Crystal Healing for a Better Quality of Life

Welcome to “Healing From Within” I am your host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit a story of spiritual awakening spiritual communication healing energies and ways to know your intuitive soul guidance system. Sheryl is delighted to welcome Sue Lilly author of The Practical Guide to Crystal Healing co-authored with her husband Simon to discuss the story of crystal throughout the centuries loved by many for their beauty and healing balancing renewing energies for living with greater harmony and well being.

In today’s episode of Healing from Within Sue Lilly will share her expertise about crystals and the way they have been admired used and understood almost from the beginning of time. Sue and her husband Simon have been involved in many aspects of healing for over thirty years. They have both studied crystal healing, color healing flower essences and kinesiology. Sue also practices soul and medical astrology.

Sue first encountered crystals being used by her yoga teacher and goes on to tell us her studies lead her to know that Crystal healing works through the interaction of the stones and your body’s natural subtle energies. Unlike modern medical treatments, these techniques have no obvious scientific rationale or data. For some, this lack of logic and clear cause and effect can be disorienting, particularly when, as in this volume, many of the healing processes do not even involve direct physical contact between human and crystal. Sue and Simon ask you, the reader of The Practical Guide to Crystal Healing to be an explorer, to take the same stance that we encourage in every one of our new students on crystal healing courses: be alert, be skeptical, but be open to new experiences.

Mankind’s use of crystals and gemstones has always straddled the gulf that appears to exist between science and magic, practical rationality and poetic imagination. Thousands of years ago crystals were used in magic and ritual as well as for practical purposes such as metal-making and creating pigments. Similarly, in the modern world, the parallel uses of stones for spiritual healing and as popular “good-luck” charms contrast with the vital role they play in our advanced technology. Nothing has changed over the millennia in that regard, except for the emergence of different world views and belief systems. One great difference from the past is in the accessibility of many more gems and minerals. Crystal collecting was once the quirky hobby of a few gentleman scientists who sourced curiosities from commercial miners. Now it is a huge industry that caters to a fascinated general public.

Sue first used crystals as a way for healing certain physical symptoms and saw some amazing results. Crystals offer a way to help specific illnesses or situations from insomnia to migraines, depression to the upheaval of moving from a house and also help with spiritual development along with visualizations and meditation.
Holistic healing addresses the underlying weaknesses that have allowed physical symptoms to arise. To treat the same set of symptoms, one person may require balance at a physical level, while another might find it more effective to work on emotional stress. For true healing of a condition to take place, stress will probably need to be released from several different areas of your being over time. Like unknotting a big ball of string, or opening a combination lock, for healing to be permanent and effective it must be carried out in the order appropriate to each individual. Sometimes small steps are needed before big issues can be addressed; sometimes work in an apparently unconnected area of the self unexpectedly releases a great tangle of stress. Regular crystal healing ensures that as much stress as possible is lifted from our energy systems, and prevents it from reaccumulating. If we can stop new stresses from settling into our bodies, that helps to focus our self-healing processes on more fundamental, long-term imbalances. The techniques chosen for this book are sometimes directed at specific complaints but are also suitable for everyone because they reduce the overall loading of stress, helping to improve our general wellbeing.

Sue describes her area of expertise after suggesting that there are many ways to work with crystals, and trained crystal therapists can choose from many different approaches to correct an individual’s pattern of imbalance. For this book we have drawn on the most appropriate techniques from our long experience in crystal healing and we have selected from those that can be carried out without previous specialized training. Sue likes to work with crystal layouts. The majority of patterns she shows are crystal layouts, where specific stones are placed on and around the body. Certain layouts harness the healing properties of color, and for these exercises it is helpful to use cloths of various colors. Alternatively you can visualize breathing air of the relevant color for a few moments prior to the exercise. Specialized layouts called “crystal nets”, which catch specific types of healing energies and concentrate them around the person being healed, also appear. These nets are unique to our crystal healing method, and their names often refer to the aspects of reality they were designed to explore, which we can only briefly explain in these pages.

Sheryl say that Sue has suggested that, “If we can put aside the rational, scientific viewpoint that we have come to equate with intelligence and “common sense”, and look at the world in a more immediate and sense-oriented way, we can perhaps get an idea of how our ancestors perceived crystals. From this more poetic and magical perspective, when something reminds us of another object we “see” a link, a resonance, a connection between those things. Therefore a crystal sparkling in the darkness has a resonance with the stars in the night sky a red stone has within it the heat of embers and the energy of blood. The connection is immediate and obvious to the senses. Whereas today we consider such links to be coincidental, in the past they had a valuable significance. This understanding of resonance, the symbolic and associative linking of disparate things by similarities of form or quality, is the very basis of all magical and ritual operations, and is at the heart of our relationship with stone. At deep levels of the mind this way of connecting experiences is natural and immediate. It goes way beyond known facts and, without needing to deny the rational, appeals to our need to see patterns and meaning in the world around us. It mirrors the way the unconscious mind seems to operate – for it is the unconscious mind that runs the body and drives the emotions: the deep mind is the driver, while conscious awareness is at best a back-seat commentator on the view.”

Sheryl tells the story of a Yogi who walked into a showroom she managed years ago and he handed her two stones a larger black one for her husband and a small golden one for herself. He told her to keep the stones near to her. Sue suggests that the stones represent what she believes them to be and Sheryl who is a solar personality one of sensitivity and passion like the sun has a protector which the dark stone like Tourmaline would suggest.

Sue’s first book was Crystal Doorways in 2001. This crystal book focuses on a very particular system of using crystals and color to bring about changes in our consciousness and an increasing understanding of the energy world around us. It offers a clear, immediately understandable system of energy nets using small, easily obtainable crystals. Each net is illustrated and described in full, with what stones to use, where to place them, potential uses and background.

Sue tells us there is no crystal she doesn’t like as all crystals seem to show us more about the Universe creation and the human and spiritual forces of our lives so many crystals are enjoyed by crystal healers. We see the process at work in all the traditional associations of gemstones with planets, parts of the body, emotions and illness, and this is still the main way that the qualities of stones are intuited today. Appearance, color, shape, patterning and occurrence are tangible characteristics that tell the story of what the stone “means”. To science this seems nonsense, but that is because science looks at the world in a completely different way. Just because something is non-scientific does not make it worthless. Science all too easily dismisses the emotions, but without emotional involvement in the world life loses most of its meaning and all of its enjoyment.

Perhaps crystal healing works so well simply because it bypasses the constraints of common sense and satisfies a more basic need for a personal and intimate connection and harmony with the world. It seems to be this connection that we all need in order to maintain our mental stability and physical wellbeing. Let’s look at the resonance of Quartz. Although not an effective Way to start fire, quartz pebbles when rubbed or struck together in darkness will generate a faint burst of light. Our cave-dwelling ancestors will have known of this phenomenon. Quartz crystals, and many crystals in general, sparkle with light and color. Like the stars, they seem to contain light. Stars resemble distant flickering campfires of the spirits. Spirits gather, as humans do, around the warmth of fires; and it is natural that they will gather around the fire of crystals. Stars sparkle in the darkness of the night sky, crystals in the darkness of the earth. Although our dead are put into the earth, the ancestor spirits are in the sky with other spirits. So then, quartz must be a way to link with the spirits of the heavenly worlds and the ancestors. In many cultures quartz crystals are the pre-eminent tools for spiritual knowledge, transformation and healing. they are often thought of as fragments of heaven.

This healing pattern shown in the book is one of the original layouts from the early days of modern crystal therapy. Sometimes called the “Star of David”, it is basically a six-pointed star comprising two intersecting equilateral triangles. In classical and medieval magic and alchemy these triangles symbolized the union of the four elements, fire, earth, air and water, which were conceived as combinations of earthly and heavenly qualities. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the hexagon, made by linking all six points of the star, represents the cross-section of a quartz crystal. It is also found within other natural structures, including corals, bone cells, bee hives, carbon atoms, and so on.
When the points of your crystals (terminations) are directed away from the body, this pattern will release imbalances and clear tension. The points are then turned toward the body to re-energize and restore equilibrium

Most types of crystals used in healing and industry are formed when gases and liquid solutions surge upwards through volcanoes, rock fissures and fractures in the Earth’s crust. At different depths, temperatures and pressures change, allowing many varied crystals to form according to the optimal conditions they require. The harder crystals such as ruby, emerald, topaz and quartz form quite deep in the earth. Softer crystals such as fluorite, pyrites and azurite form at lower temperatures and pressures. The growth of a crystal lattice will be affected by its environment. Even though the lattice structure is regular and the relationship of angles and faces remains constant, more atoms tend to accumulate on one side of the flow than the other, so that perfectly symmetrical crystals are rare. Often different types of minerals will crystallize at the same time, sometimes even inter-growing. It is not known precisely how long crystals take to form in the Earth’s crust. However, the process requires very specific conditions that cannot remain the same for long, and so it is likely that crystals form quickly, within small windows of opportunity.

Sheryl selected Tourmaline which is found in every color to give some characteristics of and to show how it can be used effectively for healing. “The black variety is sometimes called “schorl”. When black tourmaline is translucent, it may have a brown or dark green tint. It deflects many types of harmful energy, and can be worn on the body or placed in a space for protection. This crystal works with your core structure, easing muscles and aligning the skeleton. It can also help to align a person or space with the energy of the planet. Black tourmaline has a stabilizing effect on the physical, mental and spiritual levels of being. It is an excellent grounding stone, helping to anchor the physical and subtle bodies into the planet.

Smoky quartz another popular crystal is found in mountainous or volcanic regions. The color, which can vary from a very pale, transparent grey to a solid, opaque black, is thought to have been caused by low levels of natural radiation. Smoky quartz is linked to the root chakra and has an energizing effect on the physical body while being quietly grounding. This crystal slows down the thought processes, creating tranquility of mind and reducing the impact of disturbances from the outside world, making it a valuable meditation aid. It can also help to expand the subtle senses and makes an excellent support for divination or channeling

Sue writes that, “The use of crystals in mechanical and electronic technology has long been familiar – for example, to amplify light in lasers, and as conductors in crystal radios. The common assumption that crystals function in a similar way when used as healing tools is rather naïve, and not based on any correlating evidence. However, the human system is certainly a conductive electrical entity. Our cells communicate with one another electro-chemically, but also through tiny bursts of light (bioluminescence). Increasingly sophisticated scientific measuring devices are making it clear that our bodies are sensitive to minute fluctuations of any electric field. It is still within the bounds of possibility that, in the healing process, crystals and humans interact as two dynamic equilibriums, exchanging energy information and feedback loops.”

An understanding of our metaphysical energies is expressed In the Hindu philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism, the descent into manifestation is visualized as energy emerging from a single point. This occurs through the process of becoming increasingly conscious and aware. Finally, near the very end, the awareness of individuality causes the manifestation of the senses and ultimately the five elements: ether, air, fire, water and earth. Our physical bodies, therefore, are only a small part of what we really are, even though we are unable to investigate the finer layers of ourselves with our ordinary levels of awareness . Crystal therapy in alignment with other healing modalities provides a holistic way to treat and heal and also to prevent many conditions which often affect our body and mind creating sub-optimal levels of health and well being.

Sue’s successful tips for healing using crystal include.

• It is possible to be seated for crystal healing, but it is easier lying down. A yoga mat or blanket on the floor is ideal.
• Wear loose clothing, and remove all bulky and metal items: phones, spectacles, watches and particularly jewelry (which can affect balance procedures). Make sure you will not be disturbed. Have some surgical tape to hand, just in case you need it to keep your crystals in place for an exercise.
• Take plenty of time to relax after a session – as a general rule, wait double the session time before you resume normal activity, as this gives plenty of time for your system to adjust to its new balance. Drink a little cold water.
• Short, regular sessions (5–10 minutes, once or twice a week) are much more valuable for releasing stress and maintaining healthy balance than occasional long sessions.
• Remember that every session is a unique event. Do not expect any particular experience or effect. Unusual sensations and imagery can occur as a result of stress release and readjustment of subtle energy. But a quiet, unremarkable session does not signify that “nothing has happened”. It is the end result that matters, not your experiences during the session.