Those who believe in the healing power of crystals credit the stones for helping to boost energy, nurture relationships, and even manifest better dreams. With optics like these, why not supercharge your life by carrying the semi-precious stones everywhere you go? If you think that sounds extreme, check Miranda Kerr, who carries rose quartz in her bra, or celebrity manicurist Mazz Hanna, who will put them on your fingers, for a price.
The manicurist who works on campaigns for brands like Fenty and Prada also offers a super customised, nail service in Los Angeles: the Crystal Healing Manicure, which promises to help amplify the positive energy from charged stones for weeks while sporting dope-ass nails. Could this be the thing that offers a meditation on whatever positive vibrations we need? I set up a session to find out.
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Like many nail appointments, this one started with a battery of questions. But instead of being asked for preferred favourite nail shape or polish shades, I was hit with a highly personal questionnaire delivered to my inbox and peppered with queries about my childhood and the areas of life in which I felt sluggish or stagnant. Okay. Clicking through the multiple choice questions did feel a little more like therapy than I had bargained for, but I submitted my answers in the name of beauty research.
When Hanna appeared for our appointment, all glowing skin, pink hair, and good vibes, she immediately got to work sage-ing the workspace and creating a crystal grid (fashioned in the shape of a sunburst), based on my answers. What I didn’t realise was that she had selected these crystals to help align my out-of-whack root and sacral chakras, as revealed by the quiz. (That’s the thing about Hanna: she’ll go over the metaphysical bridge with you or not talk healing energy at all — whatever you prefer. It's a touch that keeps the appointment from feeling too out there for semi-believers like me.)
The nail pro, who has a product line slated to launch September 15th, also presented a personalised Alignment Elixir, a face and aura mist custom made with essential oils geared to stimulate my two unbalanced chakras. “Crystals enhances the healing power of those things,” she later said of the elixir. “They work together to bring you harmony.”
With a carefully laid out display of smokey quartz and amethyst at my left, and air cleansed by sage and spritzed with elixir, Hanna got to work on my nails. She used a quick-dry, Japanese gel polish in a calming shade to match the stones beside me. After the colour was applied, she embedded little chunks of smokey quartz onto the nails of each of my ring fingers.
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Though celebrity clients like Nicole Richie, Emma Roberts, and Greta Gerwig may go for more bling-y designs that utilize crystals on every nail, I took to my minimal mani quickly. Not only did it become a soothing habit to rub the embedded stones with the pads of my thumbs, I also got a weird reward from tapping the stones on the surface of my desk between keystrokes at work. The manicure not only held up to the beating of everyday life, but according to Hanna, the tendency to absentmindedly rub the stones themselves may have served a grounding function, too.
“Everything in the world is made of energy and energy wants to attune with other energy that’s of the highest frequency," Hanna explained to me. "The frequency of crystals is higher to that of humans, so when our energy vortex interacts with it, it elevates our vibration." She explained that by putting crystals directly on the nails, you consistently absorb the energy, which allows your body to take everything it needs from the stones.
After a few weeks, it was time to have the gel polish removed, and with it, the stones. While it’s hard to quantify whether it helped realign my chakras, having crystals on my nails did remind me that I needed a little grounding in life — plus, my nails looked fresh as hell, so I'd call it a win-win.
Mazz Hanna Crystal Healing Manicure, £350 (£265), available by appointment at Mazz Hanna.
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