AUTHOR, MUSICIAN, JEWELRY ARTIST
Since 1980, Uma Silbey has been known as a spokesperson and spiritual leader for an emerging new consciousness, popularly known as the “New Age.” Known for introducing quartz crystals in the late seventies and eighties, having the first quartz crystal jewelry manufacturing company, and being the author of one of the first crystal books, the international best seller, The Complete Crystal Guidebook, Uma draws from years of spiritual and psychological training as well as her everyday life experiences of being a mother and wife, a business owner, recording artist, and writer.

Over 50 years of focused spiritual practice underlie her five published books, jewelry designs, and music recordings. Raised Christian with a long background in art and music, she has since studied, meditated, and taken initiation with Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist masters as well as with Native American shamans and medicine men and women. After meeting her Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, in 1976 and receiving the name “Uma” (the name of a Hindu Goddess married to Shiva and representing “divine feminine creative energy”), she began her continuing practices of Vipassana and other forms of meditation, bhakti yoga (the yoga of love, service, and devotion), and kirtan (devotional singing). Shortly thereafter, taking the Bodhisattva Vow and initiated in “Karma Sange Drolma” (Buddha Tara) by Venerable Kalu Rimpoche, she also received initiation into the Buddhist Kalachakra, Tara, and Mahamudra practices.

The next year she gave up all her possessions and moved into a Los Angeles ashram where she received the name “Prathna Kaur” (Princess of Constant Prayer) and studied mantra and sound current meditations, pranayam (breathing practices), and was trained to be a teacher of kundalini yoga. Eventually she was in effortless, deep meditation for most of the day and night, barely needing to sleep, and left her ashram room only to teach yoga and make a few pieces of energy jewelry to support herself. It was during that time that she learned how to remain in a state of continuing meditation while working in the world, something that she continues to this day and now teaches others to do.

In 1980 Uma left Los Angeles for the San Francisco area and began what turned out to be her life’s work producing jewelry healing tools and teaching about quartz crystals, meditating while being in the “real world,” and subtle energy healing. To do that she also recorded guided visualizations and meditation (new age) music and wrote several books about enlightenment and the use of crystals and stones. It was then that she started her quartz crystal jewelry company as a way to introduce the metaphysical uses of gems and stones, using jewelry as tools as well as for beauty. Her purpose was to bring this knowledge that was previously limited to a very few spiritual practitioners to a more mainstream audience, bridging East and West in order to help raise consciousness to more loving and expanded awareness.

While in the San Francisco area, Uma renewed her Bodhisattva Vow with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and was initiated by him into the Blue Medicine Buddha practices which she uses in her healing work today. She also worked for twelve years with the Native American healer, Native American Church Roadman and spiritual leader, Marcellus Bearheart Williams and, after completing four vision quests, she received the name “Lum-He-Ho-Lot-Ti” (Blue Eagle), was authorized to be a pipe holder and to pour water or be in charge of the Inippi or sweat lodge ceremony. Augmenting her working knowledge of subtle energy healing work, she spent the next several years being trained in many Native American and other indigenous healing ways by several medicine men and women. She is also a certified minister.

Believing that the way to wisdom is not to remain secluded but to balance spirituality with everyday living, Uma has done just that. After a bachelor’s degree from UCLA,