Positive Health Online

The Beginning: Before the Nervous System Existed

Before you had a nervous system, you had water.

For nine months, the human nervous system develops entirely submerged in amniotic fluid. Water is not merely a medium for that development, it is the original sensory environment within which every neurological pathway is laid down. Before the brain could process sound or the skin register touch, the body existed in water. That submerged state was, by definition, the original state of safety.[1]

At birth, everything changes simultaneously. Sound, light, hunger, smell, cold, gravity, an entirely new sensory world arrives at once. For the first time, the nervous system must assess every incoming signal on a spectrum from completely safe to potentially dangerous. That process was never required in utero. The suggestion here is that the body retains something profound from that original experience: a deep, pre-neurological memory of water resonance as the signal for safety.[2]

 Mother with Pelvic Girdle Pain Lying with Baby on Two Pads

https://www.the54clinic.com/conditions/

Does the Dive Reflex Work Like a Faraday Cage?

Most people know what a coaxial cable does. The signal, the television picture,  travels down the inner wire. Surrounding it is a copper mesh shield. That shield does not amplify the signal. It simply prevents outside electrical interference from corrupting it. The result is a cleaner, clearer transmission.

Water at the body surface appears to work in the same way.

When water is placed against the skin, or held in contact with a practitioner's body while they work, it creates a diamagnetic surface layer around the body. Both water and copper share an almost identical diamagnetic susceptibility.[5] This surface layer behaves like a biological Faraday cage: it does not stimulate the nervous system, it shields it. The electromagnetic noise of the outside world, which the sympathetic nervous system is continuously monitoring and responding to, becomes quieter. The body's internal signal, its own physiological equilibrium, comes through more clearly.

The result is immediate and measurable. Sympathetic tone drops. Muscle tension releases. The body settles to a lower, more stable resting state, exactly as it did in the uterus, when the surrounding water performed the same shielding function. 

The Dive Reflex requires cold water or facial immersion but water none-the-less. The above requires only that water, or any diamagnetic material of equivalent susceptibility,  be in contact with, or resonate with the client’s body,  as practitioners body water will resonate through the practitioner's hands. The body responds because this is what it is biologically calibrated to do. Water means safe. Water means quiet. Water means home.

Five Observations, 25 Years

Each of the following can be tested by any practitioner today using a goniometer and two 2-litre bottles of water.

1. Water under the patient increases range of movement. When water (2x2ltrs) are placed beside a patient, the Straight Leg Raise (SLR) and hip rotation show an immediate, measurable increase. Remove the water and the range returns. Heart rate variability studies confirm that water immersion produces a measurable shift toward parasympathetic dominance.[3]
2. Increasing the volume increases the response. Adding water stepwise, from 4 to 8 litres,  produces a proportional stepwise increase in SLR range. This dose-response pattern is the signature of a field effect, not a neurological reflex. Neurological reflexes fatigue and show threshold behaviour. This does not.[4]
3. Water on the practitioner produces the same effect. When the practitioner holds water against their own body with no direct contact with the patient, the patient's SLR still increases and returns to baseline when the water is removed. Thermal, hydraulic, and neurological contact with the patient are all ruled out , no patient contact. Something transmits through the practitioner's hands.
4. Copper produces an identical response. Copper braid pads in neoprene sleeves, no skin contact, produce the same SLR increase as water, whether under the patient or held by the practitioner. Water and copper share one relevant property: diamagnetism. Their magnetic susceptibilities are numerically almost identical.[5] Diamagnetism is the operative variable.
5. The response does not fatigue. Identical on the tenth repetition as the first. Instant, symmetric, fully reversible. This is the behaviour of a physical field effect, not a biological signalling cascade.

Bone, the Periosteum, and Why This Matters

One of the most clinically striking findings is what happens to bone under these conditions. To the experienced manual therapist working with water or copper pads in place, the bones of the body become measurably more compliant, more available to the gentle torsional forces used in Craniosacral and osteopathic techniques. This is not imagination. It has a clear anatomical explanation.

Bone is covered by the periosteum – a connective tissue membrane enveloping every bone surface in the body. The periosteum is the most densely sympathetically innervated tissue in the entire musculoskeletal system.[6,7] When sympathetic tone is high, periosteal tension is high. The bone, encased in that tense membrane, becomes less available to therapeutic input. Increased sympathetic activity directly reduces bone formation and increases bone resorption – the skeleton is a direct target of the body's stress response.[8]

When Water's Window reduces systemic sympathetic tone, the periosteum relaxes. Muscle attachments soften. Fascia releases. The bone settles into a lower mechanical equilibrium. The whole tissue column, from bone outward, becomes more receptive, not because anything structural has changed, but because the sympathetic pre-stress holding it rigid has been reduced.

This effect is most significant at the cranial base and the sacrum, areas of concentrated autonomic outflow, where a diamagnetically enhanced technique can produce a whole-body parasympathetic shift from a single focused intervention.

The Invitation

No special equipment is required. Any practitioner with a couch, a patient, a goniometer, and four 2-litre bottles of water can replicate this observation today. Hold the water against your own body, perform the SLR, compare with and without.

The finding has been consistent across 25 years of practice. The body does what it is biologically wired to do when surrounded by a diamagnetic field: it returns, briefly and measurably, to the state it occupied before it ever learned to be afraid.

It is time this was examined seriously.

Case Study: Trigeminal Neuralgia — A Nine-Year Follow-Up

Patient: Simon W, Police Constable, Thames Valley Police

Symptom onset: December 2016

First treatment: 23rd January 2017

Second treatment: Shortly after January 2017

Testimonial written by patient: 3rd May 2023

Telephone follow-up: 7th May 2026

Total follow-up period: Nine years and four months

The Presentation – December 2016

In December 2016, Simon W, a serving Police Constable with Thames Valley Police, contracted Covid followed by sinusitis and a secondary chest infection. As his infection resolved, the pain in his head did not. His right eyebrow began to droop. The area around his right eye, the top and right side of his head above his ear became tender to the touch, described as feeling like sunburn. Standard pain relief had no effect. He was unable to complete a shift. He went on long-term sick leave on 27th December 2016.

His GP, Dr Susan D , confirmed the diagnosis of Trigeminal Neuralgia and commenced Carbamazepine. The dose required to manage the pain was 800mg daily. At this dose Simon was profoundly drowsy. Simple domestic tasks required an hour of rest to recover from. Car journeys of over thirty minutes left him nauseated and exhausted, requiring eighteen hours of subsequent sleep. He was unable to return to frontline duties. He was unable to function effectively as a father. His mental health deteriorated significantly.

His GP was explicit: there is no cure for Trigeminal Neuralgia. Requests for neurological referral, scanning, and pain clinic review were all declined. He had attempted to reduce his dose to 600mg on several occasions and been unable to sustain it; the pain returned each time, forcing him back to 800mg.

By the time he attended for treatment in January 2017, Simon had been off work for over two months and was actively considering whether he had a future in frontline policing.

In his own words, written six years later:

"I was deeply sceptical at first, but willing to try anything that may help with my issue so I could get back to work. And with my wife's recommendation too, I felt I didn't have anything to lose."

The Treatment – January 2017

On 23rd January 2017, Simon attended for assessment and treatment. Copper braid pads were applied according to the diamagnetic field and cranial base release protocol described in the accompanying article. Full informed consent was obtained prior to treatment. The session was recorded on Simon’s own phone at his request.

A second appointment followed shortly after. The follow-up produced less dramatic change, because the primary autonomic shift had already occurred at the first session. The body had found a new parasympathetic equilibrium. The second session consolidated rather than transformed.

The Outcome – Nine Years On

Within approximately one week of the first treatment, Simon was able to begin reducing his Carbamazepine. Over the following two weeks he reduced from 800mg to 400mg daily, a fifty percent reduction, and sustained it. He returned to frontline police work. He has remained in active frontline service for nine years continuously since.

In his testimonial, written six years after treatment, he recorded:

"I honestly believe that the therapy I received from Hector that day has had a positive impact on my recovery from TN, and my mental health, because I feel like I am moving forward with my recovery when I was told it was unknown."

On 7th May 2026, nine years and four months after his first treatment Simon was contacted by telephone. He has not experienced a Trigeminal Neuralgia attack since treatment. He continues to take Carbamazepine daily at a reduced dose out of caution, a fear of the pain returning that anyone who has experienced TN will understand entirely. The only circumstances in which he becomes aware of any sensation in the Trigeminal territory is during the extreme physical exertion of restraining and arresting violent members of the public. Even then, it is an awareness rather than an attack.

In the nine years since treatment, Simon has also navigated a divorce and a traumatic incident at work significant enough to require extensive professional counselling, events well documented as powerful triggers for sympathetic nervous system dysregulation and TN relapse. Despite these sustained life stressors, his TN has not returned.

Simon remains a serving frontline Police Constable for Thames Valley Police.

Clinical Commentary

Trigeminal Neuralgia is consistently described as a chronic, relapsing condition for which there is no cure. The standard treatment, Carbamazepine, carries a significant sedative side effect burden. The condition can be profoundly disabling, affecting employment, family function, and mental health simultaneously, as Simon's account makes clear.

Simon's outcome sits well outside what conventional management predicts is achievable. A single primary treatment session producing a fifty percent medication reduction within two weeks, sustained continuously for nine years, through a divorce, a traumatic occupational incident, and nine years of demanding frontline police work including the repeated high adrenergic stress of physically restraining violent offenders.

The treatment used copper braid pads. In the author's subsequent clinical experience, water pads have proven superior – producing a gentler but more penetrating release of autonomic tension. A further observation of clinical significance: when copper pads are placed between the body and water pads, no additional release is produced. When water pads are placed beneath and copper above, the release can be further increased. This asymmetry suggests water and copper are not simply equivalent diamagnetic materials. Water has a quality, almost certainly related to its dipolar and EZ water properties,  that copper cannot replicate and that copper actively interferes with when interposed between the body and the water. This observation warrants formal investigation.

The proposed mechanism is that diamagnetic field application combined with cranial base release in the region of the jugular foramen reduced the chronic sympathetic over-activation that both drives and perpetuates Trigeminal neuralgia. By addressing the autonomic substrate of the condition rather than suppressing its symptomatic output pharmacologically, the technique appears to have produced a durable shift in the patient's baseline autonomic state, maintained through nine years of the kind of life events specifically predicted to challenge it.

This is a single documented case. It is not a clinical trial. But it is a precisely timestamped, independently corroborated, nine-year follow-up of a condition that mainstream medicine describes as incurable, in a patient whose occupation subjects him regularly to the highest adrenergic stress available outside of combat.

The result has held. It deserves to be part of the formal record.

Simon W’s written testimonial is dated 3rd May 2023 and held on file. The follow-up telephone conversation was conducted on 7th May 2026. Alex has given his consent for this account to be published. Treatment records are dated 23rd January 2017.

References

1. Cerritelli F, Frasch MG et al. A Review on the Vagus Nerve and Autonomic Nervous System During Fetal Development. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 2021;15:721605.
2. Hoyer D et al. Developmental milestones of the autonomic nervous system via fetal heart rate variability. PLOS ONE. PMC6049949.
3. Djarova T et al. Effect of immersion, submersion, and scuba diving on heart rate variability. British Journal of Sports Medicine. PMC1724326.
4. Buchheit M et al. Effect of cold water immersion on post exercise parasympathetic reactivation. American Journal of Physiology. 2009;296(2):H421-427.
5. Wikipedia; Copper's Magnetism. JEELIX. 2025.
6. Nijs J et al. Sensory Innervation of Human Bone. 2021. PMID:33964414.
7. Jiang Y et al. An Atlas of Brain-Bone Sympathetic Neural Circuits. PMC11245306. 2024.
8. Jiang Y et al. Molecular mechanisms of the sympathetic nervous system in bone-related disorders. Bone Research.

Further Information

Hector Wells BSc (Hons) DO is a RegisteredOosteopath with 25 years of clinical practice.

Hector Wells BSc (Hons) DO. (Osteopathy) 

Principal & Clinical Lead, Cranial sacral practitioner for baby sleep issues & colic.
Tel: 01295 265267
Email. hector@the54clinic.com
https://www.the54clinic.com
The 54 Clinic
54 Bloxham Road
Banbury Oxfordshire OX16 9JR
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