I could not even begin to wrap my mind around my mother’s new hobby. It made no scientific sense to me, and I had never heard of it ever before. In all seriousness, upon introduction I thought the unexplainable cult of healing my mother decided to join had to involve some form of ancient witchcraft. Or at least it had to be a direct violation of the laws of Catholicism, heavily upheld in my household. Regardless of its questionable sacrilege, my mother has continued to take part in it, study it, and fully immerse herself in it.

To understand why my mother has turned to this abnormal healing process, one must look to our families’ past. When it comes to curing sickness, my mother has always been on top of it, whether that be actively prescribing the right medicine or rushing my two brothers or me to the pediatrician at a moment’s notice. We used to have cabinets full of cough medicine, allergy pills, and Ibuprofen amongst other things. In recent years though, my mother has thrown away Advil and our family pediatrician in favor of a new form of remedy: crystals.

My brothers and I have a long and tiring history of illnesses. As a child I had asthma, entailing long nights of gasping for air, something I luckily grew out of. However, I haven’t been able to get rid of my chronic migraines, which plague me on an almost everyday basis. This is due in part to my optic nerve that has an annoying tendency to swell up. My middle brother has a higher degree of asthma than I had, along with a weak immune system. Over the past couple of years he has had both swine flu and pneumonia. My youngest brother has it the worst though. Covering his whole body is itchy and scaring eczema. The only way doctors know how to rid him of the bumps, because he is allergic to too many things to change his diet, is to use heavy doses of steroids.

Ultimately, my mother grew tired with modern medicine. No doctors could give any solutions that weren’t harmful one way or another. Of course my mother looked for alternatives, new trials and the possibility of a safe drug, but nothing seemed promising. This led my mother to turn to the unorthodox methods of crystal healing. With a very active Internet community, my mother was able to quickly learn a bulk of knowledge about crystal healing. She ordered books, starter kits, and watched crystal healing classes online to gain an even bigger knowledge of crystal healing. She was determined to find an alternative, and healthy, way of healing her sons.

Crystals are said to have the power of channeling negative energy inside the body and either releasing it or subduing it. This ideology is based in the assumption that all things are made of energy, from the tinniest ant, to the biggest elephant. Sick people’s energy is malformed. This can mean that there is too much energy concentrated in one spot, or plainly that there is negative energy in a place where there should be positive energy. Thus, to cure a person of sickness their energy must be shifted or purified through an exodus of negative energy. To shift energy, a crystal healer must pinpoint the problem and then move a crystal in a direction that the misplaced energy should really be in. If there is too much negative energy, a crystal simply has to be placed in the spot of aggravation. Crystal healers swear that harnessing energy  can help with an array of things like curing sickness, limiting skin irritation, preventing mental illness, and increasing creativity.

There are rules to crystal healing. For starters, crystals can be overworked. If a crystal is used too many times or not enough times it can become tainted. In the event of this there are two solutions. The quick solution is to use a Selenite wand: a white crystal that has purifying properties. The longer but more effective solution is to allow nature to purify a tainted crystal. It is said that rain water and the moon’s shine are very beneficial to a crystal’s purity and effectiveness. My mother has used all three solutions at one time or the other.

A second and notably more important rule is that not all crystals have the same healing powers. For example Amethyst, a purple-hued crystal well known regardless of one’s familiarity with the Crystal world, is said to be able to cure migraines, insomnia, and other infirmities of the mind. If Amethyst were being used on a person who had a stomachache, the crystal would have no affect. Because of this, it is imperative to know each crystal’s healing powers. Amethyst’s healing realm is the head because it coincides with the sixth chakra, “The Third Eye, which is positioned in the middle of the forehead and deals with maladies of the mind. The chakras, rooted in Indian culture, are seven major locations throughout the body that allow for energy to flow in and out of the body. It can then be very understandable that crystal healers believe that using a chakra-specific crystal to release negative energy through a chakra can heal someone of an infirmity.

When picking out a crystal for healing, there are two primary options: tumbled and raw. A tumbled crystal is one that it processed in a machine to be smooth, while a raw crystal is not altered once retrieved from the ground. There is much debate amongst crystal healers regarding the effectiveness of a tumbled stone. Interestingly, most healers believe that a crystal can pick you. When buying a crystal, a healer holds each crystal individually until they find one that feels right. Once touched by a healer, or a cystal enthusiast, the crystal forms a bond with the person. Thus, it is argued by some that the immense processing a tumbled crystal goes through damages its power and ability to heal as it changes hands so many times during production. However, my mother and other healers I have personally met do not agree with this. They prefer tumbled crystals because they are easier to hold, and do not believe that they processing has any effect on a crystal’s power.

Earlier, I explained crystal healing on the body, but that isn’t the limit to a crystal’s power. One of the first things my mother did to familiarize me with crystal healing was to take me to a class on the subject. For the purpose of the class called “The Different Uses of Crystals” located in downtown San Antonio, the instructor gave us each a piece of Fluorite cut in a long prism structure. She explained that fluorite cut in this way is best used to intercept radiation and harmful energy from electronics. Because the crystal comes to a point at the top, the crystal has a much more powerful force. This is because when it takes in negative energy, the crystal has a specific direction in which it can release the energy. Knowing this I now have a prism-structured fluorite crystal near my computer, which hopefully is channeling all harmful radiation and energy away from me and dispersing it into my surroundings.

It took a good amount of time and convincing for me to even begin to believe in the power of crystals. I mean, logically how can a rock cure the reoccurrence of nightmares? Thus, my first interaction with crystal healing was a mix of utter hysteria and confusion. John, my middle brother, is constantly fighting stomach pains. Like my headaches, he gets them during the worst of times: on the way to school, during tests, and right before bed. On a night I can’t remember the date of, although it had to have been at least two years ago, my brother was confined to his bedroom fighting a lengthy war with his stomach. I went into his room to check up on him and deliver him some hot water to drink, in the hopes that it would calm his stomach. Walking into the room, I was overcome with giddy emotions. Lying right in front of me, I stared down at my passed out brother with a mass of yellow crystals taped to his stomach. Yellow because crystals of that hue coincide with the Naval, or “Solar Complex”, chakra.

It wasn’t long before I had my own, equally as surprising, crystal healing experience. My mother wanted to tackle my chronic migraines and prescribed a hearty amethyst crystal to be taped to my forehead. I wasn’t very comfortable with a rock being anywhere near my forehead, but my mother and I did compromise on allowing one to be put in my pillowcase. The crazy thing was, my migraine actually retreated, and I began to feel better. I don’t know whether it really was the crystals releasing negative energy from inside my body or not, but I didn’t have a migraine anymore.

Even with that experience, I still have my suspicions regarding the phenomenon of crystal healing. Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that the crystals are creating a placebo effect for the person using them. If the person believes a crystal is really going to heal their migraine or stomachache, and they concentrate on getting better, it really isn’t the crystal that is healing them but they are healing themselves naturally. I don’t know if crystals can really manipulate the energy inside ones body. I do know though, that using them does have a positive affect on ones health, even if it really isn’t the crystal’s direct doing.