Candling for Optimal Health: Common and Lesser Known Benefits

Introduction

It was whilst living in Switzerland in the late 1980s that I first heard the word ‘reflexology’. A friend showed me a diagram of the reflex zones on the feet and how, by stimulating the appropriate zone, the corresponding organ in the body could be treated. This was so fascinating that I decided to look into it further, and I qualified as a reflexologist in 1988.

It was the start of a passion for complementary medicine; in fact, it was just after obtaining my diploma that my attention was caught by an article in a magazine about ear treatment candles. It was accompanied by a photograph of a man lying on one side with a hand holding a lighted taper upright in his ear. Very bizarre! However, on reading the article, I learnt that these candles (which are hollow tubes made from linen or cotton and not exactly ‘candles’ as we know them) could be used for a multitude of health problems. Ear cones are just as popular and have exactly the same function, and many people prefer to use them. NOTE: For simplicity I’ve used the word ‘candle’ throughout the text but the word ‘cone’ may easily be substituted.

The treatment seemed extremely basic, consisting of lighting this tube, said to work for sinusitis, otitis, impacted wax, relaxation and so on, and placing it over the entrance to the auditory canal. This enabled the flow of energy to the ear to be improved through stimulation of the acupressure points and the lymphatic system. The article added that once these systems functioned properly, the production of wax was controlled and the energy flow normalized.

A couple of days later, I was contacted on another matter by someone I’d met on my reflexology course. I mentioned candling to her and she became very enthusiastic, telling me she had used ear candles for years and then recounted a few cases where she had found them hugely effective. Convinced that I too wanted to try candling, I wrote down the name of a lady who made them, then a friend, who was as interested in the technique as I was, visited her and purchased some candles. I received my first treatment and before long was treating my work colleagues and obtaining excellent results.

When I moved to London from Switzerland, in 1989, I was amazed to find that candling was not widely known in the UK and decided to set up a company to import and promote the candles. Our first public demonstration took place at the Healing Arts Exhibition in London in the autumn of 1991. This is the oldest and largest exhibition of complementary therapies in the UK and attracts hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of visitors from all over the world. From Day 1, we were caught up in an amazing rush of enthusiasm, with people practically standing on each other’s shoulders to obtain a better view! Some of the visitors told me that they made their own ear candles with more or less success, so they were delighted to find something being produced commercially that was safe.

Sales of ear candles soared and included many repeat orders. I was frequently contacted by people who had marvellous stories to tell and, perhaps more importantly, by people who couldn’t find any information on the candles. Indeed, although more information is now available, for most of the time I have been using ear candles, I have found practically no published information—apart from a few magazine articles and plenty of ill-informed comments on how dangerous or what a waste of space they are.

For example, it has often puzzled me how people can say that a candle treatment is painful because, when done properly, it is wonderfully relaxing. Recently, I trained two therapists, one of whom already knows the candles and treats her family when she visits them. She couldn’t understand why she was unable to feel the candle and insisted it was not in place. If this is the case, smoke will emanate from the base. Now I understand that people who do not know how to do a treatment think they should ‘screw’ the candle into the auditory canal (the outer ear), but this can be excruciatingly painful. I also understand why smaller ear candles for children are sold, although they are totally unnecessary.

When the candle is placed lightly over the entrance to the auditory canal the size of the ear has no importance whatsoever. It made me even more convinced that a book on ear candling is absolutely essential for people who want to candle and even more so for people receiving paying patients. After all, you don’t want to spend good money to writhe in agony on a therapist’s table!

My original intention in writing this book, putting into it what I have learnt and am still learning about ear candles and what they can do, still stands, and this edition vastly expands the content of what has gone before. If it helps to introduce more people to this simple but highly effective therapy, if it helps more people to learn how to do a treatment properly, then I shall feel it has been totally worthwhile.

Over the years I have been using them, I can say with conviction that ear candles do everything they are advertised as doing, and much more. Candling has often been considered something anyone could perform at home, and ear candles have always been on sale in pharmacies and health food shops. However, from what I’ve learnt since first writing this Introduction, I’m positive that, although using the candles at home is an excellent idea—especially for children, for relaxation, or for a rapid result—the moment a more serious health problem arises, your best option is to consult a therapist who can look at a particular pathology holistically. This is especially true in the case of long-standing conditions that may have proved difficult to treat by other means. Some professional therapists who use ear candles combine them with different therapies, as I do myself. It is worth emphasizing that all forms of complementary medicine go hand in hand with a healthy lifestyle; this applies to every aspect of our lives, not just to our nutritional habits.

When we have a health problem it fills our waking hours, but when it disappears we immediately forget about it. I have discovered that when receiving patients for a follow-up treatment they often tell me that nothing has changed. Perhaps the problem on which they had focused hasn’t improved, but when I question them more closely I find that, well, yes, they have slept better; well, yes, they have had more regular bowel movements; well, yes, they did have a runny nose for 24 hours and then the congestion disappeared, and so on. This is why I recommend consulting a properly trained therapist for a long-standing or intractable problem, so that, together, patient and therapist can measure progress.

I do want to reiterate that for those conditions that have suddenly arisen, such as the onset of a cold, blocked sinuses, a child with earache, a stressful day at work, the candles can be a wonderful panacea. They are, however, a complementary therapy; they do not replace proper medical care. It is important to remember this, and act accordingly.

CHAPTER 1

History and Use of Candling

Many people who visited our stand at health exhibitions in the early days expressed amazement at seeing a treatment that to them was something granny did when they were children. I have met people from Australasia, all round the Mediterranean basin, Asia and the Americas, as well as many other places, who say that this was a well-known folk remedy in their home country and they are delighted to see it again.

One therapist from Cyprus told me that people in his village used paper impregnated with beeswax and honey to make cones, and it is a therapy much in use even today. As I didn’t at the time know why honey was used, his mother was able to tell me that it stopped the cone from burning down too fast. Rolled-up newspaper or tobacco leaves have also been mentioned many times. Each country’s traditional method grew out of its most easily obtainable materials. Pottery cones and even reusable glass cones have also turned up.

Whether candles or cones, everyone seems to agree that candling is a very ancient tradition, stretching back for centuries, to the time when folk healers all over the world used the therapy in some form or another. Chinese, Tibetan, Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, and several North American Indian cultures are invariably mentioned as performing candling ceremonies. Traditionally, the Choctaw Indians of the south-eastern United States have used a method that involves blowing the smoke from various herbs through a cone-shaped object into the ear canal, while shamans in the Muskogee tribe of Oklahoma rolled the leaves that grow around corn cobs to use in shamanic candling rituals. In Italy, people used cheese cloth; in India, they used dried-out papyrus seeds for candling.

Many ancient cultures thought of coning as a spiritual practice to clear the mind and the senses, as the pathologies that cause us problems today were largely unknown to our ancestors. Using the ear candles to improve health, therefore, would not have been a consideration. I feel that, even after all these years, we have merely scratched the surface of the many uses for candles.

Today’s Methods

Let me say first of all that ear candles are not used for cleaning the ears, as most people seem to think. Our ears (and our auditory system) are constructed in such a way that they work perfectly without any ‘help’ from us. However, with dietary lapses, stress, medication, and so forth, our bodies don’t always function as well as they should. The energies circulate more sluggishly, and people can find that their ears seem ‘blocked’. By far the most widespread method of dealing with this is syringing, a process performed in a doctor’s surgery whereby a high-pressure jet of water is released into the ear aimed at dislodging and extracting hardened wax—and extremely unpleasant it can be, too, depending on the expertise of the practitioner. Apart from the possibility of perforating the eardrum (rare, but it has been known to occur), people find the more they have it done the more they need it done. The stimulus to the ear is unnatural and very powerful, and the cleansing is perhaps too thorough, causing the body to produce more wax to compensate. This is why people who decide to try the candles to clear blockages will need more than one treatment—it is gentle, and the amount of wax that needs to come to the surface does so only when it is ready. A normal, healthy amount of ear wax is replaced in 24−48 hours, and when the energies are circulating properly the ears don’t get blocked.

This is just one well-known use for the ear candles, but it isn’t one of the major reasons why people resort to candling. Indeed, those who consult me are suffering from a wide variety of health problems—problems that would not necessarily lead us to think of ear candles as the first line of approach. They have possibly read articles or seen or heard interviews I have given; some have read earlier versions of my book and have learnt that the candles have been used successfully for many different pathologies.

When it comes to treating a patient with a long-standing and/ or difficult health problem, a trained ear candling therapist is the best person to advise on the suggested number of treatments to resolve the condition; s/he may also refer the patient to other health professionals, trained in nutritional therapy, cranial osteopathy, and other complementary therapies, as s/he deems necessary. Qualified ear candling practitioners can be found in several countries. They are graduates of professional courses in ear candling (or ototherapy, as it is called in Switzerland) who have obtained a recognized qualification—something that many patients find reassuring (see Candling Courses at the back of this book).