Being human means that you are undergoing a spiritual growth process, whether it is acknowledged or not. Everyone has wounds from earlier times. When left unresolved or pushed into the recesses of your consciousness, they can negatively affect your behavior patterns and reactions to life. To progress in life and on your soul path, you must be brave enough to face, heal, and integrate your experiences--especially the difficult emotions and unconscious programs that may have resulted.

Shadow work is a term used to describe the process of becoming consciously aware of parts of the self that have been hidden, buried, or suppressed. Emotions that are judged as negative or unacceptable can be buried in the shadow self--such as shame, fear, anger, jealousy, or hatred. Here are some signs that might indicate the need for deep inner healing and shadow work:

• Feeling overly reactive or triggered by situations or people
• Feeling blocked. Working hard and not getting results
• Being stuck in repeating patterns or situations
• Reacting with excessive aggression or positivity
• Feeling emotionally numb
• Self -sabotage or negative self-talk
• An overwhelming need to please everyone and to be liked

As the planetary energy continues to accelerate and current events pile on more stress, it becomes even more important to do this work. Meditating with the right crystals can certainly help. These four crystals can bring hidden aspects and emotions to the surface, while providing energy to help you heal, clear, and integrate them.

IOLITE

Iolite has been described as a twilight stone, which conjures the feeling of in-between times where night and day are coexisting and both accessible. It opens psychic and intuitive doors to inner realms that might not be perceptible to your everyday awareness—bringing light and consciousness into the darkened corners of your psyche. If you are afraid of going into the dark, Iolite infuses you with calm energy. It gives you the wisdom and support needed to take this worthwhile healing journey, while helping you to remain detached and objective when faced with difficult material that arises.

Meditating with Iolite at the third eye will sharpen your inner vision, psychic senses, and shamanic abilities. It surfaces the hidden issues, patterns, and emotions in order of healing priority and in the form of symbols, feelings, or direct memories. Iolite helps you to find lost or neglected parts of yourself. Once you pinpoint them, Iolite connects you with the higher perspective needed to make peace with the past, to heal, and to reintegrate the fragmented aspects.

APACHE TEARS

This gentle form of Obsidian is a nurturing and grounding presence for anyone who is doing deep inner work. It is especially helpful in healing cases of intense abuse, violence, or trauma, or if you are recovering from grief. When you experience a trauma, emotions can get frozen or trapped in the body. Apache tears can unlock these emotions, allowing them to release from your system.

If you are feeling fragile or overwhelmed, Apache Tears can support you in a gentle way to keep going with your healing work a pace you can manage. It is especially helpful for people who would rather avoid facing their uncomfortable emotions, and instead just focus on love, light, and positivity. Apache Tears encourage you to process your pain, so that you can truly heal and grow from your experiences.

RHODOCHROSITE

If you suspect that you have shadow work to do around childhood wounds or past emotional trauma, Rhodochrosite is an excellent choice. Its mission is to help you love yourself unconditionally and to heal your heart from past hurts. Its nurturing, compassionate energy infuses you with love, helping you to feel how precious and worthy you are. Self-love and self-care are the first steps in any healing process.

Rhodochrosite brings to the surface old emotional wounds, traumas, repressed feelings, and anything you have stuffed away because it was too difficult to accept or process at the time. It supports you in facing what happened and understanding the higher purpose, reasons, and lessons behind it. This allows you to access forgiveness and release it from a space of spiritual awareness and love. Rhodochrosite provides the energy necessary to clear the old emotional blockages and to gently mend any holes or damage around the heart chakra and emotional body where the emotional injury took place. It also helps you to assimilate the wisdom gained from these experiences, which creates a complete healing.

NUUMMITE

Nuummite is an ancient stone from Greenland that is dark with flashes of iridescent color. It is one the one to try if you feel that you have lost soul fragments or that you need to do past-life or karmic work to heal your shadows. It can be used to facilitate soul retrieval. When a person has a traumatic experience, part of the soul can splinter off due to the impact of the event. In meditation, Nuummite can help you locate and pull those lost parts back so that they can be healed and brought home.

Nuummite works on the level of the deep subconscious mind and the etheric blueprint to clear trapped and hidden energies and emotions—especially related to trauma, fear, shame, and misuse of power. The etheric blueprint programs the formation of your physical body and carries patterns from other lifetimes that can affect the current one. Nuummite can help you trace the root causes of issues and difficult emotions, whether they originate in this life or in other lifetimes, so that you can heal them at the source and stop karmic patterns from continuing. It helps you to dig deep and connect to such a high place that you can find love and acceptance for the parts of yourself that you have vilified and rejected.

A wise and beloved employee at Nature’s Treasures named Linda once told me this: The bigger the light, the bigger the shadow. Shadow work isn’t easy, but the rewards are great. If the process gets too intense, please seek out a qualified therapist for guidance and support. We all need help sometimes. It will all be worth it when your power and energy is free to create new and beautiful things in your life.

-- Adrienne Goff  is an author, healer, and teacher with a specialty in the healing crystalline kingdom. Through her courses, Adrienne has taught hundreds of people how to connect with crystals and gems to affect healing, self-discovery, and spiritual advancement. www.adriennegoff.com