The Crystal Workshop: A Journey into the Healing Power of Crystals - Azalea Lee 2020

Introduction

Do you want to learn how to work with crystals?

If your answer is yes, this book was written for you.

I HAVE MET SO MANY OF YOU who sincerely want to learn about the crystals. Through your many questions, comments, and concerns, I profoundly hear your longing to understand crystalline energy.

In your desire to understand them, you may have gathered information here and there, hoping that all that you learned would click together and make sense in a deeper way. You found information telling you about the properties of different crystals but scant information on how to actually work with them. What you did find was in bits and pieces and often confusing and contradictory to you.

You couldn’t shake the feeling there was so much more to understand.

Because you intuitively felt the gap between the power you sensed in the crystals and what you understood about them, you came to the conclusion that being in tune with the crystals—being able to understand them, communicate with them, and use them for healing—was only for a select, special few.

This is untrue.

There is a real reason why you are drawn to them.

You have the ability to understand and work with crystals too.

Your understanding of crystals will be forever changed by this book.

Learning about crystals is exactly like learning how to cook. First, you have to get to know your ingredients. Then, you discover techniques for how to cook with them. The more you cook, the more you learn. Over time, you begin to get a feel for what’s too much, what’s too little, and what’s just right. And as you gain experience and skill, you no longer have to depend on the recipes someone else has written. Instead, you are able to develop new dishes based on ingredients and techniques that resonate with you and create new flavor combinations imbued with your own tastes and unique take on the world.

In the same way, you can think of this book as being like a cooking class, but one that teaches you how to “cook” with crystals. You will learn about them, understand how they work, and discover basic techniques to get you started. Then, with practice and experience, you can take these foundational methods and apply them toward more advanced forms of crystal healing. You will learn how to work with the crystals so that you may use their powerful energies to help heal yourself in all areas of your life.

HOW TO APPROACH THIS BOOK

This book is based on my experience working with crystals as a crystal healer as well as what I have found most helpful in teaching others how to use crystalline energy. For those of you just beginning your journey with crystals, this book will be an in-depth study of the basics of crystals. If you already have a connection and practice with the crystals, you are likely to discover new perspectives and approaches to working with them.

This book is different from other crystal books you might have read. Instead of focusing on individual crystals and their properties, I will be teaching you how to work with crystals in a way that gives you a direct, personal experience of their energies. In order to help you do this, I encourage you to connect with the crystals in a firsthand way by simply looking at them in the photographs and noting your reactions toward each of them before reading the captions. Additional information about the crystals in these photographs, including the size and locality of mineral specimens, appears in the Photo Information section in the back of the book. It’s also important that the chapters be read in order, for they have been calibrated to layer the information in such a way as to maximize what you learn. Because of this, it is very important to not jump around from section to section. As you read, you will come across information that will spark related questions, and you will be tempted to skip ahead to another chapter to get your answer. But I urge you to be patient: As the old adage goes, the whole is more than the sum of its parts; and this book has been arranged in such a way that once you’ve completed all of the chapters and exercises in order, you will gain a far more holistic and rewarding understanding of crystalline energy.

This book has been written for someone who has a general idea of spiritual concepts like chakras, vibrations, and energy healing. But even if you don’t know what these things are, don’t worry, keep reading along. Even if you read a thousand poems about falling in love, you won’t truly understand what everyone is making a fuss about until you experience the feeling for yourself. In the same way, true understanding of metaphysical principles comes only with personal experience, and until then the words can only serve as an outline to give you an idea of what you are seeking. But this book has been structured in such a way that you will begin to gain experience with these concepts as you work through it.

Also, by the nature of its multidimensionality, metaphysical information has to be “folded” when put into words, creating a layered quality to the text that reveals more insight over time. So it’s entirely common to read a passage from a metaphysical text, then return to it at a later date and pick up entirely new information, as though you had never read the words before. Thus, metaphysical information can be much like a very intricate connect-the-dots illustration: At first you may see only a patchy outline, but the more personal experience and understanding of each metaphysical concept you gain, the more detailed and rich your picture will become. And because each picture can only continue to gain more definition, wherever you are is as good a starting place to be as any. So don’t worry about what doesn’t make sense now. Over time you’ll understand these concepts better.

Thus, be gentle with yourself and allow yourself to have fun learning about the crystals. As long as you put sincere effort into the exercises and do your best to understand the information that follows, you can expect not only to connect to your own latent crystal abilities but to deepen your intuitive talents on the whole.

Azurites exhibiting different crystal habits

Honoring Your Truth

As you read this book, you may find that what you have learned from other crystal teachers resonates with you more. Because the study of crystals is not a religion and, like most subjects, has different schools of thought, there are ultimately no specific rules or codified guidelines to follow. Because every teacher will have a different opinion, it will be up to you to decide what information best connects with your spiritual energies (though you’ll always know you’re on the right path if what you learn and practice makes you truly feel better).

Thus it is very important to trust your own experience rather than believe what someone else says. This includes anything I write about the crystals. If you disagree with something in this book, that’s okay. Give yourself permission to have a different opinion about part or all of what you learn. This book will hone your intuition and your intuition with crystals, so ultimately it is far more important to trust your own experience than to believe someone else’s truth, including mine.