A.  This is a very difficult question for me. Many respected colleagues regularly pose verbal questions to the body. I rarely do. Introducing verbal questions into an energy test brings in a whole other realm beyond the body’s wisdom. I, instead, use energy testing to tune into the language of the body, which I’ve come to profoundly trust. Energy testing the body, without an overlay of words, is generally quite reliable when the procedure is followed correctly. Energy testing verbal questions, regardless of how it is done, brings in many more variables.

I have felt uneasy about this issue for decades. Some practitioners have learned to use verbal questions followed by an energy test as a way of tuning into a higher source of information, so it becomes for them a way of channeling, a bridge to the truth of the situation. More often it is probably picking up on their unconscious assessment.  I believe that this is what “ideomotor” devices like pendulums also often do. Nothing wrong with that, just don’t assume it is God speaking. 

I am not placing a judgment on people who have developed to a refined art ways of asking the body questions or using a pendulum that they find trustworthy.  My real point here is that casually using energy testing to answer any of a wide range of questions is a questionable approach. I have seen more nonsense emerge from this than I like to think about.

But since this is a valid method for some people, I’ve never taken a public position on it. I have simply gone about teaching energy testing in the contexts in which I use it, which are much more traditional—checking, under specific conditions, the relative strength of indicator muscles to determine the energetic state of a meridian or chakra or other system.

Efforts to ask the body questions about the future seem particularly ludicrous to me: "How long before I will be cured of this illness?" While I may have a lot of information to make an educated guess about such a question, an energy test is not a source I look to for that information. I believe there is fate, there is free will, and there is chance. An energy test of the future assumes it is all fated. But free will and chance converge with whatever may actually be fated. This is why readings from even the most talented psychics are only a percentage game. Many factors influence the single question being asked.

But even questions about treatment are very tricky. "Should this problem be treated with the meridians or the chakras?" Energy tests can be influenced by so many forces, even for people of the highest integrity who do everything they can to get out of the way. It is challenge enough not to exert an influence on the test based on your beliefs, desires, or unconscious expectations. This is true for any energy test, but so much more so when it is based on a verbal question rather than letting the body respond in its own language.  The same problems apply to “surrogate testing” yourself for another person from a distance.  It is more likely to be picking up on your unconscious take on the situation than providing a direct assessment about the client’s health condition.

Beyond all of this, I believe that the body often does not have a clear yes or no.  The seven layers on each chakra can contradict one another.   Triple warmer and spleen often contradict one another.  It is quite a complex drama to reduce down to “Yes” or “No.”

As I write this, I am having images of colleagues who ask questions before an intervention such as "Is this for the body’s highest good?" or "Do I have permission to proceed?" I ask these questions intuitively, but I personally do not energy test for them. However, practitioners I admire do ask these questions and test for the answers so respectfully, almost as a prayer, that the questions themselves set an energy field of respect and equality. So the energy test itself can serve the very legitimate purpose of setting a morphogenic field for healing. There are many truths and many ways to get at them. Asking the body questions is one of the trickier of the bunch.