What dowsing has to offer those who work with land
by Keiron Pratt
January 2026
In our modern world, so disconnected from nature, rife with industrial agriculture and screen addiction, the stark contrast when we encounter people who want to feel rooted in a life on the land becomes refreshingly obvious. We saw this during the epidemic when people started to allow their interests of working with land to manifest. We also see this with the recent spike of interest in native traditions wisdom. There is a movement of 'coming back to the land' and a call to reveal the wisdom and balance we somehow know it holds for us.
In this 'coming back to the land' movement I believe dowsing has much to offer as a tool to reconnect us to living earth, gaia, god, country, pachamama, the source; whatever we wish to label it. Dowsing provides something more than dry facts and logical assertions. It connects us to the land on a deeply felt level. A way that inspires us not just to know, but to feel and to act in accordance with that.
I am a landscaper and permaculturist, working in these fields since my youth. I was introduced to dowsing in the irrigation industry when I was 21 and over the years have been blessed with two close mentors. Over the last 15 years I have used dowsing for many applications in both my professional and personal life.
In recent years, with my wife, we have offered dowsing courses in Australia, Spain and Online. In this work, I have witnessed great enthusiasm and abilities to connect through the dowsing tool. Animals, trees, elements, spirits, landscapes, farms and all the beings that make up these spaces are not just communicated with, but even more interestingly, are obviously as joyful as us to work together and be in allegiance for overarching love to prevail.
When participants begin dowsing their minds seem to open, they become less self-preoccupied, and a surrendering to something bigger than them occurs. After the first session and some healthy sharing with a cuppa, a group of serious and reserved adults turns into a class of uninhibited children; playing, smiling, dreaming and feeling. They begin to open, and from there receive information beyond their sight, facts or blind faith.
One of my mentors puts it so eloquently when asked how Dowsing works:
"fu@#ed if I know, but it does, so why get caught up in too many explanations".
I find Dowsing helps with the over-importance placed on the logical, hard thinking, dare I say, masculine way of operating. When we dowse we find the belonging, harmony and connection we yearn for. And from that dowsing/grace/non-biased/loving state we soften the impermeable barrier that often separates us from the so called 'otherness' of nature or land. And it is from there solutions and 'best ways forward' are co-created.
I present dowsing as an antenna or multiplier of our already existing felt connection to living earth and all that it is made up of. Although the ultimate tool to read the spaces, lands and energies that surround us are our bodies and the dowsing tool is used to decipher what our bodies are intuiting and reading. But it all happens in our bodies. And in order to be in our bodies, we need to allow the logical thinking mind to soften and to drop all that contracted, tight, squeezing brainwork that we have worshipped to be superior in our societies over the last centuries.
In the courses my wife and I run, we often have many people coming who are interested in specific applications of dowsing; finding a suitable bore location, balancing spaces, locating services or energy lines/centers etc. They may learn those things, but what we usually hear to be their most precious takeaways are hearts full of gratefulness for living in a world abounding in connection that they are unashamedly an integral part of.
Therefore, as dowsers we have so much to offer to those interested in, or already working with land. There are already so many forms of practical resources out there for teaching sophisticated methods and techniques for working with land, but what I feel dowsing has to offer is much richer and rarer than that. It helps us to trust our intuition, our own inner wisdom and felt connection to land. It allows us to find the unique solutions needed when working in our own lands and unique contexts.
Certainly, this connection will provide more-than-human co-created solutions to the fast paced, ungrounded, disconnected problems we are facing on earth currently. That is my hope for engaging with this work.