Hi, everyone and crystal blessings. Today, I am so excited to be interviewing the amazing Adam Barralet. Adam is someone that I’ve been following for quite some time. If you’re not familiar with him, you may actually know him and not even realize it from his amazing YouTube channel where he talks all about healing crystals.
Ashley Leavy: So Adam, thank you so much for being here.
Would you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about how you got started working with crystals?
Adam: First of all, thank you very much for having me today. I’m really blessed to be in a chat with you all, your fans, your following and your circle. So my journey began with crystals over 20 years ago now. I walked into a crystal shop and I bought myself a little Amethyst. I went home and I read all about the magic and the mysticism of that crystal on the little bit of pamphlet they gave me. The next week, I’m back in that crystal shop and I bought another one, and then another one, and another one - to the point where now I think I work with about 300 different crystals. So that’s where I kind of began. I would buy so many books and try to find as much information as I could about crystals.
There’s so much information out there that would tell me that a rose quartz is good for love and Citrine is good for abundance, but they wouldn’t tell you what to do with them.
So I was collecting all these crystals, but they were just sitting on the shelf looking pretty. If we’re drawn to crystals, we can justify spending $10, $20 or $50 on a bit of rock, however our friends and family may wonder where our money is going. So I thought, if I have this unique drawing to gifts from mother nature, I also have the responsibility to make sure I know how to use them. Otherwise, it’s like giving you a Ferrari and you leave it sitting in the garage. So I started bringing another elements of different practices: aromatherapy, astrology, Feng Shui, guided visualizations, spell work and more, to find out how they create and understand love, healing and protection.
I grew up in Australia, however I lived in Toronto for a while and in New York City. I had some great teachers in these places, and when I finally came back to Australia, I met some great people who invited me to write my books and produce my oracle cards.
Now I’m blessed to travel around the world teaching people what to actually do with these colorful things that we love so dearly.
Ashley: You know, Adam, I’m so glad that you brought that up because as a crystal teacher that was earlier on in life a student, that was one of my biggest complaints while I was trying to learn everything I needed to about crystals. I mean, I have over 200 crystal books, but it seemed like there were all these encyclopedic volumes about what the properties of stones were but not as much information on what to do with them.
Often, the information you got was so overly complicated that I constantly felt like, Oh, what if I make a mistake? Or this has a lot of steps. It seems really complicated. What if I don’t have all of those special tools or things that I need? Through my own work with stones I eventually realized that it doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. I think more and more people are waking up to that. Now, you see amazing books available like your book “Crystal Connections: A Guide To Crystals And How To Use Them” which really is more practical. It's more of a hands-on, integrated approach to working with stones
Adam: Exactly. You know, I love working crystals and I wanted many people to feel confident with that. If we can’t make it simple and understandable, then we’re going to be eliminating people who will feel helpless with what to do with their crystals.
Ashley: So true. Now, Adam I know for you a big part of your attraction to stones is really because of this value that you have about living in harmony with nature. So...
What tips do you have for our listeners on the podcast or our readers on the blog on how to work with stones to find this balance and live more in harmony with nature?
Adam: Know that crystals are gifts from mother nature that certain people are drawn to. She’s going to gift them to us. Sometimes people feel a little bit worried about taking things from the earth. However, I personally have sat with this idea for a long time and feel that mother nature is going to give us these gifts. We can then use them to work in harmony with her. It's just like when we feel that we love going traveling around the world, but there’s nothing better than going home and having so many people sitting in your lounge or sitting in your spiritual room at home and doing crystal work.
What I found time and time again, the more we can go out in nature, it’s like taking the crystals home. They sing so much more, they allow us to experience it. As they wake up our awareness, they wake up what’s happening around us in their natural environment. Some days we can go all day and not notice a single thing about what’s happening in the natural world. But we should. There’s a greater need now more than ever to really read and connect with nature.
I think crystals love it when we go back to nature and I think we really love it when we’re back with nature, so it’s a match made in heaven.
Ashley: You know, that is so true. Just to give a quick example, yesterday, I had one of those days where exactly what you’re explaining happened. I was rushing around all day, totally not in my present moment of awareness. I was just going from one task to the next. Busy, busy, busy all day. Then, I was on my drive home because I live a little outside of the city (I have a new age store here in Mass and Wisconsin). I live about half an hour away, and I have this beautiful drive to the countryside. I really love it because I’m so decompressed by the time I get home.
So I was looking out of my car window, just looking at how beautiful everything was, and the sun was just starting to set. It was so gorgeous, the sky was that soft pink color. I went past this little pond that’s pretty near my house and I saw that there was a flock of pelicans. There, I could see their glistening, beautiful white, shimmering feathers in the middle of this pond with this beautiful pink sunset. Then as I drove past it I thought, "Oh, that’s pretty" but then I told myself "No, oh my gosh, this is such a beautiful moment." So I turned around my car and went back, walked down to this big pond and just sat for 20 minutes and just enjoyed the beauty of this moment.
You’re so right that our crystals are like little connection points to that energy that mother nature has to share with us. They're such a good reminder to take time to appreciate it.
Adam: Precisely. I think as humans, we’re all very important, but sometimes we get overwhelmed with how important our troubles are. I was blessed to grow up in the bush of Australia and I found this little rock that I could go sit on at the top of the hill and through that, I could see Perth, which is the capital city of where I live. From there it looked about two inches tall. When you think about a big city and there it’s about two inches tall, it really puts into perspective how big our troubles really are. Crystals give us that gateway to really get out there and connect with the power of nature. Even more, to find that balance that nature already has everyday.
Ashley: Wow.
Are there any crystals that come to mind? Specific crystals that are a good reminder for you or a good touchdown to help you with that connection to the natural world?
Adam: It’s a pretty basic crystal but I think it’s one that gets neglected - maybe because of its color - but smoky quartz is a beautiful one. There are so many vibrant, different colored crystals, but I think a lot of the time, because we are so much in our heads, we are also so much in our hearts, with emotions that are overwhelming. Smoky quartz grounds us so beautifully. It reconnects us with the sacredness. So I really love working with that one. There are also other, more rare ones. I’ve got a bit of a bad habit of loving really rare crystals. Nuumite, for example, which comes from granite in Greenland. They are brown and can be really nice as well, but a smoky quartz can work just as well to remind you the sacredness there.
Ashley: That is so true. I think it is often overlooked and kind of underutilized. Honestly though, it’s one of my favorite stones to work with for so many reasons. But yeah, the grounding capability of that crystal is just phenomenal.
Adam: Yeah.
Ashley: Adam, let me ask you this... I know that you mentioned this a little earlier, but you also use crystals in conjunction with essential oils. I’m just wondering here, I’ve spoken with a lot of people who use these two things in combination, but...
What are some of your favorite ways to work with the really powerful healing energies from crystals and essential oils in combination?
Adam: I’ll give you a couple of my favorite examples. So why I love working with essential oils and also bringing animal archetypes and things like that is, instead of just having one little soldier fighting that battle for whatever you want to manifest, you can get a whole army together.
So I will share one of my favorite abundance ones:
What you need for this is a small Citrine crystal, some bergamot essential oil and -- in Australia we use a $100 note, or whatever your highest currency note is in whichever country you are. So what you do is you sit down with your crystal and you hold it in your hand, you visualize whatever you want to manifest abundance-wise, whether that would be a certain amount in your bank account or being able to pay for a holiday or something like that. You want to see and taste and feel and do that. You send that into the crystal nook and program the crystal.
Now, after you’ve done that,
