Feeling tired? Hang on, I'll get my twigs out

The ancient practice of dowsing once located water underground. Now it has more unusual uses.

Christopher Strong looks like an ordinary businessman. He wears a shirt and tie, and carries a briefcase. He has an MA in natural sciences from Cambridge and used to work as a tropical agronomist specialising in pest management. But rather than a laptop and a sheaf of memos, his briefcase holds metal rods, crystals and pendulums, because his business today is dowsing.

Dowsing is an ancient practice, usually associated with using twigs or rods to locate underground water sources - the rods twitch downwards over the water source. But Christopher takes it much further than that. Using his copper dowsing rods and his carnelian and crystal pendulums, he traces not only water, but also pretty much everything.

He will dowse your house to detect physical disturbance (electromagnetic fields, landfill sites below the foundations, pollution), man-made disturbance (electromagnetic fields, badly placed phone lines) or psychic disturbance. (Could your home have an unhappy atmosphere because it is built on the site of a former battlefield, perhaps? Or is there a trapped presence seeking release?) He will divine the feng shui of your home using his rods to follow the passage of energy through the house. He will also dowse you personally, to look at your aura, assess your energy field, and to check for food intolerances and allergies. And any imbalances he finds, he will rectify; he specialises in healing sick buildings and harmonising energies. Dowsing seems to be the one-stop shop of the alternative health world.

All of this means that a home visit from Christopher is a pretty energetic experience. He started off chez Lacey by examining the house itself, asking murmured questions of his swinging carnelian pendulum. No major problems, apart from a certain level of electromagnetic disturbance and an energy barrier over the line of an old underground stream. On a plan of the house I'm hoping to move to, he diagnosed underground water - and pinpointed the old well on the corner of the house. This was getting off lightly: in one house where the owner had complained of malaise, his dowsing rods had led him straight to a photograph on the wall, which turned out to be her husband. (They later divorced.)

The rods themselves are very ordinary-looking lengths of copper, bent at one end to form a handle which slips into a length of bamboo. The rods can be used to ask questions (to signify "yes" the rod turns one way, for a "no" they twist the other) and to measure energy levels (a spinning rod in one direction shows good energy, in the other it shows negative energy). Their movement is uncanny - because they're in the bamboo holders, explained Christopher, he can't influence their twists and turns. He used them to analyse the house's feng shui by asking the rods to guide him to the house's energy centres. (They found the business area in the spare bedroom, which isn't ideally convenient, but the wealth area over the desk in the study, which sounds rather more hopeful.)

To harmonise the house, Christopher recommended crystals of amethyst and silicon carbide, which he carefully put in the exact locations indicated by the rods.

Then it was my turn. First of all Christopher made me stand up so he could look at my personal energy field; the rods swung apart. "You have a normal energy field with two pluses," he announced. "But it should be a little bigger." Then he dowsed me as I made a call on a mobile phone, and the rods swung together - apparently mobiles play havoc with your energy fields. Then he had a look at my aura. While my general colour was violet (quite spiritual), his pendulum told him that I was missing out on yellow completely - not good. Yellow is the colour of willpower. So while I stood in the middle of the room, Christopher pointed his crystal wand at my solar plexus, where yellow willpower is concentrated, and cured me of wimpishness.

Finally it was time to dowse my insides. Christopher produced a long list and his pendulum, and asked it whether I was sensitive to various different foods. The pendulum was very much against stilton cheese, while Wensleydale was fine; sesame seeds were in but pistachios were out. It said I should never touch beer but that champagne was fine for me, which is excellent news. Anything can be dowsed; Christopher was able to reassure me that Persil non-biological washing powder and Colgate Total toothpaste both suit me fine. And, he added, "avoid nylon, cotton is best" which is good advice whether dowsed for or not.

Christopher normally spends around two hours on a home visit, and charges pounds 65 per hour. By the time he left, I and the house had been thoroughly and comprehensively dowsed, inside and out. He also left me a charm to encourage a quick sale of the poor house, which seemed a bit mean having just harmonised its energies. The charm is hidden in a secret location in the area the dowsing rods designated as the luck area, and, given the vagaries of estate agents, seems as likely to work as anything else.

Christopher Strong practises at the Hale Clinic in London (tel: 0171 631 0156) and the Life-Ways Health Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon (tel: 01789 292052) and can be contacted on tel: 01386 833899. There will be an introductory dowsing course in London on 11 December.