About Altered Elements
We are a genuine boutique, we offer a wide range of really cool artsy and unique items. They represent things we love and gathered from around the worlds. Our mostly sterling silver jewelry is one of a kind with high quality gemstones and crystals embodying a beautiful piece of artwork that is wearable. Our pieces have personality and actually talk to you. The jewelry is often displayed on specimen rocks and crystals which have a life of their own discovered through metaphysics. Lots of words to tell our story, read if you wish, traveling to now is an interesting journey. We have been open since November 2009. We are not who we were those few years ago. Are you? There is a passion and a joy at Altered Elements. The Rocks talk, the jewelry jingles, the gifts are glorious and the art is adventurous. Your senses are inspired and perhaps challenged. Hmmm…..
Altered Elements was the creative vision of Marsha Pulling, Karen Bishop and Lucy Finch and opened in November of 2009. We all loved and love the Earth and designing almost anything, making jewelry, art, sculpturing, working with our hands and tools, growing plants and gardens, cooking and traveling. We love to teach what we know and share our joys. Change stays in our lives as we move with the ebb and flow of nature, valuing our past, enjoying the now and listening to next. Marsha, an experienced landscaper, needed to be free and the walls of a structure were too confining. So back to the landscaping, building and designing she went, still altering the elements but now with the green plants outside of those walls. Karen, an experienced engineer and project manager, returned to this skill when the real estate market improved bringing business, still altering the elements with her exciting vision of developments. And Lucy remains with Altered Elements, continuing with the jewelry design and energy healing modalities learned over a lifetime. The rocks and stones daily tell their stories. Sharing those stories, introduce you to an unseen world waiting to be discovered.
So Hello, it is Lucy here, telling you my story. I was born in Fort Myers because there wasn’t a hospital in Naples. My parents and grandparents lived here. We have lots of family photographs from 1910 and later of my grandparents hunting and fishing in Naples with other early pioneers. They were from Windsor, Ontario, Canada and you can only imagine how they got here for several months every year back then. They lived on the beach on Broad Ave. South, which is just one block north of the pier. My grandmother, also named Lucy, told me of giving a tea party for ALL the “ladies” of Naples, 20 people were in attendance. So my friends that means Naples winter population was 40 people. My how Naples has grown. How interesting it is that this building which houses Altered Elements was in fact built by my father, John Pulling Sr., and I rent from his son, John Pulling Jr.
My father moved to Naples permanently following a yearlong hospital stay when he was 19. He had a form of arthritis called Spondylosis and was the first human being to receive the experimental cortisone shots. A lot of experimentation was done on him looking to learn more about and cure arthritis. His whole life always had some degree of physical pain. He came to Naples in 1934 to heal, letting the land and the sun and a bit of Rum offer this to him. And he pulled away from deaths door living to be 89. So knowing the land can heal was in my life lesson from an early age.
My mother taught me about music, and singing and opera and being beautiful and kind and of the Church and knowing God, Jesus and of Spirit who teaches us of LOVE. Together my parents took me and my brother John (Alec) on trips to Canada, camping in Algonquin Park in Quetico territory in Northern Canada where I spent nights under the aurora borealis and days watching the loon dance or canoeing the otter slides. Once the states were experienced travel to other lands ensued; Greenland, Scandinavia, throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America, there were over 80 countries experienced. Our family scuba dived and hiked, bullet trained and flew, cruised and sailed, and bused and walked for miles seeing, tasting, touching, listening, smelling and knowing people and places, cultures and camaraderie, and I learned. I learned humans are precious, to be treasured and appreciated, and our Earth and the Cosmos are all a part of us. I learned we have within us a capacity to heal and be healed, to love and be loved, and to create and be created. We have free will and we are LOVE. Sometimes that’s covered up. Let the veil go. We should share and care and dare to be ourselves.
I graduated from Rollins College in sociology with a minor in law, and I got an additional associates degree in accounting and paralegal from Jones College. In my life as wife, though no longer, and mother of three, still am, I helped build a successful mirror manufacturing business, I chaperoned school trips and helped lead PTA’s and fundraisers (UGH.) Within the community I taught Sunday school and volunteered with the Junior League, YMCA, Developmental Daycare, Family Service and a dozen more.
I have professional training in energy healing modalities from Congdor Daniel and Biotherapy, Drunvalo Melchizedek and Awakening the Illuminated Heart, Bradley Nelson and the Emotion Code, Eric Pearl and the Reconnection, Donna Eden and Energy Healing, Gary Craig and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and Esoteric Healing by Dr. Barbara Briner. along with the hundreds and hundreds of books I have read.
I have gone beyond practitioner to becoming a certified teacher as Reiki Master, Certified Crystal Healer from Hibiscus Moon Academy recognized by the World Metaphysical Association, Psychic Medium Advanced training from Denise Lescano, and Seraphim Blueprint Teacher from Ruth Rendely.
When one cares deeply about people and the world, and wants everything to be nice and pretty with enough for everyone and it isn’t nice and pretty and there is not enough and fear and hurt rule so so very many then you are led to prayer, and extended prayer becomes meditation. About a year ago I was curious and reviewed my life year by year. I realized I have over 33,000 hours of meditation, not the walking around with your thoughts thinking kind. It is the kind where you are still and quiet and focused and breathing and searching, and asking for help and answers, wanting the world to be a better place and how can you serve. And for me my meditation is with Jesus, my guide, my ascended master, my best friend in Spirit. He has taught me of other guides and angels and lives and how time is an illusion because all time is now. That gets heavy thinking about dimensions and cosmic friends and higher consciousness. But for me it is very real. The reality of how connected we all are amazes me every day. So I have a passion birthed from hurt and fear and feeling separated into a knowing that absolutely everything has a purpose. Eventually the evil will fall away, the Love vibration disintegrates the fear, the negativity will no longer be necessary, and Unbounded Love is all there is.
You might have seen the book the Crystal Bible by Judy Hall. If you are a fundamentalist Christian this would offend you. You don’t put crystals and bible together. One is esoteric and dangerous and the other is holy and the only way. She knew what she was doing. She was being true to an inner knowing. She was not denying what her personal experience was. Having always loved the rocks and crystals and feeling a natural affinity to them it was only natural, clearly obvious that the best way to display our jewelry at Altered Elements was on pretty rocks. A few rocks became more rocks as our displays kept being sold. We brought in the specimens and geodes. Walking up and down Fifth Avenue no one was selling gems for healing, nice mineral specimens, quality crystals or healing tools. There was a store that had sad tumbled stones that went out of business. I hope they are fine. We started carrying high quality tumbled stones. Specimens from the studio/warehouse would tell me it’s time to go to the Park St. store, so I would bring them to the store and within hours someone would come in to get that very specimen. Stones would tell me to take them to this friend or that friend and I would (often it was an immediate request and quite inconvenient for me) and the friend would hold them and an energy would run through their ailment (yes, there was always a piercing pain) and they would instantly feel better. When that happens a lot you research even more. It is not unusual for people to come through the door and ask “Who ARE you?” they tell me they never come to downtown Naples, they have never been on Park St. but spirit just brought them in and they don’t know why. So I think, here we go again and we explore and we find the problem and offer healing, a stone, a piece of jewelry, a piece of art or simply a message and a breath breathed fully.
There have been many people walking into the store, I ask, “May I help you?” they answer, “You already are.” At first these comments puzzled me, which was when I didn’t fully understand the energy of the store. Now I understand when they say “I just came in to breathe.” The synergy, camaraderie and relationship that these stones have with each other is alive and holistic and healing. Are they calling you? Hundreds of days they have told me who wants to come to the store today only to be requested by customers moments upon arrival. This is a crazy neat world. The elementals are speaking, lights dance, and smells sparkle, waves become particles become waves creating an uncatchable force, that is as mysterious as it is real. You can communicate with more than people. You just have to remove the barriers that blind, the emotions that distract, the headphones that silence, the thoughts that limit and your world becomes bigger. No fear permitted. No negativity necessary. Honest emotions are recognized and put into perspective so that we can do our business work, still being grounded to pay our bills, clothe our backs and rest our bodies with shelter and food. We are practical here. Grounded and purpose filled. Listening to the rocks talk is just another perfectly normal, richly enjoyable day. Thank you for reading About Altered Elements.