I’ve always been drawn to playing with crystals, marbles, jewelry, beads, mementos, and other small found objects. As a kid I’d spend hours by myself organizing my collections by color or size or feeling. Sometimes I’d convince a heartfriend that this was a really fun game and we would sit side by side quietly arranging in tandem.
In 2014 I started working with Christel Alberz who is a crystal resonance therapist (CRT).
I came to her with precious emotional baggage from an excruciating and exhilarating initiation into this more awake chapter of my spiritual path, which arrived in the form of a breakup and the discovery of myself alone on an island of my own making. I was remembering who I am and how I can be when I don’t make people, places, and things my higher power.
I arrived at my first session with Christel with these stories, which had been coded in quartz crystals from my love, an amethyst necklace I bought the week before I gave up drinking as a Reiki 1 graduation present to myself, baby teeth from the puppy I no longer lived with, stones that reminded me of friends who were taking a break from spending time with me, a grab bag collection of tiny gemstones that were given to me as a kid and rediscovered while liquidating my possessions from my childhood home after my parents’ divorce, and a shark tooth I found on the beach in Florida in January 2014 the week I started praying on my knees, meditating daily, and doing my first fear inventory.
I really didn’t know wtf to do with these objects or my feelings, but I was ready for some new suggestions when I came to the CRT session.
How do I help myself heal with crystals and other rocks?
Christel’s first suggestion was to make a mojo bag containing the energetically charged objects and to carry it with me everywhere. Add a few well loved rings from my grandmothers to the mix for back-up, and allow the healing to unfold.
Her second suggestion was to play with the contents of the mojo bag — to remember how I played as a child and to let whatever bubbled up spin out of me in a gentle web of familiarity.
So I did what was suggested and started carrying the rocks and teeth and rings around with me in a little bag. I played with them when I remembered to and things started to get better.
The memories softened. Forgiveness rose. New teachers appeared. Space opened. Tears arrived. Art fell out of me. Friends were made. Love came and went and came.
Sometimes when I have especially distressing (sometimes wonderfully distressing) dreams I’ll wake up and drop right into a free flow meditation + music + daytime candle-lighting personal jamboree with a handful of crystals and stones that remind me of the situation or person that I dreamed about.
When I’m done working with a stone, it will let me know. Like people, stones come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime and that is the natural order of these elements. They existed long before they came into my life and they will have new life after I work with them.
One day the stones I love might vanish. I’ll “lose” them or they’ll start falling out of my hands or pockets like they are trying to get away from me. They are and that’s okay. That’s normal! When a stone is done with me, I’m done with it.
Maybe my inner knowing will tell me that it’s time to leave a stone I’ve been loving up on at someone’s gravesite or with a friend for her birthday or buried in the sand at the ocean’s edge. When it’s time to drop the rock I will.
I almost always carry stones with me now. I love holding a grounding tiger’s eye during business meetings. Right now I like wearing a quartz crystal on a chain that lands on my solar plexus. I do it because it feels right and fun, easy and healing.
Since I carry stones with me wherever I go, I can have impromptu crystal resonance sessions with myself and friends and clients anytime. It’s one of the practices that helps me and whomever I’m with drop into communion with the universe and spirit incredibly quickly. I can come into the present moment and stay there for awhile.
Working with crystals and stones has facilitated my practice of sitting in resonance with charged objects made from other materials like wood, seashells, glass, plastic, fabric, metals, and paper including photographs and old love letters. Thank goodness.
Tips + Tricks for working with crystals and other stones
+ Do it because you’re called to do it — it sounds fun / interesting / useful / delightful.
+ See what you’ve got already around your house including jewelry, marbles, rocks, metal trinkets, human or animal teeth, and anything that speaks to you.
+ Allow your intuition to let you know which objects to work with when.
+ Make a mojo bag and carry it with you everywhere so that you can practice with your stones whenever you get the inner guidance to work with them.
Use a small cloth bag, an Altoids tin, a plastic sandwich baggie, or a cardboard jewelry box. You might want to wrap your stones in fabric or add tissue paper or cotton balls to your bag or box so that the stones don’t knock around and get chipped — or you might allow them to get chipped if they want to get chipped — it’s all okay.
+ Play! Remember how you played when you were a kid. Let it be fun, easy, weird, intimate, wacky.
+ Listen to music if you like. Here is my Crystals + Healing Stones playlist on Spotify. I have also loved listening to Beautiful Chorus while working with my rocks.
+ Sing if you can, sing if you want.
+ Set a timer to hold a container of space so you’re not constantly looking at the clock if you’re feeling a little awkward about playing with these elements. Or, if you’re really into it and not feeling inhibited at all, use that timer to make sure that you take a break to eat lunch.
+ Write or draw in your journal before, during, and after.
+ Breathe intentionally and deeply whenever you remember that you’re not doing that.
+ Hold one stone in your receptive hand (usually the left hand for right handed people and vise versa) and meditate for 2 or 5 or 10 minutes. Notice what comes up. Scan yourself and feel if any part of your body is communicating something.
+ Put a stone under your pillow and record your dreams in the morning.
Clearing Stones
Energy exists! Everything is energy. Just like anything else, and sometimes even more so, stones and crystals hold on to old energy. If you want to clear the energy of a stone under your jurisdiction here are a few suggestions:
+ Run the stone through the smoke from sage, palo santo, or incense.
+ Tone = sing ommm or any sound that feels right to you and let the vibration of your voice pass over the stone.
+ Ask! Say or write down your clearing intentions.
+ Put the stone out in sunlight or moonlight. Be aware that some stones will fade or change color in the sun.
+ Give your stones a sea salt water bath. Some stones don’t do well in salt water, do your research.
Charging Stones
While all stones can hold energy, some are more easily “programmed” than others.
For example, when I first started playing with stones intentionally for my healing, I was really attracted to quartz crystals. The energy of my life was chaotic and exciting and airy fairy and sometimes scary and fast-moving up on a pink cloud. Those quartz crystals couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. One even fell on the ground after a 3-hour session with Christel and cracked into two pieces. Since then, I’ve been working with mega grounding stones — hematite, tiger’s eye, pyrite, common river rocks — and they’ve been sticking around longer.
One of the characteristics of clear quartz that I really enjoy is that it’s a stone that loves to be programmed. So during that time of fast-moving and sometimes difficult and confusing energy, the quartz I was working with ate up that vibration and peaced out from my life once it was at capacity.
Since clear quartz is a ready vessel though, I can intentionally program it with love, peace, and clarity just by holding it when I’m feeling those states of being. Once the crystal is all charged up with that flavor of energy, I can use it during more hectic, distressing, or difficult times and it can bring forth those vibrations of love, peace, and clarity that I imbued in it before. Practical magic.
Where do I get crystals and stones??
Besides hiding in junk drawers in your house, you can find crystals and healing stones at mineral shows, flea markets, novelty treasure shops, on Etsy, and at metaphysical bookstores.
Often I’ll find stones that want to come home with me when I’m walking in the woods, hanging out on the beach, and scattered along the sidewalk in suburbs and cities.
If you start openly carrying crystals and stones around, your friends and family will notice and might start giving rocks to you as gifts, which I find to be a very sweet and rich way for these elements to enter my life.
Resources
+ mindat.org is a website about the chemical composition of stones.
+ The Book of Stones by Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian is a great resource.
+ You can get a Crystal Resonance Therapy session with Christel Alberez in Philadlephia, PA — tell her that I referred you!
+ Book a 1-hour Dream Coaching + Reiki Session with me and whatever rocks you are working with right now via skype or in person in Philadelphia or Baltimore. Shoot me an email at lexgstein@gmail.com to set it up.
Now I’d love to hear from you. Are you working with a crystal or another kind of stone right now? Share one specific way that your practice with crystals or other rocks has impacted your life. If you haven’t started yet but are curious, which suggestion from the list above sounds most enticing to you?
Leah Moon
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