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Unearthing the Power of Stone Medicine with Sarah Thomas · The Seed Project

• 0:02
  Charlotte: Welcome to The Seed Project.
• 0:05
  Charlotte: It's a podcast that nourishes your heart, mind, and soul.
• 0:09
  Charlotte: I'm your host, Charlotte Edwards.
• 0:12
  Charlotte: I believe everyone plants a seed in each other, whether it's a seed of knowledge, inspiration, or impact.
• 0:19
  Charlotte: I created this podcast so we could have real conversations, create connections, and grow into the best versions of ourselves.
• 0:27
  Charlotte: Everyone has a story to tell, so let's share ours together to empower, heal, and grow.
• 0:32
  Charlotte: Laugh and learn.
• 0:34
  Charlotte: Grab a cup of coffee and let's start planting.
• 0:42
  Charlotte: Hi, everyone.
• 0:43
  Charlotte: Thanks for joining me today.
• 0:45
  Charlotte: I'm really excited to have Sarah Thomas on the podcast Sarah is an inspired healer and educator who owns clarity acupuncture in Asheville, North Carolina.
• 0:56
  Charlotte: She has also founded the upper clarity school of stone medicine in 2013.
• 1:02
  Charlotte: Sarah has developed north Carolina's first studies in mineral healing program.
• 1:07
  Charlotte: She teaches yearly at the earth medicine conferences across the United States and certified students across the world and a thriving online certification program.
• 1:17
  Charlotte: That's rooted in ancient Taoists tradition of stone medicine.
• 1:22
  Charlotte: Sarah's owned out is to resurrect the vast knowledge and uncharted potentials.
• 1:27
  Charlotte: If healing and awakening with stones and crystals.
• 1:32
  Charlotte: Sarah, good morning.
• 1:33
  Charlotte: How are you?
• 1:34
  Sarah: Good, Charlotte.
• 1:36
  Sarah: How are you?
• 1:37
  Charlotte: I'm good.
• 1:38
  Charlotte: I'm good.
• 1:39
  Charlotte: sarah, you, have your upper clarity school of stone medicine.
• 1:44
  Charlotte: can you tell us a little bit what drew you to stone medicine and how you got into stone medicine?
• 1:50
  Sarah: Sure.
• 1:51
  Sarah: Um, you know, stone medicine is just for people who are like, what is this?
• 1:58
  Sarah: It is kind of just a different way to say crystal healing.
• 2:02
  Sarah: and when we say stone medicine, We're almost saying herbal medicine because we're going way back in time to ancient Daoist China where they were cataloging all these herbs, all these trees, all these animal parts, all these rocks, all these plants.
• 2:19
  Sarah: And This is like the largest body of, of kind of mineral medicinal uses in the history of our world that we know of, or that's intact.
• 2:30
  Sarah: And so when we say stone medicine, it's almost like we're saying herbal medicine, just so you know.
• 2:35
  Sarah: And then we use the stones for healing, just like people would in crystal healing, which started more like in the 1970s.
• 2:43
  Sarah: and stone medicine is also, you know, if you trace its roots back, it is...
• 2:50
  Sarah: Originally it was like people were not only using stones and plants for healing and longevity, but they started to realize that stones had these interesting spiritual properties and they started to work with stones to achieve immortality or transcendence or spiritual awakening.
• 3:09
  Sarah: And they would sit around these cauldrons.
• 3:12
  Sarah: And, the, the extensive nature in which they Gathered the stones harvested them created fires around these cauldrons for nine months at a time where there was always an attendant They would work on these Formulas so deeply so much alchemy, right?
• 3:30
  Sarah: Because you think of turning lead into gold all of that goes back to ancient Daoist China alchemy and then they would work with these medicines that were coming out of the cauldron to, try to achieve immortality.
• 3:43
  Sarah: And many of these magicians, stone medicine practitioners, they were hired by courts and emperors to, help them heal or, you know, emperors always want to stay alive because they're the king.
• 3:54
  Sarah: So they always wanted these pills of immortality.
• 3:57
  Sarah: And nonetheless.
• 3:59
  Sarah: They worked with stones like that, so it's the whole range of crushing them up, materially ingesting them to treat things like syphilis and skin rashes and, fever and things like that, and then all the way to the other side of the spectrum of working with them spiritually, for spiritual awakening.
• 4:16
  Sarah: And now today, we kind of call it crystal healing, but crystal healing, I think that word kind of woke 70s.
• 4:24
  Sarah: And people started channeling things like from Atlantis and stuff.
• 4:28
  Sarah: And they said, Oh, we've got to put crystals on the chakras.
• 4:30
  Sarah: And there was like a channeling aspect back to old cultures, but the two do intersect.
• 4:35
  Sarah: So I am an acupuncturist and because I'm an acupuncturist, my background's in Chinese medicine.
• 4:42
  Sarah: And through that background in Chinese medicine is how I found these ancient roots of stone medicine and was able to start practicing.
• 4:51
  Sarah: Stone medicine.
• 4:51
  Sarah: So that's, that's why I started a stone medicine school, the upper clarity school of stone medicine that you mentioned.
• 4:57
  Sarah: And so that's kind of context a little bit.
• 5:00
  Sarah: And I got into it because I was a healer and becoming an acupuncturist.
• 5:05
  Sarah: And then I, I got really blessed to study this deep old lineage of stone medicine.
• 5:11
  Sarah: Um, with a really special teacher and I've been doing that for like 20 years or so.
• 5:15
  Sarah: So healing with the stones and learning about the stones and all these things is, it's kind of like crystal healing, but it's kind of not.
• 5:22
  Charlotte: who was your teacher that you started studying with?
• 5:26
  Sarah: when I went to school to start studying Taoism.
• 5:30
  Sarah: I was really lucky to go to the, actually this school was just incredible, I won't go on, but I got really lucky to go to this great school and my first teachers were actually named Bob Duggan and Diane Connolly and they really changed me and I got a really great education and then my last year of acupuncture school when I was practicing in the clinic.
• 5:48
  Sarah: Um, doing the clinical work and all that, I got to go study in New York City with an 88th generation Taoist priest to study the crystal medicine specifically.
• 5:59
  Sarah: And so I would go up there for a year and that became like a long, a long practice of really learning from him.
• 6:06
  Sarah: And when I first started going up there, it was so far above, it was so advanced from what I had even learned in acupuncture master's degree.
• 6:16
  Sarah: It was so advanced from that.
• 6:19
  Sarah: All my notebooks from that time, like I, I can't even discern what the words say.
• 6:22
  Sarah: All the words are spelled wrong.
• 6:24
  Sarah: You can see me just trying to keep up and trying to keep up, like just a massive leap that has taken me so many years to, continue to digest.
• 6:33
  Sarah: So he's an actual, his name's Jeffrey CUN.
• 6:36
  Sarah: He's a, he's an actual 80th generation priest of the Jade period purity lineage.
• 6:41
  Sarah: And he's, um, a Chinese man living in New York city,
• 6:45
  Charlotte: what a special experience.
• 6:48
  Sarah: Well, when it came up, it was one of those things that I was like, I don't care what I have to do.
• 6:53
  Sarah: if the program was in our Antarctica, I would have went, I was so clear that I had to go do that.
• 6:58
  Sarah: And it was 2, 000 to study for the whole year with him in New York city.
• 7:03
  Sarah: It's very reasonable.
• 7:05
  Sarah: but I didn't have that.
• 7:05
  Sarah: I was a waitress and I did not have any savings.
• 7:08
  Sarah: Like I was just waitressing and living kind of like day by day.
• 7:12
  Sarah: And I remember asking my dad.
• 7:14
  Sarah: Which was hard to like just go to my dad and be like, can I have 2, 000 because at the time that was like more Like 5, 000 today and he kind of didn't say anything and just kind of stared at me and I was like listen, I have to go study this and he was like mmm and I was living in Washington, D.
• 7:31
  Sarah: C.
• 7:31
  Sarah: at the time going to my master's program and, and a few days later, a few weeks later, I just got this check in the mail for 2, 000 with like nothing connected to it, but it was like his blessing and I paid for the course and went so I would have done anything I would have done anything to go to that.
• 7:47
  Sarah: Like, you know, that clarity you get sometimes in life about what you have to do.
• 7:51
  Charlotte: Yeah.
• 7:51
  Charlotte: You just have a strong, strong sense of clarity of a calling.
• 7:55
  Charlotte: Like this was meant for you.
• 7:56
  Charlotte: This situation or this experience was put in front of me and I need to go all in
• 8:03
  Sarah: Yeah, that I love that feeling.
• 8:05
  Sarah: It's like nothing will stop me.
• 8:06
  Sarah: I mean, I love that feeling.
• 8:07
  Sarah: I feel like there's just some like a few times in life we get like such great clarity like that's pretty special.
• 8:12
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 8:12
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 8:12
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Charlotte: and how special for you to get that blessing from your dad.
• 8:17
  Charlotte: He might not have understood what you wanted to do, because would you say this was like 15 years ago
• 8:23
  Sarah: probably 20 years ago now, I was probably around 24.
• 8:26
  Charlotte: About 20 years ago, your dad was probably like, so what are you really going to do, or did he understand what your purpose was?
• 8:32
  Charlotte: Cause you were studying acupuncture and you were getting into different ways of healing more than the traditional route.
• 8:39
  Charlotte: Did he understand what you're.
• 8:43
  Charlotte: Goal was, or what you were trying to achieve, or he was just like, I love you and I believe in you,
• 8:50
  Sarah: He just trusted me.
• 8:51
  Sarah: I mean, he didn't even know what acupuncture was.
• 8:53
  Sarah: It's not like anybody in our family ever had acupuncture.
• 8:55
  Sarah: Like it, you know, yeah, he just trusted me.
• 8:58
  Sarah: He had no idea what I was talking about,
• 9:00
  Charlotte: right?
• 9:01
  Sarah: but it goes to show like, if you see that, like, look in your kid's eyes, even if it's like the weirdest thing that they're saying they want to do, like we should trust that because now I'm like that seed of 2, 000 became like my entire.
• 9:14
  Sarah: Like life.
• 9:15
  Charlotte: Your whole livelihood.
• 9:16
  Charlotte: You've been doing this, 20 plus years.
• 9:18
  Charlotte: Oh,
• 9:19
  Sarah: And I, it was funny because a few years ago I paid him back.
• 9:22
  Charlotte: that's awesome.
• 9:24
  Sarah: I brought cash into his house.
• 9:26
  Sarah: He didn't ask for it back, but it touched him that I said, okay, then you got me there.
• 9:31
  Charlotte: That is so cool.
• 9:33
  Charlotte: Come full circle.
• 9:35
  Charlotte: okay, well then let's just go backwards even a little bit more.
• 9:38
  Charlotte: No one in your family had done acupuncture.
• 9:41
  Charlotte: What made you decide to do acupuncture?
• 9:45
  Sarah: Good question.
• 9:45
  Sarah: So I was in college.
• 9:46
  Sarah: I went to Penn State and I was studying art and we had one of my best friends had her mom was the starter of the holistic healing program at Penn State University and because she started that program She had all of these, researchers and scientists and healers that she was connected to that she was bringing in to start that program to teach and one of them was an Indian woman named Sucheta and she was an ex NASA engineer because she quit working at NASA to become an acupuncturist and she was wicked smart and just like, she would, she wouldn't let you get away with anything.
• 10:25
  Sarah: She was so profound and so, you know.
• 10:27
  Sarah: My friend's mom was like, you all should start go seeing Sucheta for acupuncture and, I was like, okay, and I went in and saw Sucheta and she absolutely changed my life.
• 10:36
  Sarah: Like that first treatment just changed my life.
• 10:39
  Sarah: I had never had somebody be so present with me.
• 10:41
  Sarah: I don't think in my whole life.
• 10:44
  Sarah: Her eyes were like laser presence and, and I couldn't hide, you know, I mean, as a kid at that time, I was smoking weed all the time and just like partying and I probably had a lot of issues like we all did at that time, but, um, I couldn't hide from her.
• 11:00
  Sarah: And she looked at me and gave me these treatments that just, like, stripped me bare and completely reset me and the magic that I experienced with her was, you know, like, went deep.
• 11:14
  Sarah: It really affected me really deeply.
• 11:16
  Charlotte: Oh, intense, but how powerful.
• 11:19
  Sarah: Oh, the first treatment she gave me, I, the very first time I went in there, I was, she had, she gave me a treatment that I was sitting up.
• 11:28
  Sarah: And, um, sitting up on the healing table and so much energy was leaving my body.
• 11:36
  Sarah: It had so much to do with all of the pot smoke, like it was, and the smoke that my dad smoked growing up.
• 11:43
  Sarah: it was like massive amounts of debris toxicity and non presence were moving from my body and detoxing from me so massively that I had to ask her for the trashcan.
• 11:57
  Sarah: And I am not a thrower upper.
• 11:59
  Sarah: I am not a thrower upper.
• 12:00
  Sarah: And I was like, I have to throw up.
• 12:03
  Sarah: And then after I released all that, I just, I couldn't even sit there anymore.
• 12:07
  Sarah: I had to lay down on my side because there was needles in my back.
• 12:10
  Sarah: And I laid down on my side and just was like, like, I was clear.
• 12:15
  Sarah: I could see the world.
• 12:16
  Sarah: I could see the paint on the walls.
• 12:18
  Sarah: I could see the color.
• 12:20
  Sarah: And she just looked at me and she looked at me with so much presence, And I just started crying, these tears down my eyes, and she watched me cry, and I mean, she was amazing, her presence was amazing, and I, I quit smoking after the first treatment.
• 12:36
  Sarah: Um, so, yeah, she's a really magical person, and a few years later, I was like, I can be an acupuncturist.
• 12:44
  Charlotte: What a gift, what a gift, especially to be in college.
• 12:47
  Charlotte: And I mean, none of us know, we go to college, but do we really, truly.
• 12:52
  Charlotte: Know what we want to do our life path or have that clarity and for her to give you that gift and kind of Unveil that and obviously she knew that this was a calling for her to say, I work at NASA and now I'm going to leave and become an acupuncturist.
• 13:08
  Charlotte: but she had to have some deep calling of her healing power that she was going to leave this successful career and start something new.
• 13:17
  Charlotte: And look what a profound experience it had on you and probably all of her other students.
• 13:24
  Sarah: Yeah, it really does speak to, the power of destiny.
• 13:27
  Charlotte: Right.
• 13:29
  Charlotte: Yeah, for sure.
• 13:30
  Charlotte: And what a beautiful gift for your twenties that changed the whole trajectory of your life.
• 13:36
  Sarah: Yeah, it totally did.
• 13:38
  Sarah: It totally did.
• 13:39
  Sarah: And I had a natural healer in me too.
• 13:41
  Sarah: it was almost like finding something inside me that had been there all along too.
• 13:45
  Sarah: So it wasn't like I had to figure out how to be a healer.
• 13:47
  Sarah: It was so innate in me for some reason.
• 13:51
  Sarah: it was just landing on the path of what I already was in a way.
• 13:54
  Charlotte: Were you able to study acupuncture at Penn State or did you have to finish your degree at Penn State and then go to an acupuncturist school?
• 14:01
  Sarah: I was an art student and learning art ed, so I got to take a few classes in that holistic healing program that I was talking about, and that was cool because I learned a lot actually from these really cool vibrational scientists and stuff, and then, yeah, I didn't get to study acupuncture until I actually went to acupuncture school.
• 14:19
  Charlotte: You had an acupuncturist, practice for many years.
• 14:22
  Charlotte: Do you still currently have that?
• 14:25
  Sarah: I practiced for about 15 years in Asheville, and I had a really busy practice and the clinic and, It was great.
• 14:36
  Sarah: And then I stopped practicing right when COVID hit.
• 14:42
  Sarah: for all of these convergent reasons, but it was like COVID and everybody shutting down their healing practices was the thing that tipped me over the edge and let me let go of that, um, because I was already teaching.
• 14:55
  Sarah: so then I really just started focusing on teaching and COVID was the thing that slapped me off the horse and let all these convergent factors of me moving on take place.
• 15:04
  Sarah: So I have now just been kind of treating friends and family and let go of the.
• 15:08
  Sarah: Seeing multiple patients in multiple rooms, five days a week kind of lifestyle.
• 15:13
  Charlotte: Let that go and then started teaching.
• 15:15
  Charlotte: That leads us back to stay medicine.
• 15:19
  Charlotte: When you said that you wanted to start teaching, did you want to teach acupuncture or you decided this was now your calling to branch off?
• 15:28
  Charlotte: More so into the stone medicine path.
• 15:32
  Sarah: Um, you know, honestly, I had been teaching since 2013, but I was just like teaching on the side and teaching on weekends and stuff.
• 15:37
  Sarah: And in 2018, I started teaching pretty full time.
• 15:40
  Sarah: And there was like two years in there, 2018, 2019, 2020, that I was practicing a lot and teaching a lot.
• 15:46
  Sarah: So the teaching was already happening in a big way.
• 15:50
  Sarah: And then just I let go of the practice.
• 15:52
  Sarah: But yeah, the teaching is all around the stone medicine and crystal healing.
• 15:56
  Sarah: And I do teach a lot of acupuncture within that, the greatest acupuncture points to put the crystals on, how to activate the acupuncture points with the crystals, all of the things that I've learned about healing.
• 16:07
  Sarah: So now it's like people come to my classes because they want to learn stone medicine, but they're definitely getting a lot of, uh, Chinese medicine and acupuncture within that.
• 16:16
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Charlotte: For someone who's never really had any kind of stone medicine or Chinese medicine, what, for being naive, would it be just to have clarity yourself?
• 16:30
  Charlotte: Would it be to heal an ailment?
• 16:32
  Charlotte: I guess to understand the power and the presence of stone medicine?
• 16:37
  Sarah: You know, it's such a good question because it's true holistic medicine and medicine from the East had a way of just retaining this is oneness.
• 16:47
  Sarah: This is wholeness.
• 16:48
  Sarah: This is holistic.
• 16:49
  Sarah: So we never cut out the spirit.
• 16:52
  Sarah: We never cut out the emotions.
• 16:53
  Sarah: When we look at healing, it's like it was said a long time ago that the first, the first layer of healing or the lowest grade of healing would be to fix someone's symptoms.
• 17:06
  Sarah: And then when you get better, it's like the next level of healing, like the next higher grade is when the practitioner actually strengthens your strengths.
• 17:13
  Sarah: They stop focusing on what's wrong with you and they start focusing on what's right with you and helping you flourish and activating this flourishing of your gifts.
• 17:22
  Sarah: And they start talking more about your gifts and they do these points and treatments that illuminate your gifts instead of focusing on your symptoms.
• 17:30
  Sarah: And then the next level of healing, the highest level of healing.
• 17:34
  Sarah: It's actually the practitioner helps you realize your destiny.
• 17:37
  Sarah: They help you realize why you're here on earth and how you can kind of clinch that destiny and not only realize it, but actualize it and live out your whole purpose of coming to earth and which are these incredibly sacred reasons that we come to earth.
• 17:53
  Sarah: It, it blows me away when, when these are unveiled at people They're, they're so sacred.
• 17:59
  Sarah: They'll make you cry.
• 17:59
  Sarah: I mean, they're holy.
• 18:00
  Sarah: It's the reasons that we come here are so unique and varied.
• 18:03
  Sarah: and, but when you really see like what they really are, it's, it's never about like starting a business or making money or like the thing that you did, it's some, it's this like incredible transformation of the spirit that we come here for.
• 18:15
  Sarah: And so the highest level of healing is when the practitioner is really meeting you there.
• 18:20
  Sarah: I think that's like really the gift of real, I mean, it's, it's one way to talk about holistic medicine.
• 18:26
  Charlotte: Right.
• 18:27
  Charlotte: If someone was to start, let's say I want a stone, would you say I want a stone medicine treatment?
• 18:33
  Charlotte: What would I have to go to an acupuncturist?
• 18:35
  Charlotte: If I was intrigued about it and wanted to.
• 18:40
  Charlotte: Experience this, what is the best way for someone to start or get introduced to stone medicine?
• 18:47
  Sarah: Well, I think as far as the way you'll find it, there's not many crystal healers out there.
• 18:53
  Sarah: So if you just Google around, are there crystal healers in my town?
• 18:56
  Sarah: You might find a couple.
• 18:57
  Sarah: Most crystal healers are It's under the title of acupuncturist or Reiki practitioner.
• 19:03
  Sarah: I think energy medicine modalities, it's vibrational healing modalities, it's craniosacral therapy.
• 19:11
  Sarah: So you kind of find people working with crystals like among those, and you usually don't know what's going to happen.
• 19:16
  Sarah: So you get there because they're not saying on their website, like first, this is about crystal healing or anything.
• 19:22
  Charlotte: Well, cause would you say that, a lot of people just say that's just woo woo do you get that a lot?
• 19:28
  Charlotte: Or, I guess in your circle, in your bubble everyone, understands holistic healing and different modalities, but to the.
• 19:38
  Charlotte: Larger population, do you get a lot of, is that real?
• 19:43
  Charlotte: Is that woo woo?
• 19:44
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Charlotte: that can't happen.
• 19:46
  Charlotte: How are you getting, this treatment from a rock?
• 19:49
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 19:50
  Sarah: Totally.
• 19:50
  Sarah: Everybody in the West is like, I mean, if you listen to anyone's podcast or anything going on, everyone's just crystals are woo woo, or this is woo woo, or I don't want to get all woo woo on you.
• 20:01
  Sarah: And then they'll actually say, I don't want to get all crystal healing on you.
• 20:05
  Sarah: I've heard that term on someone's podcast in LA.
• 20:08
  Sarah: They're like, I'm not going to take this all like crystal healing level.
• 20:10
  Sarah: So it's like all one big joke of what is Unfounded and so out there that there's no ground to it.
• 20:18
  Sarah: And it's really silly for most people.
• 20:20
  Sarah: I mean, that's like in the collective Western.
• 20:24
  Sarah: Culture.
• 20:24
  Sarah: And I've even, I was in the newspaper once for just doing stone medicine and they took pictures of me like with all my stones in my office and stuff.
• 20:32
  Sarah: And it was so funny, the comments on that article, because the comments were like, you know, people are meaner when they're online and they don't actually have to speak to someone's face, but all these men were, it would just happen to be all these men, but they were commenting like.
• 20:48
  Sarah: This is so dumb.
• 20:49
  Sarah: This takes so much credibility away from all actual healing.
• 20:52
  Sarah: Like, what kind of crap is this?
• 20:54
  Sarah: And saying, they even said, you're actually taking people back who are trying to make things like acupuncture and chiropractic more credible.
• 21:04
  Sarah: You're like taking them back and, and making them less credible just by even talking about this.
• 21:09
  Sarah: So, I mean, like a lot of nasty things came out about it, but, you know, in the past, like, It's like how could crystals not be healing tools?
• 21:18
  Sarah: Everything is, everything is.
• 21:20
  Sarah: Trees, seeds, nuts, grains, flowers, like we have found that everything on this earth has a purpose, you know, everything on this earth has a vibration.
• 21:29
  Sarah: And when you, when you can like harness that vibrational resonance, you can bring it into resonance with something else.
• 21:37
  Sarah: And if you can bring those two things into resonance, any two things that come into resonance will exchange information and that's transformational.
• 21:44
  Sarah: So.
• 21:45
  Sarah: As we have moved into more like, it's an old way of looking at things, but it's the new way of looking at things too, because it's like quantum physics is proving these things, but as we move more into kind of like a, a quantum, we realize that, that everything's energy frequency and vibration, I mean, it's silly to think that rocks and stones and crystals would be the one thing on this earth that don't heal or don't have medicine or don't have a meaning.
• 22:12
  Sarah: Like, why would they be the one thing?
• 22:14
  Charlotte: Right, right.
• 22:16
  Charlotte: Yeah.
• 22:16
  Charlotte: And I think it's, it's also like anything else you're quick to judge without being informed or being educated.
• 22:26
  Charlotte: And as I, Went back and got a degree in holistic nursing, and it opened up my eyes and my mind to figure out a way to try to blend both.
• 22:42
  Charlotte: I work in the Western world in a hospital, and then having this degree and all my fabulous instructors on all these.
• 22:54
  Charlotte: Ancient healing practices, modern healing practices, and figuring out how you can blend both.
• 23:01
  Charlotte: I truly do believe Western world saves your life.
• 23:04
  Charlotte: it's there for a purpose.
• 23:06
  Charlotte: And obviously with my story, I wouldn't be alive and my son wouldn't be alive without Western medicine.
• 23:13
  Charlotte: But as I'm learning and educating myself more, my day to day life.
• 23:20
  Charlotte: Eastern medicine helps me more.
• 23:22
  Charlotte: It helps me with my breathing techniques.
• 23:24
  Charlotte: Meditation.
• 23:25
  Charlotte: It helps me when I'm out in nature and all the healing benefits of that, and I think to have a more holistic lifestyle, you need a blend of both, you know, Eastern medicine is what's going to take you day to day and.
• 23:42
  Charlotte: Western medicine definitely serves its purpose, for times of crisis or, big diagnoses things like that.
• 23:51
  Charlotte: Just trying to blend both
• 23:52
  Sarah: I totally agree.
• 23:53
  Sarah: I used to, when I was young, I was super biased against Western medicine because I would get all these patients that were like, they put me on this drug and now I have all these side effects and it's not even working.
• 24:03
  Sarah: And I used to be very judgmental about Western medicine.
• 24:07
  Sarah: And as I grew up, you know, I, I realized that, gosh, how much, how many people in my life has Western medicine like helped and saved?
• 24:15
  Sarah: Um, now it has hurt people too, but, uh, yeah.
• 24:19
  Sarah: Yeah, I've definitely gotten to where you are with it's not either or it's both and.
• 24:24
  Charlotte: what do you think about I know you have a crystal shop, and I've seen crystal shops here in Charleston, of people just going and buying crystals.
• 24:31
  Charlotte: is that something that someone could do, or do you need to really understand, what Crystal could benefit you, or is it better to go learn from a practitioner or acupuncturist and have someone, do a treatment for you,
• 24:48
  Sarah: Oh, there is such a great place for, um, working with yourself and following your intuition and following that.
• 24:55
  Sarah: personal relationship that you can cultivate on your own with stones and crystals.
• 24:59
  Sarah: Yeah, I really believe in that.
• 25:01
  Sarah: It seems like the first step on the path, really.
• 25:04
  Charlotte: Let's say we had anxiety or just wanted to open up their heart center.
• 25:08
  Charlotte: is there something that you would recommend or could they come to your website and learn about it?
• 25:14
  Charlotte: And I guess I'm just trying to understand for somebody who's never been exposed to it, what's the best way to kind of introduce them
• 25:23
  Sarah: Oh, that's
• 25:23
  Charlotte: about it versus them just going like, for me, I would go into a crystal shop and I'd be Oh, this color's pretty.
• 25:29
  Charlotte: and buying it more from.
• 25:31
  Charlotte: Purple's my favorite color.
• 25:32
  Charlotte: So I would go by and, an amethyst looking one where I don't have a clue to what that rock would mean.
• 25:43
  Sarah: right.
• 25:43
  Sarah: Right.
• 25:44
  Sarah: Well, the first thing to, I think, imprint upon your listeners is that you never pick anything up by accident.
• 25:52
  Sarah: And whatever you touch, there was always a vibrational attraction like that actually vibrationally attracted to you, attracted you.
• 25:59
  Sarah: And color might be something that is easy for you to enter.
• 26:03
  Sarah: I mean, it's easy for all of us to enter because we start learning about color when we're in kindergarten.
• 26:07
  Sarah: And it's like we have a connection to that and color has a pretty strong, uh, connection.
• 26:12
  Sarah: It just comes right into our eyes.
• 26:13
  Sarah: It's easy.
• 26:14
  Sarah: So a lot of people do get that vibrational attraction through color, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't an actual vibrational attraction.
• 26:22
  Sarah: It doesn't mean there's a reason that you like purple.
• 26:25
  Sarah: There's a reason that you would go in and pick up a purple stone, but to your question to be a little bit more specific, if we wanted to speak about color really quick, you said that the heart, maybe someone wants to work with their heart or has anxiety.
• 26:38
  Sarah: So we work with color through something called five element phenomena, and it just means that, you know, the heart is always the color red in our Daoist tradition.
• 26:50
  Sarah: And this is phenomenological through nature too, because the heart is fire and fires are kind of red and the kidney is water and water is blue.
• 27:02
  Sarah: And this whole color wheel just is it's a kind of exactly how nature works when you study it and it's not the chakra colors.
• 27:09
  Sarah: It's different.
• 27:10
  Sarah: Um, but I absolutely believe in 100 percent because I've witnessed it so many times, um, in my life and the color phenomenon is if you want to work with the heart, you actually work with the color red.
• 27:22
  Sarah: So you would pick red stones or pink stones.
• 27:26
  Sarah: And when you are attracted to purple stones, yeah.
• 27:29
  Sarah: What that is, is a, is a combination of blue and red.
• 27:33
  Sarah: So the combination of blue and red means that you're asking the kidney and heart to communicate because kidneys, blue and heart is red and kidney heart communication is actually about getting your destiny and your potential because you have this potential and you have this reason why you came to earth.
• 27:55
  Sarah: And you have all these gifts, right, that are actually really unique.
• 27:58
  Sarah: You have codes and gifts that nobody else has.
• 28:00
  Sarah: And that's for real.
• 28:02
  Sarah: And those are all stored down in our kidneys and it's kind of like this deep protected place like down under the ocean where all of our potential is.
• 28:10
  Sarah: And we carry that through lifetimes.
• 28:12
  Sarah: Like it's really deep.
• 28:13
  Sarah: We can, we can pass it on to our kids.
• 28:15
  Sarah: It can be passed on to us.
• 28:16
  Sarah: Like we call it our essence.
• 28:18
  Sarah: It's where we keep like all the deepest, truest parts of who we are.
• 28:22
  Sarah: Like if we blew off all the bullshit of who we are and what we act like every day, and you got to the core of who we really are, that's our essence.
• 28:30
  Sarah: And it's down there in the kidneys.
• 28:32
  Sarah: And sometimes people have a lot of potential.
• 28:35
  Sarah: And they have a lot of gifts, but they can't actualize them in the world.
• 28:38
  Sarah: They can't get them out.
• 28:40
  Sarah: They're all there, but the person's still just sitting on the couch.
• 28:42
  Sarah: They can't actually express them or actualize them.
• 28:46
  Sarah: And the way to actualize them is get the kidney to come up and communicate with the heart.
• 28:51
  Sarah: So blue touches red and it becomes purple or it becomes purple and the heart actually actualizes that destiny So you need that heart and kidney to be communicating to actualize your destiny So we work with purple stones to help people not just see their destiny or potential but to actually actualize it Like to get it out in the world.
• 29:12
  Sarah: So that is, you can go into a crystal shop and just pick anything that you're drawn to realize that you're vibrationally attracted for a reason.
• 29:20
  Sarah: And there's like all of this knowledge that you could have or not have, but let yourself be intuitively guided.
• 29:26
  Sarah: And then, you know, if you want to learn more about it and like tap into the knowledge, you can always go to, uh, Like a school like mine or somebody else's school, but I feel like we understand what we need on such a deep level and stones work at such a deep level.
• 29:41
  Sarah: They work in the subconscious because they're under the earth, you know, they're, we can't see them.
• 29:46
  Sarah: They're underground.
• 29:47
  Sarah: So they connect to what's underground in us or our subconscious.
• 29:50
  Sarah: And we actually know a lot more about them than we realize.
• 29:54
  Charlotte: Wow.
• 29:54
  Charlotte: That's fascinating.
• 29:55
  Charlotte: And I guess for my lack of knowledge, when you say that you work with stone, so let's say I'm your patient
• 30:03
  Sarah: no,
• 30:04
  Charlotte: or your client, and you know, that I'm drawn to purple and you're going to work with my kidney and my heart, Is it a body treatment?
• 30:12
  Charlotte: I would lay there, I guess.
• 30:16
  Charlotte: I'm just trying to understand when you say, okay, we were going to mix the blue and the red to get the purple.
• 30:22
  Charlotte: How, I really just to understand.
• 30:25
  Sarah: that's great.
• 30:26
  Sarah: It's such it's the practical is really important.
• 30:28
  Sarah: There's three applications of stone medicine.
• 30:30
  Sarah: One is on the body where you're creating the treatments, working with the energy centers.
• 30:35
  Sarah: The other one is elixirs, anything you put in the body.
• 30:38
  Sarah: So that's when we make what people often call gem essences, but we call them stone elixirs.
• 30:43
  Sarah: And we create these formulas in stone elixirs, and then we have people drink these formulas.
• 30:48
  Sarah: And then the other one is called the vibrational application of stone medicine, and that's anything that you put around the body.
• 30:53
  Sarah: So that would be like a big crystal tower you would put in your living room, maybe, to emanate that energy throughout the home.
• 30:59
  Sarah: So we would find the right application for you and, maybe do more than one of them, but yeah, a lot of it's crystal healing kind of like layouts that you would think of on the body, but we also do a lot of elixirs and we also do a lot of like home placements.
• 31:13
  Charlotte: Okay.
• 31:13
  Charlotte: So I could have a purple stone on my desk
• 31:18
  Sarah: Yes,
• 31:19
  Charlotte: and, that would help me start
• 31:23
  Sarah: held up a purple stone people.
• 31:25
  Sarah: She just held up a purple stone on her
• 31:27
  Charlotte: I did.
• 31:27
  Charlotte: I did.
• 31:28
  Charlotte: I held up my purple stone that is on my desk.
• 31:31
  Sarah: Yeah, that's a vibrationally affecting you being there.
• 31:33
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 31:34
  Charlotte: Okay.
• 31:35
  Charlotte: All right.
• 31:36
  Charlotte: Just fascinating because it's so different.
• 31:37
  Charlotte: It's so different from I've done for so many years and so different just even from my upbringing of just really trying to understand this knowledge that's obviously been passed down from many, many generations.
• 31:51
  Charlotte: It's definitely, you know, Chinese generations, but in America that it's starting to.
• 31:58
  Charlotte: Help people and more people are getting educated on it.
• 32:01
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 32:02
  Sarah: And for beginners, Charlotte, I think one thing that I think is really cool for beginners is to get themselves like a little, what I would call a quartz kit, which just means that you get five different quartz types.
• 32:15
  Sarah: So the purple quartz type is amethyst, the brownish oranges, goldish quartz type of citrine, and then you can have one clear quartz.
• 32:25
  Sarah: And then you could have, uh, potentially like a rutilated quartz or a, Tormblinated quarts or a rose quarts, and you pick five quarts that you're attracted to.
• 32:40
  Sarah: You can ask the crystal store person to help you and take them and put them on like on your window sill and your kitchen where you do dishes or just somewhere that you're going to see them every morning or every day.
• 32:50
  Sarah: And then tune in with them in the morning and just be like, which one do I need today?
• 32:55
  Sarah: And then just intuitively pick that one that you need today and carry it with you all day in your pocket.
• 33:01
  Sarah: And.
• 33:03
  Sarah: And then you can put it back on the windowsill or in the place, but every day you, you, over time you kind of learn Oh my gosh, I've been picking up this citrine one on the days that I've needed this.
• 33:15
  Sarah: And then, Oh, I've been picking up the amethyst one for two months straight.
• 33:18
  Sarah: Like what is that?
• 33:19
  Sarah: You know, and you kind of create your own relationship with them and see how they're affecting you just by doing that.
• 33:26
  Charlotte: Oh, that's a great idea.
• 33:27
  Charlotte: Just to really trust your gut, trust your intuition of what's pulling you towards a certain, color or certain shape or, whatever it may be.
• 33:36
  Sarah: Yeah, and somebody might be like, I just can't even put down the Rose Quartz one and, and then you know that's really treating you because you feel like I just need to hold this, you know?
• 33:46
  Charlotte: Right.
• 33:47
  Sarah: Yeah,
• 33:48
  Charlotte: It's all very interesting.
• 33:49
  Charlotte: I love learning new things and, just understanding how much is out there.
• 33:54
  Charlotte: There's so many different healing modalities and they all serve a purpose.
• 34:01
  Sarah: yeah, totally.
• 34:02
  Charlotte: For your classes, do you have intro classes or are they mostly, more for not providers?
• 34:12
  Charlotte: That's not right.
• 34:12
  Charlotte: The right word already for, people practicing.
• 34:17
  Sarah: We, I think that all of my classes, by some magic, are actually really good for beginners and advanced people.
• 34:26
  Charlotte: because everyone can take something out of it.
• 34:28
  Sarah: yeah, beginners learn so much, advanced people learn so much, I think, cause it's a pretty unique lens, so it's like getting to look at something in a new way anyways, it's not your typical crystal healing, and we have free classes, two, three, four times a year we'll do a free class, and that's always cool to jump into a free class and see what you get, we just did one on stones for protection, um, and then we have classes that you can kind of, Um, so I feel like a beginner could take a lot from that, you know, and then I feel like someone advanced good too.
• 35:05
  Charlotte: you think that, have you seen an uptick?
• 35:10
  Charlotte: And people reaching out for more stone medicine, I kind of feel like after covid and so much going on in healthcare right now that so many people are reaching out for different modalities.
• 35:24
  Sarah: Yeah.
• 35:24
  Sarah: Everybody's like the therapist, nobody can get a therapist these days.
• 35:28
  Sarah: Everybody's so booked.
• 35:29
  Sarah: I feel like we're definitely in a place where people are really needing a lot of support.
• 35:35
  Charlotte: I think so.
• 35:36
  Sarah: Actually the next class we're doing is called stones for the heart.
• 35:39
  Sarah: And it's all about Um, and I think it's, it's a pretty deep class because it's going to be about actually despair, how do we move through big loss?
• 35:49
  Sarah: How do we kind of almost resurrect the heart and really hard times.
• 35:52
  Sarah: And I think humanity is like, we're just in it.
• 35:55
  Sarah: You know, a lot of people are at max capacity right now.
• 35:59
  Charlotte: Yeah.
• 35:59
  Charlotte: I feel that.
• 36:00
  Charlotte: I feel like everyone, is definitely, full to the brim where they can't even care for themselves because they are so maxed out.
• 36:09
  Sarah: Yeah, I agree.
• 36:11
  Charlotte: Well, Sarah, I really appreciate you coming on.
• 36:13
  Charlotte: This was great.
• 36:15
  Charlotte: And it's a great intro to stone medicine and, your story behind it.
• 36:20
  Charlotte: I would love to have you come on and talk about stones more in depth sometime soon.
• 36:26
  Sarah: Absolutely.
• 36:27
  Sarah: I'll see you later, Charlotte.
• 36:28
  Sarah: Thanks for having me.
• 36:30
  Charlotte: Thank you.
• 36:33
  Charlotte: I appreciate you spending this time with me until next time, keep sowing the seeds of love in your life and those around you.