Source : The Waterford News & Star (September 5, 2008)
By Cathy Power

IF YOUR baby started waking at night when you moved her out of her cot and into a bed,would you immediately think that geopathic stress was the problem? Well, that's what John Murphy, thought when his 18-month-old Ava's sleep became disturbed at their home in Kilmeaden.

"She had been sleeping soundly, in her cot in the corner of the room for a year and a half. When we moved her, the bed was on one of the geopathic stress lines and immediately she started waking at night, every night, for two hours. And she'd be wide awake too," he said.

So, how did geopathic stress come to mind? "A friend of mine had had his house surveyed and his wife, who was ill, improved a lot when he fixed the problem," said John, explaining that he had back problems and so did his wife, Anita.

He turned to the internet for more information and became convinced that he had pinpointed the problem.

Geopathic stress, it seems, has the potential to make us ill,or at least to make our immune systems less effective. The Chinese knew about it thousands of years ago and sited their buildings accordingly. Various European scientists are credited with developing the theory, some even going so far as to say that cancer is a "disease of location".

Most doctors and modern scientists say the theory is false, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence and claims that avoidance of geopathic stress lines is good for the health. John Walsh had his house surveyed by an Brendan Murphy of Positive Energy Limited a full eight years before he took action at his house in Kilmeaden.

"I had the survey done and about seven or eight lines were found in the house," said John."I didn't take a note of them but I remembered where four of them were," he explained. Then he realised that sleep problems in his baby arose when her bed was on one of the lines. He was unable to find the original record of where all eight lines were found in the house years earlier so the survey was done again.

In the end, it was about eighty years after the original survey that he and his sceptical wife, Anita, decided to spend neatly €5,000 to resolve the problem.

"Other than moving furniture, there is not much that can be done, except the big job that we did," said John. The remedy was fairly drastic, involving digging a trench around the house, inserting a copper bar and a copper pipe through which water flows to surround it completely. Theory is that the geopathic stress hits the water and then it flows out of the house with it. "It was hard to justify the money," said John, especially as his wife was not convinced. "I felt it was real when the second survey was done and found the same results as the first one taken years earlier," he explained, however, it was still a leap of faith especially as the job involved digging up tarmac,destroying the garden and spending five grand.

My daughter immediately began to sleep through the night and my wife, Anita, who was against it, woke up pain free on the morning after we got the job done," said John, although his own back problem took six weeks to disappear, he is convinced that dealing with the stress was the cure.

John, who teaches martial arts, says his energy levels improved and that he notices that at 39 he can keep up with the young lads at his Muay Thai Boxing classes."It was a good investment,"he said. "When you think of all the cancers around in the South East. There was one line going directly across my stomach and I don't like to think what that might have meant,"he added.