Читать книгу Crystal Intentions - Lune Innate - Страница 12

Grounding and Centering to Self-Heal, Reduce Burnout, and Relax

Before we begin to work with any self-healing method, it is a good idea to ground in the moment, center yourself, and set intentions. “Grounding and centering” is language borrowed primarily from the modern pagan movement, but the principles are recognizably the same as those in most healing, therapeutic, or mindfulness strategies regardless of background or context. The matter of setting intentions allows us to tune into ourselves carefully and ensure that the energy we put into our relaxation work is focused in the direction that serves our greatest good.

Ever feel like you are just working really hard and accomplishing nothing? It’s almost as if this is the nature of stress and frustration. We expend all our energy, but it’s like revving the engine to try and get a car out of a muddy trench. We just keep spinning our wheels, wearing out the motor and using up all our fuel, only to end up stuck in the same place and covered in mud. Stressful situations—even those stressful situations we invite into our lives, such as the stress of a new project or job—deplete our energy supply both in the activities related to the stress and in our efforts to relax and calm things after the fact. Relaxation, of course, is necessary both in happy situations and unhappy ones, because we cannot stay at high velocity permanently. Energy, though limitless in nature, is finite within the human subtle body field, as it must be restored to maintain harmony and balance. You reach your best state of wellness when you become aware of both the present state of your stress levels or overall energy and the knowledge that you have the power within yourself to restore peace within.

The social, physical, and emotional demands of life have increased over the past several decades. Over a century ago, during the dawn of the industrial revolution that made our supply of food, water, and resources more efficient and pulled people out of the farm fields and into the factory, early students of sociology began to examine the nature of labor and commerce, concluding that the critical thing people had to exchange for food and water was their time. Not everyone could be wealthy or born into royalty, and so survival of the poor and working classes depended on our ability to trade one commodity for another. Since the poor tended not to have land or objects to trade for resources, they came to trade their time for the financial resources necessary to survive. It was during the early days of this social experiment, when the labor forces were unable to till the fields and instead found opportunity in the factories, that we began to recognize the impact and value of labor in terms of its toll on our bodies. Labor takes time and energy, and that energy is depleted from our bodies and must be restored consistently.

Labor and energy go into many more activities than simply those that earn us the financial resources we need to eat, drink, sleep, and remain safe. Labor and energy go into all our activities, whether they be studying for that big biology exam tomorrow, caring for the needs of a houseful of toddlers, packing up our household possessions to move across the country, or even going on vacation.

Mental pursuits, such as programming software applications or designing websites, also expend our labor and energy. Unlike the industrial revolution, during which we moved from farm fields to the Ford assembly line, this technological revolution has had a tremendous impact on our bodies and minds. Even though we are not toiling in coal mines beneath the ground or riveting bolts into the beams of a skyscraper a mile above it, we are still expending energy on the hidden costs of our new technologies—and of our addiction to them. While modern technology has given us the potential to research any topic, work at our professions remotely, or source inspiration for our next meal, it has a downside. It is difficult to unplug; we reply to emails at two in the morning when we should be sleeping, or we spend hours mindlessly scrolling through social media with little awareness of how the images or messages we’re absorbing might be affecting our psyche, let alone our vision or our sleeping patterns.

On one side of the burnout spectrum, we have stress which occurs when we expend our energy in hyperactive ways. Stress is a form of anxiety that stems from the “fight” part of our fight-or-flight instincts left over from our tiger-fighting days. Stress rises when we experience a rushed need to expend energy in a difficult situation, such as managing conflicting priorities or saving lives during a natural disaster. It also arises when we experience the need to expend energy for positive situations, such as finishing that painting or playing basketball with your friends.

Prolonged stress results in burnout. It is the exhaustion of your energetic body where you disengage both mentally and physically. Burnout resembles depression; with both, you feel less interested in things and people. When you are burned out, your body—both at the subtle and physical levels—is crying out for you to slow down and let things cool off for a while so you may return to your optimal energetic state.

Many psychological professionals see burnout as a symptom of poor stress management. Spending excessive screen time with video games, social media, and television keeps you engaged mentally even if you are sedentary, and you deplete your energy trying to unwind by winding right back up again. What’s more, a recent study by a major health insurance provider found that the current generation is more lonely than any other generation in history.3 Part of the blame for that loneliness, which is a state of burnout, belongs to our devotion to technology as an attempt to replace our very real needs for direct human contact and social engagement. That lack of in-person socialization has a profoundly negative impact on your well-being.

We may begin to feel lost and isolated without meaningful relationships. It can feel as if we are missing something of great importance in our lives. This also can lead to being too much “in our own heads,” and even simple social interactions become overwhelming. This can make it even more difficult to form connections, and we may take things too seriously or personally. Healthy relationships manifest more easily when navigated from a calm and balanced state.

Crystal relaxation strategies can help center that energy by winding down your stress or restoring your energy after the depletion of burnout has set in. Developing awareness about our current energy state and the onset of stress and burnout is the best defense. Set an intention and choose an action—even non-action—to restore comfort and peace, lead to your own greater clarity, and reverse the “downward spiral.” Energetically speaking, even the smallest of shifts in the right direction can truly turn the tide.

Stress and burnout certainly affect us in our physical bodies as we experience tension or exhaustion. Sometimes we even experience these physical symptoms of burnout in the form of pain, which is like a warning flare sent by our bodies to alert us that something is wrong: if we keep going at a certain pace or remain in our current condition, we might do actual damage to our bodies. But what are the cues that we receive from the energetic realms within our subtle bodies?

There is an ancient saying that can help explain the impact that physical energies can have on our subtle energies: As above, so below, and as within, so without. The origins of this concept have been credited to multiple sources, including the Emerald Tablets associated with Egyptian and Greek mythology. Mystery surrounds these alchemical messages inscribed on green stones, but the earliest known reference to these arcane texts occurred around the eighth century; interest in them was later reinvigorated by medieval alchemists4 and then again by the unique blend of transcendent psychology uncovered by Carl Jung. References to the concept expressed by “As above, so below” occur in many religious writings, including the Christian Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Vedas, and many other sacred texts throughout history.

This ancient saying expresses the concept of correspondence between the inner and outer worlds of being. This idea is reflected (or perhaps refracted) by the crystal. The outside of a crystal is beautifully structured, and the inside of a crystal is a perfect geometric pattern. Everything without and within (above and below) is in alignment. Energy is similarly experienced: When you are feeling disconnected from your experience of the divine, your outer energy in your physical body is low, and you may present to others with a duller tone or less of that twinkling inner fire that burns within you. You may become sick or exhausted as your inner world is reflected through your body to the outside world. The same is true in reverse: when you are sick or agitated physically, you may experience emotional symptoms that may present a withdrawn or disorganized appearance to others, as though your Self is disconnected.

This sacred unison of Self is reflected by crystals, which come from the ground and thus are excellent tools for grounding. They were once thought to be ice, expressing the universal connection between earth and water energies. The word itself, “crystal,” comes from the Greek word for frozen water. Your body is a physical expression of your energetic body, just as crystals are a physical expression of the organizational energy of the universe. When you are stressed and your layers of existence are out of alignment, you look to attune your outside with your inside to realign; “As above, so below.” Crystals can be particularly useful to this because their internal structure is geometric perfection.

Crystals are actually defined by their internal structure, or the organization of their atoms and molecules. While it is true that crystals can be manufactured or mimicked by commercial factories, we encourage you to work with true, raw crystals which are ethically harvested from the Earth in sustainable ways so that you can tap the energy of their geometric perfection. True crystals contain within them perfectly symmetrical, geometric, interlacing rows of atoms. It is this internal organization that allows crystals to be such collectors of energy to power lasers and solar panel cells.5 That same principle of inner organization and outer beauty can also be harnessed for attunement and alignment when you are experiencing burnout or just need the opportunity to relax. Inner order makes for outer order.

It is possible to achieve energetic balance when both sides of the burnout teeter-totter are level. In your optimal state, time seems to fall away, and you achieve what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow. Creativity represents the force of love in the universe. According to Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, flow occurs when there is order in consciousness and that order breeds creative and loving energy. Its opposite state, entropy, occurs when we are in a state of disorder. Flow occurs when your entire consciousness is focused on achieving your inner goals. Flow exists when you battle “against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness. It is really a battle for the self; it is a struggle for establishing control over attention” (Csikszentmihalyi 41).6 Like the hermetic teachers before him, Csikszentmihalyi identifies the goal of self to be a state of organized alignment between body and energy. Perhaps Csikszentmihalyi, whose own brother achieved flow while studying crystals,7 might honor crystals for their optimal flow of organized energy within and beauty without.

Like flow, mindfulness is the awareness of that state of creative focus. People in a state of flow are so focused on the task of creation that they forget all about the world around them—in some cases, they even forget about their own bodies as attention to pain or hunger slip away. The flowing person transcends the needs of the body, but there is a problem with being in a state of flow for too long. Pain and hunger exist to keep the physical body operating. For flow to be optimal, it must be both hyperfocused on creation (the fight for self) and mindful of it. But how do you do that? How do maintain an awareness of body, mind, and energy while allowing yourself to engage fully with your state of flow?

Mindfulness is one of the tools we use to weave the fabric of our many selves together into one. While it is a marvel that creative energy can allow your awareness of your body to fall away while you flow with creative energy, returning to your physical body after spending so much time in your energetic body may be a bumpy reentry. Being mindful refers to an intention to be aware of what’s happening both within and without. Truly gifted mindfulness practitioners do not judge what that awareness highlights; that is, they attune to what they think or feel in a given moment, but they don’t necessarily attach to those thoughts or feelings. Judgment actually takes you out of the moment and causes an interruption to the direction of your energy. The key is to honor and not deny the experiences you have—warts and all.

If you are to manifest your greatest good, you can’t be in denial. Denial sends energy to the very thing you are choosing to deny, because denial is an action. If you are actively trying to reject something—perhaps because you don’t like how it feels—then you are aware of that rejection and your thoughts and reality will be out of alignment. An example of this we see often is the client who says she wishes to attract something into her life—we’ll say more joy and happiness—but continues to engage in the activities that cause her to feel unhappy. She knows she wants more happiness and works with her crystal healer to manifest it, but, subconsciously, she denies the need to make changes in herself to be aware of that happiness. Manifesting wellness takes intention and a willingness to change.

Grounding with a crystal connects you to the present. It might literally mean connecting with the ground beneath you, which is always supporting you by holding you up, feeding your body, and quenching your thirst. Most gemstones and minerals are sourced from the ground; even organics like Pearls, Jet, and Amber are connected to Earth in some capacity. In fact, 12 percent of the Earth’s crust is made up of silicon dioxide or Quartz Crystal, making it the most plentiful gemstone on the market8. Perhaps this is why grounding with a crystal in each hand as you stand with your feet connected to the Earth amplifies your energetic connection, as though the crystals you hold are charged and generating a connection to the crystals beneath our feet in the ground below.

Ground and Center

If you are able to stand, consider grounding on your feet so that you can cycle the energy of the Earth up through your spine and back down again into the ground as if you are pushing your feet down like tree roots into soil. If you are unable to stand, you can accomplish a similar grounding experience by lying flat on your back and noticing where your body makes contact with the ground beneath you. If you have access to nature, it is best to do this directly on the unpaved, unaltered ground in its natural state so you can connect closely with the energy of the planet. You can also achieve that connection while on a floor or a bed with a little extra work by consciously remembering that the Earth is below you.

The imagination is a powerful grounding tool. Try this visualization to emotionally cleanse yourself. Imagine that you are standing under a glittery, rushing waterfall. The water pours over an outcropping of rocks into a clear, blue pool warmed by the sunlight. The spray of the waterfall creates a mist dappled with rainbows everywhere you look. Imagine yourself standing beneath this flow of crystal-clear water as it washes away your stress and frustrations. Feel your feet sink slightly into the water of the pool as your toes flex to grip the stony earth beneath them.

The key to grounding is to pause and pay attention to where you are connected to the ground. Choose two or more crystals and place one in each of your hands. If you are flat on your back, you might also place a crystal on your Third Eye between your eyebrows, over your heart, and near your pelvis to cycle energy along your chakras as well. Some people even place a crystal beneath their feet while standing or lying down.

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 or remember a new future—this is the heart of manifestation. Dream it. Become it.

Use the stone to amplify your experience and do some of the work for you. You might think of stones as programs you script and run on your computer as you prepare them with your intentions. Stones operate like scripts, working beneath the surface to make things run smoothly. A script can be as simple as just the word “relax” said once or repeatedly over the stone. You might feel guided to hold the stone very close to your mouth and speak into it as if you are telling it your deepest, darkest secrets. Some crystal workers take a more alchemical approach and write the intention on a slip of paper that is then wrapped around the stone with ribbons. Infuse the crystal with your intentions to pair its own inner strength with yours as you ground, center, and relax.