Simon Lilly - The Practical Guide to Crystal Healing: Harnessing the Power of Gemstones to Enhance Health and Well-Being

The Practical Guide to

Crystal Healing

Harnessing the Power of Gemstones to Enhance Health and Wellbeing

The Practical Guide to

Crystal Healing

Harnessing the Power of Gemstones to Enhance Health and Wellbeing

Simon and Sue Lilly

Dedicated to all our teachers,
human and non-human.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Rather than a book of explanations and theories, we hope that this will be a book to work with and directly experience. Its purpose is to provide clear guidelines for those who wish to explore the potential benefits of crystal healing for themselves.

Crystal healing works through the interaction of the stones and your bodys 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. We would ask you, the reader, 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 sceptical, but be open to new experience.

Mankinds 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.

Our approach in this book has been to present processes and techniques that are as easy as possible to accomplish. There is a natural tendency for people to want to skip the boring basics and proceed directly to advanced areas, imagining these to be more fulfilling and exciting. This is nearly always self-defeating. In crystal healing, there is no basic or advanced, only what is appropriate or not appropriate for an individuals needs. Time and again we see students impatient to move on to more esoteric, detailed or specialized studies. Soon they realize that, in fact, if they pay attention to what appear to be simple techniques, and develop true awareness of their own practice, profound changes occur, and significant healing can take place without effort.

We have found that the most effective healing happens when the body is not confused with too much energy or information. Each crystal can be thought of as a packet of information or a set of instructions. When someone is confused or lost, simple, concise, clear directions are easier to remember and to follow. Therefore, while the techniques use a wide variety of stones, few procedures in this book involve the use of more than three different types of crystal.

We suggest that you explore those techniques that seem to address your situation and also those that pique your curiosity. If you can, it is best to work little and often on your issues. In this way, you will gradually reduce the stress levels that contribute to so many health problems. You will see that many techniques are related to one another, and we make suggestions for other processes that may be helpful in dealing with different aspects of the same issue.

Our situations in life are complex, and solutions to a problem can also be multi-levelled. There will always be more than one way to deal with a situation, but to make a start in your own healing, to take responsibility for your own life and to move in the direction of your personal goals is a powerful first step.

PERSONAL PATHS TO HEALING

To work well with crystals it is important to understand the holistic approach to healing. Although all human beings are biologically similar, we are each of us unique. In sometimes very small, but often very important respects, our uniqueness affects the ways that we suffer and the ways that we heal.

Difficult situations create hugely varying degrees of stress in each one of us, depending on the different circumstances of our lives. Something that one person will shrug off as a minor irritation will be a major trauma to another. Our personalities are shaped by our weaknesses as well as by our strengths and we learn to cope with life by building up a personal world view that inevitably contains contradictions and faults of logic. These can put strain on body and mind and are often revealed in repeating patterns of behaviour, life experiences, accidents or illnesses, though they can be difficult to identify in ourselves because we accept them as reality. Where we have the greatest accumulation of stressing factors, where our energies are mismatched the most that is where symptoms of disease will tend to manifest, as these areas are the weakest parts of our makeup.

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 its reaccumulation. 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.

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST USE OF THIS BOOK

The first chapter of this book introduces the main concepts and systems that will be referred to throughout. Each of the other five chapters covers an aspect of our lives: our bodies, emotions, life changes, spiritual aspirations and environments.

At the start of each chapter you will find repertories of crystals arranged by colour. These are 40 of our favourite stones, easy to find and broadly useful in all crystal work. (A larger directory with concise information on 100 further crystals is provided at the back of the book.) These stones relate to the theme of the chapter. For example, red and dark-coloured stones have a strengthening effect on the physical systems of the body, so they are placed in the chapter that focuses most on the physical body Chapter 2: Healing the Body. However, working holistically means working on all levels of the self at once, and these crystals are also broadly useful for all crystal work; the techniques in each chapter use stones of a variety of colours.