This week I mentioned Rhodochrosite in my Tarot of the Week for the Three of Swords, and with some hard heart situations for me this week, as well as the holidays coming up, I thought it was the perfect time to discuss the tunning Rhodochrosite.
A few years before I began taking my coursework for my Crystal Healing Certification, I had a normal kind of week. My third eye was very open to signs, coincidence and messages from my guides. Really, what I had been doing was intensely working with crystals to open my third eye. At the time, I didn't much work with heart chakra stones on my own. Funnily, though, when working with other healers, they all felt that my heart was almost entirely closed. Years of grief and isolation closed up my ability to give and receive love properly. Man, did I really have that upside down! The heart is the way to the third eye. All the lower chakras are keys to psychic work. In fact, you must must must balance the other chakras. It is imperative to not only good physical health, but psychic, emotional and mental health. I didn't know. All I wanted was to have these messages I had been getting all my life to be clear, for me to see what I needed to see. Clarity was my goal.
For that week, it seemed every book I opened mentioned Rhodochrosite. A crystal card would fall out of the pack and inevitably there would be Rhodochrosite staring at me from the floor. I turned on one of my favorite Blog Talk Radio show and they mentioned Rhodochrosite, which is strange, because it is not a common stone, per se. It culminated to a weekend class I took where the instructor was wearing a massive pendant of, you guessed it, Rhodochrosite. It was so stunningly beautiful, so rich in texture and color, I was in love. And in that one week, I had no less that six signs about Rhodochrosite. A few weeks later, at a gem show, I found an entire jar of natural Rhodochrosite, and bought it up, then began working with it.
It was then that I really heard the message my guides had been telling me. Fix the heart, and the psychic abilities will follow. And so, in earnest, I began really focusing on any heart blockages. See, I thought that if my heart was open, I would be a gaping wound, ready to be easily injured. That also is a heart chakra imbalance, the one of being too open.
This long opening (sorry!) is a way of reminding you to pay attention to your guides, and the crystals they are bringing into your life. Let every interaction be a conversation with your guides, angels, and the Divine. If you spend a day in that kind of receptive space, it is amazing what you find out about how to heal your own spirit, and truly, how to be of service to others. When I began reading and working with Rhodochrosite, I simply could not believe how perfect it was for me and where I was in my healing. This is why I think it is so important for people to head to a crystal shop and just take off your reading glasses, so to speak. Just go where you want to go, touch the stones you want to touch, place them on your third eye or heart,and feel the energy. Choose based on what you are most attracted to, either visually attracted to, or vibrationally attracted to.
So, Rhodochrosite is a stone of self-love and self-compassion. With a Mohs hardness of 3.5-4 (watch for water), it grows in a hexagonal system (trigonal too), and so it is great for five pointed star grids, for my grid students. Where Rhodochrosite's beautiful healing is most felt is in the wake of trauma and healing. It helps gently move the energy away from this fear for survival to trusting again. It is also wonderful to remembering those repressed memories that have created energetic blockages. But without the kind of extreme, demanding memories that mark say working with Malachite. Not that Malachite is bad, but it simply is less gentle than Rhodochrosite for this heart healing work.
Interestingly, Naisha Ahsian notes that it is a great heart bridge for lower chakra and upper chakra work, which is exactly why my guides were probably pushing this stone at that exact time. For me, the key to Rhodochrosite, what made it such a game changer in my life, lies in the concept of self-compassion. There is a wonderful book by a psychologist Laura Neff called Self-Compassion. She lays out very specific ways to work with this concept. For me, Rhodochrosite IS the stone of self-compassion. If we see self-compassion tweaked and moved into an unhealthy place, it is self-pity. Self-pity, I like to say, is self-compassion run riot. Self-compassion isn't "Poor Me;" it is an acknowledgement that what we went through was suffering. We sit with it without running the story line over and over again. We simply let ourselves feel the grief, as we would with another. We hold ourselves. And then we move to the next feelings. Rhodochrosite remains the best ally we have for this heart chakra work.
Personally, I think Rhodochrosite resonates beautifully with the energy of Dravite, or Champagne Tourmaline, and Almandine Garnet. These are Root Chakra stones that really can support and ground your self-compassion work. The grids I have created when doing self-compassion and healing work have included these three stones.
A beautiful affirmation for Rhodochrosite is
I heal all wounds from this life, past lives and future lives with compassion, attention and love.