Randolph Stone

Dr. Randolph Stone, the founder of Polarity therapy, was born Rudolph Bautsch in Austria in 1890. He emigrated to the United States of North America as a youngster around 1898. His family settled in the upper midwest, with relatives living in Wisconsin and Minnesota. He learned English by reading the Bible, and as a teenager he traveled widely through the U.S.

After an initial impulse and study to become a Lutheran minister, he decided to pursue a path in the health profession. He completed his primary medical certifications in the early 1920s, including DO, DC and ND. He was a lifelong student, eventually adding certifications in a wide range of topics including massage and midwifery. Simultaneously he was fascinated by spiritual studies, including mysticism in many forms. He was an avid reader and book collector, and held the position of librarian for the Theosophical Society Adyar for many years.

In the late 1920s he married and changed his name to Randolph Stone. But his esoteric interests created separation with his wife and they divorced without children. He loved to travel, and after his divorce he roamed widely often in search of medical insights from other cultures under his motto, "Whatever works, works!"

Dr. Stone in 1950
He maintained a medical practice for over 50 years in Chicago. He developed a reputation for his willingness to work with "hopeless cases" who often responded to his increasingly unconventional approaches which incorporated techniques from around the world.

In the 1940s he deepened his knowledge of and commitment to esoteric understanding by accepting initiation in a meditation system based in Beas, Punjab, India. His dedication to this yogic path continued uninterruptedly for almost 40 years, and he made frequent visits to India to study and develop his inner knowledge.

By the late 1940s he had created a synthesis of his collected information. He published his first book, Energy, in 1947, advancing his concept that the polarized field of attraction and repulsion, as found in the atomic structure or in magnetic relationships, was the underlying reality which determined all physical phenomena including health. A series of seven books and pamphlets followed, all expounding on the basic Energy theme and providing numerous specific applications.

Dr. Stone in 1974
In the mid 1950s he tried to attract interest in his ideas from the medical community. He offered free lectures, wrote articles for magazines, and repeatedly attempted to engage his colleagues in dialogue. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, as the drugs and surgery era was ascending rapidly throughout his profession.

In the 1960s, already in his mid 70s, he found popularity for the first time, not with his colleagues, but with a new generation of health seekers for whom his blend of science and spirituality was not so unpalatable. In seminars in California he vigorously preached his message of holistic health, and the seed of Polarity therapy finally found soil fertile enough to survive. Dr. Stone retired in 1974, at the age of 84, and appointed his student Pierre Pannetier the task of continuing Polarity Therapy in America. He then moved to Beas, Punjab, India where he lived in a meditation community, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and offered free services in a public clinic, assisting approximately 9000 satsangis to meditate through clean diet and a special system of balanced yoga postures. He gradually withdrew from public life, eventually passing on peacefully in 1981-December at age 91, of natural causes.

Randolph Stone