Connecting with Your Dowsing Intuition with Water Dowser Lee Barnes

Ready to have a deeper conversation about body and soul, sacred leadership, and our collective evolution? Welcome to the Wise Body, Ancient Soul podcast with me, your host, Charisse Sisou.

Charisse Sisou (00:00)

welcome to today’s episode. I am so delighted to introduce you to Lee Barnes and let me pull up his illustrious bio. He has a PhD in environmental horticulture. He is a long-term dowsing intuition educator.

local Appalachian chapter leader, that’s chapter of the American Society of Dowsers, and professional water well dowser in the crystalline bedrock of the Southern Appalachian Highlands near Asheville, North Carolina. Oh, I hear the pride in that sentence. Oh, I can just imagine how good the water is. He has over 25 years of experience dowsing water wells, sacred sites in the US and United Kingdom.

Lee Barnes (00:33)

I love my

Charisse Sisou (00:44)

Geopathic energies and map dowsing for moving hurricanes all of which I want to ask you about Lee was honored by ASD as the 2012 educator of the year And 2019 dowser of the year and as someone who’s seen Lee in action teaching, He is a generous and Wonderful teacher. He just so clearly is coming from a service and a deep well of knowledge pun intended Lee is a lifetime member of

Lee Barnes (00:50)

Hehehe

it.

Charisse Sisou (01:13)

the American Society of Dowsers, as well as the British Society of Dowsers, and studies dowsing intuition a lot. I love that. I love that last sentence. He’ll be joining us at conference this year, and you can learn more about him at AppalachianDowsers.org. Welcome Lee. I can take off my readers now. Oh no, I can’t cause I gotta look at my notes. Well, oh my goodness. So I would love to start.

Lee Barnes (01:31)

Thank you.

I have to keep my nose.

Charisse Sisou (01:44)

in the beginning. Now, your, so your PhD is in horticulture. How, like, were you, I guess, what were your original career goals? How did you find dowsing? How did dowsing find you? How did it all start?

Lee Barnes (02:01)

My PhD was environmental horticulture and I actually worked with three endangered species of plants in North Florida. They were being dug in the wild and we were trying to reproduce them and it was a totally uneconomic crop. So my whole life I haven’t worked, you know, to make big bucks but I wanted to move up to the mountains. So I did that 33 years ago and I discovered dowsing

bioregionalism and permaculture all at the same time.

Charisse Sisou (02:35)

Oh, I got chills when you said that because that was going to be one of my questions. I know you are a big, your bio didn’t mention this, but you’re a big like sustainable agriculture guy or you’re a seed saver. You teach people about seed saving. Okay. So you learned about it all at the same time. This fascinates me. Tell me more about that.

Lee Barnes (02:57)

Um, I worked with a, a organization called Katua journal, which was an environmental magazine. I think that opened me up to, uh, developing a sense of place and respect of place. So I’ve been passionate about sharing that sense. Uh, I had a permaculture class and gosh, I’ve ended up forming a nonprofit and we’ve raised over a quarter million dollars in the last 10 years to promote permaculture education.

demonstration and networking. And then I’ve been doing seed saving of heirloom varieties for somewhere 28, 29 years with several organizations. So I’m passionate about saving seeds, but dowsing really captures my heart because it’s so, well, one, we all can do it. And I’m using the term dowsing intuition so that people don’t think that water dowsing is the only use for…

Charisse Sisou (03:48)

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (03:55)

uh what the definition of dowsing if anybody has heard the definition they would think you know an old man and a black bag walking the fields and that’s me now so i made that but um water dowsing is just the very beginning of a tapping in a system to access your dowsing intuition and I noticed on one of your videos you said you didn’t like the term higher self I don’t either

Charisse Sisou (04:07)

Good job.

Hmm

Lee Barnes (04:24)

I use my super self or super consciousness. And it’s all a continuum. And it’s all a matter of paying attention. So the steps, the elevator speech is, learn to ask a better question. A clear question is gonna give you a better answer. Learn how to sense it in your body. I mean, we use various tools, but after a while you wanna feel it in your body. For example,

Charisse Sisou (04:27)

Interesting.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (04:53)

people may know a pendulum. Pendulums go back probably three or four thousand years. And I can feel that in my chest. I no longer have to swing this. I get, you know, I believe everything. Okay. I’ve spent a year of my life in the woods and I realize that everything is animated and interconnected. So I co-create with my tools. So I ask them, you know, show me the easiest way to indicate. I’m giving a voice to my muscles basically.

Charisse Sisou (04:59)

Hmm.

Lee Barnes (05:23)

Show me a yes, and I happen to get a counterclockwise direction, and a lot of books say, well, it’s supposed to be clockwise. Well, not for my body. And then show me a different movement for a no, and I got a clockwise. And then after doing it for about 10 years, I realized, show me a vaguely worded question or question not answerable at this time, and I get this diagonal swing. So I can feel that all in my body. So I…

Charisse Sisou (05:23)

Hmm

Lee Barnes (05:51)

people say, well, pull out your tools and ask the question. I don’t need to do that anymore. I trust. And the third step is learning to allow this to come through and not having a hidden agenda and trust results you’ll get. I’ve dowsed 500 wells and somebody’s spending anywhere from 10 to $20,000 on a well. And you mentioned crystalline bedrock.

Charisse Sisou (06:09)

Mm.

Lee Barnes (06:21)

We don’t have true aquifers up in the mountains and people are also building up on the high ridges where it’s a little more difficult to get water, more expensive anyway. And I think what I’m doing, and I’m kind of the analytical one on this, I think we can sense electromagnetic fields. I’ve seen a demonstration where a small pocket compass, 50 people tested in a lab could detect the magnetic field

Charisse Sisou (06:22)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Lee Barnes (06:50)

turns that little needle. Well, a good dowser 1000. So, you know, dowsing is tuning in a very acutal awareness. It kind of reminds me of the movie The Bourne Identities, where this spy is walking around. He knows which car, well, he’s memorized the license tags just indirectly, and he knows which car is more likely to have a gun in it. Now, how do you do that? Well, real sensitive.

Charisse Sisou (06:55)

Mm.

Hmm. Bright.

Lee Barnes (07:20)

And you as a dancer, I noticed you were talking about, you could sense the energy in a room. And I dowse people’s, okay, I’ve given little general dowsing classes to literally a thousand and I’ve had like five or six people who couldn’t get it. And I think they were blocking themselves. So I try to teach that, you know, this is the way I do it, but learn with your own system. I did a talk recently for the American Society of Dowsers.

Charisse Sisou (07:34)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (07:49)

and I pulled up a chart of like 47 different divination techniques. And to me, as long as you’re consistent with whatever you’re doing, you’re gonna get better answers and get better with time. So I will actually have students, I give them a, I don’t have one right in front of me, a nut on a string, because I think that’s just funny. I used to do it on dental floss, but you know, I’ve moved up.

Charisse Sisou (08:03)

That’s true.

Hehehe

Lee Barnes (08:18)

and to stand over flowing water in a water pipe. So they see it with their other senses, but they learn to feel it. And they’ve got a response. Most people, the rods will cross in or out, it’s kind of like belly buttons, you know. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent with it. I show them that, right, I show them that I like to know which direction the water’s going. So if I have a sense of flow,

Charisse Sisou (08:24)

Yeah.

Some people are innies, some people are outies. Yes.

Lee Barnes (08:48)

my rods will point in the direction. And that’s important if you’re locating a well near a septic field or something where, you know, you wanna protect a little bit better. And I do get a handful of people that point upstream. And I’m intrigued by that because I think they’re thinking the source of the water versus where it’s going. So.

Charisse Sisou (08:50)

Hmm.

Yeah.

 about the source. That’s really fascinating. So this leads me to, oh my gosh, you just said so many things right there. So how, just to reel it back, how do you define dowsing then? Is it accessing this dowsing intuition?

Lee Barnes (09:16)

Hey

Um, I think so. And I’m using the term dowsing intuition so that people kind of put the two together to further their understanding of it. Um, I now I keep a very messy office, but if I can’t find something, I get in a relaxed, um, uh, intuitive state and I’ll walk over and pick up and there it is. So was I remembering, you know, uh, where it was at?

Charisse Sisou (09:37)

Got it.

Yep.

Lee Barnes (09:56)

or was I sensing the vibration and was attracted to it? My work with, my passion with sacred sites is that there are energy lines that connect these. And I can actually show you how to simply dowse an energy line around a tree or between trees. When I stand people over water, their energy fields contract. And I think they’re trying to maintain, I guess the fancy term, homeostasis, their energy field.

Charisse Sisou (10:15)

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (10:26)

And then I showed them how I could trick them by pulling mine in completely. I call it going invisible. If I’m around animals that don’t know me, so I’m less threatening. I’ll pull my energy in. And if you can tell, I can probably fill a room, uh, auditorium with energy. If I’m trying to reach that back row. So that’s just fun things to play with.

Charisse Sisou (10:38)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Very much so. What if any tools do you use? I definitely want to talk about sacred sites, but let’s stick with wells just for a moment. What tools do you use or do you use tools anymore when you’re detecting a well?

Lee Barnes (10:58)

Okay.

I do, I use the basic, what are known as L rods, angle rods, the letter L, because I can have them point in a direction, I can have them cross at the greatest flow, and it’s convenient in the light wind. But I can’t tell you the number of sites I’ve been to where I laid my pack down, walk around, and right where I laid my pack down, it was the best site. So.

Charisse Sisou (11:08)

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

That’s where it was. That’s amazing.

Lee Barnes (11:32)

And Leroy Bull has a famous story where he would send his daughter out to mark a site and she’d jump out of a car, run out and put a stake in and leave. And I go, wait, what? You didn’t do anything. Well, the work had been done from a distance. And I am learning that we have this capability to resonate with anything in the universe. And remote viewing would be what some people think distant dowsing.

Charisse Sisou (11:38)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (11:59)

is a higher level because not only can you sense a place and what’s going on, you can ask questions about it. And the very highest levels I see is where you make a change at a distance. And this is just generally called energy work because you don’t want the AMA to, you don’t wanna diagnose or heal unless you have a license or they’re suing you. So, but people have been doing that for thousands of years.

Charisse Sisou (12:03)

Mm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Absolutely. Right.

Lee Barnes (12:27)

It’s fun to dowse the sex of a baby that’s going to be born. That’s gone back thousands of years. Same idea with sexing chicken eggs. So you take the roosters away. But there’s no limit to dowsing except your ability to ask an absolutely clear question.

Charisse Sisou (12:34)

Sure.

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (12:49)

And you can actually just by looking up, you shift into alpha. So you see a lot of medieval art where people are looking to the heavens. Well they’re doing a dowsing consciousness shift. And I did send you a chart that shows that dowsers are using all the major brainwave patterns simultaneously in both hemispheres.

Charisse Sisou (12:59)

Ah.

Let me see if I can bring it on the screen, what you’re talking about, because this is really fascinating and we’ll describe it for folks who might be listening.

Lee Barnes (13:22)

Well, it makes the science in me that there is a science to dowsing, because you’re accessing everything you know. You know, we have trillions of neurons. We have more things like that than the largest supercomputer.

Anyway, just to simplify it, the first three, four, is the daily rhythms that most people go through from conscious mind to alpha, to deeper sleep, delta and theta. And on the far, my right, there’s three columns. Two of them are…

Charisse Sisou (13:46)

Sure, sure.

Right.

Mm.

Lee Barnes (14:02)

meditators and they kick out in the alpha, you know, they’re reaching out in those wavelengths. On the far right is what dowsers are in all those wavelengths simultaneously. So we are reaching out to our super consciousness, our super awareness, more than just normal thinking. So

Charisse Sisou (14:22)

Yeah, I got it.

Lee Barnes (14:27)

Charisse Sisou (14:26)

Oh, great. Perfect. Well, I’ll share a link to it so people can look at it and see it. But it is really powerful to see represented that even so like normal waking versus the meditative state and then getting into Zen meditation, lucid awareness, those are like more expanded states, but that expert dowsers, high creative states, this is where all the it’s like all the pistons are firing, right? Basically.

Lee Barnes (14:52)

Your super self does not sleep. Its job is to be aware all the time. And there’s a new concept of the perceptive mind, which kind of says that consciousness is just a fraction of what’s going on and you need it to make decisions. But your background is doing its best to analyze everything and keep you alive. At one time it was real important to notice the tiger staring at you from the forest.

Charisse Sisou (15:15)

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (15:20)

And finding water is pretty handy too.

Charisse Sisou (15:24)

Right, absolutely. That’s a big survival tool. Well, and I think too, it’s, I mean, just to your point, we do have such a level of awareness of our environment. Even folks who say, “oh, you know, I’m not really intuitive,” but we’ve all had that experience where you’re like walking into a room and you get the heebie-jeebies like, ah, I’m going to get out of here. Or conversely, like…

Lee Barnes (15:47)

Oh yeah, pay attention.

Charisse Sisou (15:51)

guide into talking about sacred sites, you walk into a space and you just immediately feel like elevated, right, as some of these sacred spots, you know, just immediately it shifts your energy.

Lee Barnes (16:05)

If I can twist your thought, you said something with the word not. And I would change that word to that I am getting better at doing X, Y, Z instead of I can’t, I shouldn’t. Does that make sense?

We cancel ourselves with our language. So I’m a writer too, and I realized the power of a single word. And what was fascinating is, oh gosh, one of my first dowsing conventions, I’ve been to I think four, I highly recommend that people go to them because learning this in person with someone is just incredible. But they had giant letters, runes, that, you know, they were like five feet.

Charisse Sisou (16:23)

Yeah, you’re right, absolutely.

Lee Barnes (16:48)

by size and you can sense the energy fields around them and the corners. And it made me realize that sentences are energy patterns linked together.

Charisse Sisou (16:52)

Yeah.

Absolutely. when I talked about people who will say to themselves that they’re not intuitives and what you’re saying is like, yeah. And basically the idea is like, you are, absolutely, we all are. And you add that extra layer of having that awareness with our language because exactly, by saying that, right, then you’re right. Yeah.

Lee Barnes (17:05)

Okay, that’s it. Not intuitive.

If you tell yourself you’re not worthy, then you’ll limit yourself. Or somebody has a pain in the neck, you’ll get a pain in the neck or wherever. So just, that’s what I mean by impeccable language. The better you get at that, the smoother life is. And once again, I think everybody can do this. It’s just developing a discipline and a trust over time. I look for something physical, something that you can confirm.

Charisse Sisou (17:30)

Ayayay, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Lee Barnes (17:50)

So, you know, I find water sites, you know, I find septic fields, you know, not as romantic, but also find grave sites. Any time you dig a hole, even though you fill it back up, there’s electromagnetic difference along the edges, and you can determine the sizes so you know whether it’s a child or adult. And the best dowsers I know can tell you the race, sex, and age of the people in the ground.

Charisse Sisou (17:50)

Yeah.

Mmm.

Hmm.

Wow.

Lee Barnes (18:20)

And how do they do that? Well, I know they can do it. With my water well dowsing, sensing electromagnetic fields is the easiest part. So finding the center. Then I estimate how deep it is because that’s people’s pocketbooks. So I’m thinking of number and it’s based on, like I say, I’ve done about 500 of these wells. Not all have been dug for various reasons.

Charisse Sisou (18:21)

That’s amazing.

Hmm.

Lee Barnes (18:47)

But I’ve got a, you know, my memory, I have a memory and successes and failures and I get a number. I do a bracketing like a, I would imagine a carpenter would look at a board and say, well, that’s more than six feet, but it’s less than 10, it’s eight and a half. You write that down, you trust that. You don’t ask your super self multiple times because it has the temper tantrums of a five-year-old.

if you ask too many times and it will play with you. And then I do the same thing for gallons per minute, recoverable at the surface. So is it more than five? Yes, more than six. Yes, more than seven? No. And I bracket it down and I write it down. I don’t go back and do it multiple times. Then one of the more difficult things is I’m estimating quality of the water. I wanna make sure it doesn’t have iron or sulfur or a problem. And I use a scale from

Charisse Sisou (19:17)

Cheers.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (19:44)

really zero to 10 with 10 being good mountain water like you would get at 6,000 feet in a Fraser fir forest. And I get a number, I write that down. And the last number I get, all these are super conscious estimations. It’s my best guess. I will look for casing depth. And casing pipe is what they put in five feet into solid rock to keep the well from falling in and to…

Charisse Sisou (20:01)

Mm-hmm.

Lee Barnes (20:14)

They grout it so surface water doesn’t flow. So I’m estimating something, and it’s up to the driller to decide when that rock is solid enough. So I’m estimating something in the future that someone else has an opinion of. I write it down and live by it. So.

Charisse Sisou (20:17)

Got it.

Yeah. Well, and I love what you’re saying because one, just reiterating what you’re saying of when you dowse or, when you tune into these answers, trust the answer that you’re getting. Yeah, trust that first answer. It’s like

Lee Barnes (20:45)

Yes, the first answer. Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (20:50)

It’s like when you’re at the restaurant and you’re ordering off the menu and it’s always and people are like, well, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. And it always ends up being the first thing that their eyes looked at. It always is what they actually wanted. Right. But I love too, that you’re clarifying that, you know, locating a well, it’s not just, I found water, right? It, you have to ask all the questions. Is it potable? Is it, you know, you have to ask all, you know, right. Yep.

Lee Barnes (21:09)

Right.

Is it cost effective for the owner and the driller? I have a whole litany of questions I ask. And…

Charisse Sisou (21:19)

Yeah. Well, Leroy, he tells that story in his episode as well about his daughter. He got some pushback from some of the farmers, some of the guys out there who were like, I’m not going to… Because of course, his daughter was like a teenager at the time as well. So she’s just driving up in a little teeny bopper car and planting her a little stake in the ground. They’re just like, who is this child? No, I’m not going to pay you money for the well. So he said, well, look,

Lee Barnes (21:34)

Right.

Okay.

Charisse Sisou (21:48)

dig and if there’s no water there, I will cover your fees. And you do, you have a very similar guarantee of like, you know, right? I seem to remember I was looking at your

Lee Barnes (21:58)

I do not, I return my fee if they don’t get water. And I realize that I’m taking a risk because not every driller drills straight. But, you know, I just do word of mouth. I don’t advertise. I’m slowing down now that I’m getting older. I can’t, you know, cross country like I used to. But I think over time, I’m doing it for the earth.

Charisse Sisou (22:25)

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (22:26)

 don’t want the earth, if you’ve ever watched a water well going in, it’s violent. The ground shakes. So Marti Kane, you should interview her sometime because she’s just a pixie on this. But she’ll ask the water beings, are they willing and able to provide water to this borehole? And that’s another level. And she says, yes, they’re usually willing, but sometimes she has to do a little prayer or something to…

Charisse Sisou (22:31)

Yeah.

Yes.

Lee Barnes (22:56)

to help them, but that’s just a different level of consciousness.

Charisse Sisou (23:00)

Yep. Yeah. the very… Oh yeah, go ahead.

Lee Barnes (23:03)

The other thing I pulled this up This is my fancy $50 Dowsing rod I can do the same thing with a bent surveyors flag But people were willing to pay me more when they see a fancy tool But you got it. You got to have a little bravado here

Charisse Sisou (23:16)

Heheheheheheh!

Right? They notice these things, you know. I love that. I’m delighted that you’re teaching water dowsing at the conference this year. I’m super excited to learn more about that. Yeah. Tell us more about take us into the world of sacred sites. I. Oh, and then.

Lee Barnes (23:29)

and a presentation.

Charisse Sisou (23:42)

Yeah, I’m sorry. I was going to just hop back. I would love to interview Marti. And in fact, I’m going to be interviewing Adela Toy as well. And she is also communicating and talking to people about how to communicate with the elementals, the nature beings. And I find it really, it adds a whole other dimension to working with the earth. Because like you said, it’s…

Lee Barnes (23:50)

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (24:10)

It’s not just about finding and drilling a well. Sandi Isgro talked about this in her conversation. We’re working with the earth. We are drawing as dowsers, we’re drawing from knowledge that we share with the earth because we are part of the earth. And so for her, a big part of it is always like, do I have permission? Is this the appropriate, you know, is that a part of your process as well?

Lee Barnes (24:16)

But, yeah.

It is, with dowsing you can stick your nose into somebody else’s business.

Charisse Sisou (24:46)

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (24:47)

And it’s like, if I’m gonna help someone estimate the sex of their baby, I definitely should ask permission of the mother, and I think I should ask permission of the baby. I mean, so…

Charisse Sisou (24:58)

Absolutely.

Lee Barnes (25:03)

For me, the standard permission is, can I, may I, should I? And I don’t like those words. So for me, am I able to dowse this subject accurately at this time? That’s my first question. May I, do I have permission from the person place thing or universe, whatever? Who am I asking permission from? Whoever my super awareness reaches out to. It’s my simple answer to that.

Charisse Sisou (25:07)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (25:32)

Um, and then, uh, lastly, just, um, like I said, relax and allow. There was another thought in there,

Okay, the last question is…

it’s a little bit different than the first one, is now an appropriate time to ask this question. Because the answer may not be available. You mentioned drinking water. That’s probably the one caveat that you need to be well hydrated when you’re dowsing and not distracted. And I don’t like to dowse when it’s raining and water is dripping off my nose because I’m just not as attentive. So, and I don’t go out in freezing weather anymore.

Charisse Sisou (25:49)

Right.

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (26:13)

It’s got to warm up.

Charisse Sisou (26:16)

No, but that makes sense.

Lee Barnes (26:16)

But that’s an idea of how permission that I see. And when I go into the site, I’m entering it with a level of reverence that I’m being allowed there, I’m gonna try to help. Spending a year in the woods, you realize that things are going on all around you. And you pay attention to it because you hear a snap and a twig. You wonder, you know, is it…

Charisse Sisou (26:21)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (26:44)

Is it falling from the tree or is it a bear?

Charisse Sisou (26:47)

Tell me about this year in the woods. Were you alone? Where were you? What sparked it?

Lee Barnes (26:52)

Um, I’ve done for, yeah, um, I’ve done 4,500 miles of backpacking, which was a year. And part of it, I did the Appalachian trail over like four summers. So at the most I was out in the woods, you know, two months at a time, mostly by myself. And you, you just pay attention at a higher level when you’re by yourself and you, you’re, you’re reading the landscape. Um,

I think I figured I’ve done somewhere about six million steps with a backpack. And you’re always looking where that next foot goes because it may be a root, it may be a rocky rock. I call them laughing rocks. They just, you know, I see them now, you know, before I step on them. I’ve paid attention because I have been, I have fallen before. So, but it’s just, once again, this is, you know, how we evolved as a species was…

you know, paying attention and I think native cultures around the world are very respectful of the world that gives them life. That’s kind of how I see it.

Charisse Sisou (27:58)

Mm. Yeah. Absolutely.

Lee Barnes (28:01)

And I have done treasure hunting but never found anything, but finding water, what better treasure? I mean, water is better, worth more than gold, in my opinion. So, yeah.

Charisse Sisou (28:11)

Water is life. Yeah, water is life. Yeah, beautiful. Oh, cool. So I have experienced that. Like it’s when we go into, you know, it makes me understand, you know, why people will do like silent meditation retreats and stuff like that. We go into a different vibe when it’s just us alone. You were reminding me because I found myself, I was, yeah.

Lee Barnes (28:19)

Hehehe

And it’s the brain waves too, I think. Yeah, definitely shifting. But it is different. It’s the same reality, but it’s different. It’s more real.

Charisse Sisou (28:41)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. You just notice all the details.

Yeah, right? It’s like, yeah, so well put. It’s more real. It’s more nuanced. It’s richer. You know, I was traveling. I was supposed to meet friends and this was like before the days of cell phones. So we missed each other and I was like, well, that’s it. I guess I’m exploring Prague by myself. And it was the most magical weekend and it was like, you know, I didn’t speak a word to anyone except to order my dinner or…

you know, get a place to stay, but it was, um, yeah. Oh yeah. Very much so. Oh, I was, I was so in the flow and so being watched over by angels is not even, not even funny because of course it was perfectly safe. And it was great. But, um, tell me, um, I’m going to circle back again. So talk to me about sacred sites and, uh, dowsing for sacred sites. Um, yeah. How does that, how does that work?

Lee Barnes (29:22)

You’re in the flow. That’s what it sounds like. Yeah.

So, every place is sacred. But some places since more sacred than others. And during my hiking, there were definitely places that I think were a Native American energy had set up. I’ve been by mounds and stone circles, and they’re not just random. They’re very specific in their orientation.

Charisse Sisou (29:53)

Yeah.

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (30:14)

And right after my first trip up to ASD’s Vermont conference, probably 20 years ago, there was a group called NERA, the New England Antiquities Research Association. And they took us on a field trip and we went to all these stone circles and there was a platform that had a huge white quartz crystal in the end of it. And I dowse the energy line and I think it went to the next sacred site.

Charisse Sisou (30:24)

Mm.

Wow.

Lee Barnes (30:45)

And I’ve been to Ireland a couple times. There was one place on a foggy beach that was a 20 foot tall standing stone and it dowsed in a certain direction. And I think it was kind of like a lighthouse that people could pick up on that energy and, you know, redirect it. So my experience within the Southeast here, we have mounds.

Charisse Sisou (31:06)

Wow.

Lee Barnes (31:15)

We do have some petroglyphs and some stone things, but I would, you know, once again, I go to these sites with deep respect and permission of the beings and spirits of place. And I get what I call dowsable energy lines. Once again, on the Appalachian Dowsers, we have a glossary of terms, AppalachianDowsers.org, that we kind of stole from the British Dowsers.

Charisse Sisou (31:16)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (31:43)

you know, that’s a compliment isn’t it. And we added some, but it’s a vocabulary, so we’re all talking the same. And they call a dowsable energy line, not a ley [line]. A ley may be just an alignment, but if there’s an energy with it, I don’t know if it’s electromagnetic or what, but dowsers can pick it up. And it, you know, it’s fascinating. I would get dowsable energy lines.

Charisse Sisou (31:57)

Mm.

Hmmm

Lee Barnes (32:10)

in the four directions here in the southeast and I’ve been over the Mississippi and others and I think somehow energy was imprinted on the site due to ceremony. And I know there’s a group, once again being in the woods, there’s a group called the Mountain Stewards in North Georgia who are into what people call directional trees. These were built by

Charisse Sisou (32:33)

Mm.

Lee Barnes (32:40)

Native Americans to indicate a direction toward a stream crossing or a village or different things and you know, they’re all 170 years old or something because that was before the removal But this group brought a dowser out and he found moving water every Every under every one of these trees that he dowsed I think it was a couple hundred but that told me that

Charisse Sisou (32:52)

Mm.

Wow.

Lee Barnes (33:08)

you know, the First People were sensing the energies of place. And if you’re going to build a lighthouse, why not put it, you know, on where there’s, you know, high energy, if you catch my energy. So it’s, and there’s no end to it.

Charisse Sisou (33:13)

course.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s so rich. Yeah, there’s a gentleman, Freddy Silva, who’s done a lot of work in this area too. And it’s kind of like, which came first, that high energy point of the Earth’s energy lines meeting or the sacred site? And as you were talking about it, actually, what I really got is it’s like the download I got is it’s really both. It’s like this

Lee Barnes (33:28)

Yeah, I know Freddy, yeah.

You can dowse that.

It’s co-creative, yeah.

Charisse Sisou (33:51)

It’s co-creative. It’s the earth as well as the sacred use, just in the same way that we can mark a spot with an event. You know what I mean? It can shift the energy of that spot or that place.

Lee Barnes (34:07)

or sense where your car is in the parking lot.

Charisse Sisou (34:11)

Yeah, without the little boop boop, the little key thing.

Lee Barnes (34:13)

Yep.

I mean, once again, part of it is, well, I kind of remember where it was, but part of it is that relationship. If you can image something, it’s kind of like a cell phone in that things will connect and you can get information about it. And once I started paying more attention to that, things just seemed to go smoother. I’m driving down the road and something tells me, go this way. I don’t fight it. I do it.

Charisse Sisou (34:27)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (34:41)

And it usually turns out to be interesting, or there’s a car accident farther up, or something that I’ve picked up. And once again, it’s super awareness. And I don’t understand quantum physics either, but we can connect with focus and system.

Charisse Sisou (34:56)

Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. How do you find? Let me take a look at my. So we talked. Oh yeah.

Lee Barnes (35:04)

haha

One other thing I’ll mention that some of the stone circles in England, they find that cows will knock fences down to get in them to give birth. So there’s some sort of energy that is helping anesthetic or something. And to me that’s intriguing.

Charisse Sisou (35:12)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is a mountain in Hawaii on Oahu that is the birthing mountain. As you say that, I’m still learning about it myself, but it makes sense that there would be supportive energy from the earth, whether it’s anast…

Lee Barnes (35:50)

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (35:55)

kind of a pain relief. It could be as simple as pain relief. It could be just that elevated energetic state. Yeah, right? So that we’re in more of that mode. That’s powerful. That’s really powerful. So we talked about, oh, you mentioned map dowsing as well, which I think we kind of were grazing this even with what you were saying. Like if you can get an image in your head, you can tune into that. Is that?

Lee Barnes (36:01)

changing the brain waves, whatever.

Charisse Sisou (36:22)

Is that kind of what you’re doing when you’re map dowsing as well?

Lee Barnes (36:25)

I think so, well, you interviewed Leroy Bull, and he was the teacher that helped me really get to trust map dowsing. Wonderful man, wonderful man. And what I started doing, I live up in the mountains, but my parents at that time were down in the Piedmont of North Carolina. And whenever there was a hurricane in the general area, I would literally print out one of those little hurricane maps and then

Charisse Sisou (36:30)

He wrote the book on map dowsing

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (36:55)

Ultimately, I developed where I could take a pendulum and rub a finger. I was looking for where is the eye wall of the hurricane going to hit land? Part of this, you know, I’m a weather nut, so I’ve studied past histories. I know the approaching fronts will do this. It’s like linebackers. I know they tend to go up bays. And so that’s going on. But I’ve got the spaghetti maps. And on five…

Charisse Sisou (37:04)

Mm.

Yeah.

Lee Barnes (37:21)

hurricanes that I was concerned that was it going to hit me or my parents, I got within 10 miles of landfall three days before it hit. And then I was able to track it a couple other days within a 50-mile radius. So, I mean, we have a supercomputer up here, so it can be used. And once again, I write down, you know, what I get. I don’t question it. I don’t try to over, you know, analyze it.

Charisse Sisou (37:31)

Wow.

that’s.

Yeah, we really do.

Lee Barnes (37:50)

This is what the universe is. Like I say, my super consciousness is handing me. So learn to trust it. Yeah, it’s kept me out of trouble in the past. I’ll mention one other thing. The last time I didn’t pay attention to my intuition, I slid down a snow field at 10,000 feet and should have been killed. I was on a four month backpacking trip, car camping across the country.

Charisse Sisou (37:56)

Mm. Yeah.

Oh.

Wow.

Lee Barnes (38:19)

We were gradually getting higher and higher during the elevations. And I didn’t realize the snow was frozen at that point. It was ice. It wasn’t snow. And I walked out on a snowbank and I said, oh man, this looks like so much fun. I’m going to slide down and do what I’ve been doing. And something told me, no, walk away. So I turned around and went back four or five steps and then I went, oh no, it’ll be fun. Well.

Charisse Sisou (38:40)

Mm.

Lee Barnes (38:47)

I realized real quick that I was totally out of control. I was looking between my feet and I saw a pile of rocks the size of Volkswagen’s and somehow, and this is getting to that spirit range, I was moved over 40 feet and skid over the small rocks. Cut up a little bit but I was alive. So that’s one instance that I can’t deny that something extraordinary happened. And I’ve listened to my intuition since.

Charisse Sisou (39:12)

Mm.

That’s one way to just get it deeply ingrained. Okay. Won’t forget that one. Won’t forget it. Wow. You, I’m going to circle back because I think somehow we, I asked you what, you know, your first experience was. What was your first experience and how did it end up tying together with the.

Lee Barnes (39:19)

Yeah!

Yeah, good question. Basically I helped co-found the Southeastern Permaculture Gathering, which is an informal conference and we had a professor come up, that was 31 years ago, come up from North Carolina State and he showed us in a half an hour dowsing how to sense underground electrical lines and water.

Charisse Sisou (39:59)

Mm.

Lee Barnes (40:03)

And he says, well, he requires all his students to learn dowsing, before he will graduate them out of his class. But from that, I went, hey, this is going to help me understand the sacred sites maybe. And then I realized that a lot of the sacred sites are associated with water, with the energy of flowing water. And so that’s when I started dowsing wells for friends. And when the first three came in successfully and I didn’t charge, I just went, well.

Charisse Sisou (40:10)

Fantastic.

Mm-hmm.

Lee Barnes (40:32)

Maybe there’s some right livelihood here. I’ve got some experience now. And to keep me from feeling too guilty, I give a money back guarantee. I can actually look down a borehole and see whether it’s straight or not. You take a mirror with sunlight and you can see. And the drillers that drill too fast are not straight. So I have a short list of drillers I prefer. And they believe in me. They want a reputation of

Charisse Sisou (40:36)

Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Lee Barnes (41:00)

being successful and not drilling super deep. So it’s a good relationship, but there’s only two or three that I work with that I prefer, the others that I bad mouth them, they bad mouth me, you know.

Charisse Sisou (41:07)

Yeah.

It’s a friendly, friendly relationship.

Lee Barnes (41:17)

Yeah, well, it’s expensive, so…

And that’s, we’ve had classes, there’s a great need to train water dowsers because it’s gonna be a lost art. And we’ve had classes where people are really good at it, getting independent depths that are the same, finding spots, but they don’t wanna get in it professionally because somebody’s betting 15 to $20,000 based on their experience, and it’s kinda…

Charisse Sisou (41:29)

Mm.

Lee Barnes (41:51)

It’s kind of hairy. But you have to once again, get over that and learn to trust and it is, you know, like I say, I’m doing I think to help the earth. It’s now my higher guide. And once again, Marti Kane taught me to dowse the client to the effect of how much will I enjoy this experience on a scale of one to 10 or minus 10 to plus 10.

Charisse Sisou (41:53)

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

It’s beautiful.

Lee Barnes (42:19)

So not only do we get yes and no’s, we get qualities and quantities. So.

Charisse Sisou (42:26)

That’s great. Well, thank you for continuing that tradition of the water witching, dowsing for water. And yeah, I think it will not become a lost art because of teachers like you. So.

Lee Barnes (42:42)

Well, I’m passionate about it and I will continue to help empower people. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So that’s, I’m holding out for that.

Charisse Sisou (42:52)

So true. Absolutely, absolutely. So what, as we bring this beautiful conversation to a close, what last pearls of wisdom, if there is like one takeaway that you’d love for people to have, what would it be?

Lee Barnes (43:11)

We are all remarkable beings. And we can choose to connect or not connect. We can choose to be respectful or not. But that affects everything beyond that. And if you wanna be healthy and spiritual, I think learning to work with things instead of against things is the better way to go. So that’s…

Charisse Sisou (43:26)

Mmm.

Lee Barnes (43:42)

Read everything you can about dowsing. Go to dowsing conferences and see what other people are doing. And then go do it. There’s nothing like that hands-on experience. It’s like you’re dancing in a room. You feel the energies. And I think everybody can access it if they try.

Charisse Sisou (43:51)

Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, thank you so much, Lee. This was fantastic. And I’m excited to share all the resources that you talked about will be in the notes and all of that stuff. Thank you for joining me today.

Lee Barnes (44:18)

Okay. Very good. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

Thanks for joining me on Wise Body, Ancient Soul. I hope it reminds you how magical and powerful you truly are. Kindly subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so more juicy light bringers like you can hear these transmissions. And if you’re looking to connect more deeply with your body and soul’s wisdom, visit CharisseSisou.com to learn how else we can play together. Here’s to your joy and wild success! From my heart to yours, I love you. Take what you need and pass it on.