How to do the Collecting Stones Meditation:

When you want to cleanse yourself of challenging emotions, take a walk in nature and keep your eye out for small stones that call to you.

Over the course of your stroll, select three that feel good to hold in your hands. Name each stone by the label of whatever you’re harboring that you’d like to leave you. For example, you might name the stones Guilt, Fear, and Anger. Or Hate, Shame, and Disappointment. Or Frustration, Sorrow, and Despair.

Carry these stones with you wherever you go. Keep them in your pocket, if you’d like, or even in your hands. Get to know each of your three stones. Look at them when you get an opportunity. Study their surfaces, their terrain. Keep the stones on your bedside table. When you go to sleep, say goodnight to these stones. Upon waking, say good morning to the stones. Bring the stones to the kitchen table when you eat breakfast. Keep the stones on you when you walk. Even take them in the shower with you. (Do not worry if the stones get wet.) Develop a relationship with them; become friends. If you would like to introduce your stones to your other friends and family, feel free. When you hold onto these stones, let the heat from your hands warm them up. When some days are harder, you can lean on your stones. Try to believe that they understand you, and that their job is to absorb the emotions you’ve named them after out of your soul and body. The healing frequency of the minerals will act as an antidote to whatever ails you, whether emotional, spiritual, or physical.

When the time naturally comes that you feel the stones have done their job and you’re ready to let them go, carry them back to nature and release them into a body of water, such as a pond, ocean, lake, river, or stream. The living water will purify them of the venom they’ve drawn from you, and you’ll walk away purified, too.

If you lose a stone or even all three, this was not your fault, nor was it a mistake. This is part of your spiritual experience. This exercise is never under your full control. The stones can make their own choosings. When symbiotically working with your emotions, a stone’s disappearance is a sign. It may mean that the stone has absorbed as much as it can for now and needs some time on its own for now, or it may mean that the emotion is already in the process of leaving you, so the stone disappeared for good to help rid that emotion from your soul, spirit, and heart. Whether you lose one, two, or all three stones, you can replace them if you would still like to complete the exercise. If you lose those stones, you can replace them again. If you’re in a situation where it’s difficult to get another stone, then allow for the timing to become right, eventually, for a stone to fall into your hands.