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Wellness > Mental Health

Meditation, Crystals & Chakras: How To Embrace Spirituality In Your Routine

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Casper Libero chapter.

As we’ve been looking for ways to deal with this terrible scenario, looking for new ways to reconnect with ourselves internally is necessary has been proving itself a necessity, so that we could have mental balance to deal with hardships. A lot of people started searching for self-control through meditation, crystals and, as a consequence, they got really into the spiritual universe. Also, since they’re timeless practices, we don’t need to know a lot about them to include them in our routine.

So, I’ve selected some ways to help you with that, that won’t take more than 15 minutes a day! First of all, we need to understand that all these methods work based on the intensity and intention which we do them.

 

Meditation

woman in black swimsuit meditating
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
Starting with meditation, anyone can do it, you just need to be interested and willing to search and understand about it. Meditation is a practice that increases your self-knowledge and helps you with the worst battle ever: you versus yourself — something that we’d put aside while we were too busy with our non-pandemic lives. It’s helpful to reduce anxiety, depression, and stress as well as physical issues. There are multiple kinds of meditation, two of them being:

  1. Mindfulness Meditation: It’s the most common practice because it works with focusing on your breathing and controlling your thoughts, keeping them in the present. Start with 5 minutes of practice, sit with your back straight, and feel your breath. 
  2. Guided Meditation: We use this method to get a deeper answer about a specific subject. This is one of the best options for those who struggle with concentration — with a mentor’s help, we get more focused for a long period. We can find this type of meditation by searching on YouTube, groups on social media, or apps, such as Simple Habit.

As I was saying, meditation can be an amazing tool for your personal and spiritual understanding. Being motivated and taking 5-10 minutes of your day to practice it, you’ll notice significant changes in your life!    

 

Crystals & Cleansing

Also, we have crystals, they can be used to increase your meditation. As everything that comes from nature, crystals do have an energetic vibration, which means that they’ll keep all emanated energies for themselves. They can be used for decoration and protection; also we can wear them as rings, necklaces, earrings or carry them in our bags and wallets. We don’t need to hold them every second, though: once you’re in the same place, you’re tuned in to them. 

Unsplash
Each crystal has its own function, normally used as amulets and some of them have a therapeutic effect, focusing on mental illnesses. To understand a little bit more about it, here are some crystals and their characteristics:

  • Rose Quartz: One of the “love stones”, attracting peace and emotional healing. It helps with meditation by increasing your emotional balance when used on the root chakra.
  • Amethyst: The spiritual growing crystal. Improving your levels of concentration helps with meditation. They’re known for their power to protect your heart and mind, reaching the third eye chakra.
  • Quartz Crystal: Because of their powerful vibration, they can act in every situation. Balancing your soul and solidifying your self-esteem, working on the crown chakra.
  • Aquamarine: Based on their relaxing effect, which reduces stress, this crystal calms your thoughts down and elevates your spirituality. It helps with meditation and has the power to block negative energies coming from other people.
  • Citrine: Attracts prosperity, love, and happiness; people normally call them a “piece of the sun”. It has an amazing vibration, being capable of cleaning and energizing itself and crystals around it too. It’s used on the solar plexus chakra, compensating for your self-confidence and braveness.
  • Orange Calcite: Optimizing your joy and enthusiasm, assisting our emotional equilibrium and self-acceptance too. They work on the sacral chakra, improving your creativity and happiness.
  • Red Jasper: People use this one a lot, especially during hardships, by helping us to stay focused and not lose our minds. One of the most used protective crystals in the world, due to its power of blocking negative energies. It´s connected with the root chakra, creating balance and a safety sensation.

If we want to use crystals, we need to do cleaning, energization, and programming rituals. Cleaning rituals are used because all those energies they absorb need to be clean within an estimated period of time, so they can reach their highest performance. We can clean them by using incenses, putting them in water with coarse salt, waterfalls, rivers, seas, or just being next to a Selenite (another crystal, which can clean itself and crystals around it). 

Carole Smile / Unsplash
When we’re powering them up, we can leave them on the floor, taking a sunlight and moonlight bath or putting them above a druse. When we’re programming them, we should say (anyway, mentally or not) their function.

Knowing that each crystal has a natural structure and, in some situations, different ways to be taken care of is essential. Some crystals can’t be cleaned with water, others are affected by sunlight. That´s why we need to search for the best way to preserve them so they can help us!

 

The Body’s Energetic Centers: Chakras

When I was describing crystals, I mentioned the popular word “chakras”, which are nothing more than energetic centers distributed all over our body — reaching our physical and spiritual body. They’re responsible for each part of us and, once they´re misaligned, everything around us turns into a mess.

They can be “fixed” by multiple choices, which can be reikis, meditations, using crystals, chromotherapy, or even with food. We have more than 80 thousand chakras all over our body, however, let´s focus on the main 7:

  1. The Root Chakra: the physical needs chakra is situated on our private parts. The color is red, and we can eat apples or tomatoes for equilibrium. When it’s damaged, it can attract financial difficulty and fatigue.
  2. The Sacral Chakra: the creativity chakra is situated on our belly button. The color is orange, and oranges or pumpkins are recommended for equilibrium. When unbalanced, it can attract fears and guilt.
  3. The Solar Plexus Chakra: the self-strength chakra is located on the top of our belly button. The color is yellow and we can eat bananas or corn for equilibrium. It can, however, attract nervousness and digestive problems when damaged.
  4. The Heart Chakra: the love chakra is between our lungs, close to the heart. The color is green and we can eat green vegetables in general for equilibrium. When it’s out of balance, it can attract sadness and cardiac problems.
  5. The Throat Chakra: the communication chakra is situated on our throat. The color is a lighter shade of blue and we can eat blueberries or figs for equilibrium. It can attract trouble with communication and creativity when put at risk.
  6. The Third Eye Chakra: the intuition chakra resides on our forehead. The color is a darker shade of blue and we can eat grapes or blueberries too for equilibrium. When damaged, it can attract nightmares and headaches.
  7. The Crown Chakra: the illumination chakra’s location is on top of our head. The color is purple and we can take a sunbathe for equilibrium. When it’s damaged, it can attract mental confusion.

You can assemble all this knowledge, for example, a guided meditation with crystals to balance your chakras — and it won’t take you more than 10 minutes. You can put a crystal under your pillow to get a night of better sleep or focus on your breath for 5 minutes every morning. I guarantee that it’ll change everything!

In conclusion, these topics are much more complex than they seem. On the other hand, they’re very necessary, despite being criticized or deemed “silly” by society. When looking deeper into those methods and adapting them to our routine, we can notice that not only them but also everything around us, can be under our control.

 

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The article above was edited by Isabella Gemignani.

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Georgia Ponce

Casper Libero '24

estudante de relações públicas; São Paulo, Brasil; apaixonada em descobrir e adquirir novos conhecimentos.