Lifetime Achievement Award
Joan Nathanson, 2010
Joan Nathanson Photo by Kathy Wilson
Joan Nathanson & Carol HeathPhoto by Susan Collins at 2010 Convention
Joan (De New) Nathanson attended her first CSD Convention in June 1998, where she was elected second vice-president. With the encouragement of Dorothy Clark Donovan, Joan contacted CSD members in the Hamilton, ON, area, and organized the first meeting of the Hamilton and Area Healing Network in November 1998 to provide ongoing dowsing educational opportunities on what has turned out to be almost a monthly basis since that time.
For the first three years, Joan acted as the HAHN “mother,” organizing the meetings, and sending out monthly newsletters to those who became members. After that, a HAHN Council was elected each year to direct activities. Joan continued as newsletter editor and a regular reporter on the monthly meetings until January 2010. She also served as president of the Council in 2009. HAHN became the first Associate Member group of the CSD, and has promoted CSD and contributed financially to it each year. Several members of HAHN have served on the CSD Board of Directors.
Concerned that it was time to create a Constitution and By-Laws to facilitate CSD’s development, she drafted a statement of purpose and the means by which the purpose would be accomplished: this was adopted at the 1999 Annual Convention. The following year, while Joan served as secretary of the Board, she worked with Guy Nadeau to develop a full Constitution and By-Laws which was adopted at the 2000 Annual Convention. That year, she declined nomination to the Board, as she was expecting to be retiring with her husband to live in Guatemala.
As circumstances turned out, these plans did not develop, and in 2001, she was elected President of CSD. Her main challenge was to work out the implications of a new Constitution and By-Laws which had been created when CSD incorporated in the spring of 2001. Under Joan’s leadership, CSD produced a 3-panel brochure promoting the work of CSD for use by members with friends and acquaintances, and for distribution at conferences, workshops, and libraries. Many guidelines were created which provided clear direction to those serving as webmaster, the new quarterly newsletter editor, an editorial policy for the joint quarterly journal published with the Canadian Society of Questers, and to those providing leadership as Convention coordinators, and Dowsing School teachers. Binders were created and distributed to each Board member with copies of the Constitution and By-Laws, approved policies and guidelines, and a place to keep Board minutes for easy reference. These binders were intended to be passed on to future holders of these positions as references on which new Boards could build easily. After her two-year term as president, she served an additional year on the Board as past president, ex officio, and was also the Annual Convention Convener.
Joan has presented workshops for dowsing groups including the Hamilton and Area Healing Network, Toronto Dowsers, Barrie Dowsers, Ottawa Dowsers, Kingston Dowsers, and Montreal Dowsers. She has presented introductory dowsing workshops in Niagara Falls and London, ON. She was a workshop leader at three different Annual Conventions of the American Society of Dowsers, and did a presentation and a workshop at the Canadian Society of Questers’ Annual Meeting in 2002 at Hundred Mile House, BC. She has written articles on dowsing that have been published in the American Society of Dowsers’ quarterly digest, the journal of the Ozark Research Institute in Fayetteville, AR, and the quarterly journals of the CSD.
Joan also provides tutorials for individuals and small groups, assisting them to develop their dowsing skills, and encouraging them to explore the application of dowsing to new areas. Her personal dowsing specialties include Soul’s Purpose dowsing, and direct and distance healing using an energy checklist she has developed over the years.
Joan is also very interested in the possibilities of dowsing for organizational healing. Since 2003, she has been a licensed Healing Minister with the Church of Healing Energy, a non-denominational organization incorporated in both Canada and the US, which gives legal recognition to her as a spiritual healer, governed by a public code of ethics posted on the internet on www.energychurch.org.
Joan is committed to the purposes of CSD, and expects to continue supporting the efforts of the Board and CSD members to accomplish them. The potential of dowsers to contribute to global harmony, growth and healing is limited only by our vision of the possibilities available to us!
Although Joan was awarded an Honorary Life Membership when she retired as President, she was both surprised and humbled to have been selected as the first recipient of a CSD Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
