If you have a few gemstones you wish to bring into your practice but are not sure where to place them, try this quick connecting exercise. Take each stone individually and hold it so that it hovers a few inches above the skin, about where you imagine your aura might be. Starting at the top of the head, slowly move the stone down along the center of the body and sense where it “wants” to go. Pay attention to where it may feel pulled to your body, as if by a light magnet. You might be surprised. The Red Jasper that many associate with the deep red Root Chakra may feel drawn to the space above your heart, or a Blue Apatite traditionally associated with the Throat Chakra might tug magnetically toward your Solar Plexus instead. There are no rules when working with gemstones. Just listen to them.
Focus on the sensation of your body rather than the emotions or thoughts you might be having. Sensation is your physical experience. It is the points, rough-hewn edges, or polished surfaces of the crystals you feel in each of your hands. It is the coolness of the stone on your forehead (or warmth, in the case of Amber). It is the sharp, forceful pressure in your feet as you notice each bone and muscle in your soles flexing and pressing into the ground beneath you. In turn, you should experience the Earth rising to hold you up.
There is an old Buddhist proverb that goes something like, “The foot becomes the foot when it feels the ground beneath it.” Essentially, this refers to the awareness that we experience when we recognize sensation. Don’t judge or interpret as you might with emotions and thoughts. In fact, if thoughts float into your head, acknowledge them and brush them to the side as you refocus your energy into experiencing the sensations of your body. Feel your feet, and know that they are feet by the ground that you feel beneath them. Know that you are the ground by your feet above them. Feel the rise and fall of your breath in your chest. Ground by tuning in to your material self. Experience your own physical surface as it relates to the world around you—your skin, your breath, your muscles, your blood. Ground by pushing your energy into the Earth and the crystals you feel with your body. Ground by pulling that same energy up from the Earth as if you are drawing water from the roots of a tree and pulling it in.
Grounding is connecting with the surface of yourself, and centering is connecting with the core of yourself. When you ground, you feel the crystals in your hands. For balance, you can hold a Clear Quartz point in your receptive hand to amplify the energy you draw in and a piece of Smoky Quartz or Black Kyanite in your dominant hand to transmute the energy you are expelling, but use whatever stones speak to you personally. When you center, take that energy from the crystals and breathe it into the center of the body. Draw that energy inward by imagining it flowing into you through your breath, and then guide that breath to the parts of your body where you wish it to go.
Draw energy into your heart by shifting your focus from physical sensation to emotion, or from your body to your heart. Experience the calmness of your body by replicating the physical sensation of calm with the same emotional state. You can guide your emotions in this way. Choose crystals that resonate with your energy centers to help you draw that energy within you. Chakras will be explored more thoroughly later in this book, but, for now, imagine that your spine is a rainbow starting with deep red at your pelvic floor and ending with vibrant purple radiating from your head. Choosing stones that make you think of love or that align with your Heart Chakra can help, and you might place them directly on your body, either just resting there or set in jewelry, like a necklace. Good stones for love and trust are Rose Quartz, Pink Agate, or Chrysoprase (perhaps shaped like hearts or engraved with hearts, as a general concept), or, alternatively, stones that are green to represent Anahata, the heart energy center. These might include Jade, Epidote, Green Opal, Aventurine, Green Calcite, or Emerald—just beware, some stones (like Malachite) can be toxic to the touch or when ingested accidentally, and other stones (like Rose Quartz or Opal) can lose their luster if exposed to excessive sunlight. Opal in particular can have a dried-out appearance if exposed to the elements too long due to the fact that as much as 10 percent of an Opal’s chemical composition is actually water that can leach out of the stone over time.9
After selecting stones to employ in centering, infuse both the stone and your breath by tuning into yourself to prepare for manifestation. Breath, chi, or prana is an important aspect of crystal healing, as it is the energy that flows in and out of our bodies. Breath can also be whispered into a stone. Hold a stone close to your lips and whisper your intention into it, then breathe it in deeply as if you are sniffing a sea rose in full bloom.
Pranayama Exercise
Try this quick breathing technique to align your breath. You’re going to breathe in a 4:4:8 count. Begin by drawing in a breath for four seconds. Hold that breath in your lungs for four seconds, and then breathe out for eight seconds. Count out the numbers in your mind as you breathe: in for four, hold for four, out for eight. Keep breathing this way for a few minutes or until you feel relaxed and attuned to your body. By breathing out for a longer stretch of time than you breathe in, you will sink your body into relaxation by pushing out the toxins. It almost feels like you are lowering as your shoulders drop and your jaw releases tension. You can also alternate breathing in and out through each nostril to deepen your focus while you count. Draw in through the right for four, hold, breathe out through the right for eight, and then repeat with the left.
After whispering an intention or wish into your stone, hold it in your hands and picture a state of pure relaxation. All the muscles in your body have turned to jelly, and your head lolls from side to side on a downy pillow. In this mental picture, as you center yourself, remember that details in the central mind are powerful and can assist with manifestation. Mind your thoughts and allow only those which support your highest good to be of focus. If you notice you are drifting toward a negative image, interrupt it. Clap your hands, or tap your crystal on the ground and say firmly, “Stop!” Forgive yourself for the interruption and return your focus to centering.
Dig deep and imagine your wildest relaxation dream in vivid detail. Do you feel relaxed at the top of a mountain with your metal-cleated shoes clipped into a rock as the icy wind whips your hair around your face? Do you feel relaxed submerged in a pool of Dead Sea mud, heated by hot springs and surrounded by a gentle snowfall while you tip your head back and cover your eyes with cucumber slices? Draw the mental image of that relaxation into your mind, but don’t stop there. Imagine you can feel it emotionally and sense it physically, too, and tell yourself you can return to this feeling and sensation anytime you like by revisiting your stone.
Emotional and physical imagination are key factors in centering work as well as manifestation, and the more detailed your imagining of the experience, the easier it will be to manifest later. If you have trouble imagining sensations, try taking an improv or yoga class to attune more acutely to your sensory reactions. For emotional awareness, consider counseling or a poetry class. The more vividly you can conjure up an emotional and sensational experience, the more likely you can manifest it into reality. The number one trick to manifestation is to connect your future goals to something tangible: connect the joy you hope to feel with the sensations of joy you once felt in the past. Draw up those joyful emotions and inject them into the goal you are targeting. Picture yourself feeling that joy in the new situation. Make it tangible, and use the crystal as a reminder of that goal.
If you are having difficulty focusing on what you want to manifest, try asking yourself. Literally ask yourself out loud, “What do I want?” Or you may choose to write it in a journal, like crafting a letter to yourself, and then await the response. If you feel blocked, try focusing instead on what you want to feel emotionally or as a state of being. Love? Connection? Success? Health? Hope?
One way to prepare your mind is to flip the script upside down. Instead of asking yourself what you want, try to remember what you want as if you are remembering an event that hasn’t happened yet. It may seem weird to use the word “memory” here when you’re trying to remember something from your future, but we all know time isn’t linear, right? We can remember future states, even if they are fictions. In fact, sometimes fictions become the future, like when a fiction writer like Ray Bradbury imagined retinal scanners and flat-screen televisions for his book Fahrenheit 451 during a time when locks were mechanical and televisions used cathode rays. This fiction became a reality when scientists engineered these devices more than fifty years later. Don’t be afraid to dream