Crystals for The Autism Spectrum

Apart from all this woo woo stuff that I do, I also have a background in working with children on the Autism Spectrum. Amazing souls who, for whatever reason, struggle more than most of us on this earth plane.

I do not dare to suggest for a moment that working with crystals is going to cure you, someone you know, or your child from Autism. But if you feel yourself drawn to the idea of using crystals yourself, with those on the Autism spectrum, or if you work or live with people with Autism or Aspergers, I hope that this post will give you some guidance on both which crystals to choose and what to do with them once you have them home.

Crystals to use:

<3 Light blue or medium blue crystals - light blue is the colour of the throat chakra and for many on the spectrum communicating with others is a huge struggle. Light blue stones may help to calm anxiety around communication difficulties or even assist with communication capabilities. Some stones include: Kyanite, Angelite, Celestite, Sodalite,Turquoise, Amazonite, Blue Lace Agate or any other blue stones you can find and are drawn to.

<3 Green crystals - green is a very healing and grounding colour and many green stones have healing properties that may help with creating a feeling of calm. Try Green Calcite, Emerald, Malachite, Adventurine or any other green stone you like the look of!

<3 Clear Quartz - a good for everything crystal that you really can't go wrong with. It's great for clearing energies and may be particularly good for those on the spectrum who find themselves feeling very foggy or confused.

<3 Amethyst - a beautiful purple stone which can help to connect you spiritually as well as being a calming and peaceful stones. Also good for headaches (yours and theirs!).

<3 Grounding stones - as people on the spectrum are usually very much in their heads grounding stones can be useful in helping them to get their feet on the ground and connect with the earth. Obsidian, Smoky Quartz, Apache Tears, Black Tourmaline and any other dark coloured stones are great for helping all of us to get back into our bodies and out of the clouds. These stones are also very good for protecting ourselves and our own energy. Put a piece in your child's pocket at school so that they don't come home with anyone else's emotional "stuff". If you yourself are on the spectrum you may find it useful to wear a grounding stone as a necklace, and if you work with or spend a lot of time with people with Autism you may find that a grounding stone can keep you balanced too!

<3 Choose your own stones intuitively! If you are able to, take your child or just yourself along to a new age or crystal store and see which crystals you are drawn to. Quite often I am drawn to crystals I know nothing about, and later when I look them up, I find that they are exactly what I needed. Browse the store quietly and without too much thought and choose the crystals that appeal to you most, or let your child decide. If you can't take your child into a shop like this, choose a few different gems yourself and then see which ones your child is drawn to when you bring them home.

CRYSTALS TO AVOID:

<3 Any high vibrational crystals! Many people on the spectrum are already very high vibrational and what we want to do is help bring that energy into their bodies, we don't want to send them further away. Try to avoid things like - Aqua Aura, Angel Aura, anything incredibly shiny or colourful, anything man made such as Opalite or any of the other Aura Crystals.

<3 If you or your child is particularly drawn to the high vibrational stones (and you/they probably will be!) try your best to keep your use of them to a minimum!!

How to use your crystals:

If you yourself are going to be using these stones you can:

<3 Put them in your pocket and run your hand over them any time you need to during the day.

<3 Sit quietly while watching TV or listening to music and just hold your crystal.

<3 Meditate and place the crystal on your throat, heart or any place on your body that feels right. You may even just like to hold your crystal while you close your eyes.

<3 Put an amethyst next to your bed to help with sleeping

<3 When you feel very far away and not at all in your body grab your grounding stone and go for a walk outside or just take your shoes off and feel the earth.

If you are using your crystals with children you can:

<3 Create all sorts of games and play with the crystals as if they are people or animals or whatever!

<3 Build crystal grids with your child - these are just patterns of crystals e.g. putting out three or four grounding stones and placing other stones between. You can leave these grids out to bring grounding and healing energy into a room or house.

<3 Pop a crystal in your child's pocket or bag so they can take it with them to school.

<3 Leave the crystals on the coffee table so your child can play with them while watching TV.

<3 Place some Obsidian or Black Tourmaline next to or on top of the laptop or computer.

<3 Make a Gem Elixir for a drink! All you need to do to make this quickly is place some crystals around a glass of water for a little while to infuse the crystal energies into your drink!

There are so many ways you can use crystals and so many things you can do with them. The main thing to remember when working with crystals, just as any of the intuitive arts is to go with what feels right to you. Hopefully you will find that you are able to use crystals for the Autism Spectrum, and I do hope and pray that they will bring even just a small amount of healing and grounding to you or your children's lives.

<3 Love, light and healing crystals <3

Vix

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The 2015 energy shift - or why do I feel so freaking weird right now?

I know I'm not the only ungrounded person around right now. The 2015 energy shift I've felt coming into this new year has been intense! So many shiny people on social media have been saying similar things too. It seems a lot of us are feeling a double whammy. We feel better than ever, like we are floating on clouds, in an exciting new head-space full of ideas, inspiration and even productivity! But meanwhile our bodies are telling a different story...

You may have been feeling like this lately:

<3 light-headed or dizzy

<3 ungrounded (more than whatever is 'usual' for you!)

<3 having waaaay too many ideas for your pretty little head

<3 sick - head-colds, nausea, migraines, headaches...

<3 pain somewhere in your body

<3 super excited!

<3 scattered

<3 anxious

<3 nervous (good or bad!)

<3 like your energy isn't in your body properly

<3 out of alignment

<3 any other way your body/mind tells you that you are ungrounded or uncentred

<3 just weird 

At the end of 2014 I had the worst migraine I've had in years. It was horrible. I lost my vision three times (usually it just happens once) and didn't get it back totally for a few days and I was in a seriously crap amount of pain. Then in the days after I just felt weird, I blamed the migraine, but guess what? It's been a couple weeks now and I still feel weird! Peeps on Instagram and FB have been reporting similar disturbances - disconnect, fuzzy, faint, dizzy, werid. OK, I'm a Gemini and I'm pretty scattered most of the time, but the thing is, a lot of other peeps are saying that they don't usually feel like this at all. 

So what the actual is going on? 

OK, so for those who didn't get the Numerology memo 2015 is bringing us into an 8 year which means Abundance City Baby! 2014 was a 7 year, which was basically about learning and working shit out. So for those of us who spent last year reading self help books, chatting with our guides and angels, journalling, asking questions, learning new skills, just thinking - 'what the hell am I supposed to be doing with my life?' and taking any steps big or small towards becoming who we really actually are and doing what we actually came here to do - this shift is HUGE! We actually know now what we are meant to do! I mean OMG! YAY!

WE'VE LEVELLED UP!!

Think of 2014 as level 1, or 2, or whatever level you've been playing at, doesn't matter! As the clock struck midnight bringing us into 2015 we literally levelled up! So here we are now walking around this new level and feeling pretty good about it! It basically looks the same, but there are some slight differences, new challenges, different colours, characters we didn't see before, we might even have a new outfit on or a different hair colour. The old level we were playing at had no challenges left for us!

So really, we are just feeling ungrounded because although we have raised our vibration (or levelled up!) our bodies haven't totally caught up yet!

PLEASE NOTE: Now this isn't medical advice by any means and I'm planning to see a doctor myself to talk about my migraines, and I highly suggest you do the same if you have any health issues, worries or concerns, but if you are just generally feeling ungrounded, perhaps it's just because your body isn't playing at the same level as your higher self is, not just yet anyway!

Try out some of the tips below or check out this post I wrote on grounding:

<3 take a bath

<3 breathe

<3 meditate

<3 eat potatoes - I'm not even joking, very grounding

<3 read... anything. You know I love a good YA book

<3 visualise your energy going back into your body and dropping down a touch

<3 clear your chakras

<3 yoga

<3 stretch

<3 dance

<3 carry crystals - I highly recommend black tourmaline, but any crystal and especially the dark coloured ones are good for serious grounding

<3 get outside as much as you can

<3 drink lots of tea (preferably caffeine free!)

<3 ask the angels, your guides, whoever you work with to help you stay grounded

<3 do all your grounding visualisations - feet as roots!

<3 just say out loud - "I am grounded!"

I hope you all start feeling a little less weird soon, or at least coming to feel normal in your new weird!

And guess what?! There's still time to get a 2015 reading with me! Huzzah! I'd love to help you look at the energies of your 2015 and how to work with them to make this the best year yet! Also make sure to come find me on Facebook for more New Age Hipster goodness, free daily readings and all sorts of fun things!

Sending you all loads of love, light and congratulations on levelling up!

Vix

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Grounding 101

angel feathers and leopard shoes

As an airy fairy air sign (Gemini) who quite literally goes 'off with the fairies', or angels, or just I don't even know where sometimes, grounding myself has been one of the most beneficial things I've worked out how to do. It has made the most amazing difference in how I'm able to connect to my higher self and intuition.

For years I've been floating away. I always had about a gazillion ideas at a time, and with a joyful adventurous spirit this meant I was always doing things like booking international flights on a whim, dating highly inappropriate men, not being able to hold down or have any interest in a real job, and creative projects? Don't even get me started. I had so many I couldn't even tell you them all - I was selling jewelry on Etsy, learning guitar, writing songs, writing Tween fiction, starting and deleting various blogs, acting in short films, dabbling with all sorts of spiritual and religious ideas and I was always out drinking and dancing. So OK, I still do a lot of these things, but now I do them differently. I only go on holidays I can actually afford, I am holding down a real job while I build my business and work on getting my YA novel published and I still enjoy the odd beer. But I feel better. I feel grounded.

What is grounding?

To me grounding is about centering your energy so that it stays in your body and connected to the earth, rather than floating off up and away somewhere else. It's like when you're driving you want your tyres to be on the road right? Not bouncing around like a 4X4 on a bunch of sand dunes.

I was talking to the bf about grounding - he's one of the most grounded people I know - and I while I was trying to explain why I needed to stay grounded and why it was hard sometimes I described it as my energy sometimes feeling like it's slightly higher than my body. Sometimes it feels like my head is kind of above my head!

Berkshire forest fairies

What happens when we're not grounded?

Not being grounded is different for everyone, but some things that happen to me when I'm not grounded are:

<3 Feeling like you're 'miles away' or 'off with the fairies' at inappropriate times (it's OK to be off with the fairies sometimes!)

<3 Feeling lightheaded

<3 Not being able to focus on stuff

<3 Not being able to make or follow through on decisions or plans

<3 Getting sidetracked

<3 Having a lot of awesome ideas but never being able to start, follow through or finish anything

<3 Feeling hyperactive or like you just have too much energy buzzing around you

<3 Feeling anxious and worried

<3 Feeling like your head is above your head!

<3 Zoning out

<3 Racing thoughts, crazy thoughts, random thoughts, or just the general inability to control your thoughts

<3 That feeling like you've had way too much sugar

<3 Being indecisive and 'whatever' about anything from choosing your dinner to finding your new flat

<3 You generally feel like you aren't connected to the earth, nature or this planet

<3 You feel like you are from another planet! (Even Star People need to be grounded!)

I come from a different planet

How will grounding help?

Getting grounded makes you more certain, solid, connected and gives you emotional, spiritual and energetic strength! Think of it as wearing a pair of super comfortable shoes you know you can walk all day in and they look great. Being ungrounded is like wearing flip flops in the middle of winter and being grounded is like wearing a pair of the most comfortable wedge boots ever!

Grounding will will make you feel more centered, and when you start getting your energy centered you start getting more messages from your body, spirit and your higher self.

I know you want to be up there with the Heavens and the Angels getting your guidance first hand, but the reality is that we are on this earth and we need a landline. You can't use your iPhone on a plane (maybe you can if you go first/business class but that ruins my metaphor!), so think of grounding as your landline. The more grounded you are the clearer your signal will be!

grounding crystals

That's great Vix, but HOW do you get grounded?

There's a gazillion ways you can get grounded and you really have to find out what works for you by just trying different stuff, but here's what works for me:

<3 Visualisations - I've used loads of visuals from imagining that my legs are super long and my feet are firmly far below in the earth to the super common imagining tree roots coming out of your feet, growing into the ground and then attaching themselves to a rock or a crystal. I love this one - for a fun twist I imagine golden roots and whatever crystal I feel like I need that day - e.g. I'll tie my golden roots around a huge Citrine crystal if I need an optimistic boost, or Amethyst if I'm going to be doing a lot of tarot.

<3 Balance your chakras - there are a ton of meditations on chakra balancing on the internet, or if you know what you're doing chakra-wise just check in with your chakras, make sure they're balanced and your energy is properly in your body.

<3 Go outside! Hug a tree or take off your shoes and walk on the grass/sand/earth.

<3 Bring pot plants and fresh flowers into your house and add a bunch of earthy-energy!

<3 Crystals! All crystals come from the ground so they are all grounding, but some are super grounding, mostly the black ones like Obsidian and Tourmaline but I also love Dalmatian jasper - it's grounding but a nice joyful stone too.

<3 Meditate. If you are like me and sometimes find this difficult you can get some really nice short guided meditations to help you through. I love Kyle Gray's Angel Meditations and 33 Spirit Journeys by Denise Linn.

<3 Eat food from the earth - not being grounded is a great excuse to eat a baked potato. Not sure how grounding a truck load of butter is though, sorry!

<3 Talk to the fairies and nature spirits. Just saying hi to them can get you more in touch with the earth.

<3 Recycle and make a conscious effort to look after the planet that is our home.

<3 Spend time with animals. Cats are so grounding! Meow!

<3 Wear earthy or dark colours - anything that reminds you of nature.

<3 Paint your nails an earthy colour!

<3 Exercise! Spend time in your body, and you don't just have to do Yoga. You can walk, run, dance, go to the gym, swim, whatever works for you.

<3 Spend some time with the Earth/Coins/Pentacles suit in your Tarot or Angel Tarot deck to soak in the earthy energy.

<3 Surround yourself with grounded people. Don't hang out with Drama Kings and Queens!

<3 Choose to be grounded. Sometimes when I'm feeling weird and don't have time for all this stuff or if I've just accidentally eaten 4 donuts or something I just say out loud if I can, or in my head- "I am grounded" and even that alone makes a world of difference.

Angel Tarot - Nine of Earth, Ace of Earth

I would love to know what you do to stay grounded! Join me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and share your own tips for grounding!

Lots of love, light and good grounding vibes,

Vix

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Vix the New Age Hipster at the Rollright stones

Lessons from the Louniversity

When I signed up for Louise Androlia's Energy Awareness + Surrender Session double whammy I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but I've been following her blog for a while and reading my Tarotscopes every month so I knew that whatever lessons I was going to learn would be totally on my frequency.

Louise is an energy guru and I was so excited to hear her take on how to work with energy. As an empath - you know, those of us who pick up all the energy crap floating around in the air, I have struggled with being able to block negative energy for years. I'm that kind of person that feels what other people feel... If I'm next to someone on the train who is grumpy, I get grumpy! Don't even get me started on how it affects me when someone barges past me in the street - it makes me so damn ANGRY! And I've only recently realised that it's not because it really makes me angry, it's because the person who barges you in the street is generally a very angry person, someone who is angry at life and everything that happens to them... OK, some people do it accidentally but usually they give you a look or say sorry and that's totally a different thing...

When you live your life this way things can get heavy. Constantly picking up on other people's energy is sooooo draining and when we feel drained we don't spend time with friends, we don't crack on with creative projects and we end up living our lives from home to work to home to TV to dinner to bed to work again...

So what do we do about it?! You can do all the visualisations you've read about - the bubble, the mirrors, the cloak. You can buy a bunch of protective crystals - I've been wearing a smoky quartz and that seems to help! You can focus your intention - if you begin to be aware of picking up on energy you're already going to pick up less! But if you are just starting out with this stuff, or if you need a boost to what you are already doing Louise's energy workshops sure will help!

Being surrounded by a bunch of self aware women looking to add something to their personal and spiritual development all afternoon was in itself inspiring and empowering.  Louise lead us through a bunch of energy awareness exercises and continuously dropped so many enlightening phrases and ideas at us so fast I couldn't keep up with my notes! Not only did she share her thoughts and visualisations but there was a real sense during the afternoon that we were all there together, learning from each other as much as we were learning from her. We shared our own ideas, concerns and worries about shielding ourselves and it was the perfect supportive forum to be able to ask anything!

I'm always usually the person up the back of these workshops just chilling, taking notes and keeping to myself, but when Louise asked if anyone wanted to share something they wanted to surrender I felt my hand go up before my brain even thought it was a good idea. I wasn't worried about what anyone was going to think of me and my thing I wanted to surrender because I knew in that moment in that room I was surrounded only by people who were there to support, uplift and encourage each other on our journeys.

Now not everyone can pop into East London for a weekend workshop, but Louise has a fantastic blog on which she shares so many energetic insights and you can find it here.

And I thought I'd finish up this post by sharing a couple of gems I can almost make out in my notes...

<3 your intention (to protect, clear, ground, whatever!) is powerful!

<3 eat more vegetables to feel grounded - sorry guys, sugar is not grounding! :-(

<3 always be in your bubble!

<3 when you are feeling anxious it's because you are not in the present moment - you are too much in the future or the past.

<3 rejection is redirection!

<3 and if someone has something you want (success for example!), that doesn't mean there isn't enough for you too! If they have it, you can have it!

Love, light and lessons from the Louniversity,

Vix

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