"Crystals are vibrations of energy in a physical form"
I worked with crystals intuitively for years before I began working with Reiki.
I would pick up the crystal I was drawn to, and reading up on it, find it was exaclty relevant to what was going on in my own life...
Later, after doing my Reiki training, a friend asked me to teach Crystal courses, sharing my knowledge, stating that I knew more than them about the crystals I was working with. And I found that I was teaching the practise of tuning directly into the crystal, asking intuitively for which crystal needed to be where, to support the healing awareness and focus being held at that time. At the same time, I would teach the importance of cross-referencing this with reading material, and learning the specific properties of each crystal to balance the intuitive with practical confirmation from external sources.
This way of working could be used during treatments, building crystal grids, or using maps to do distance work.
This is still the way I continue to work with crystals.