Welcome to the start of your journey into crystal chakra healing. Chakras and crystals are intrinsically linked through their connections with energy—the chakras are the doorways through which the positve healing energies of crystals can enter the body. By following the expert advice in this book, you will begin an enlightening journey focusing on the relationships between crystals and chakras that will help you to achieve a healthy body, mind, and spirit.
Placing crystals directly on and around your chakras, or energy centers, creates an internal energy balance that leads to healing and improved well-being. Chakras draw the healing energies of the crystals into your body and then release this power through the meridians, or energy pathways, and out into your surrounding aura.
Crystals have their own unique energies which balance your energies. You can effect beneficial changes to your body, mind, spirit, and emotions by applying crystals using both ancient and modern healing techniques, including:
Each chakra has associated healing crystals. Those above are the chakra “set” of seven, for each of the seven chakras (see page 41). The ancient Agamas from India depict five, six, seven, or eight chakras. By the ninth century, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and the Indian Tantric lineage had fully adopted the seven-chakra system we use today.
Doorways to Energy Exchange
Chakras are the key to the crystal chakra healing method described fully in this book. By drawing in, processing, and distributing life force energy (also known as chi or prana), chakras act as the doorways to the healing energies of crystals. There are seven major chakras, which control the health of specific areas of your body and the way you interact with the external energy of other people, your surroundings, and your lifestyle.
This interaction of energy underpins many alternative-medicine healing systems, including Ayurvedic medicine (AM) and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The chakras tie in with acupuncture points and also relate to the key energy storage centers in Taoist healing. First systematized in ancient India, chakras form part of the underlying belief systems of religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and spiritual energy practices such as Reiki healing and yoga. They fit within systems that link the body and mind into one indivisible unit, sometimes known as the bodymind.
Practical Exercise: Sensing Energy
Practicing this exercise will help you sense the energy inside and around you in response to the interplay between a crystal and your body’s energy system. Take note of these feelings, as they are sometimes very subtle. However you describe crystal energy will be unique to you. Don’t worry about what you feel or where you feel it—only that you feel something. If you have a journal or note book, it can be helpful to record your experiences.
Find a quiet space in which you will not be disturbed. Then, with a friend present, close your eyes and hold both of your hands out flat in front of you, with your palms up.
Ask your friend to hold a quartz crystal over the palm of one of your hands, with the termination pointing toward your palm. Now ask your friend to rotate the quartz crystal slowly 1–2in/2.5–5cm above one of your palms.
Notice the difference in how your two hands feel. Look for physical feelings, such as one hand being warmer, cooler, heavier, lighter, itchier, and so on. Don’t worry too much about what you feel, where you feel it, or how you describe it—the important thing is that you feel a difference, however slight, between the hand with the quartz crystal above it and the other hand. If you don’t sense anything, try shaking your hands vigorously before you begin—this seems to make it easier to sense subtle energy.
In some Eastern thought, the chakras are seen as levels of consciousness linked with the soul, which relates to different areas of physical life: the physical body, instinct, vital energy, emotion, communication, the overview of life, and connection to the divine. The chakras are arranged within the body like a ladder for the soul to climb, from matter (the crude form of consciousness) at the base to pure consciousness at the crown.
People who can see energy often describe chakras as spinning spheres or wheels—“chakra” is derived from the Sanskrit chakram, meaning circle or wheel. There isn’t really a vocabulary for subtle-energy phenomena, so each person describes the experience in their own way, as they are perceiving it. The same is true of crystal healing energies.
Crystals are naturally occurring solids made from minerals. Most are formed in the earth’s surface; some are formed by inorganic processes, such as sedimentation, whilst others, such as moldavite, are born in the stars. Residing in the heavens, they fall to earth as meteors.
In scientific terms, a crystal is a solid form of a mineral or other substance. Coming in all shapes, sizes and colors, each type of crystal has a precise atomic arrangement and mineral composition, making it unique. They can be identified by their crystal form, color (although colours can vary, not only within one type of crystal but also individual specimens of the same crystal) specific gravity, and their degree of hardness as measured by the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness. The Mohs Scale is named after Friedrich Mohs, a German inventor, who discovered the constant relationship of how hard minerals are in relation to one another.
Natural Crystal Shapes
Each type of crystal is formed by a specific group of atoms, in a fixed structure, creating a unit cell. These cells are stacked in a precise three-dimensional pattern that is described as the crystal system. Crystals can be grouped depending on their crystal system. A defining property of a crystal is its inherent symmetry, which is dependent on the crystal system of its structure.
There are seven crystal systems that define the natural shape of any specific crystal. These are: cubic, hexagonal, tetragonal, rhombohedral, orthorhombic, monoclinic and triclinic. So, for example a cubic crystal, such as pyrite, will always have the symmetry of a cube, whereas a hexagonal crystal, like quartz, will always have six sides.
Natural dioptase
blue lace agate and fire agate
Crystals can also be cut and polished into any shape. Common polished shapes are the point or obelisk, sphere, egg, heart, angel, faceted stone, and tumble stone. Tumble stones are tumbled with grits in barrels, to smooth and polish them, and are the most widely available form of many crystals.
Amethyst
aqua aura
pink rhodochrosite
angelite
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
Throughout this book, the term “crystal” is not limited to the scientific definition but also includes all of the mineral kingdom, the Stone People; crystals, minerals, rocks, stones, and gemstones.
Exploring the Power of Crystals
Crystals are scattered throughout the literature of the ages, including ancient Chinese writings on traditional medicine and India’s Ayurvedic texts. The Bible has over 200 references to crystals and their powers and associations, while the text Peri Lithon (“On Stones”) by the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus is the basis of today’s modern scientific classification of gemstones. His taxonomy of known gems describes their origin, physical properties, and magical and healing powers. Crystals have also been found around the world in the graves of ancient cultures, including Ancient Egypt and the Olmec civilization of South America.
Mankind has been aware of the power of crystals for thousands of years—yet science has yet to explain exactly how and why they work. We know that they focus, transmit, transmute, and store energy. Like everything in the universe, they vibrate. Some can produce electrical effects, namely the piezoelectric effect (in response to mechanical stress) and the pyroelectric effect (in response to being heated). Crystals increase the frequency of light and affect the movement of photons of light. They “learn” things and communicate information in much the same way as radio signals, evolving their healing capabilities to suit changes in their environment. Scientists have been intrigued for many years by the theory that crystals have the ability to act as primitive genes, and research into the “crystals-as-genes” theory is pioneering our knowledge of crystal inheritance mechanisms.
Rough Manganoan calcite
polished erythrite.
Practical Exercise: Sensing Crystal Energy in the Heart Chakra
Hold a quartz crystal 1–2in/2.5–5cm from the center of your chest (this is your heart chakra; see also page 80). Now move it slowly in counterclockwise circles.
It may take a few minutes, but you will notice something—not just in your hand or the crystal or over your chest, but within you. You may feel happy or elated, sad, or emotional. You may give your feeling many words (you are creating a vocabulary) but you will feel “something.” It is essentially energy flowing in, through, and out of your heart chakra: balancing, healing, and creating the possibility for change.
Western science has shown the existence of the body’s energy system in terms of the aura and chakras; the meridians have been mapped by Japanese doctors. At present, the only way we can understand the bodymind and its associated energy is through experience. Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, Head of the Institute for Life Physics in Tokyo and the California Institute for Human Science, has developed two machines—one that can measure life force energy and the other the energy of the chakras. He says, “That is how we can find this mechanism for the interaction between the mind and the body. That is a new science, or not a new science perhaps but a new medicine… So now we are just approaching this door to open.” To sense crystal energy in your own energy system, try the exercise above.
Crystal Chakra Healing for Animals
I was recently asked whether animals have chakras. Yes, everything from ants upward on the evolutionary scale has seven chakras. This fact may be linked to the segmentation of the body (clearly seen in insects) and Hock’s genes (on human chromosome 12) which act as master switches, controlling the activity of genes and how they interact with each other. Very early in the development of the fetus, they help the identical cells formed during its early growth to differentiate and form the various segments of the body, and later the specific organs, limbs, etc, residing in each region of the adult body. As this process of development is essentially the same for almost all animals, it is logical to assume that animals’ energy systems are also fundamentally the same, developing along the same segmented path. Both my experience and many others’ experience of healing domestic and farm animals bear this out.
Working with my own dogs over the years, I have found that crystals have very similar effects on them as on me or any human subject. You can apply crystal chakra healing to pets and livestock yourself, but you will need some understanding of your pets or you can simply dowse crystals with your pendulum (see page 20). Attach the selected crystals to collars, place them in water bowls or beds, and put them in or tie them to cages.
However you choose to work with crystals, learning to control the flow of life-force energy allows you to make positive alterations to your health and lifestyle. The Complete Guide to Crystal Chakra Healing is a handbook to health, containing many techniques for working with crystals on the chakras, aura, and meridians of the body’s energy system. You can use it to improve the quality of your life and your clients’, healing mind, body, and spirit.
Attaching crystals to animals’ collars helps them benefit from the crystal’s healing energies.