125. Crystals, Gemstones, and Spiritual Artisans - Pam Urbas and Andy Duchovnay

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Tips for connecting with the right gemstones and crystals for you. Beautiful stories of finding amazing gemstones on hikes (with the help of cat friends!). Nurturing the art of spiritual craftsmanship across the world. All of this and more is explored on this episode with Pam Urbas and Andy Duchovnay.

Pam and Andy are spiritual partners, artisan healers, and owners of The Indigo Sanctuary. They are passionate about supporting and empowering others through their individual spiritual journeys. Along their journey, Pam and Andy have accumulated a diverse array of practice modalities and certifications, all focused on healing mind, body, and planet. They possess certifications in reiki, yoga, sound healing, and environmentalism.

- Learn more surprising facts about sugar and sugar addiction in episode 105 with Michael Collins:
- They talk about their fortuitous trip to Nepal, and how this was a catalyst into their work with native artisans.
- What is the purpose of a home sanctuary in cultivating a personal daily spiritual practice?
- Pam and Andy talk about rockhounding, including fascinating insights about how they are drawn to “rocks” out in nature that turn out to be gemstones once they clean them up at home.
- How ginger cats help guide them to beautiful gemstones.
- Advice for selecting crystals and gemstones.
- How to use stones in meditation.website : www.theindigosanctuary.com

Instagram: @theindigosanctuary

Facebook: theindigosanctuary

Email: theindigosanctuary@gmail.com

[00:00:26.090] - Kara
Hello, and welcome to the meditation conversation. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin. And today I'm joined by Pam Herbis, Andy Dukovny. And Pam and Andy are spiritual partners and artisan healers, and they're owners of the Indigo Sanctuary. And we will get into all of this throughout. But they're very passionate about supporting and empowering others through their individual spiritual journeys. And along their own journeys, Pam and Andy have accumulated a diverse array of practice, modalities and certifications that all focus on healing mind, body and the planet. And they possess certifications in Reiki, yoga, sound healing and environmentalism. So welcome, Pam and Andy, it's great to have you here.

[00:01:20.910] - Andy
Thank you.

[00:01:21.730] - Pam
Thank you. All right.

[00:01:24.460] - Kara
Let's talk about the foundation that's delivered you both to where you are now. I'm really curious about your current lifestyle and all of this beautiful healing that you're bringing forth to the planet and to humankind. I'm curious about if you were born into this lifestyle that you're embodying today, the focus on nutrition and meditation and yoga and healing, or was there something that propelled you out of a more mainstream kind of?

[00:02:02.140] - Andy
I would say that we started out similarly and then went different ways. We're both very much empaths, and we sensed that really early in our childhood. And we took on a role of healer in our family because we were skilled at that just very naturally. Yes. And then it was Pam who has had a long history of involvement with nutrition and physical fitness and yoga. And then she and I met, and then I was introduced to it, and it flourished from there for the two of us.

[00:02:55.210] - Kara
Okay.

[00:02:57.010] - Pam
Nutrition has been a real top priority for both of us. We both Cook, but Andy's an excellent Cook. But nutrition is really a top priority for us, especially sugar. We really believe that try to not eat sugar, natural sugars, and that's really something that we both do. Otherwise, everybody's very individual what they need to eat. But there's sugar in everything. And that alone not eating so much sugar or not eating processed sugar at all will ground you. And it certainly changed me as a teenager when I started investigating about kicking the sugar habit.

[00:03:59.770] - Kara
Yeah. That's so important. I actually had a guest on a few months ago who does a whole you know, he has a whole sugar detox thing. And it was a really eye opening discussion for me because it's something that I have kind of taken for granted and didn't really understand the true impact of it. And what you're talking about with the naturally occurring sugars as well. That was really eye opening, too, because I think that a lot of us understand, like white sugar, processed sugar don't add sugar, but then what's in fruits and I think even nuts and things like that.

[00:04:44.720] - Andy
I was surprised to learn we try to focus on staying grounded so we're aware of all the different things that may keep us from feeling as grounded as we'd like to be.

[00:04:59.530] - Kara
Right. So you grew up in environments that nurtured this sort of nutrition and more holistic health?

[00:05:14.950] - Pam
I say I did. I grew up in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, and it was very alternative kind of place. It did. We had Bread and Circus, which is Whole Foods now, and a lot of health food stores, little health food stores. It was like all around me. I think that when I moved well, I know when I moved to Philadelphia and there was nothing I think there were like two little health food stores around, but now it's so popular.

[00:06:01.130] - Kara
Yeah, that's the thing. It's so much easier now, the access to information that propels you to even want to adopt a healthier, more holistic lifestyle and the access to Whole Foods, for example, or other more conscious places to source your food and other things.

[00:06:30.750] - Andy
There are a lot of CSAs now, subscription farms.

[00:06:34.670] - Kara
Right.

[00:06:35.520] - Andy
And we're really into knowing where our products come from. So if we're talking about food, being able to participate in a CSA is a great way to get your food from a source that you know what their energy is like.

[00:06:52.970] - Kara
Yeah, right. Absolutely. Right. So I want to hear about your trip to Nepal. You had a very fortuitous trip. That was a big catalyst for you in a lot of ways. So can you talk us through that a little bit?

[00:07:11.290] - Andy
Certainly. We've been to Nepal twice, and on our first trip we went there. We knew we were going to do some trekking and get into the mountains. And we knew we were going to go to a yoga and meditation ashram because we wanted to experience how yoga and meditation was practiced in Nepal, which is closer to the source. And it's not Americanized like you'd find here. So we planned our trip and it was just by happenstance. When we met our friends Jackie and Tulsi. We had gone from Kathmandu to a small town called Bakhtaport, which it translates to City of Devotees. It's a very spiritual town. It's in the Kapmandu Valley, and it's known traditionally for their traditional wood carvers and metal workers. And we just by chance met Jackie and spent some time with him and he introduced us. We were aware of singing balls, but he took us much deeper into learning about them and culturally, their significance and their use. And then we met Tulsi, who comes from many generations of traditional wood carvers. And we felt in the poll that we were home. There was an energy about it that was familiar to us.

[00:08:54.480] - Andy
It's very warm. And in Bakhtapore especially, it's very warm. The people are generous with their time and they are sincere and we just felt a kinship to them. It's a very spiritual place. Bakhtapur is the home of people of the Nawari culture. And our friends Jackie and Tulsi are constantly educating us on Nwari tradition. And in Nepal they have a rich tradition that has aspects of both Hinduism and Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism. And so there's a lot of beautiful carvings and really dissembolism history, and it's just steeped in history and culture and spirituality. So we work with a lot of wood carvers there, and Jackie is there. We work collaboratively with the wood carvers. And because Nepal and Baktapore is such an important place to us, we focus a lot of our giving back activities there. We have profit sharing for our business partners there. So we're all working together and profiting. And we've sponsored the education of two young girls in Bakhtaport, Nepal, and we pay for their education completely. And it means a lot to us to give back to the community. And unfortunately, there's a lot of bad tradition of people going into cultures and culturally misappropriating their traditions and their work and taking advantage of them.

[00:10:58.360] - Andy
So we try to be very respectful of the cultures and the people we work with and acknowledge that the traditions are theirs and show our respect and treat them fairly like they treat us kindly.

[00:11:12.910] - Kara
That's so beautiful. And you've touched on your work that you do with them. And again, you own the Indigo Sanctuary. So can you just talk us through what is Indigo Sanctuary and how are you working? If you can talk a little bit more about specifically with the word working and with the artists that are there in Nepal that you're working with, what are you offering through the Indigo Sanctuary?

[00:11:49.650] - Andy
We'd love to talk about that. The purpose of the Indigo Sanctuary is that we would like to help people have what we have, which is a personal daily spiritual practice. And we believe that by having a personal spiritual practice and sticking with it, it helps us become centered and calm and be more our authentic selves and handle the stresses of life. And we believe that everyone would benefit by having a home sanctuary. It doesn't have to be a whole room. It can be a corner of a room, an altar, something where they have some items that are spiritually significant to them and inspire them to participate in their daily practice. So the goal of the Indigo Sanctuary is to support people, provide education, and provide products, tools that may assist them. So on the website, we have blogs that talk about sound healing and how it works and gemstones. And it discusses the story of the gemstones which we collect and the chakras. So we provide educational resources and we provide products, and our products focus on energy, whether it's sound healing or gemstone energy or spiritual energy, like our carvings. As to our colleagues, our partners in Nepal, we have really deep relationships with them.

[00:13:39.430] - Andy
Our friend Jackie is himself a Nepali traditional singing bowl healer, and we started working with him and learning from him. And then we went on, he recommended other Masters, and we continued our studies. Jackie educates us on singing bowls. And when we were in Nepal for the first trip, he took us to the factory, which was important to us because we wanted to see one, how they were made and two, what the working conditions were like for the workers there and to make sure that it wasn't child labor or an unsafe work environment. So we work really closely with Jackie. When we're in Nepal, he takes us to the factory, and we sit down for hours and hours, and we hand select singing bowls, and then we bring them back. And when there are times that we cannot go to Nepal, Jackie curates our collection of bowls for us, and we work really closely, and it's been a really rich, meaningful relationship. And Tulsi, as I said, comes from a long line of wood carvers. And initially we were buying pieces that were traditional Napoli wood pieces. And as time went on and our gemstone work grew, we started working collaboratively.

[00:15:14.610] - Andy
So we would ask Tulsi, can you make us something using a symbol like a Lotus? And we would say, is it okay? Is it respectful for us to use your Lotus and put our gemstone in it? And of course, he said yes, because otherwise we wouldn't do it. And then we worked with him and his father on making other pieces. For instance, we wanted something with the hand, which is the Himsa symbol or the Abaya Mudra. And after we cleared with them that they were okay with us putting our stones in it, they carved unique pieces for us for that purpose. And we've done that similarly for Lotus designs and things like that. And we make gemstone playing sticks where we put the gemstones on them and we paint them, and we wanted them to be protected. So we asked Tulsi about getting cases for it and his sister custom knits cases for us lined with fleece with buttons so we can keep the gemstone painted playing sticks safe when they're not being used. So whether it's wood or woven products, we work collaboratively in the creation process.

[00:16:48.250] - Kara
That is so beautiful. You're just talking about the knitting. And as you were talking about the collaborative work and how it's all come together where you've gotten permission to use the symbols. And I was just getting weaving. I mean, before you said anything about knitting, it was like, oh, this weaving is so beautiful. And for it to actually culminate in your story to culminate. And knitting is really beautiful. So bless you both for doing that work and doing it so conscientiously. I hope that this is like a way that we are all working globally in the future, that this will just be something that is like the way that it is. And Unfortunately, fortunately for you, you're blazing a trail right now, and there are others who are doing this, too. But I hope that it's something that's clicking in for more and more people the importance of it. And you keep talking about, as well, the energy that is containing all of this work and how important that is. And, of course, everything is energy that is so important. And the more etheric or esoteric or intangible benefit that people receive from purchasing and from filling their homes and creating sanctuaries within their homes.

[00:18:40.230] - Kara
But with this conscious consumerism, really, what a blessing that you guys are providing in this time, it's really important.

[00:18:53.870] - Pam
Thank you.

[00:18:56.090] - Kara
So I am really excited to talk to you both about gemstones because you have a lot of experience with gemstones, and there's a lot I mean, when you and I were talking in preparation for this, there were things that you were offering to talk about that I didn't even know were things. So you have so much to share. I am fascinated by crystals and gemstones. I actually have always here with me. I'm showing them here. This is a honeycomb calcite. I believe that I just got in Utah in June for my birthday. I was there over my birthday, and they have all kinds of rock and mineral shops just roadside in that Four Corners area. They're just everywhere. And so on my birthday, I went to one, and I'm a beekeeper also. So when I was like, honeycomb cowsite, that's a thing. But you guys do something called rock hounding, which this is what I mean when I'm like, I didn't even know that was a thing that people could do. And so I would love to hear about this, hear what it is, and then your experiences and how it all flows together.

[00:20:26.210] - Andy
I was a rock Hound when I was a little boy. I didn't know what it was called, but I was always collecting rocks. And when I was 13, I bought a rock tumbler. And of course, I was using stones for the most part. I would find somebody, I would buy them. And as I grew up, I stopped doing it. But Pam and I always loved being outdoors. Even before we met. We always loved being outdoors.

[00:20:54.830] - Kara
I could see that about you, for sure.

[00:20:58.190] - Pam
We really liked being outdoors even before we met. I think that was, like, a common thing. We were like, oh, let's go hike here. Let's go hike there. Andy always picked up rocks, and they look like rocks. I love crystals and gems and things, but to me, it looked like a rock. But when we got it home and we cleaned it up, it was a gemstone.

[00:21:27.780] - Kara
Really?

[00:21:28.850] - Pam
Yes. He had a great eye for that. And I was like, so impressed with that. I'm like, I don't have to go into a shop anymore. We can just do this on our hikes.

[00:21:39.810] - Kara
That's amazing. And this is in Pennsylvania.

[00:21:43.370] - Pam
Anywhere we go, like Cape Cod, he'd find stones. And we had young children at the time, and the gemstones by the ocean were a little easier to spot out because you put them in the water and then they shine. But the ones on the hike had, like they were all covered with dirt and they were Brown. And I don't know how he saw color in them. That's the.

[00:22:21.010] - Andy
Yeah.

[00:22:24.230] - Pam
It was the funniest thing.

[00:22:26.170] - Kara
Which guy were you looking with, Andy?

[00:22:30.110] - Andy
My child died.

[00:22:31.630] - Kara
Oh, beautiful.

[00:22:33.170] - Pam
Yeah. I was very impressed by this because I love crystals and gemstones, and it was years later that we got a rock tumbler. So that was our first machine. And so when you Polish them, it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of patience to do rock tumbling, which is a very meditation by itself. You have to wait. And even now it can be difficult for me. Like, oh, we have to do step two. We have to do step three. But it's great for children, I think. And they learn patience, too. Everything takes time. It teaches them that. Then we went to lapidary arts. So from the Tumblr, we did lapidary arts, which is another kind of way to Polish and cut gemstones. And that's a little quicker. But the cabons that you see in jewelry are done by lapidary artists.

[00:23:56.090] - Kara
And lapidary has nothing to do with lapis. Is it lapisuli or how do you say that?

[00:24:03.590] - Andy
I think that's how I would say it, but no, I'm not sure where the word lapidary comes from.

[00:24:10.260] - Kara
But it's a process. It's a way to bring out the gemstone from a rock.

[00:24:19.910] - Pam
Yeah. And it's a lot of fun because you're kind of playing in water, the machine spits out water, and you see the process of the stone coming alive. You start to see color coming out of it. Sometimes the gemstone speaks to you, and you need to do very little to it. Other times, you really have to spend some time with it. So again, it is a spiritual process different than the tumbler. Even though tumbling is easier in some ways of shaping it, the machine does it for you. For me, it's always a difficult process because it can take how many weeks do you think it takes? Five weeks. Yeah.

[00:25:17.550] - Kara
With the lapidary.

[00:25:19.370] - Pam
With the tumbler. Okay. Yeah. With a lapidary, you can finish a stone in a matter. It depends on the stone, but no more than a sitting a day. Yeah. Well, since Andy was so good at it, at finding stones and just picking them out, we stopped going to shops. We didn't use catalogs to find stones. We didn't go to shop. And we realized that we were ethically sourcing and we knew that it was ethically sourced because you were finding them out in nature. Yes.

[00:26:10.870] - Kara
And do you ever have a sense of when you find a stone, like a yes or no about whether it wants to come?

[00:26:21.130] - Pam
You know what? I don't think so. And sometimes you don't really notice the beauty of the stone until you get it home. Yeah. It depends on the stone, but we have books now, so we had never heard of Raw County either. It was a process that we learned about, and we have books where to go and what kind of stones are gemstones are in that area. So we find it a lot easier. At least I do. I know. Oh, I'm looking for something where when we went on hikes before, it was like, Andy would say, I see something. What is this? But it's good practice to do both. I think it's good practice to do both. Don't you think so, Andy?

[00:27:16.700]
Yeah.

[00:27:16.900] - Andy
Because sometimes you find something randomly and it's not what you were looking for. You want to talk about the peach?

[00:27:28.070] - Pam
Yeah. Well, we're animal lovers, and somehow animals are our guides. So we were in Virginia and we were looking for it, said amethyst. And we found one piece of amethyst after a long time in the wild.

[00:27:52.910] - Andy
It was on a farm.

[00:27:53.850] - Pam
Farm. It wasn't really a pretty place. Sometimes they're beautiful settings where you raw count. Sometimes they're okay. They're never ugly, but they're not always in wilderness.

[00:28:15.250] - Kara
It was just in the ground or like, on the ground.

[00:28:17.800] - Pam
In this farm, we dig with a shovel and we're digging. Also, if you find, like, a vein, it'll bring you to the gemstone. So, yeah, in the Earth. If you find a vein in the Earth, I am not usually picky about like, oh, we have to find this. I'm just happy to be outside. But when it came to Amethyst, I wanted it. I really wanted that amethyst. And we just found one little piece, and this peach cat kept on following us, and he was a beautiful cat. And at the time, we kept on finding this peach stone, which was surprising that we didn't really even think it was peach fellspar Moonstone, and we thought it was pretty. And the peach cat kept on following us. And then again, when we got home, we cleaned off the peach stone, and we realized that's what the cat was trying to tell us, that this is the stone for you because it was the same color as the cat.

[00:29:43.640] - Kara
That's incredible.

[00:29:44.690] - Pam
Incredible, isn't it? Whenever we find a peach stone, we see ginger cats. Really the craziest thing. It happened in Rhode Island, right?

[00:29:58.020] - Andy
Yeah. Pam said, we're going to Rhode Island. Let's find some rocks. And everyone on the Internet said there are no rocks in Rhode Island worth collecting. And Pam said there has to be. So we were told to go to this place called Moonstone Beach, and we got peach Moonstone. And as we were leaving the beach, we see a big ginger cat on the side of the road.

[00:30:30.790] - Kara
I love it. All of the symbolism, all the patterns to be able to point and keep you on track and confirm. Even in that story, confirmation, it just feels like you guys are like Guardians. Do you get that sense? That you have some sort of guardianship from the Earth nature?

[00:30:58.630] - Pam
I think so, yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:03.610] - Kara
I have chills, as I say, that all over my body.

[00:31:06.470] - Pam
Thank you.

[00:31:07.060] - Kara
There is some sort of guardianship there.

[00:31:09.750] - Pam
Yeah. Andy is very intuitive, but I think that he came back to that intuitive feeling and started to develop it more because it's hard for men. It's hard for men, and not that it's not hard for women, but we're encouraged a little bit more. Do you agree with that?

[00:31:45.720] - Andy
Yeah, I think so. I had a nurturing feeling inside of me, but it took a space, a safe space to let it come out more.

[00:31:59.750] - Kara
And bless you for revealing that and honoring it and for letting that rise to the surface, because I know that it serves you in your day to day life, but it's serving much beyond you. Thank goodness that you cultivated that. You listened and cultivated it. It's beautiful.

[00:32:21.300] - Andy
Thank you. We try. Everyone tries.

[00:32:25.570] - Kara
We're all trying. Yes, some of us are trying. I can't say across the board, everybody in humanity is, but there are many. So I'm curious about people who maybe are not so drawn to rock hounding but are drawn to rocks and gemstones. And I know that sometimes this is just part of an unfolding for a person. Like, as they start to realize, as bales start to get removed, and it's like, oh, my goodness, there's a lot more mystery and a lot more support available to me in this planet, in this in the ether sort of stepping stones, using a pun, I guess, in that unfoldment can be crystals and can be gems. But when you're new to it, I often have people who are like, what should I get? Like, I'm curious about getting some crystals, but I don't know what to get. What do you recommend or how do you have some ideas for people if they do want to go to a shop or if they do want to, you know, they're not adept at finding them in nature, but how they know what will help them?

[00:33:53.030] - Pam
Well, I think that you have to trust your intuition. If it's colors that you see that brings you towards that gemstone, you should just go with that. But we really do recommend for people to hold hold the gemstone. That's very important. So you see it first, and then you need to hold it to see how it feels with your own energy. Yeah. Everyone's energy is different. And then, you'll know, and while you're holding it, you need to breathe deeply. That is really important. So it may take a while to feel it before you start. Your breath starts to slow down, or maybe the gemstone helps you slow down your breath, but it's just a matter of witnessing how you're feeling. Yeah. So that's all part of intuition. And then also the Chakra system is very popular now, and that is a good system, but we always recommend for people to have a root stone, something that grounds you, centers you first before you go, you start looking at other stones. And a lot of gemstones have a lot of chakras in them. Like, for example, Rodonite is for the heart, but it's also very grounding.

[00:35:53.870] - Pam
So that would be great for someone who maybe is too much of a giver. They're always giving. They like that feeling of giving until they're depleted. So they need to be more grounded in order to know, to balance the heart. And then rodent would be a good stone for them. But rooting is very important. Like I talked about. We talked about with nutrition, you need to find stones that are grounding as well as other chakras that are involved. I think it's very simple, and it somehow has become complicated. I don't quite understand that, but I think when we root ourselves, we'll see how simple it is because we're all in the head. It helps to draw you deeper into your body. It does. And like the palm stone that we gave you with the red Jasper, talking about drawing you into your body, that stone, red Jasper really brings you into your body, really brings you into your body, and it stabilizes you. Yeah. And then with the black Obsidian, that it's together. The stone is together. The black Obsidian also cleans the aura. Any of the negativity around the aura, and Blackstones in general are used in Feng Shui for protection.

[00:38:05.300] - Pam
So Blackstones. I love Blackstones.

[00:38:11.510] - Kara
They're good for EMF protection as well. Right.

[00:38:14.460] - Pam
That comes from electronics that are just absolutely like the smoky quartz is like. Yeah, it is really Blackstones. I love clear Crystal, but I love Blackstones, and they shine and they shine outward. So if you're an inward person, that outward shine is very healing. Yeah.

[00:38:46.610] - Kara
Well, I want to thank you again for the gift that you sent me. The Jasper and the Obsidian. The red Jasper and the Obsidian, it's this gorgeous Palmstone. And we were talking about it a little bit before we started recording. I don't remember seeing two stones melded together in such a way. So it's an Obsidian stone that has red Jasper in it on it. Can you talk a little bit about this? This is new for me, too.

[00:39:22.440] - Pam
Well, this is called a doublet, and people are more I think that it's not as popular, but we designed it ourselves, and we wanted to look like a stone.

[00:39:42.270] - Kara
Yeah, it does. It looks like it is naturally like that.

[00:39:46.180] - Pam
Yeah. So we shaped it. Andy actually made that one, and it became very popular because it looks like a stone, and we call it our rooting stone. To work with red Jasper, it can be very difficult. It's like the messiest stone around, and I'm not even really that tidy. I'm clean and everything, but everything is red.

[00:40:19.770]
Really?

[00:40:20.780] - Pam
Yeah. It's almost like you're bleeding.

[00:40:24.550]
Interesting.

[00:40:25.190] - Pam
Yeah. It's so interesting. The thing about red Jasper, too, it's very good for fertility. Yeah. So it stabilizes. It roots you when you feel it, you feel like you're holding a palm stone. So that is our meditation stone to root. We both feel that if you're rooted, you can handle a lot of stresses in life and stresses are bound to happen. And some people are naturally more rooted than others. But we all need to be rooted like a tree, like our friend, the tree.

[00:41:19.490] - Andy
We've done the Obsidian with higher shopper stones like lapidolite, and we've done other combinations as well. So we're excited to explore that more.

[00:41:36.810] - Kara
It's beautiful. And you mentioned it as like a meditation stone as well. So from a practical perspective with these stones, do you recommend that they're held while meditating?

[00:41:52.170] - Pam
Yes, I like to hold my stones. I'm very tactile, Andy. You do too. You like to hold your stones for different reasons. I like to hold it during meditation. He likes to hold them when you need it for like a helping friend or something like that for comfort.

[00:42:16.290] - Andy
Someone can see it, but it's a piece of wood that I've carved from reclaimed wood and it has a piece of rotocrocyte in it. And I usually wear it turned around touching my skin because for me, we have affirmations that we use with our stones. Like Pam said, for Rodent, it's for someone who's giving and it helps them with self love. I find the rotocrocyte similarly heart healing. So I just know that when I feel it, it reminds me of this is that rotocrocy? This is how it makes me feel. So it's a reminder. And I think it's like a meditation item that it triggers memories. It triggers memories. And I think the more that you meditate with a stone, the more that you wear a stone and do affirmations or meditations. I think it creates kind of muscle memory in your brain and your system. It calms you down. It's a reminder. So I do like wearing them where I can touch them.

[00:43:39.360] - Pam
We do affirmations with our gemstones as part of our practice. We are very much into affirmations during practice or during our day, so we find them very helpful. It seems like everybody else does too. It's very popular.

[00:44:03.510] - Kara
Yeah. Well, I have heard at least I have a lot of crystals as well and use them for helping to hold space. So you talk about affirmations and they can also be used to help create or to hold attention or to kind of like as they can be tools where you set them up, like what you were talking about, Pam, with selecting a stone and how you tune in. You can hold the stone and then you're feeling and you're feeling. I think when I was first kind of getting in tune with crystals, I was focusing more on how my hands felt. How does this feel with my hands? And I could tell a little bit, but if you actually it was when I learned to pay attention to your heart, for example, how does the heart feel? Are you getting an expansive feeling or like there's a response within the body, beyond the hands? But you also can just kind of scan with your hands and feel within your hands, but be sure you take it deeper in. But the same sort of thing that I have found anyway with setting stones up around the house and does it like facing this way?

[00:45:37.890] - Kara
Does it want to face that way? And it's playing around with it and feeling within? How does this feel like connecting with it and feeling like listening, but listening with the body? And you can kind of create, like, stones that go together and then use that to hold space for where you're going, what you're focusing on and what you're wanting to manifest or lots of different things, but they're very powerful and they fractalize the energy, and they create these energetic patterns that are my point is kind of just beyond the beauty that we see with our eyes, the power.

[00:46:38.890] - Pam
That is such an important point that you bring up, because sometimes I think all gemstones are pretty, but sometimes a gemstone that visually isn't the prettiest is very beneficial. I mean, like ocean granite, it's a pretty stone. It really is. But it's not like, I don't know, amethyst. It doesn't like sparkle a lot. And that stone does so much for my mental state because it's grounding and it helps creativity. The second Chakra, too. So when I were artists, Andy is more grounded than I, so he gets a lot done. But sometimes I could just float around with creative ideas and then I don't get anything done. So that stone, it's like when I find that all this creativity is just running around in my head, I grabbed that stone. But another interesting point that you bring up, too, is that when you hold the stone, it's not only in the hands, you could feel it in the feet. Exactly. And that's the same thing with our bowls, too. Some ways you have to let go of the chakras. You have to just say, okay, I'm not thinking about chakras. Where do I feel it? And the vibration is different for everyone.

[00:48:34.030] - Pam
So that is such an interesting point that you brought up about not just feeling it in the hand, you feel it anywhere.

[00:48:46.490] - Kara
Well, I love that you've mentioned the gemstone playing sticks and your singing bowl, so we've touched on them a little bit, but I wondered if we might be able to hear one of your bowls, and we can talk a little bit more about the gemstone playing sticks, certainly. So what do you have here?

[00:49:10.920] - Andy
This is an antique singing bowl handmade from the Paul. It's made of seven metals, which is traditionally how they're made. And later I can describe the process of making them. And this is a gemstone playing stick. This is Amazonite, which we collected in Pennsylvania near us. And the stick is hand painted. And what we do is we connect the primary Chakra of the bowl with the primary Chakra of the gemstone. And also the stones are Reiki infused after we make them. And we feel that the energy of the bowl and the energy of the stone have a synergistic relationship, and it adds to the energy that you're experiencing. So I'm going to tap the ball and we'll be able to hear it.

[00:50:37.450] - Kara
That is beautiful. So which Chakra is that one attuned to?

[00:50:51.810] - Pam
This is the heart Chakra, and the bowl is also the heart Chakra.

[00:51:05.050] - Kara
And do you typically have the gemstone and the bowl set to the same?

[00:51:13.850] - Pam
Yes, but some stones are more than one Chakra.

[00:51:19.080] - Kara
Okay.

[00:51:21.350] - Pam
It gives you that flexibility.

[00:51:24.650] - Andy
We take a lot of time to pair them. We'll take the stick and we may do a couple of sticks to find the right one. And then we'll say this is going with this bowl, and then we pick the stone and we place it and it's painted handle, and then it's Reiki infused.

[00:51:48.950] - Kara
That's beautiful. From an energy. We've talked to quite a bit about energy here. And just from an energetic perspective, there are singing bowls available through Amazon, for example, that you're not really connected, in that case with the source, but it's a singing bowl. Do you have any insight on the benefit that somebody has in purchasing something that has been from an energy perspective that has been kind of handcrafted and lovingly made versus the mass production?

[00:52:33.510] - Andy
Yes. Generally, we do believe strongly that things that are made in an artisan way, in small numbers have really good energy. You want someone who's preparing something that's going to be dear to you and that you're going to use in a healthy, spiritual way. You want it to be made with good energy from the maker and the materials and good Karma. You want that. When we talk about singing bowls and mass production, it's really important to understand that one bowl is not the same as another. The bowls that we buy and use and sell are only handmade seven metal bowls from Nepal. And the way they've always been made is the way our bowls are made. They make the alloy of the seven metals, and they cast it into an ingot, a block of metal. It's a block of metal. And they take the block of metal and they put it in a furnace, and then they take it out and they start hammering it. And it goes from a block of metal, and they shape it slowly through the process of heating in the oven and taking it out and then hammering it and putting it back in the oven and taking out and hammering it.

[00:54:01.760] - Andy
And slowly they build up the sides of the bowl, and they make the shape it's a really long process that involves a lot of skill to make it into the shape and to tune it. Now those are the handmade balls. And when you play a handmade ball, it vibrates. You feel the energy in your hand before you hear the sound. And the physics of the ball is really complicated. So it creates sound waves you hear and sound waves you feel. So a handmade seven metal bowl generates and produces a lot of sound waves and their healing. A lot of the bowls you see on the Internet are not made that way. They're not made with seven metals. And they're made by casting the ball into a shape. So there's no heating, there's no shaping. It's just poured into a mold sometimes. And we've seen it where people will take the bowls that are cast and they'll take a hammer and they'll tap it and they'll make little hammer marks, little dense.

[00:55:13.740] - Kara
Yeah. So those are like, artificial.

[00:55:16.650] - Andy
They're artificial. They're purely decorative. There are providers online who do sell genuine seven metal hand made bowls, but there are many others who don't. So we draw the distinction where we don't think of the balls that are cast as healing bowls. We don't think that they serve that purpose.

[00:55:44.560] - Pam
No, they're not. And you can tell when you tap the handmade bowls that the note doesn't drop. It continues. So even without looking at a bowl, you'll tap a machine made Bull and it'll make a pretty sound, but the note will drop. It won't continue.

[00:56:13.090] - Kara
Well, it's all fascinating and really beautiful. Thank you so much. Can you tell us a little bit about how people can learn more about you and about your products and your offerings?

[00:56:28.090] - Andy
Certainly. Our website is www.indigosanctuary.com. That's www.thendigosanctuary.com and on Instagram. We are at the Indigo Sanctuary, and we invite people to visit us at our website, check out the educational information we have. A small portion of our products are on the website. We have a lot of products that we haven't loaded yet. So if there's something anyone wants, they can reach out to us. And one thing we do do is if someone buys a singing ball from us, we give them a free Zoom singing bowl lesson with the ball to help them learn how to play it, because we want to make sure that if you're getting a ball from us that you get the benefits from it. We want to make sure that we guide you that way.

[00:57:29.770] - Kara
Beautiful. Well, thank you both so much for being here and for sharing all of this wisdom and for sharing your light, for continuing to do so with every day. It's really beautiful, really important work that you're both doing. So thank you so much.

[00:57:51.190] - Andy
Thank you.

[00:57:52.730] - Pam
Yeah. Thank you.

[00:57:57.230] - Kara
Wonderful. Well, be sure to check out the Indigo Sanctuary. There are a lot of goods out there. Goodies to fill your space and elevate your space so do yourself a favor and go explore and support Pam and Andy and support their family in Nepal their soul family out there in Nepal doing all of this amazing healing work through these goods and thank you for listening as always. I so much support the time that you take to listen. I very much appreciate subscribing rating, reviewing and sharing this episode. All of that is so supportive and I look forward to the next meditation conversation.

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