Jenny Croft and her curious bowl

She invites customers in her shop to try this new way of busting stress and boosting well-being and hopes they will then put some money in her collecting box for Barnados Children's Homes.

Jenny has worked as a clairvoyant all her adult life having discovered she had the ability when she was a child. She also found out she had the ability to heal - she believes we can all do this - and has been working to help others since she turned professional at the age of 26.

Now Jenny, who runs White Wave Crafts in Sackville Road, has started using the healing bowl which she thinks enables her to see if people have health problems and need a check-up with their GP.

She listens to their vibrations as they resonate from the bowl and says the sound created is different for everyone although the effect is the same because the resonation corrects the meridian lines and encourages a natural healing process.

She had heard good things about crystal healing bowls and was looking forward to trying it out.

"When it arrived it was not how I envisaged it would be. I thought - I am not sure about this. But I thought if it works I can do it in the shop and help people a bit more, if I can make them go away feeling good, then that is what it is all about. But once I get it resonating I find it actually seems to tell me whether there is something wrong with a person's body. It makes a noise - but I can't describe it.

"The sound it makes is different for different people - the depth of it or the tone, it is higher or deeper for some people. Yesterday there were two or three people wanting to play, and one young girl tried it out, and it hardly made any noise, nothing.

"I almost feel this bowl knows - but is it the bowl, or is it me using it?

"It is helping me pick up people's illnesses and problems. If there is anything more I recommend they go to see their doctor, but I think this helps to cure certain conditions like stress...the first time I did this to someone, they said they had the best night's sleep they had in a long time. But maybe that is just coincidence."

Jenny does not charge people to use the bowl but hopes they will instead put a donation in her Barnados Children's Homes collecting box.

She appreciates the opportunity to help others and said: "It is lovely - it is a way you can give back. We all take things out but with healing there is a way to give back. it is a natural thing for most people, everybody has got it, but it is just not developped. Some people have it stronger than others, but everyone has got it."

She remembers having the ability as a child: "I think it all came automatically...I remember as a child putting my hand on my dad's head and poking the headache away for him. I thought - I can do that."

She believes the clairvoyancy came easily too, and said: "To me, it is all just normal - I don't know any different, it is just normal.

"People are amazed by it, they come back again and again. I have got clients that have been coming back for years, and then there are some you help and you don't see them again because they don't need you, and that is okay as well."