Snippets from Excerpt 1

The magical journey that led me to international medical research fame, seeing the spirits of patients’ late relatives and pets, diving down rabbit holes of studying consciousness, metaphysics, after-life communication, Ayurvedic medicine in India under the auspices of the former Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, and ultimately meeting HRH Prince Charles in person (long before he was King) began in Abergavenny in 1949.

I was the younger daughter of Wyndham and Elsie Blackwell. Dad was a bus driver, and Mum a housewife/market gardener who later ran a fruit and vegetable stall in Abergavenny market. Our family home was just a ramshackle tin shack that had once been part of a temporary village set up in the early 1900s to house the men employed to build Grwyne Fawr Reservoir Village in nearby Forest Coalpit. Because the buildings were built of wood and corrugated iron it quickly became known as “Tin Town.”

… When I was eleven, Dad had a heart attack. A doctor had warned Mum that my father could drop dead at any minute. After that wellmeaning curse from the white-coated “shaman,” my mother was forever watching Dad for any signs of imminent death…

Dad was a dowser and a self-taught electrician, mechanic, and mystic. Indeed, he was “some unsung, rustic polymath” if ever there was one. These facts may be relevant to what happened some months later when Pops had a second heart attack. As was the usual practice in those days, he was nursed in bed at home.

One day, Mum and I noted that something strange was going on. Dad was not only cold and clammy to the touch, but he was also vibrating. In fact, his entire body was buzzing. We were completely mystified. There was no obvious explanation for this strange phenomenon.

“Well, I certainly don’t vibrate when I join him under the eiderdown at night,” Mum said.

“Then I think we should call his GP,” I suggested. The call was duly made, the visit paid, but still no explanation was forthcoming. Days passed and dad continued to buzz. A second GP stopped by from the practice. But he didn’t have a clue either. And so it continued until one day, Mum had a hair appointment. “Will you watch over your father?” she asked as she sailed out the door.

Intrigued by Dad’s curious buzzing, I stood contemplating his juddering body when a bright idea suddenly popped into my head. Perhaps all Dad needs is to be grounded! I thought.

Confident I could do that, I made a beeline for Dad’s workshop. Rummaging around, I soon located a length of 13-amp electric cable, stripped the plastic off, and returned to my parent’s bedroom, where I found Dad awake. Ever the optimist, Dad good-naturedly agreed to let me wrap several feet of bare copper wire around his forehead and attach the other end to a metal spike. I thrust the spike into the garden outside his bedroom to earth him, and surprisingly, the buzzing ceased. Soon after, Mum arrived home. “Hello, what are you up to?” she enquired in a half-amused, half-quizzical tone that conveyed her befuddlement at how she and my father could have bred such an unusual child.

Whether it was the grounding that had helped Dad’s recovery, I don’t know, but curiously, some fifty some years later, grounding, also known as “earthing,” is attracting considerable interest for its potential benefits in reducing inflammation, cardiovascular disease, muscle damage, chronic pain, and mood.

In fact, according to the late American Board-Certified Cardiologist Dr Stephen T. Sinatra, when done properly and safely, “grounding or earthing, may have profound effects on the autonomic nervous system (ANS), heart rate variability (HRV), and blood viscosity /zeta potential.” *

Apparently earthing—the process of attuning to the earth’s electrical potential—soaks up negatively charged electrons that neutralize free radicals in our bodies and help stop cells from sticking together. Perhaps my father’s red blood cells and platelets had clotted, blocking his arteries and causing inflammation which, in turn, had raised his free radicals, thereby encouraging more cells to stick together.

To read more of  Chapter One download excerpt 1 below