 of Tony G. create a life you love. I believe that each and every one of us has a purpose, a Dharma, if you will. Something that we were put here to do, to create. Today, I will be speaking with Diane Bloom, owner of Free Spirit Crystals, on how she took her purpose and her passion and turned it into an amazing career working with crystal. Hi Diane, welcome to create a life you love. Thanks Tony, it's really good to be here. Absolutely, so my first question is, when did you first learn about crystal? Well, it was an amazing experience. I was working in corporate food service back in the 80s and early 90s. And I was very unhappy with corporate work. And I was just so disenchanted with the business world. And I knew I had to get out. I felt like I was dying inside. But I didn't know what else to do. Because that's what I had trained for. That's all I knew was to do food service. But I knew I couldn't do it anymore. So I decided to take a leap of faith and just quit. Not knowing what else I was gonna do with my life. I decided to take a year off and just travel, explore things, find out something else that I liked. So the day that I quit, I was pitching in a softball game. And I got hit in the face with a line drive. And I got knocked out, I fell and hurt my shoulder. And it was like, what is this? Here I'm gonna take this whole year off. I'm gonna travel, I'm gonna explore my life. And now I get hurt. And I remember laying on the ground, looking up into the dark sky at night. And saying, what is this? And I saw the stars going around my head, you know, like, because I had a concussion. And so I went on a year long journey instead of exploring and traveling. I went to doctors and hospitals and physical therapists and nothing worked. My arm was separated. The separation healed, but there was something else in my shoulder that did not heal. And every time I would bend my arm, it felt like I was being stabbed with a knife. So the doctors didn't know what it was. Finally, the following year, I had an operation on it because they thought they knew what it was. So I said, fine, do it because I didn't know what else to do. So I had the operation and the doctor said, well, in six weeks, it'll be fine. You'll be back doing everything you want to do. He said, great, wonderful. Six weeks later, my arm was worse. And I went back to the doctor for the last time. And the kudai gra was when he came into the room and he didn't know which shoulder he had operated on. And I thought, there is something wrong with this system. Yeah. This isn't right. Yeah. So I told him that it wasn't any better. And he said, well, I can give you another quarter zone shot. And I'd already had two or three quarter zone shots. And I thought, that's not going to do it. So I left not knowing what I was going to do. So I called a friend of mine who was a therapist and I'm crying, Patty, my arm, oh, I don't know what to do. And she said, well, I have a friend that works with crystals and does energy work. Why don't you go see her? And I thought, well, that's just crazy. I go through this, all the medical procedures I could, the best doctors I could get that didn't work. And I thought, a few rocks, that's going to help. I just thought it was nuts. So I said, Patty, that's kind of weird. And she said, well, what's your alternative? Good answer. And I didn't have one. So I went to see this amazing woman who worked on my arm, but she worked on more than my arm. She worked on my spirit. She worked on my inside, she worked on my emotions. She worked on my childhood. She worked on my belief systems. And after working with her for five weeks, my arm was healed. Isn't that amazing? And I thought, wow, this is incredible. How does this work? I wanted to know everything that I could about why did this work and all of the medicine that I had did not work. So I began a really intense study. I read every book that I could find on medicine or energy healing and rocks and crystals and how does this work? And I just fell in love with it. And I thought if this works for me, it's got to work for other people. And that was my, I love serving people. That's why I went into food service because I love the service part of it. And in the corporate part, it's not so much about service. It's more about how much money can we make? Bottom line profit. I can't stand that kind of ideology. So when I discovered this, I thought, this is probably something I could do. And full disclosure, during the time after I got hit in the head, I started hearing voices. I don't know if I should say that or not. Oh, what the heck, I just did. And these voices would direct me to go study different things and look at different things. And I thought, you know, either I'm crazy now after getting hit in the head, and I'm mentally insane or something, or there's something else out there that I don't know. So it piqued my curiosity. It's very interesting because before I started the career I have now as a hypnotist healer and psychic channel, right before that almost, I was in a completely different career. And I had had an accident with a magician. He knocked me off his magic box. No, it really was a magic box. He knocked me off of it and I hit my head. And it bounced up and hit the cement again and shattered my ankle. And from there, I also was led to a career in healing myself first and then being just so passionate also about helping other people heal. And I've seen that from a lot of people. And I was getting ready to backpack through Europe. So they're saying, I think what those who know know was you're no longer going to run away. You're gonna sit your butt down and you're gonna get in your life path. So let me ask you, you now, you own a store that has some of the most amazing crystals I've ever felt in my life. Now let's talk about the energy. If you don't mind the energy that crystals carry. Because they do come first, crystals come from the earth. So everything that I use comes from the earth. Right, it comes from the earth. It's a part of basically what we not walk on every day, but it's a part of what we live in. So explain a little bit if you can about the energy of crystals. Well, it's all about vibration. And if I could just hold this piece up. Yeah, please do. It's a beautiful piece. This is a quartz crystal. And quartz crystal, they've proven scientifically. And this is very scientific, by the way. This isn't just woo-woo stuff. They have shown through different machines that they built that quartz crystal has the closest vibration to the human body of any other stone. So when you put this on your body or near your body, it helps to align you back into your natural state of health. So when I use this, like for my shoulder, it brought things back into alignment. But it does more than that because everything has consciousness. Everything, stones obviously don't think like we think. They don't have that kind of brain. But they're in the earth. They're growing. They're growing a universal consciousness. And when you match that up with your cells, it helps to bring forward blocked memory, blockages that we've had through our whole lives and open those up so that we can become aware of the things that are holding us back. So it's not that just it's gonna take pain away or it's gonna cure us of something. It's going to do the holistic healing. It's gonna heal the whole part. It's gonna go to the root of how did I get this in the first place? Where did this come from? So that when we get that part, when we get that piece of it, when we get the awareness, that's when things start to shift. That's when things start to align. That's when things start to really, truly heal. And that's the thing that modern medicine, allopathic medicine can't do. They take away symptoms. This goes to the core of how did I get that symptom in the first place? Exactly. I believe every crystal has a different, let's call it energy and vibration. So one of my favorite crystals is amethyst. I love amethyst. Now, I recently found out that amethyst is actually also my birth crystal, because I'm a Gemini. So what are some of your favorite crystals and what are the energies or what they can do to help people? Well, I think my favorite of all time is citrine. Yes, one of mine. I love citrine. Me too, me too. I'm just totally in love with it. It's a beautiful golden color. And this helps to work on our fear issues. Everybody has fear issues. I don't care who you are, unless you're self-realized, actualized, saint, you have fear. And what the energy of the citrine does is goes to the core of the fear and helps you to bring that up. Healing is all about awareness. One of my teachers said to us, here's how you heal yourself. Awareness, awareness, awareness. So in order to truly heal, we need to have that awareness come up and out and into our consciousness so that we can see or understand why was I holding on to that? And that's the beautiful part about citrine. I've used citrine more than any other stone simply because I lived with so many fears. And I would sleep with it. I would journal after I would get up in the morning. Whenever I'm afraid, I hold on to citrine because it says, okay, I know you're afraid, but fear is an illusion. Right, it is. It's taught. It's a behavioral thing. It's not something that's natural to us. So right there, it helps to lay what I'm afraid of because, yeah, you're right. I can pinpoint in my childhood where that fear came from. And it's not true. Right. And it snaps the illusion of it. I love that. And the other thing about citrine, it's also called the stone of manifestation because once you're not afraid of something, you can bring in whatever you want. Fear is the only thing that holds us back. Absolutely. And so this stone is like my number one favorite stone. If I could have no other stone, I would have citrine. I would have quartz crystal because it's just their magnifiers. And they go in and they bring out to us the things that we have locked inside. Absolutely. Now they say, I know that there are raw stones and polished stones. Do you have a preference and what's the difference between the raw and polished? Yeah, polished. Aesthetics. Okay. It still has the same vibration. It still has the same energy. It's just a matter of preference. You'll be drawn to whatever you need. I have raw stones. I have smooth stones. I mean, well, I've got tons of stones, but it doesn't matter. My opinion. It doesn't matter whether it's a rough stone or a smooth stone. It's whatever you're drawn to. That's consciousness that you can work with. Absolutely. And you will be drawn to the stones you need. I cannot tell you the number of times I've walked into your store and I thought, I'm gonna get this. And then right away, as soon as I walk in, I'm pulled to something else. And there it is. And I'm like, I can't take my eyes off it. I'm walking around the store with it going, what did I come in here for? And I truly believe that. Now bringing up your store, how did you create Free Spirit Crystal? Well, I did what the voices in my head told me to do. I was like, I'm your guide, an angel. In 1991, after my shoulder was healed, I was lying in bed one night watching television. And all of a sudden, these lovely voices, I don't know who they are or what they are, started talking to me. And they said, it's time to start your crystal business. And I just went, what? To start a crystal business, why would I do that? I don't know anything about crystals. I don't know anything about businesses. Food service I knew, but to start my own business and crystals, how was I gonna do that? And so they said, no, we really need you to do this. And I said, why don't you go pick somebody that already knows something? You don't start a business not knowing anything. That's crazy talk. So they said, no, because we know that you're going to be honest. And we know that we need somebody who's gonna sell the stones at a reasonable price because we want more people to have them. And we know you're gonna do that. I said, how do you know that? How do you know I just wouldn't charge whatever I wanted? They said, because we know you. And so they set out this whole business plan for me. It was the most remarkable thing I'd ever seen. I've never heard, or I don't even know how to explain it. Because it was not in my realm of thought that I should start a crystal business. I just wanted to learn it. I didn't want to sell it. But I didn't have anything else to do because I was looking for a new job. And it just literally fell out of the sky. So that's how I started. So I just said, well, okay, I'll give it a shot. And here I am 26 years later. Oh my goodness. It's amazing. That is amazing. That's absolutely amazing. Now, when you started, did you start with a full on store? No, I started in my bedroom of my house. Nice. I love that. See, everybody sees the end product and they think, oh, she was overnight. I need to do what she did. They don't realize all the steps that were taken one by one to get to the point that we are at today. I had two tables set up in my spare bedroom. I didn't even know what the stones were. So I called the person that healed my shoulder or helped me heal my shoulder. I said, I don't know what to do here. She said, well, you go down to Arkansas and buy stones. All right, so I didn't have much money because I wasn't working, but I took whatever I had and I drove my van down to Arkansas and I would go to the different mines and I'd say, I need to buy stones because I'm starting a business and they'd say, well, what do you need? I said, I have no idea because I don't even know what they are. And they were kind of like, you know, they kind of look at each other like, whoa, we got one here. But they were very nice, very honest people. And I came back with a van full of rocks, not knowing what they were. So my healer came over and told me what they were. She put prices on them, she labeled them, put them on the tables for me and that's how I started. And then I would go to different flea markets, shows. I didn't have a store, I didn't have a store until 1995. Very nice. But I would just sell them wherever I could and it was quite an experience. It was a really good training for me to learn how to talk in front of people about something I knew nothing about. Right, now you have started teaching people how to use crystals to help let's say the healing process to realign and to be whole again. Tell me a little bit about that. I started teaching probably in, well it was kind of an interesting thing. The woman who helped me heal my shoulder was a wonderful teacher. So I would get people together and she would teach the classes. Okay. And so back in 1992 I had a class coming over to our house and this was before cell phones and email and stuff and she called me about 10 o'clock in the morning said I can't teach the class, I'm sick. And I said oh no, no, you have to come over. I don't know anything about this. You've got to teach the class. She said I can't, I'm sick. So I panicked because I didn't have any way to get a hold of these people and they were coming over in about three hours. So I went oh my God, so I got out a book and I started reading and I'd look at the crystals and I'd go oh my God and I'd start writing things and I'd say this is impossible. There's 60 stones here, I can't talk. And so I'm holding on to an adventuring and all of a sudden it told me what it did. And I wrote it down and I went could that be right? So I looked it up in the book and it was in the book. So I thought hey, this is easy. So I picked up another rock, same thing. And I thought oh my gosh, it's all about the consciousness. It's all about listening in a different way. And all of our nerve endings in our body are in the palms of our hands. So when I'd hold a stone in the palm of my hand that energy would go through my body through your nervous system, which is our communication system and I would understand what it did. So I said this is not hard to do. Anybody can do this. And ever since then I've been teaching classes. And so again, it was an accident, if you will, of how I got started teaching, but I've been teaching ever since. And then I've expanded, I started doing layouts which is simply putting crystals on the body or stones on the body. I started a healing school to teach how to teach crystal healing and now I'm teaching teachers how to go out and teach this. So it's really expanded itself over the years and I've been having a blast. This is just, I can't even imagine doing anything else with my life. And that's, you know what? I just wanna say, when we are in our purpose, that's exactly what it is. You have this knowing, you know like you know like you know you are in the right place doing the right thing. Your body is at this sense of peace almost. And you feel your way through it. And I believe that everybody has that purpose. I do. I do too. If we listen. If we listen and when we don't, we end up getting hit with a softball. And you know what? Softballs aren't soft. No, they're not. They're really hard. But, and so I tell my students, don't wait to get hit. Don't wait to have an accident. Don't wait to get sick. Absolutely. Or now. Yeah. Now, I know that stones are also jewelry because I wear this ring all the time. And I know that they say I read some place that if you wear paredo earrings, that it can help you financially. And that other stones like rose quartz can help you with love. Can you expand on that a little bit? Well, it's all about the consciousness. And this, you know, stones have been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Every culture has used stones for healing. And so this isn't just something that we made up. This is something that's been handed down to us from years and years and years. So when people say this is New Age, I say no, no, no, no. This is old age. This is original age. This is original age. And jewelry was originally used as medicine because they would put the jewelry on different chakras. They would put it in their belly button. They'd put it over their heart. They'd put it over their thymus glab. They'd put it over their third eye. Wherever they needed some kind of healing, they would put stones. And then it eventually turned into jewelry and because it's beautiful. Absolutely. But originally it was used as medicine. Now I do agree that this is original age. This is before Western medicine and medicinal before doctors came along and said, we have to cut you open. We have to do this. We have to do that. I have used crystals and stones myself. And there's another stone I will hope you want to talk about it's cellanite. I love cellanite and I keep, for some reason, I'm drawn to keep so much cellanite in my room. I call cellanite the rocket ship. It's a very fast stone. It's a striated stone and it's a connector. And it helps to align our spine. It helps to align our consciousness. It helps to open up blockages. It's a very fast acting stone. And I just want to go back to something you said about using stones versus modern medicine. I would never, ever tell people not to go to a doctor. Go to a doctor. I mean, I just recovered from stage four lymphoma. I went to the doctor. I'm not going to be so cavalier as to think that I never have to have medicine. However, I used both. Right. I used this and I used medicine. Right. I healed in six months from stage four lymphoma, which was in my bone marrow. So, and people sending love. You know, love is the greatest healer ever. Absolutely. And stones are pure love, pure consciousness. There can't be anything bad in them unless we put it there. Right. So it's that consciousness of love that really helps us to heal. My theory is that when we are filled with love, there can't be disease. Right. And I say to you, I agree with you. It's about being whole. It's about being love. Right. And I do tell people, if there is something you are repairing in yourself or healing in yourself, use every avenue possible. Don't, you can put all your cards in one basket. I'm not the boss of you. You can go ahead and put, you know, only go Western because that's what you are comfortable with. But explore and see what else is out there. See what else might be able to bring you back into balance to make you whole again. Right. To help you find that love that you have for yourself once again. Well, again, and it's very often it's when people are, get sick and they go to doctors and they can't help them like you and me. And or they are there in a really tough situation and nothing else seems to be working. That's when they come in. Not everybody, but a lot of people are like that and they started to explore and people who never would have done it before but they just don't know what else to do. And they find out that doing it naturally, that doing it from the inside out, we call it healing from the inside out because it's not taking something away from you. It's giving something to you. It's giving you your true self, your true being. Absolutely. That's the true healer. And people can die and still be healed. Right. Because you're healing on that very deep emotional level. Very good. Spiritual level. Absolutely. So now let's tell everybody where Free Spirit Crystals is located. We're at 4763 North 124th Street in the beautiful downtown Butler, which is right across the street from Milwaukee, right near Hampton Avenue in Milwaukee. Yeah. And it's a great little shop. She offers, Diane offers books, crystals, jewelry and classes, which are amazing when you- Oils and incense and cards and we got CDs. I get all my angel cards from your shop. And also a Himalayan sea salt lamps and cellar night lamps. Oh my gosh, I just love- I love your store. I got a great store collection. We have, actually, I've got so many crystals and I don't know what to do with them all because I just went on the shopping bin. But yeah, come in and see us. It's a fabulous place. And the people are so friendly and we love what we do. Every single person that comes in that store, we just love helping people. Absolutely. Well, Diane, thank you so much for being on this edition of Tony G. Create a Life You Love. Thank you so much. I am so honored to have you on. I am so honored that you tuned in to watch this edition also. Tony G. Create a Life You Love is all about taking your purpose, turning it into your passion and making that a viable career. Each and every one of us has a purpose. So live on purpose, with purpose, in your purpose. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Have an amazing rest of the day.