DFest 2026 Programme

Indoor Workshop Option: Alex Russell-Stoneham

‘Recalibrating Your Inner Compass - Set Sail for Your North Star. Dowsing, Sound Essences, Heart Tones & the Assemblage Point’

This heart-opening workshop invites you to return to your centre, restore energetic harmony and reawaken the clarity of your inner compass. Through Sound Essences, crystal bowl resonance and intuitive dowsing, we explore how subtle vibration can guide us back to our true north, the place where our heart, body, and energy field are aligned.

At the core of this work is the Assemblage Point, the energetic focal point in the chest that influences vitality, emotional balance, perception and direction. When aligned, we feel grounded, connected and clear. When it shifts, we may feel overwhelmed, scattered, fatigued or out of sync with ourselves. Using vibrational sound tools and intuitive dowsing, we’ll realign this point so that your inner navigation system begins to work in harmony again.

This workshop is a gentle yet powerful journey of resonance, intention and return, a space to feel yourself coming home.

What you will take away

• A lived experience of realigning your energy field through sound and resonance.
• A practical method to assess and adjust your Assemblage Point.
• A renewed sense of clarity, grounded presence and inner direction.
• A soul-aligned intention supported across mind, body and energy.
• A deeper understanding of how sound transforms water, including the water that forms you.
• A soft yet powerful reconnection with your own centre, guiding you forward on a path that feels true, coherent and heart-led.

Outdoor Workshop Option: Dr Karen Stead Dexter

‘Dowsing for Connection’

We will connect with nature, and learn to dowse its hidden currents and discover how that connection changes the way you feel. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn practical dowsing techniques as a gateway to deeper connection with the living world around you. We’ll explore how to sense the subtle energies of land, plants, birds and water, not just as information, but as a way of entering into relationship with the more-than-human world. As you practice, you may notice shifts in your awareness, emotions, and sense of belonging. Together, we’ll reflect on these experiences, exploring how connecting with nature in this way can open insight, calm, and vitality, and how they impact our own health.

You’ll leave with

• The skills to use rods or pendulums with confidence.
• Tools for attuning to environmental energies.
• Greater sensitivity to how nature affects your own well-being.
• Practices to continue deepening your connection at home.

Come with an open mind and leave with a new way of listening to the Earth, and to yourself.

Field Trip Option: Ancient Churches

Leader: Nigel Twinn

Britain's historic churches are some of the most important places to find and to understand a whole raft of earth energy currents and other dowse-able features in a fairly compact space, and in the dry! From ley alignments to celestial grids, from water divining to the archaeological footprint, to the social history of the local community, almost every humble parish church has it in spades. Some elements may be fairly predictable, but each site has its own unique and personal signature. What will we find here? It's still rather exciting, after all these years!

Field Trip Option: Scorhill Stone Circle

Leader: Peter Knight

Scorhill is arguably the most dramatic of Dartmoor’s stone circles. It is a moderate 15-minute walk from the car park. There are currently 23 standing stones and 11 fallen stones which form a circle 27 metres in diameter. The views west, south and north are breath taking. Dowsing could include the Guardian of Place, remanence of missing stones, healing spots, blind springs with their energies, stone transmission bands, stone cross talk, energy spirals, alignments, astronomy and much more. The Tolmen Stone, with its fascinating myths, can even be climbed through. This is a short walk down the hill to the North Teign River. There are many hut circles in the area forming part of an extensive Neolithic settlement. Car sharing will be required as parking is limited.

Pete’s belief is that by better understanding and absorbing ancient wisdom, we can reconnect with landscapes and Planet Earth in more fulfilling and sustainable ways. OS Map Ref 655874 – Post Code TQ13 8HS. Pete and Sue will also be available for book-signings at their stand over the DFEST weekend.

Indoor Workshop Option: Barry Witton

‘Dowsing Lifestyle Choices for Optimal Holistic Health’

Incorrect lifestyle choices can have a significant detrimental impact on our Holistic Health. This workshop will seek to empower attendees to make better choices and take more control of their health. Hopefully such informed choices will provide protection from potential future ill health and help the body to heal itself.

We are all unique individuals, and it is difficult to know which lifestyle choices we should make. Our conscious mind can decide what it wants, but our unconscious body knows what it needs. Through dowsing, we can have a conversation with our body and identify what choices it really needs for optimal holistic health.

For example, I did not want a cold shower, but through dowsing my body tells me that it provides a 9/10 benefit to my holistic health. I now have a cold shower every morning.

The workshop will start with a brief identification of 15 key lifestyle topics, and we will then have practical dowsing sessions. We will focus on a topic, for example toxic load, and attendees will dowse themselves from lists to identify the sources of any detrimental toxic load in or on their body. We can discuss (dowse) what detox mechanisms may be beneficial to clear any residue. Other topics will also be chosen.

They will be interactive sessions where we can discuss the formation of dowsing questions and the calibration of results. It should be a bit of fun too!

If you are interested in this workshop, you should dowse the following:

“Are there any beneficial lifestyle changes I can make which will improve my holistic health?”

Holistic Health = physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing.

Outdoor Workshop Option: Gordon Field

‘Our symbiotic relationship with the trees’

The trees have taken me on a strange and, at times, an incredible journey. They have been revealing hidden and lost knowledge from our past which will transform our future. Dowsing is my main form of communication, but now have constant visions from the trees around me. Often, I know the answer long before I have even asked the question.

The energies of the Earth are now the strongest they have ever been in millennia. We are being given the opportunity to help heal the Earth and in the process transform ourselves. Now my role is to collect, interpret and then present the knowledge that the trees hold in trust for us to help us reconnect with the land on our journey to the light.

The message from the trees is that we have to renew our symbiotic relationship with them. We have to become at one with them and all the other beings around us. The workshop will be based around the protocols and ways of working with the trees in order to open up a dialogue with them. All around us there are trees waiting to have conversations with us. Through grounding ourselves within the land we will be able to connect with the trees, their roots, the fungal networks and the water-based energy lines that form the Elemental Web, the communication network of our past and future.

We will be aware of the feeling of wellbeing after visiting a forest or woodland, but the trees have much more to offer us. Now that their energies have become so powerful they are drawing us to them. When you spend time in their company time will often stand still while they offer you strength and guidance. Many of the trees are now revealing themselves to be healing trees which have the potential to heal us and others. Now is the time for us to renew our symbiotic relationship with the trees. Website: artisttreedowser.com.

Field Trip Option: Prewley Moor, NW Dartmoor

Leader: Emma Cunis

Prewley Moor on Sourton Tors is a fascinating area to explore with beautiful views across Meldon Reservoir and North Devon on a clear day, plus the ruins of a large stone circle, not shown on the OS map, multiple cairns, boundary stones, earth hummocks, an ancient track, and old Ice Works. There is also said to be a sacred pool in this area which you may wish to search for when dowsing.

This is a moderate walk, approximately 3.5km or 2 miles on open and hilly moorland. There will be several stops along the way to enjoy the views, and dowse the features.

Contact: +44 (0) 7817 329584 · info@dartmoorsdaughter.com · dartmoorsdaughter.com for Walks, Talks, Tours & nature Connection Experiences.

Field Trip Option: A Qiqong Inspired Walk up the Beautiful Taw Valley

Leader: David Start

A walk up the valley from Sticklepath next to the River Taw as it flows down from Dartmoor is a magical experience at any time of the year.

On this walk David will teach some basic Qigong practices and Taoist principles. Qigong is an ancient Chinese practice that combines gentle movement, breathing techniques and focused awareness to cultivate and balance your body’s energy known as qi. Having quietened your mind, you will be invited to connect with the nature surrounding you, both seen and unseen, using Intent, and then to share this if you choose to. Further Qiqong practices will enable you to 'close down'.