About once a month, Isabel Stadnicki receives a telephone call from a man in Arizona, a treasure hunter seeking pertinent information.
The caller will run through a list of questions, which Stadnicki answers to the best of her ability and, when they’re done, he’ll say, “the cheque is in the mail,” and the call ends.
This anecdote represents an atypical request of Stadnicki’s unusual abilities. More commonly she is sought out as sort of a medical problem solver, who uses her 30-plus years of training in parapsychology to heal mind and body.
“I don’t like the word ‘psychic’ and I don’t wish to be referred to as a psychic. It’s intuition,” says Stadnicki.
Seated comfortably in a sunroom in her Sicamous home, on a road that shares her family name, Stadnicki holds in her hand what looks like a small weight on a chain – her pendulum. Beside her are shelves packed with books, binders and other items and, laid out on a table in front of her, some of the tools of her trade, so to speak. These include various pieces of coloured glass, crystals and a multi-coloured schematic of the human brain. There are also letters of appreciation from those she has helped.
Stadnicki picks up a piece of dark red glass, stressing its importance as it is linked to the brain, or “computer brain” as she calls it. She uses the red glass to reprogram the brain, when and as needed, through her practice of colour therapy, or chromotherapy, in which light and colour are used to help balance energy lacking in the body.
“The brain is the most fabulous computer of them all and you are the programmer,” says Stadnicki. “Consequently, if you know someone who is forever kicking the gong on the wrong side, bitching, bellyaching, whatever, they are programming their brain with negativity. And they will just continue to get worse and sick and sick.”
Stadnicki picks up another piece of glass, light blue in colour, and explains how this colour was used to treat someone who was losing her eyesight. To treat a bed wetter, glass the colour of sunflower yellow or light green is used. She says each specific shade represents an energy and, when a person comes to Stadnicki for help, she will find which energy is missing. She will then prescribe a colour that the patient must be exposed to for a certain length of time in order to get well.
“You have to know… that every organ in the body has its own energy level. You have to pick out the missing energy and you have to match it up with the rainbow colours,” says Stadnicki. “So we’ve managed to, in times past, get rid of parents’ frustrations with bed wetting, sometimes in as little as two or three weeks, simply by putting coloured bed sheets and pyjamas on.”
Longtime friend and author of, Art of Healing: A Biography of Isabel Stadnicki, Paul Chelli describes Stadnicki as a “medical dowser” who uses natural remedies to heal people.
“You know how water dowsers find water and they locate wells and whatnot, well, she does that medically on the body by using a pendulum,” Chelli told the News. “And it’s quite common, it’s been around for centuries… probably older people or farmers would relate to that terminology much better than ‘psychic,’ which is so broad, it encompasses way too much.”
Stadnicki says there is nothing mystical or mysterious about what she does, which is, simply put, helping people find answers.
Born in Enderby in the mid-1920s, Stadnicki had three brothers and two twin sisters. She says her interest in parapsychology – a study of psychological phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis – was kindled by the twins, who in later years came to reside in Grindrod.
“They were both young marrieds, and Grindrod was like a lot of other places, six people on a party line, and the women had nothing better to do than you-know-what,” laughs Stadnicki. “So these two, when they had something to say to each other, they got in the habit of doing it mind to mind. And that stimulated my curiosity.”
Between 1945 and 1949, Stadnicki trained to become a nurse. In 1948 she met Jan Stadnicki. The two married the following year and bought a small farm near Sicamous.
A turning point for Isabel was when she came across the book, How To Make ESP Work For You, by Harold Sherman. Thinking of her sisters, Stadnicki picked up the book and soon after attended a Body, Mind and Spirit workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas. Later that year, acceding to Chelli’s book, Stadnicki attended a series of lectures on parapsychology at the Okanagan College campus in Salmon Arm. The lecturer, Andrew Schneider, agreed to host future lectures in Sicamous, which led to the formation of a local meditation group. Over the course of their meetings, would share a number of strange, unexplainable experiences.
“There are people around here who can do all kinds of weird and wonderful things, it’s just we don’t talk about it,” says Stadnicki, explaining her unusual passion led to something of a falling out with her church.
“I had to leave the church eventually that I had supported for God knows how many years because I didn’t have a place to hang my pointy hat and park my broomstick…,” laughs Stadnicki. “You’re talking about the love of God, you’re talking about sharing love with people, and it has nothing to do with, I mean, we’re all human beings and if we can share our love, our knowledge, our food, our homes – we’re in big trouble right now if people will not get busy to learn and share. And I don’t care which way you crumble the cookie, just don’t get hung up on words.”
Stadnicki is an honorary life member of the Canadian Society of Questers, an organization of individuals who seek enlightenment through investigation of the paranormal. The Shuswap Chapter of Questers meets in Salmon Arm on the third Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Downtown Activity Centre.