One of the first things I say to my new students is, “You’re going to be bringing up your *stuff* for healing and healing doesn’t always feel good.” They don’t really believe me, but they humor me. Then, they work with a certain stone or elemental force, and their *stuff* doesn’t just come up– it hits the walls. It may be physical symptoms that arise in uncomfortable ways, emotions that surface suddenly and for-no-particular-reason, old memories resurfacing or external situations that come to a head. The first question they usually ask is, “is this really because I worked with that stone?” Yes. “Is the stone carrying negative energy? Does it need to be cleared?” No. The hard stuff you’re experiencing when working with a particular stone isn’t the stone’s negativity– it’s yours. It is old, festering, icky energy and emotional goo that has been triggered within you by the pure vibration of the stone you engaged. The stone doesn’t need to be cleared– you do. The stone is helping you with that by bringing it to the surface for you to see, smell, taste, hear and feel.
Crystals and minerals are very precise vibrational tools that act as energy markers. Each stone has a specific vibrational signature that is unique to itself. When you bring that stone into your energy field, a bunch of things happen. The nerves in your hand pick up tiny electrical impulses and transmit it through the nervous system to the brain. Your brain digs around in its filing cabinet to see what it knows about that frequency. It then throws out all kinds of information related to that specific frequency. That information may be memories, thoughts or feelings that it had associated with that frequency in the past. The association of these inner references with a particular frequency is not a science. It’s a complete accident. When you encounter a vibration for the first time, your brain automatically associates with it anything that is happening concurrently, with which it is already familiar. It doesn’t say, “Hey, what’s this new thing all about? Let’s explore its true essence!” Heck no! It says, “What the heck is that? Oh well, let’s just say it’s related to this other thing over here.” And, that’s that. That’s also why you can’t say that a certain stone is going to cause the same effects for everyone. Everyone has different content stored around those frequencies. It is a highly subjective experience.
The vibration of the chemical elements in the stone vibrate those same chemical elements within your body, through the mechanisms of the law of resonance. This changes the vibrations your brain and heart are picking up, and can trigger biochemical shifts in your body in response. This is a much more precise reaction, because we have a pretty good understanding of how the chemical elements can act upon and within the human body, through both allopathic and homeopathic applications. This can create temporary physical symptoms that can be both unpleasant and uncomfortable at times, but are clear indicators of where imbalances lie in the energy system.
The energy with which the stone oscillates can also affect the chakras. Each of the primary seven chakras (in the modern system) also correlates to a major nerve plexus in the body. Each of these nerve plexi is hooked into various parts of the autonomic nervous system, which control different systems, bits and bobs in the body. Sudden changes in the frequency and amplitude of energy moving through the nervous system creates very sudden changes on a physical level, as anyone who has had the twitches and jerks on a healing table can tell you.
Unfortunately, many people have been taught that when a stone brings up your hard stuff or creates unpleasant physical symptoms, it is because that stone is somehow carrying “bad vibes”. It actually is very rarely the case. It takes a lot of high amplitude energy to knock a stone off of its normal base resonant frequency. It is much more likely that the stone is hitting your junk square in the trunk, but you can benefit from this experience if you are mindful of what is happening.
Protocol for *stuff* hitting the wall:
- Don’t try to make the discomfort stop. If you feel like crap, sit with that, be mindful of it, journal about it and inform yourself of what is arising.
- Put the stone aside for 24 hours, then come back to it. Don’t use other stones in the meantime– they’ll just confuse the process. Sit with the stone again, and notice if more information/experience arises. Journal it. You’ve got to keep track of what the stones bring up for you, or you will lose track and the whole point of the exercise is wasted.
- If you are very symptomatic (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc.), then don’t carry the stone with you. Give yourself space to integrate and be aware.
- Continue with steps 1-3 for at least 3 days, or until you no longer experience the symptoms.
And, if you’re really ready to dig into your stuff and heal it, then you might want to try approaching stones that repel you. If you have a stone, or see one in a store, that makes you go “Yuck!”, pick it up and work with it. It isn’t the stone that’s making you go “Yuck!”, it’s the stuff inside you that the vibration is hitting. Instead of saying, “Oh My God! That stone is possessed by the devil!”, try saying, “Wow, that stone is hitting my *stuff*!”. Then, work with it. Get to know your stuff. It’s the only way to heal.
Of course, you should always clear a stone when you first receive it into your life and after you’ve put it in a position of being exposed to very loud energy– such as an emotional release. Sound is the most effective way to quickly and easily clear multiple stones at once.