lead to greater dowsing skill and competence. Let's all demonstrate more dowsing instead of simply reading or talking about it. Remember to become great dowsers, we need to practice, practice, and practice. Let's make dowsing an everyday activity. Why just read about dowsing when you can experience the real phenomenon of dowsing?

  A Suggested Dowsing Plan

• 1.    Write out a dowsing road map for success.
• 2.    Make daily, weekly, and monthly dowsing goals.
• 3.    Be a decisive dowser; i.e., just dowse it.
• 4.    Be disciplined; i.e., practice dowsing every day.
• 5.    Become an ASD member and surround yourself with successful dowsers; i.e., join or form a local ASD dowsing club
• 6.    have a long-term perspective of continually building up a thicker and thicker layer of myelin over the dowsing nerve fibers.
• 7.    Know that you are becoming a great dowser!

There will be a great opportunity to practice dowsing skills under controlled conditions at the ASD National Conference. Everyone is invited to actively participate (anonymously if you wish) in five or more simple but revealing dowsing experiments developed by Shelley Higgins that will include qualitative and quantitative measurements of the dowser response. These fund trials will involve using L-rods and pendulums and include recording various shielding and magnetic flux observations. Experiments will take place throughout the day on Saturday, August 9th as well as on Sunday morning, August 10th.

Preliminary results will be presented at the ASD Science Panel later Sunday afternoon. Shelly will be available to answer our questions and address comments related to the experimental protocol. All guests, including non-laboratory participants, are welcome to join the “Science Panel” discussions. Remember: becoming a successful, highly accurate and consistent dowser is a choice we all can make. All we have to do is practice, practice, and practice some more!

Ron Blackburn, Ph.D. is the ASD National Science Advisor and an ASD Sustaining Life Member. He has served as Vice President of The American Society of Dowsers and was founder and past President of the Veterans Chapter located in Pleasanton, CA. Ron is working to establish a dialogue with the research community to foster increased interest in dowsing including ways to apply the scientific method and techniques that would enhance global acceptance of the dowsing phenomena.

ASD DIGEST

VOLUME 48, NO.2 SPRING  2008

Other Titles From This Edition Are: 

How Lucky We Are! By Jim Harvey

Healing The Alphabet– How You Can Effectively Ask For Help By Mary “Mo” Wheeler, Ph.D

Bull’s-Eye! By Jim Kuebelbeck

Unlimit Yourself By Josh Wakefield

Geomancy By Sig Lonegren M.A.

Healing Giardia And Shame With Burdock Essence By Fearn Litchfield

Lost Object Found- Dowsing By Telephone By Jason Light

The Perfect Solution For Low-Volume Wells By Porky Cuter

Shamanism, 3 Worlds, One System-Part 1 By Frank Jordan

Thousands Of Wells For Villages In South India- A Report On My Work By Brother James Kimpton

Longevity And Weight Loss Resistance By Dr. Indrani Maity

Brain Waves By John Living

Find these and more in the Member's Only Section of the ASD Digest Archives or Sign Up today to Become A Member.