Crystal Healing: Do Crystals Really Work? What We Know About Energy and the Power of the Mind

Stones have been part of my life for years. I choose them for my malas; I know their colors, their differences, their imperfections, and the meanings and stories people have attached to them. I love some of them. I feel drawn to them, and they evoke certain sensations in me. Others leave me completely indifferent, and there are even a few I almost dislike.

But one question keeps coming up:

Do stones really have properties that can affect our health, our emotions, or our energy?

The answer becomes much more interesting when we stop choosing between two extremes: believing everything or dismissing everything as nonsense.

A stone can hold meaning, become part of a ritual, remind us of an intention, and even contribute to making us feel better—without any of that proving that the mineral itself possesses a particular healing “energy.”

And this is where research on the placebo effect—the fact that we may feel better partly because we expect something to work—becomes especially interesting.

Crystal healing is much more recent than we tend to think

Stones have accompanied human beings for thousands of years. They have been used as ornaments, amulets, ritual objects, and symbols of status; they have been associated with planets, deities, and particular qualities. In a number of ancient and medieval traditions, stones were also believed to have medicinal or protective properties.

But the contemporary idea of a system in which specific crystals are assigned specific energies believed to rebalance the body, influence emotions, or interact with the chakras took shape largely within the New Age movement of the second half of the twentieth century.

New Age healing entered popular culture especially during the 1970s and 1980s, alongside a growing interest in holistic health, esoteric practices, and personal transformation.

And it took on a distinctly modern, Western form: a problem is matched with a property, and that property is matched with a stone. It is almost a catalog system, very different from many of the symbolic and ritual uses of stones found in earlier cultures.

Katrina Raphaell’s Crystal Enlightenment, published in 1985 and now regarded as one of the most influential books in modern crystal healing, explicitly presents crystals and gemstones as tools for healing, balance, and personal growth.

So we need to distinguish between two things:

The symbolic, ritual, and sometimes therapeutic use of stones is ancient.

Modern crystal healing, with its particular language of energy and specific crystal properties, is largely a recent construction. So recent, in fact, that it is younger than I am.

But our fascination with stones remains. Do they work?

From a scientific perspective, the answer—at least based on what we currently know—is fairly straightforward:

we do not have convincing evidence that a crystal produces a specific therapeutic effect because of the properties attributed to it by crystal healing.

Surprisingly little rigorous experimental research has actually been conducted on the subject.

One of the most frequently cited experiments was carried out by Christopher French and colleagues and presented in 2001. Eighty participants meditated while holding either a genuine quartz crystal or a fake crystal they believed to be real.

Participants reported sensations such as warmth, tingling, and a sense of well-being.

Wonderful—but there was a problem: people reported these sensations whether they were holding the real quartz or the fake one.

Expectations seemed to matter more than the material they were actually holding.

In 2025, researchers conducted a much more structured randomized controlled study involving 138 participants, using genuine rose quartz and a visually similar placebo.

People who already believed in the effectiveness of crystals showed a reduction in anxiety regardless of whether they had received the genuine rose quartz or the placebo.

Among people who did not believe in crystal healing, no reliable improvement was observed.

The researchers therefore found no specific anxiety-reducing effect attributable to the crystal itself. What they found instead was something different: the participants’ expectations and beliefs played an important role.

And this is where, for me, the subject becomes genuinely fascinating.

If it’s placebo, does that mean it’s all imaginary?

No.

And this is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings surrounding the placebo effect.

Saying that an effect is connected to expectations does not necessarily mean that someone “made it up.” Quite the opposite.

In 1955, Henry Beecher popularized the expression the powerful placebo, helping to bring the phenomenon to the attention of modern medicine. Many of his conclusions were later challenged, but his work still represents an important historical milestone because it helped draw attention to the ways in which expectations and beliefs can influence what we perceive and, under certain circumstances, even some of our body’s responses.

In 1978, an even more interesting discovery was made: when people believed they had been given a painkiller, their perception of pain could decrease even when they had not actually received an analgesic.

And when researchers blocked some of the body’s natural mechanisms for controlling pain, part of that effect was reduced.

So it wasn’t simply “all in their head”: the expectation was associated with a real biological response.

Since then, a great deal of research has helped us understand more clearly that expectations, learning, conditioning, anxiety, reward, and social context can influence brain processes and perception.

This does not mean that the mind can cure every illness.

It means that what we expect, the meaning we give an experience, and the context in which we experience it can genuinely change the way we perceive certain symptoms and sensations.

So what can stones actually do?

This is the part that interests me most: we do not need to attribute an unproven healing energy to a stone in order for it to have value.

A stone can become something we associate with an intention, a tactile reminder, part of a ritual, a point to which we return our attention, a symbol of a decision we have made, or simply a beautiful object we choose to carry with us.

And all of these can be very real experiences.

So when I choose a stone for a mala, I do not expect the stone to do the work for us.

I am interested in another possibility: that every time we touch it, it reminds us of something.

An intention. A practice. A choice.

That is also why I prefer to think of a mala as an anchor, rather than a magical object.

A stone cannot save you, protect you, or bring love into your life.

The value of your mala comes from the relationship you build with what it represents—and, above all, from the actions you choose to repeat over time.

One bead at a time.
To remember who you choose to be.