Crystal of the Week: Heart Chakra Grid

Since on tonight's PsychicTeacher show, we're discussing crystal grids I thought it would be appropriate to discuss how to set up a heart chakra grid.  This is something you want to set up if you're looking to manifest love, heal a broken heart or work on forgiveness.

In a nutshell, you set the crystals up in a heart shape around a center crystal that should be bigger than the other crystals.  Ideally, you should use a pyramid, obelisk or heart shaped stone.  Under this center stone, place an affirmation for what heart chakra issue you're working on. Put the grid in a place where you'll see it every day.  Each day, pray over your grid.  Imagine the love, healing and forgiveness coming to you as you pray.  As you visualize, so you believe and as you believe, so you conceive.  Have faith in these little stones.  They will work hard for you, but you have to work hard too!
ASK, BELIEVE, CONCEIVE!





If you'd like to MANIFEST LOVE, use a variety of the following stones:

Green Aventurine
Rose Quartz
Garnet
Rhodocrosite
Sugilite
Pink Chalcedony
Citrine
Amethyst
Garnet
Jade
Amazonite
Watermelon Tourmaline

Affirmations to MANIFEST LOVE:

I attract healthy, happy love to me now.
I am attracting the right person to me now.
I love myself and I attract perfect love to me now.
My partner is the love of my life and we love, adore, support and respect each other.
My marriage is happy, healthy and harmonious.
I deserve love, romance and joy and all the blessings that life has to iffer
I radiate pure, unconditional love and attract that to me now.
I am in a joyful, healthy and a happy relationship with a person who loves me unconditionally and I reflect that perfect love back to them.

TO HEAL A BROKEN HEART:

Select a few stones from this list for your grid:

Malachite
Green Aventurine
Amazonite
Rose Quartz
Rhodinite
Pink Tourmaline
Sugilite
Unakite

Affirmations to help your HEART HEAL:

I deserve perfect love now.
I release past pain and open my heart to trust, forgive and embrace new beginnings.
I embrace the lessons learned from this relationship and am now ready to release the pain and keep the lessons.
I forgive myself and                        and release any and all cords of energy between us leaving only peace, forgiveness and mutual respect.
I am free to forgive, free to love and free to release any and all pain now.
My relationships are helping me to heal and love myself.
All difficulties between                                and me are healed now for our highest good.
I am filled with light and love at all times.

TO FORGIVE:

Rhodonite
Rhodocrosite
Botswana Agate
Unakite
Pink Chalcedony
Ruby in Zoisite
Apache Tear
Chrysocolla
Lepidolite
Sugilite
Rose Quartz

Affirmations for FORGIVENESS:

I forgive myself and allow my heart to heal.
I forgive myself and release my past to its highest, healing good.
I forgive my family and send them love and compassion.
God loves and forgives me, and I love and forgive me.
I set my past free and embrace this new day.
I forgive you completely and freely. I forgive you and let you go wishing only the best for you and your highest healing good.

How To Connect With Your Spirit Guide

"How can I connect with my spirit guide?"  If only I had a dollar for every time I'm asked that question.  The short answer is one you're probably not going to like to hear -- you already are.  Our spirit guide is with us from before we take our first breath until well after we take our last one.  We communicate with them in subtle ways every day.

Before we're born, we create a life plan for our soul growth.  We include in it all the people we need to work out karma with, all the triumphs and tragedies we need to experience to learn our life lessons, and all the people and events are put in place for us to teach and share our own gifts and talents.  Our main spirit guide, our life guide,  has a copy of this life plan at all times.  When we veer off path, we'll know it.  Our spirit guide will make sure of that. We'll feel lonely, isolated, disconnected.  We'll have a lot of second doubts and nothing, and I mean nothing, will go our way.  For example, I've rarely met a divorced person who didn't feel a strong pull to not get married on their wedding day.  That's their spirit guide talking to them.  We humans are really good at ignoring these subtle signs.  We'll choose to drink or eat too much or take drugs or hide behind work, stress and self-created drama to avoid looking at the plain truth -- we've gone off path.

When we're on our path, we'll know it too.  For one thing, things will go smoothly, we'll feel connected and even if times are hard, we'll have a solid sense of faith inside us to act as a compass through a difficult but necessary time.  Sometimes, we're on our right path even when we're experiencing the darkest times.  How can you know the difference?  It's a feeling, an inner knowing.  It's truth.  If you're lying to yourself, you're off your path.  Period.

Our spirit guide will speak to us through inner nudgings, ideas, inspired thoughts, repetitive messages that just pop into our head such as "call so and so" or "talk to this person."  Their language is one of synchronicity and coincidence.  Follow the signs and you'll receive your guide's presence more strongly each day.  Remain open, ask for help and keep seeking truth.

In order to more directly communicate with your guide, practice meditation.  Take 10 minutes a day to sit in silence and allow yourself to just be.  Any thoughts that come into your mind, attach a balloon to them and visualize them flying away.  If this is too difficult for you, try a guided meditation.  I have a CD called Meet Your Spirit Guide that uses a guided meditation to help you meet your guide.

Ask and you shall receive.  Ask for a deeper connection with your guide.  But, and here's the tricky part, let go of any expectation.  Put out the request and then "walk away."  The more we want something, the stronger we repel it.

Take some time each week to sit in nature.  Take a walk in the park or on the beach or sit in your back yard and talk to your guide.  This will create an energetic path which your guide can use to teach you how to effectively communicate with him or her in the future.

Pick a sign and ask your guide to show this to you.  Our guides and loved ones are allowed to communicate with us through:

1) Nature
2) Music
3) Electricity
4) Metal

So some easy signs to choose from would be a red bird, a dragonfly, a bee, a particular song, a penny or a dime.  State the sign and then set a deadline. For example, "Please show me a purple flower by Friday."  And then be open to seeing a purple flower in real life, or in a card someone mails to you or on a display sign at a store.  I'll give you some examples I've heard from clients.  One of my clients left my office and asked her guide to show her a turtle.  She drove to meet one of her clients and the street the woman lived on was called Turtle Hall.  After that meeting, she stopped at Starbucks and noticed an article in the newspaper on an upcoming turtle release.  Then she drove to meet her next client and in front of the building was a water fountain with a turtle in the middle.

Another client asked to see a frog and that weekend when she was out for her morning run, she tripped over a frog -- a real, live frog.  Then someone gave her son a stuffed frog as a birthday present the next week and later that week when she was flipping channels, she came across three shows on frogs.  Three.  What are the odds of that?

Communicating with your guide this way builds a strong relationship and can make following your life path a bit simpler.  Let's say your sign for your guide is a yellow flower.  You're trying to decide between two jobs and the decision is difficult because they're both good jobs.  So you ask your guide to show you a yellow flower at the site of the right job for you.  When you drive to the interview for the second job, the interviewer has yellow tulips on her desk.  Voila!  Your guide has answered your question and helped you stay on path.

It's not a question of how you communicate with your spirit guide as much as it is that you communicate with  your guide.  Put the intention out there, don't push it too much, be patient and soon you'll be on your way to "remembering" your guide and building a wonderful relationship.

Why I Love Reiki

I'm teaching a Reiki I course on February 3, and I received an email from someone who said, "I think I want to take your Reiki class, but I'm not sure.  What will Reiki do for me?"

Reiki has changed my life.  Literally.  It's opened my eyes to the mystery of healing, of energy, of divine assistance.  Back in 2004, I had no idea what Reiki was -- couldn't even pronounce it.  Then one day, I was at a crystal show with my dad and this woman walked up to me and said, "I am sorry to bother you, but my guides keep telling me that you need to learn Reiki."  I had no idea what she was talking about and so she explained that it's a form of hands on healing.  I still didn't understand but because this woman wasn't even a Reiki teacher herself and wasn't trying to sell me anything, I knew her motivations in approaching me were pure and honest.  So I began to research Reiki.  Even though this was only seven years ago, there was precious little to go on.  I ordered a few books from the library because my Barnes and Noble didn't have one -- not one -- book on Reiki.

A wonderful series of coincidences led me to my first Reiki teacher, Annie Miller, and I felt so blessed to have met her.  We were a small group -- just four of us -- each as new and naive as the next.  We learned the history of Reiki and that we would be attuned to it.  What did that mean? I wondered.  After the attunement process - a moving experience of gentle quiet while my Reiki Master worked over me -- I felt this warmth rush through me and fill up my palms.  We all felt it in the class that day and were amazed.  My Reiki teacher looked nonplussed.  "That's the Reiki.  Now that you're attuned to it, it will be with you always.  Hands on, Reiki on."

She told us to do Reiki on ourselves every day for 21 days.  I learned the hand positions, even buying a large poster and hanging it up on a wall near my meditation spot to help me remember.  Every night I would sit there and do Reiki on myself.  After the first week, I began to see things.  Flickers of light out of the corners of my eye at first and then full on blinking white lights around people.  Sometimes I would see colored lights.  They appeared to me as little flashes of purple or blue or green or pink.  I was told that the white lights were people's loved ones in heaven watching over them and the colored lights were their angels.  I felt honored to see these things.

When I received my Reiki II attunement, I started to see actual people, people I had loved and lost.  The first person I saw was my dear friend George who showed me someone getting shot in the neck.  "Look up," he said.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't look up at the person's face. I was too scared.  How stupid I was, how scared.  If only I had known not to be afraid of my intuition.  Two weeks later my husband was shot in the neck by an escaped criminal he'd tried to apprehend with a taser.

A week after my husband's shooting, he was still in a coma and I discovered I was pregnant with my third daughter.  She was a complete surprise to me, a total blessing.  I couldn't stop throwing up that week.  Whenever I held my husband's cross in my hand that was covered with his blood, I would throw up and so the nurses suggested I take a pregnancy test.  I remember thinking how grateful I was that I had just received the Reiki II attunement.  Even though I was a bit of an emotional mess at that moment, I knew I could send my daughter Reiki the whole time she was growing inside of me.

When my husband finally came home a month later, I learned to set up a crystal Reiki grid and did Reiki on him every single day.  He healed a little bit each month.

A year later, I was led to my Reiki Master teacher, a wonderful, warm hearted woman named Gloria Spackman who has a true love for Reiki and helping others.  She taught us how to heal people with Reiki in the past and present.  We learned how to do Reiki "surgery" and how to pass on the gift of Reiki to others.  And so now I'm a Reiki teacher too, and I could't feel more honored.

Every time one of my children falls and gets a scrape, I put my hands on the cut and think of my teacher's words.  "Hands on, Reiki on."  My husband calls me his electric blanket because the warmth of Reiki energy runs through me all day and night.  It's a wonderful feeling.  Sometimes, I'll be getting ready to do Reiki on someone and I'll feel nervous because it's still cold in my office and my fingers will feel cold.  But then I draw the symbols on my hands and feel the warmth rushing through to my fingers.  It's a truly miraculous feeling.

Most people cry when they are on my table receiving Reiki and they always get embarrassed.  But I tell them not to. Reiki is like the Drano of healing techniques -- it clears us out, gets rid of all the negative "stuff."

I love that Reiki isn't affiliated with any belief system, that anyone -- young or old -- can receive Reiki.  Even babies have received the attunement.  I love that there's no ego in Reiki.  It's never about the healer, you never have to do anything to pass on Reiki.  You just have to be in a position of allowing and let the Reiki energy flow through you.

Reiki has changed my life.  And I hope if you're inspired by this post, you'll consider letting Reiki change your life too.

Crystals For Abundance

Tonight on PsychicTeachers, we're discussing ways you can increase your financial abundance.  If you missed the show, check out the archive on iTunes.com.  Just search Psychicteachers -- all one word.

If you're looking to increase your financial vibration so that you attract more money, look to crystals to help you.  The following is a list of crystals that will help your debt fly out the window and your checking account begin to fill up!

Citrine: The stone of success.  This stone helps us to attract money and KEEP it.

Green Aventurine: The stone of Luck.  Green Aventurine will help increase your luck!

Pyrite: The gold stone.  Pyrite helps us to believe in our own ability and worth so that we can healthily attract money

Rose Quartz: The love stone.  This stone helps us to love ourselves so that we can attract money without doubt or self judgement and criticism

Tree Agate: This stone will help us to grow the money we already have.

Moss Agate:  This stone will help you to increase your confidence and success enabling you to get that job, raise or promotion.

So what should you do with these stones?  You can create a money grid with them, you can keep them in your wallet, you can place them in a plant on your kitchen sill over an affirmation that reads "As this plant grows so does my wealth."  You can keep them in your money corner of your home which is the opposite left hand corner from your front door.   Be creative with your use of the stones, have faith that they will work hard for you, set your intentions on increasing your money and watch the money flow increase.

What Happens If Your Crystal Breaks?

I received this question today and thought it would be a great topic to discuss here on my Blog.  What do you do if your crystal breaks?  There is so much information out there on this topic and, unfortunately, few of the experts actually agree.  Some say you should bury the stone.  Others say you should place it in a bag of sage for several months.  Some believe you should no longer use the stone.  Based on my experience with stones and what I've learned in my meditations, here is my opinion:


If a crystal that is meant to protect you breaks, then this is often seen as a warning.  These crystals include turquoise, jasper, malachite, hematite, moss agate and a few others. I had a malachite worry stone that I treasured greatly.  One day, for no reason, the tip broke off.  I was devastated and refused to believe anything bad would happen.  I superglued the tip on and still have that piece of malachite today!  Still, two weeks later my husband was shot in the line of duty. If a protective stone breaks, it does not necessarily mean something negative will happen to you.  My experience could have been just a coincidence.  Who knows?  Either way, take it as a sign to be more careful.  But I would highly advice against supergluing your crystal back together :)

If a crystal that is meant to do something positive breaks, then it means you're supposed to share it.  Rose quart brings love, for example, so if that breaks it means you need to share your love.  Smokey quartz clears away negativity and depression.  So if it breaks, I would share it with someone you know who is feeling down right now.  I have a piece of smokey quartz that is self healed.  Sometimes our crystals will heal themselves and this stone then becomes a powerful stone to help you to heal yourself.

If a stone breaks that is meant to be healing such as a green stone, then again I would think about someone in my life who is feeling under the weather and I'd share that stone with him or her.  I have a kyanite stone that I love.  Most nights I sleep with it under my pillow because kyanite will help cleanse your chakras while you sleep.  One morning I awoke and saw that a blade of the kyanite had fallen off.  I thought this was odd but didn't think any more about it.  That afternoon, I bumped into my neighbor who told me he had to have tests done on his throat after doctors had discovered some nodules.  I quickly ran inside and grabbed my kyanite blade and gave it to him.

Sometimes a stone breaks and we don't really know why.  I had wanted a Lemurian crystal for so, so long.  In 2005, a client brought me one she had purchased at a gem show, and I fell in love with that stone.  I spent the next 6 years searching for the perfect Lemurian.  I never really found it, but last summer when I was vacationing in Asheville with my family, I stopped in at Points of Light and found a lovely Lemurian.  It had a little bubble of clear quartz that looked like a window into another world.  I loved this little quartz and carried it with me everywhere and to all my readings.  Three months later, I was walking into my kitchen to grab the phone.  I had the Lemurian in one hand and when I reached for the phone, the crystal dropped and broke into pieces on my hard tile floor.  I was devastated.  I called my crystal guru friend Joel and he told me to place it in a bag of Sage to let it heal from the break.  I did as he instructed but my heart felt a bit sad.  I wondered if I wasn't spiritually ready for the Lemurian.  I worried if it meant something bad might happen like when my Malachite broke.  


Months went by and I didn't try to replace my Lemurian.  Then one day, a package arrived in the mail.  Inside, under heaps and heaps of tissue paper, was the most beautiful Lemurian I've ever seen in my life.  It's over four inches tall and two and a half inches wide.  It's a Buddha Lemurian crystal which means there's a perfect image of the Buddha sitting in the middle of the stone.  I had read about this type of stone and wondered if such a thing could be possible and now here it was  -- in my hands.  It even had rainbows sprinkled throughout it.  There was a lovely note from my friend Joel.  He said he'd gotten the message when my Lemurian broke that it was time to give his Lemurian to me.  This stone, he said, had been found outside a cave in Brazil.  And on its long journey, it had somehow come to me.  I couldn't have been happier.  He apologized for the delay in getting the stone to me, explaining that it was difficult to part with.  And staring at that majestic crystal, I could definitely understand why he didn't want to part with it.  


Now I have the Lemurian crystal I've always wanted;  actually it's so much better than any crystal I could have dreamed of.  So when crystals break, try not to get scared or worried and know that it means it's just time for you to share your stones or receive new ones.  Crystals are meant to be shared, not coveted nor kept in boxes.  Still, when I receive the message to pass on my Lemurian to its new owner, I will be very sad indeed.  


Open your heart to crystals and be ready to experience subtle and profound changes that will take your breath away.  Crystals are hard working light workers who always leave their caretakers better people than when they first met.  

Crystal of the Week -- Diamonds

Diamonds are more than just pretty engagement rings; they’re powerfully strong crystals that can help us charge through tough times and face down our deepest fears.  The Greek word for diamond, adama, means invincible.

Unlike most stones that are comprised of at least two elements – the perfect diamond is made up of just one – carbon.  It’s completed its evolution and is perfect, strong and whole just as it is.  In the scale of hardiness, it’s the only stone with the highest rating of 10.  A clear diamond is perfectly reflective and holds within it all the colors of the rainbow making it a stone of limitless potential to its wearer. 

Diamonds are the hardest natural mineral in the world.  They crystallize deep in the earth’s surface, as much as one hundred miles down, under millions of pounds of pressure.  For this reason, it’s said that diamonds can help you face high pressured situations with calm, dignity and ease. 

Historically, people have attributed many miraculous claims to the diamond – none of which have proven true. Alchemists believed diamonds could make the wearer invisible.  Some said they cured insanity. Others believed that two diamonds placed together and watered with May dew would make the gems mate and have offspring. In 1534, doctors tried to cure Pope Clement II with a mixture of powdered gems, including diamonds.   Mary, Queen of Scotts, wore a diamond that was supposed to protect her from poisoning.  Unfortunately, no one gave her a stone to protect against beheading.

However, it is known that diamonds symbolize faith and longevity in love.  Because of their hardiness, diamonds bring to the wearer strength, fidelity and courage.  They’re also great amplifiers of energy.  So if you’re feeling ill, angry or sad, do not wear your diamond because you’ll just amplify this energy.   It’s believed that when your diamond gets cloudy or murky looking, it’s time to take a good look at your emotions.  Diamonds tend to cloud up when the wearer is feeling run down, sad or angry.  They can also get cloudy when it’s time for us to take a good, hard look at our marriage.  It’s important, therefore, to keep your diamond cleansed.  Simply running it under water or soaking it in jewelry cleanser will help.

The diamond is associated with the crown chakra which means it will help us get in touch with our spirituality.  Because of its clarity, diamonds help us to cut through any chaos in our life to see the seed of the problem, allowing us to finally hear the still, small voice within.

My Guide's Lesson on Forgiveness

I just woke up from the most vivid dream.  I was walking down a street with my guide; he was being quiet as always and I was yammering away.  We bumped into a friend of mine from high school.  She is someone I haven't seen or thought about in a very long time.  I hugged her and asked her how she was and suddenly she started pouring her heart out to us.  She said she'd been trying in recent years to forgive her brother and father for sexually abusing her.  I was shocked.  This woman was always happy, upbeat and kind to everyone she met.  I had no idea she'd had to deal with this.  I hugged her again and was about to tell her how forgiveness takes time, but it's worth it and how you can't forgive someone just once.  It has to happen over and over.  But my guide just made this dismissive wave in the air with his hand and said, "You don't need to forgive them.  You need to forgive yourself."

And then I woke up.  It's so true, what he said, isn't it?  Sometimes, we're the last person on the list of forgiveness when, really, we should start with ourselves.  We always blame ourselves, even when the notion seems outrageous.  I've worked with other clients of sexual abuse, and I've seen them wrestle with a lack of self-forgiveness.  I've seen mothers of addicts beat themselves up because they should've known about the drugs or stopped it or practiced tough love sooner.  I've seen husbands fall to tears when their wives cheat on them believing that if only they'd played less golf or watched less TV, this wouldn't have happened.  I've seen teachers fall apart after a student committed suicide because the teachers felt they should have seen the signs.

We all do this.  It's safe to beat ourselves up -- we've been doing it long enough.  But just for today, practice being gentle and kind to yourself.  And let's all take a moment to forgive ourselves -- to embrace ourselves with unconditional love and allow ourselves to bask -- even for a moment -- in the joy of this love.  I think it's the closest we can come to knowing God's love for us.