Philip Permutt on Crystal Healing

So, what exactly are crystals and how do they work with our bodies to help us heal?  This week I'm joined by 'Britain's leading crystal expert' (Daily Mail), Philip Permutt, to dive into all things crystals and explore their benefits from a total beginner's POV.

Philip is one of the go-to experts on all things crystals here in the UK, he's appeared on This Morning and been cited as 'one of the world's leading authorities' by Spirit & Destiny Magazine. Join us as we discuss the practicalities of choosing the right crystals and how to cleanse them, through to the origins of crystal healing and if man-made crystals hold the same benefits of those that have come from the earth...

You can find Philip Permutt online at: thecrystalhealer.co.uk / @thecrystalhealer
You can find me at  @soundsabitwoowootome / soundsabitwoowootome.com

Enjoy!

You can find me over at soundsabitwoowootome / @beckytaylorpods

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Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to the Sounds A Bit Woo to Me podcast. Each week we'll take a deep dive look into an alternative therapy, spiritual practice or a holistic well-being approach that might raise a skeptical eyebrow, be slightly misunderstood., and for some be considered a bit ‘woo woo’. Here's this week's episode.

BECKY: Hello and welcome to the podcast. my name is Becky Taylor. Before we get going today I wanted to let you know that not only do I offer my public space in yoga classes,  I also work with companies offering corporate yoga sessions. So if this is something that you are interested in for your workplace, you can head to beckytaylor.co.uk and click on the corporate yoga tab to send me a note and I would love to help. So back to the podcast!

This week I'm joined by a man described as ‘Britain's leading Crystal expert’ by The Daily Mail and Spirit and Destiny magazine have cited him as ‘one of the world's leading authorities in this field’ -  it is of course Philip Permutt and I am so excited to have him on the podcast to talk about all things Crystal healing. So here he is!

Phillip, welcome to the podcast. I am super excited to chat with you today about all things crystals. I know you're a busy man. You run your shop, you run your website, have lots of courses and classes, have written many many books and you're also a firm  favorite with the UK media to talk about crystal. So I really really do appreciate your time and with your help I'd love to dive into crystals and crystal healing therapy. So I guess let's get kick off with your story and how you came to discover crystals and began the incredible career that you've had.

PHILLIP: Years ago I suffered from Crohn's disease, which I don't have anymore, and I was in the hospital having a bowel resection and just before the operation surgeon came to me and he said, basically, we've got a problem because my sciatic nerve was stuck to the gut in many places and it kept firing and causing pain. He said his problem was that he couldn't necessarily separate every bit of nerve from all of the gut, because it was all very messed up. He said that there would be two options. Basically if he could he would try to, but if he couldn't, he could either remove the whole gut and I would have a colostomy bag, or he could sever the sciatic nerve and I wouldn't be able to walk. 

At that time I didn't really didn't want a colostomy bag, and so it was agreed that if he couldn't separate it, he’d sever the nerve. The next morning he came around and said basically, ‘the operation was a great success but sorry, you can’t walk.’ It was at that point in time that I really got into alternative therapies. Up to then I'd always been really interested in them and interested in everything sort of psychic, spiritual, alternative, but I hadn't actually needed it for me So it was more of ‘Okay, what do I do? How does this stuff work? Does it really work? Let's try it because I'm going to try anything’ and I started off having a whole load of different treatments from anyone who would come give me a treatment in the hospital. So I had crystal healing, and reiki and probably everything most people have heard of, and some things people hadn’t heard of, and I'm sure they all helped in different ways, but the short part of the story is that six weeks and two days later I walked out of the hospital without any steps or crutches or anything, to the amazement of the nurses. I was actually very very very ill at the time and I spent a year convalescing, but because my background was in science - I did a degree in Applied Biology and my brain basically was still working very scientifically way then -  and crystals you can hold, and you can do things, and you can test them, and and everything else. You can't do that with the sort of energy healing stuff, we've just got energy floating around. So it's not that the energy healing didn't work, I'm sure everything contributed towards the healing process, but the crystals are these solid things and that's why I ended up with crystals as my main thing and I love them. They're so wonderful and magnificent and amazingly powerful. 

BECKY: What an incredible story from being told that you couldn't walk to, you know, walking out the hospital six six weeks later. And at the time were crystals a big thing?

PHILLIP: No, I believe I was the sixth person in the UK in modern times to actually work with crystals as a crystal healer. At that time they were actually really difficult to get hold of, there were some very dusty mineral collector shops and there were a few sort of very mystical shops dotted around the place, which sort of put people off going in through the door and first place. 

BECKY: So how far back does crystal usage go Obviously, it wasn't very popular back then, but how long have humans been using crystals for therapy? When did it  start? 

PHILLIP: Since we’ve been human. There are some caves in South Africa called the Cradle of  Humanity, The Cradle of Humankind, because they're the oldest fossils there of anything relating to a standing up on two legs ape, basically, that we descended from. I believe it's about 3 million years that the caves were actually used as homes by our ancestors. And in the layers going down even to three and a half million years ago, they have found crystal tools and crystals, which have been brought there from other places. So they may not be able to see exactly what they use them for, how they use them, and whatever else, but we've been working with crystals since we've been standing on her back legs. 

BECKY: Okay, so long. Bringing it up to date, to now, if somebody is listening to this and it is an absolute total newbie to crystal's doesn't know anything about it, but it's kind of curious,  let's go back to basics  - what exactly constitutes a crystal, what is it? And in sort of layman terms, how can they help us? 

PHILLIP: Okay. I've got a very broad use of the word. Whenever I use the term crystal, I'm including the whole mineral kingdom. So I'm including rocks and stones and mountains and the big sort of monoliths like Stonehenge, and pebbles you might pick up on the beach. Everything is included in it. And that's because all of them basically are, or they contain,  or they are made up of, different crystalline forms. There are a few exceptions that there are some rocks that aren’t crystalline but the vast majority of them are. Not all of them form perfect crystals though,  and a perfect crystal forms in one of seven shapes and has a perfect crystal structure repeated in it over and over and over again, which is how it grows and it becomes a crystal. Everything else might have lots and lots of tiny ones of those making up one big rock. So I'm including everything in it 

How they were basically, is they change you on an energetic level. And the thing about crystals is they are so easy to work with  - the one thing they're doing for you the whole time is balancing your energy. So if you've got a bunch of crystals and you need some you don't need others, but you don't know what -  just have them all. Because the ones that you don't need are just going to sit there and look pretty, and the ones you do need are going to help you. They will balance you, and balance is the keyword, they are always balancing. So for example, if you've got crystals going to help with a weight thing, then it doesn't mean to say that that crystal will help everyone lose weight. The crystal will help everyone get to the perfect weight for them as an individual. So if you think ‘I want to be a size zero model’ it's not going to happen, unless physically you're supposed to be that.

BECKY: But we can never then pick the wrong crystal? Are there any negative effects if you do have the wrong crystal in your house?

PHILLIP: Not at all. If you have the wrong crystal then it just literally is sitting there looking pretty and that's it. If you have the right crystal, it doesn't always mean to say you like it though. Lots of people will talk about if you’re drawn to a crystal, if you notice a crystal,  if it's waving at you, if it makes you smile, then it's a crystal you need. And that's absolutely true. But I also want people to be really aware of the crystals they don't like, the ones that they go over to in a shop and they can't even touch, the ones they look at and they just feel nauseous - those are the ones which are touching something really deep down inside that you don't actually want to look at those the ones that will change your life and make you really better because it's something perhaps that you need. It’s those things that you’ve pushed down and pushed down that those crystals are going to bring up.

BECKY: How do we know the properties of what certain crystals can do,  is it uniform or does it depend on the person using said crystal and their intention? Or is there just a blanket rule for each crystal?

PHILLIP: Essentially, I believe that every single crystal does only one thing, but that their ‘one thing’ will affect a whole lot of things - there is a  chain-link knock-on effect. Take, for example, Citrine. The one thing Citrine does is to work with the cells in the gut that absorb nutrients and help to balance them. It doesn't do anything else, but by doing that it means that you're getting more nutrients into your body from whatever amount of food you're eating, which means you've got more nutrients going around your blood system, and so Citrine's good for any type of physical repair. 

BECKY: I read somewhere that when you are buying crystals, you need to cleanse them because they might have absorbed other people's energy, or anybody else that's handled them. If I were to go out and get crystals now, how would I go about cleansing them?

PHILLIP: The easiest way to cleanse them is with running water. There are a few crystals which are water soluble, so it's not advisable to put them in water because you won't have them -  they'll disappear!  

BECKY: Once we've got the crystal and it's been cleansed, we might put it in our home. We might put it next to our bed. Is that enough or do we need to wear it? Do we need to handle it every day? How should we be interacting with them?

PHILLIP:  As a general rule, if you are holding a crystal, it will work better.  If you're wearing a crystal and carrying it with you 24/7 it will work better still.

BECKY: When we are selecting a crystal, when I've looked online they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Do you need a bigger crystal for the bigger the problem? 

PHILLIP: If you're just working with yourself and you're going to hold the crystal yourself, then size really doesn't matter. If you're working with other people, or if you work in spaces or rooms and you want to change the whole room, you want to change how the whole office feels, or something like that, yes, size does matter. 

BECKY: Okay. So what are your favorite go-to crystals and tell us about some that you just love and you return to time and time again.

PHILLIP:  Citrine has stayed with me continuously since the very first day I worked with crystals on myself in the hospital. Tourmaline is another Crystal that I love, tourmaline is really protective for your energy and when you do lots of work with people, especially energy work and healing work, then your energy gets mixed with theirs in the process and so to separate it is a really really good thing. Otherwise you end up suffering their pains, their discomfort, their emotions, which get attached to you. So something like tourmaline is really really good for that. But also for anyone on an everyday basis we pick up energy just walking around the place, you know going into the supermarket or walking down the High Street, whatever you're doing you're picking up energy from people all around you all the time. You've got the friend who pops over for a cup of tea, that's the classic one, isn't it? They dump all of their worries on you, and then when they go they feel absolutely great and you're exhausted! Tourmaline is really good because it can let you still be there for them and help your friend, but without actually taking on their stuff and absorbing it. 

BECKY: Yeah, a lot of people at the moment are anxious about money and their careers, what we've Covid-19, and you know the imminent end of furlough and redundancies. For somebody in that headspace that is worried about making ends meet, or money, or has financial and career worries, is there a  crystal that you would recommend? 

PHILLIP: Citrine and Pyrite both bring abundance, and the two of them together can really make a difference. If you've got your own business then put Citrine in wherever your till is - I use that word very very broadly because if you're taking money over the internet, then that might be sort of next to your computer rather than actually in a till - and perhaps also keep one in your purse or wallet. There's a an amazing thing when you get to bigger things and needing to sell more, there's an amazing thing with selling houses that works every single time and that's to put small citrine crystal in every single room in the house and one big one either when you come into the house, or in the main room of the house. It could be in the middle of the dining table or something like that and that sells houses phenomenally well. The fastest that it's worked was a lady who had inherited a house from her mother a couple of years earlier and had been with an agent, but it hadn't sold and hadn't had a lot of interest. So she appointed a new agent and went down there to meet him, and she took the citrine crystals, put them literally in every single room in the house, and one big citrine crystal in the hallway as you came in. As she was coming home and she was driving back to st. Albans and she stopped at Fleet Services on the way and her agent phoned her and said he had an offer for the asking price. 

What I always advise people is that if you want to take the big piece with you when you move great, just leave the other small crystals there.

BECKY: Let's do another quick topical one. There are going to be a lot of lockdown babies coming up next year, we’re going to have a baby boom. What crystals are good for childbirth and labor and just ensuring a safe passage through to through to motherhood? Is there a go to crystal in that instance? 

PHILLIP: Yes, chrysocolla - this helps both the mother and the developing baby. Other crystals tend to do one or the other, so Chrysocolla is a good starting point for both.  Other things that are helpful are Moonstone and Rose Quartz.

BECKY: Are there any crystals that are native to us here in the UK?

PHILLIP: Oh, yes. We've got some interesting things. So there's flourite in Derbyshire, some of which is actually world famous and renowned for being some of the best in the world. It's called Blue John and it's got some amazing patterns in it and is used to create ornaments mostly, but it's also really good for healing. Fluoride is good for bones. It's good for teeth as well. But it's also really really good to help focus your mind. So if you've sort of got a sketchy mind or you're trying to do too many things and you can't focus on it, it really helps you with that. It's also really good for kids at school for doing exams and tests anything like that. 

BECKY: We're almost out of time, but I wanted to ask you one last question because I've read about this and I found it quite interesting, and I can almost kind of predict what your answer might be. I read that you can get some man-made crystals but logic, for me, would suggest that they're just not as good - they just won’t work because they've not been created in the earth, of the earth, by the earth. What's your opinion?

PHILLIP: Absolutely. Yes, I agree with you. Basically when you think about it natural crystals are millions of years, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years old. The oldest ones on the planet are about 4 billion years old.  You can't learn what that crystal has learned and experienced, in an hour, or a week,  or a month or however long it takes to grow them in the lab. So growing your own man-made crystals, if you like there's a difference between the two really - you can grow your own crystals because there are some crystals that can, with a little bit of enhancement ,grow very very quickly. So aragonite crystals which form a lot of the stalactites and stalagmites in caves,  and they can actually be enhanced with a little bit of vinegar to grow in weeks rather than millions of years. And so that's quite a good one for kids if they want to grow their own crystals, but those crystals aren't going to have the same knowledge and wisdom and healing ability as crystals which have grown naturally over millions of years. 

There are a few crystals which are, if you like, man-made or enhanced which are really wonderful though. Those are the aura crystals and especially aqua ora because they're basically bonding rare metals with quartz crystal. And quartz will amplify any type of energy at all. So it's a way of being able to work with things like gold and platinum and those sorts of materials which would probably be prohibitively expensive for most people. 

BECKY: Phillips, I just loved speaking to you. I have a ton more questions. You're so knowledgeable and it's really lovely to get some firm answers and some just some insight from you and everything that you've learned. So thank you so much for being here. 

PHILLIP: You're welcome. Let me just mention one thing, which is my latest project  - I’m writing a children's crystal book with my partner Nikki Roscoe and that is coming out on the 19th of March 2021 and is called My Crystal Guide

BECKY: Where can people find you online:

PHILLIP: I’m on social media, or my website thecrystalhealer.co.uk.