Spiritual healers work in different ways, some healers use nothing but their hands and a desire to heal, others use Crystals as an aid to healing, this is referred to as crystal healing.

Crystals have long been know to store energy, if you doubt this think of your quartz watch powered by a quartz crystal which vibrates and emits a charge to regulate the watch.

The ancients believed you could charge a crystal with good intent by focusing your intention on it. As an example if you focused with a clear heart on bringing peace of mind to someone as you direct your thoughts to a piece of crystal, and then you gave that crystal to someone seeking peace of mind that person would pick up the good vibrations you charged the crystal with.

I sometimes use a vogel style cut crystal when I carry out healing as I have found it amplifies the healing energy directed at the patient.

Marcel Joseph Vogel (1917 - 1991) was a research scientist for IBM for 27 years. His areas of expertise were phosphor technology, liquid crystal systems, luminescence, and magnetic's.

In the 1970’s Vogel did pioneering work in man-plant communication experiments. This led him to the study of quartz crystals and the creation of a faceted crystal that is now known as the Vogel-cut crystal. The Vogel-cut crystal is an instrument that serves to store, amplify, convert, subtle energies.

Vogels research into the therapeutic application of quartz crystals led him to the investigation of the relationship between crystals and water. He discovered that he could structure water by spinning it around a tuned crystal, altering many of the characteristics of the water and converting it into an information storage system.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Vogel