The mystical energy of crystals
Believers swear by them, ritual is relaxing, but researchers say the vibes are placebos
I’m in the basement of Happy Soul, a metaphysical shop on Bloor St. W., laying face-up on a table with my eyes shut and my shoes off. Calming music fills the small mauve room — pan flute, I think to myself — while a crystal healer places cool crystals one-by-one at my feet, up my stomach and chest, on my throat, my forehead and above my head. Each one aligns with a chakra, the seven energy points throughout the body, according to some Indian religions, Tibetan Buddhism and New Age thinking.
In a soothing voice, Lesia Yacht, the Toronto-based crystal healer conducting my session, tells me to let my mind wander. Instead, during the hour or so I’m lying motionless, I am acutely aware of my stomach grumbling and every sudden itch on my forehead.
If I breathe too deeply, will the crystals fall off my rib cage, I wonder? What if I fall asleep mid healing session? Will that send my chakras into a tailspin?
I entered this world of mystical energy and sparkling rocks in hopes of understanding a practice that’s become popular among celebrities and regular folks alike: using amethysts, emeralds, rose quartz and other crystals to harness healing power. It’s a practice that elicits raised eyebrows and concern in the medical community, as there’s no solid research proving crystals work — and even some devotees acknowledge any positive vibes are probably just a placebo effect.
Still, crystals are big business, with celebrities leading the trend. Madonna and Khloe Kardashian swear by them and Katy Perry reportedly slept with one in her hand after splitting from ex-hubby Russell Brand.
Hipster troubadour Father John Misty is selling some in his merch store — rose quartz earrings for $45 — and you can also find them anywhere from local metaphysical shops to Urban Outfitters.
Tiny Devotions, a Canadian company selling meditation necklaces adorned with healing crystals, has sold millions of dollars worth of their mala bead jewelry.
“Our revenue is over seven figures annually,” says founder Diana House over the phone from her office in London, Ont., where a large citrine crystal is on display. “I believe that it helps,” House says, referring to the roughly $1,000 crystal, known for its “prosperity and abundance” properties. “But I can’t scientifically prove it does anything,” she adds.
Before our healing crystal session, Yacht told me certain crystals can “unblock” various energy points and help manifest your desires. “If all our energy centres are open, we will be healthy all the way around,” she says.
Online fans say the sparkling stones are rooted in ancient healing rituals and act as conduits for wellness in the mind, body and spirit, channelling positive energy to improve wellbeing, and can be worn around your neck, held during meditation sessions or placed throughout a room.
Marta Borowski, 31, credits a crystal with helping her buy a house in To- ronto’s fiercely competitive real estate market. After she and her fiancé lost a bidding war, she passed a store showcasing a massive gemstone collection and decided a crystal “good luck charm” could come in handy.
“I don’t know if it was the sunstone, but we ended up getting our dream home,” she says.
Borowski thinks it’s about visualization, and perhaps a placebo effect. “Somebody could give you a piece of cloth and say, ‘This cloth holds some kind of energy-creating properties,’ and you would just harness all of your positive energy into that and it would have the same effect,” she says. And there really isn’t any concrete research backing up the positive vibes beyond this power of suggestion.
“Sadly, the whole of complementary and alternative medicine can be summed up as ‘popular in the face of no evidence,’ ” says Christopher French, head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at the Goldsmiths, University of London department of psychology.
French researched healing crystals to figure out why people think they work and presented his results at a couple of conferences in the early 2000s. In his study, 80 participants were asked to meditate while holding either a real crystal or a fake one they were told was real. Before meditating, half the total number of participants were primed on what types of sensations to expect — things like tingling, heat, a mood boost and so on.
People who were primed on crystal sensations reported much stronger sensations than those who weren’t. On top of that, there was no major difference in what people felt while holding real versus fake crystals.
“The results of our study did not come as any great surprise,” French tells me. “The power of suggestion to affect perception and memory has been demonstrated in literally thousands of well-controlled psychological experiments for many decades.”
But if you can think of an issue, fans say there’s a crystal for it. Want to bring clarity to your mind? Try selenite. Want to stimulate your immune system? Buy some clear quartz.
This concerns French. “It is sometimes argued that this is acceptable, as if a person feels better after a worthless treatment, surely that’s a good thing?” he says. “But the danger here is that people may rely on worthless (complementary and alternative medicine) treatments for problems that might have been effectively treated with conventional medicine in the early stages but not seek the latter until it is too late.”
In other words: Don’t try curing cancer with a crystal. The crystal fans I spoke to for this story agreed.
“It’s a holistic way of healing, but never to replace (medicine),” Yacht says.
Back at Happy Soul, after my own crystal healing experience — one that typically costs $85 and lasts around 75 minutes — I felt tranquil, like a weight was off my shoulders.
But was that because Yacht unblocked my “two” blocked chakras using the mystical power of the crystals covering my body? Or did I simply doze off to the sound of pan flute?