Crystal healing - Definition and Overview

Crystal healing is the belief that crystals have energies and properties that are able to improve health. It is not part of standard medical theory, but it is included in a broader view of Crystal power that says crystals, which are minerals with a periodic atomic structure, possess metaphysical abilities.

Quartz crystal

Crystal healers say that it works because everything is energy and vibrates at various frequencies and that crystals work via these vibrations. Every living thing has a vibrational energy system, which includes chakras, subtle bodies and meridians. By using the appropriate crystals one can allegedly retune an energy system or rebalance a body's energies, thus improving well-being.

The earliest records of crystal healing come from ancient Egypt. The Ebers papyrus states the medicinal uses of many different gems. Healing with crystals is also recorded in India's Ayurvedic records and in traditional Chinese medicine from around five thousand years ago.

Criticism

Most scientists, health professionals, skeptics and others consider crystal healing to be a pseudoscientific quack therapy, noting that there is no scientific evidence that healing can be achieved by it or that the claimed "energies" even exist.