Crystals are powerful healers for the emotions. They can mitigate anger, shame and guilt, encourage forgiveness and help you to suspend judgement either of yourself or of other people’s feelings. Crystals help you to maintain hope in the most hopeless situations and teach you how to remain calm no matter what. Even positive emotions, such as joy, can pull you out of the present moment if you invest in them too deeply. And if you stray out of the present moment your emotional expectations shape a future that may be distorted by fear of what is to come, or twisted by memories of the past. We anticipate what we expect to experience and see what we want to see. And what we see is deeply coloured by our emotions, positive or negative. Crystal mindfulness helps you to regulate your emotional state, as you replace negative feelings with more positive ones and avoid being totally overwhelmed by your emotions.22
Psychologist Robert Plutchik identified eight primary emotions and polarities that produce secondary emotions giving rise to the ‘wheel of emotion’ (see illustration, opposite). The primary emotions he identified were trust (acceptance), disgust (shame), joy, sadness, anger, fear, anticipation (interest) and surprise. The intensity of the emotions decreases as you move away from the wheel’s centre. The model is helpful in perceiving how emotions (these or others) interact with and give rise to each other. The mindful place to be is the very centre of Plutchik’s wheel, surrounded by and observing your emotions and aware of feelings but not overwhelmed by them. Place your crystal and your attention in the centre of the wheel to find emotional serenity.
Fear is hugely toxic and incredibly contagious. When one person panics, those around them tend to join in. Fear of the unknown is projected into the future and concerns something that might never happen; fear of the known is based on regurgitating past experience. Fear shuts off our ability to relax or to shift into a more productive mode; taken to extremes it can lead to detrimental physiological responses such as high blood pressure and extreme anxiety. Using your crystals helps you to release the past and shut off the ‘what-ifs’ that create fear of the future. The secret is to acknowledge the fear (or any other emotion) rather than repressing it. Feel it fully in the moment, without judging it, then let it go and take yourself into the calm centre of the emotional wheel. Mindful breathing with crystals assists the process (see page 23).
Plutchik’s model of emotional interaction.
Eye of the Storm (page 44), Turquoise (page 54), Agate (page 58), Amethyst (page 64), Blue Lace Agate (page 66), Aquamarine (page 76), Rose Quartz (page 80), Rhodochrosite (page 82) and Chrysocolla (page 84).