Renew Your Life the Natural Way: Balance Your Chakras with Crystals and Essences

How to Use This Book

Crystals and the Chakras has fifteen sections. These are:

About This Book

Chakra Quiz

Introduction

The First Chakra: Standing On Our Own Two Feet

The Second Chakra: Going With the Flow

The Third Chakra: Will Power

The Solar Plexus: Feeling Good

The Fourth Chakra: The Courage to Love; Healing and Balance

The Fifth Chakra: Our Words, Our Selves

The Sixth Chakra: Going Within

The Seventh Chakra: The Spacious Present

Putting It All Together

Diagnostic Tools

Evaluation

Appendix

This book began as a course. I've been giving it through my web site since 1996, and the material has evolved in response to students' invaluable comments. Many students observed that they faced the large temptation to go right to the material on the chakra they thought was most out of balance.

I recommend not yielding to this temptation. I've written the material so that each chapter leads to the next. A thorough reading of the material for each chakra may reveal to you the need for deeper study and work on an unsuspected imbalance. In addition, it helps to see how all the chakras work together.

To help you decide which chakras need your attention first, I've provided a quiz that follows this section. By going directly to the chakra that seems most in need of a tune-up, you may find that other chakras with less obvious blockages may also come into balance.

HOW TO WORK WITH THE ASSIGNMENTS

I recommend keeping a journal as the easiest and most effective way to absorb the material in this course. This may be a computer file or, for those who prefer to write journal entries by hand, a work of pen and paper.

Keywords

Whichever you choose, make a section for each chakra. When you go through the Introduction, you'll see keywords for each chakra. My general recommendation is to write about each keyword before you read the accompanying lesson.

For example, one of the first-chakra keywords is survival. You might write something like:

"Survival has always been an issue for me. My family never had enough money, and I always believed I would have to work hard in order to survive.

These days it seems even harder to survive as human beings. We are threatened by air and water pollution and governments that don't seem to care about the well-being of the common person. . . .

Write until you've said all you need to say on the subject.

Chakra Statements

Each chakra lesson begins with a series of statements that indicate an imbalance in a particular energy center. If you find statements that seem applicable to you, write about them in your section for a particular chakra.

One of the statements for the third chakra is: To be successful in this world, you have to be dishonest and manipulative. If you check this, ask yourself how you've seen this in your life. Then turn the statement around, i.e., You can be successful in this world by being honest and cooperative. Can you find evidence for this? Can you find ways to believe it without evidence?

Consider the possibility that the statements you believe to be true might not be. They may not be reality. They may be beliefs about reality. The more you begin to questions the assumptions you haven't previously examined, the more the psychic walls that have prevented the smooth flowing of energy begin to crumble.

Daily Life

Notice what happens and how you respond to it. If your child gets angry at you, how do you feel? Unloved? Determined to make her behave? Connect your response to the appropriate chakra. This may take practice, and it's a practice that brings the chakras to life, as you see them in action on a day-to-day basis.

Assignments/Suggestions

This section follows each chapter on a chakra. In each Assignments/Suggestions section, a similar set of questions is listed. In general, you're asked to study your list of statements/complaints about the areas of life covered by that chakra. Then I ask you to choose one of those areas and do something small to improve it. For example, if you feel you have a number of difficult relationships, you could pick the one that could be most easily healed and work on that.

You'll find that working on a relatively easy relationship will develop your ability to clear up a more difficult one. You may discover that in general your relationships with people are improving.

Don't wait for perfection. You don't need one hundred percent mastery in one chakra area in order to move on to another. I recommend, though, that you feel some improvement. To take another example from the fourth chakra, you may notice that it's easier for you to feel loving towards people or that resentment is no longer your automatic response when you hear about someone's good fortune.

The Meditations

Students of the course have often commented on how helpful the meditations were in opening up the energy of the chakras. I've purposely made these meditations simple. If you spend as little as five minutes a day on them, you can benefit. Those familiar with meditation may wish to spend more time meditating.

How Long Per Lesson?

I recommend spending a few weeks on each lesson. This gives you the opportunity to notice more deeply how you've shifted with respect to a particular chakra's energies. You'll pay more attention to your response when bills come in, when you think someone has betrayed you, or when you curse the sky for dropping snow.

Beyond that minimum time suggestion, you'll want to spend more time on chakras that present greater challenges. Keep in mind, though, that you'll find that work on one chakra often opens up the energies of another. This makes sense, as all the chakras are interrelated. Remember, also, that if you need to, you can always return to a given chakra lesson.

Supplementary Information

After the lessons on the chakras, you will find chapters that describe various ways to harmonize the energies of the chakras. Topics include grounding crystals for each chakra, and crystals to increase overall flow, and more.

Graduation

In the original course, each student developed a plan using crystals and essences to work on the areas of imbalance they had discovered. I evaluated each plan.

I've kept the form for setting up such a plan in this book. It's for your use only, unless you want to incorporate an evaluation into a consultation with me. If so, email me at http://rainbowcrystal.com/contact.shtml.

Miscellaneous Notes

I repeat myself in this book. That's deliberate. If you're taking your time with this material, you may forget specific suggestions for assignments and meditations from one chakra to the next.

And now, enjoy your study of the most fascinating subject in the world: You!

About Crystals and Essences

Because crystals and essence are two of the primary tools I recommend for balancing the chakras, I'm including here some introductory material about them. Whether or not you are already familiar with crystals and essences, you may find this information helpful.

What Are Crystals and

How Do They Work?

Because you bought this book, it's likely that you have familiarity with crystals. The following is a brief refresher course, which will also help newcomers to the world of minerals.

Without going into an obscure explanation that few of us would understand, a mineral is crystalline if the atoms or ions that compose it are arranged in a geometrically precise pattern of atoms which are held together by shared electrons. The important thing to understand that this orderly pattern also ensures that the energy emitted by a crystal is equally orderly and consistent. A crystal's vibration and energy pattern is steady—which is one of the reasons that crystals can help to steady the often-erratic energy patterns of humans.

They work in many ways. On a sensory level, the sight of them appeals to and reawakens our senses, both physical awareness and a sense of wonder. Through our awareness of its hidden treasures, we become more appreciative of our physical world.

On an energetic level, crystals work in a subtle way to unblock psychic and physical energy. Imagine for a moment how heavy you feel when you're depressed or feeling tired or bored or just stuck.

All of us have areas in our lives where energy is blocked, such as prosperity, love, general health, creativity. These blockages express themselves in the physical body. When we place crystals on these areas (i.e., the throat area for creativity), their high vibration help to raise the vibrational frequency in that area. 
High vibration doesn't mean making you feel jittery. When people are feeling hyper or want to calm their thoughts for the purpose of meditation crystals can help to achieve quiet. The primary purpose of crystals is to help restore energetic balance and to open energy channels so that energy flows smoothly.

Sections of the Appendix give detailed information about how to work with crystals. See sections on clearing, charging, and programming crystals. Now That I Have My Crystal, What Do I Do With It? provides a comprehensive overview.

How the Bach Flower Remedies Work:

Treating the Whole Human

Note: Although the following description describes the development of the Bach Flower Remedies, most other flower essence groups are based on these principles.

As a medical student, Edward Bach studied the emotions and personality of his patients, observing their effect on the progress of healing. Fear could slow the healing process; depressed patients showed little will to get better. Impatient ones might slow down the rate of recovery by refusing to rest and relax. After countless observations, he concluded that one's personality both strongly influenced the course of disease and determined the kind of treatment most likely to succeed.

His study of homeopathic principles confirmed his deepening belief that true healing required treating the patient, not the disease. His diagnostic ability became so keen that he could identify the homeopathic remedy someone needed in the time it took the patient to walk from his office door to his desk.

The Dinner Party

Skilled as he had become, he felt there was much more to learn about the nature of disease and personality. He was in the midst of exploring these questions when he attended a large dinner party.

Bored with the conversation, he watched the people around him, studying them closely. He began to notice distinct personality types. Inspired by this discovery, he became even more attentive, watching physical movements, facial expressions, and listening, when he could, to people's voices. He realized that some of them, although biologically unrelated, seemed like family members, so similar was their behavior.

By the end of the party, he'd begun to identify personality groups. As his ideas developed, he studied his patients even more closely, noting every aspect of their behavior.

Into The Woods

Bach concluded that mental/emotional states caused all illness and that curing these states created health on all levels. Now he focused his attention on discovering a method to foster mental/emotional well-being.

His intuitive sense told him he would find his answer in the flowers of the countryside. This sense led him to leave London for rural Wales.

Here he discovered a way to extract the energetic essences of flowers. He immersed them at their peak of flowering into pure water to sit in the sunlight long enough for the water to absorb this energy. The potentized water became the basis for the Bach Flower Remedies.

Fleeting Moments

Bach noted that, although many mental traits seemed to be a permanent part of an individual's personality, people's emotions could also change rapidly, especially in the course of illness. A patient might initially be fearful about the disease, then depressed, and then impatient to be out of bed. Each mood had to be treated with a particular remedy.

People who lived stable, unchanging lives might appear to have relatively fixed personality traits. Those who experienced frequent changes could have much more dramatic mood fluctuations. Bach realized that each time he saw a patient, he needed to discard all opinions and view her as an entirely new person. This perspective allowed him to diagnose her condition without prejudice and to choose the correct remedy for her current condition.

Through continuous observation and constant refinement, he identified thirty-eight basic mental states and discovered the remedy to treat each.

How They Work

Although the concept of energy blockage is a general one, Bach's experience was that such blockages were particularized. One person might be blocked from expressing unconditional love by feelings and thoughts of anger, another by resentment. Someone else might have his ability to make appropriate decisions limited by the feeling he had to ask others; another might always feel there were too many choices available to decide.

The theory behind the use of the Bach Flower Essences is that each of the flowers embodies a particular energy frequency. When an individual resists the expression of that particular energy (i.e., patience, calmness, enthusiasm, she is out of touch with that aspect of her fundamental nature.

Jane, for example, resists being genuinely nurturing and capable of selfless love. As a parent, she interfered with and manipulated her children's lives to the best of her ability. She became sullen when she didn't get her way. She wanted her children to visit often, and when one of her sons contemplated moving across the country, Jane bombarded him with arguments against the move.

She came to realize one day that instead of drawing her children closer to her, she was driving them away. When she got the nerve to ask one of them why he no longer called or visited, he answered, I feel stifled by you. I can't live my own life unless I stay away.

This statement shocked Jane into a desire to change. She decided to take the Bach Flower Remedy Chicory, which embodies the essence of unconditional love and allowing others to follow their own paths. It acted as a catalyst to dissolve her resistance to expressing these qualities by flooding her being with the subtle energies of unreserved love.

In Dr. Bach's Own Words:

The action of these essences is to raise our vibrations and open up our channels for the reception of the Spiritual Self; to flood our natures with the particular virtue we need, and wash out from us the fault that is causing the harm. They are able, like beautiful music or any glorious uplifting thing that gives us inspiration, to raise our very natures, and bring us nearer to our souls and by that very act to bring us peace and relieve our sufferings. They cure, not by attacking the disease, but by flooding our bodies with the beautiful vibrations of our Higher Nature, in the presence of which disease melts away as snow in the sunshine.

Introduction to the Chakras:

Life Force Energy

Working with the chakras (sometimes called chakra balancing) basically means working with energy.

The idea of energy can be confusing, especially to Westerners. We've grown up thinking of energy sources as being outside ourselves, coming from furnaces, gasoline pumps, and other devices. We know that energy made machines run but only have a vague idea that it runs us, too.

When I began to directly experiencing crystals' energy and its effect on my own energy, my feelings about this subject altered. I explored further and learned about the chakras. When I read that putting crystals on each chakra helped to balance them and began to experiment, the quality of my meditations changed, and my spiritual life expanded.

WHAT ENERGY IS (I THINK)

Physicists now recognize that all things are made of energy particles. Dense concentrations of these particles create that which we think of as most solid—stones, mountains, the earth itself. This level of vibration is so slow that we don't think of these forms as having any vibration or motion. We think, for example, of a chair as being an inert object; yet, like all matter, it is composed of spinning atoms. The elements of fire, air, and water are composed of less dense concentrations of energy particles that vibrate at a higher rate.

As humans, we are a combination of all the elements. Blood pulses and flows through our presumably solid flesh; our body temperatures vary; air flows in and out of us.

Our thoughts and emotions are also made up of energy, and as energy particles attract like particles to create and maintain a stone, so our thoughts and feelings attract similar energy particles, often to cause something we have been longing for or dreading to manifest in the physical world.

Have you ever thought about someone and then either seen them or have them call you soon afterward? These and other coincidences are caused by thought creating physical reality.

WHERE ENERGY COMES FROM

We humans are created and maintained by energy from the same source that creates all living things. Reiki (a modality of energy transmission that may be used either through a hands-on method or by distant healing) gives us the descriptive phrase, universal life force energy. Each individual being translates this energy into its personal energy.

Energy flows readily through a balanced being and concentrates in those areas in need of repair and revitalization. In this view of healing, we are constantly healing ourselves.

The natural state of things is to be in balance and to feel one's connection to all living things, or, as Einstein said, A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe.' He also noted that when we experience ourselves as being separate from that whole, we find ourselves in a kind of prison. Energy blockages are the walls and bars of the jail cell.

Our healing abilities break down when blockages and imbalance occur. In all energy work, including chakra balancing, the basic idea is that imbalance originates on the mental and emotional planes. If not corrected, an imbalance can affect the physical body. When that happens, medical, surgical, or pharmaceutical solutions may relieve the physical symptoms, but these or a new set of symptoms will occur if the original imbalance remains.

WHAT THE CHAKRAS ARE

There are a number of systems for restoring balance. One system, based on the chakras, has in its origins, four thousand or more years ago, deep connections to Hinduism. Chakra itself is a Sanskrit word that means wheel.

The chakras are the means through which universal life force energy is translated into personal energy. Our personal energy exists both within and around us. The energy around us is called the aura. Within the aura are the spinning centers of energy called the chakras.

CHAKRA SYSTEMS

Strict traditionalists insist that there are only seven chakras, as in the original Hindu system. Some systems divide the chakras into major and minor chakras (the palms and soles of the feet being examples of minor chakras) Others believe that, as human consciousness evolves, new chakras are created to take in new forms of energy.

Beliefs clearly affect one's perception of the chakras. During the Victorian age, the spleen area was considered the second chakra in order for the Victorians to be able to avoid the issue of sexuality. We may consider this a blockage of second-chakra energies characteristic of that culture which affected its members' perception of energy.

I mention the above, not to confuse you, but because if you explore this energy system more deeply, you may well come across different theories.

Although I believe that there are more than seven chakras, I feel that in an introductory course it is wise to stay with the basics, with some departures.

I use a system described by Katrina Raphaell in her Crystal Trilogy (Crystal Wisdom, Crystal Healing, and The Crystalline Transmission). There are several notable ways in which the color assignment differs from that of the traditional Eastern system.

In traditional color assignments for the chakras, the first chakra is assigned the color red and the second is given the color orange. In the system used in this book, the first chakra is assigned black, brown, and gray as colors; while the second is assigned red and orange.

In traditional chakra systems, the solar plexus is the third chakra. I assign the third chakra to the very important navel area, related to self-esteem, self-empowerment, and abundance. The solar plexus is considered an extension of this chakra and assigned the colors yellow-green and coral.

Although green, the traditional color, is assigned to the heart (fourth) chakra, pink is added.

The sixth chakra is assigned dark blue and purple, the seventh white or clear (as in crystals), instead of dark blue for the sixth and purple for the seventh.

This system has the most direct relationship to crystals and is what makes crystal chakra balancing so easy. Once you know the color associated with a chakra, you can narrow down your choices of stones to certain colors and then make more refined choices based on the characteristics of individual stones.

(Please note: You can also certainly use your intuition. If your senses tell you to place a yellow stone on a chakra that usually relates to the color purple, believe your intuition.)

THE CHAKRAS

Each chakra is connected to an area of human experience.