In this video let’s chat a little bit about our choices in stones and why there’s a difference between a box of rocks versus stones that are harvested in specifically shaped and paired up to do the techniques that we offer in LaStone training.

It’s important to understand that basalt comes in various colors. All the way from very pale grey or very pale beige, to very black. It comes in greens and reds and maroons. You want your basalt stones to be a dark color. The dark reds, the dark greens, and the black of course. Those are the ones that are going to hold the heat for you because of their mineral composition. It’s about the magnesium, the potassium and the iron that’s in the stone that allows it to stay hot longer for you. The darker the basalt stone the better.

Even though these are just like tiny little pebbles, they’re not really massage stones (this one could be a stone placement), they’re still the right type of basalt stone/the right mineral composition to hold heat for us. We can’t massage with these guys because they’re too difficult. This could definitely be a stone for us. It’s the right color and it could easily be a spinal layout stone. These are black stones and all of these are going to hold heat the way we want them to hold heat for the massage or the stone placement.

Sometimes we’re blessed with getting a stone that has an infusion of quarts in it. So we have this circle that goes all the way across this stone. This stone is actually a more special stone in my mind because this stone represents the universe. When it has that circle that goes around like that, that’s representing the universe.   It’s telling us it’s connected to the whole universe and not just Mother Earth here. So there’s nothing wrong with this stone. It’s not going to break on you. It’s not going to hurt your client. It’s not going to get dirtier. Nothing is going to happen with it other than to offer you additional vibration because you now have a ring of quartz in it.   So when you find a stone that has a ring of quartz in it thank your lucky stars because it’s a blessing.

Now, because the basalt stone comes in an array of colors you also want that stone to be a smooth stone so that when you’re massaging the client it feels nice and slick against their skin. But you don’t want it polished and you don’t want it so smooth so that when you apply oil to the body it slips out of your hand. There has to be a little bit of texture to it. A little bit of a give so that the stone works with you and stays in your hand and it doesn’t go slipping out. Plus when you do stone placement, if the stone is too polished it’s just going to slip off when the client takes a nice deep breath. So the stones that we have here are tumbled in such a way (either naturally by Mother Earth or they’re tumbled here at the warehouse) to make the texture the patine that we need for the hot stones.

Cold stones don’t come natural shaped. We have to shape them, because either if it’s marble, sardonyx or serpentine if it was to tumble naturally in a river or the ocean it would crumble and make the sand that you walk on. You can’t tumble the cold stones. We have to hand-do them because Mother Earth does not give them to us smooth like that. Cold tends to come, (those quartz, the sardonyx, and the jade and the serpentine), tend to come kind of rough so we have to hand cut them. And we have to hand buff them and take care of them one by one by one. So the cold stones are manufactured for us, they’re crafted for us one stone at a time. Not by a large machine that’s cutting out a bunch of them all at once.

We have the opportunity to use various types of stones that are cold. As long as they have a lot of limestone and calcite in them then they’re going to hold cold for us better.

Whether it’s holding cold or whether it’s holding heat, it’s only going to hold it for 30 to 40 seconds when you’re moving that stone on the body. That’s it. It’s not going to hold cold or heat for very long because the body is stealing that temperature from the stone. The stone, along with the oil, is infusing that temperature into the fascia and the muscle. So the stone itself, when it’s moving on the body, be it a hot or cold stone, is only going to give you heat or cold (summer or winter temperature) for 30 to 40 seconds. Now when it’s stone placement it might last up to about 15 to 20 minutes. You have that opportunity to have those different timelines with your temperature.

So let’s talk about the color of the basalt stone again just to reiterate before I go in to harvesting your own stones. The color grey, this stone looks grey, but it might actually (once I oil it or wet it) it might turn red, it might turn green and it might turn black. All the basalt stone, pretty much when you’re out there on the beach or you’re out there in the rivers, all pretty much look like the same color. Various shades of grey. It’s not until you oil it that you find out what it really is.

In the sunlight this stone is actually more green and it has some green and some black in it. I don’t know if you can see that in the camera. This stone gives us some nice little shadowings of different colors. It has some really nice patterns in it so it’s like having a cloud of green in this black stone. But when we first saw it, like on the beach or in the riverbed it looked grey and it looked like it was one solid color. So when you get your basalt stone set it’s not going to be pre-oiled for you. You have to do that yourself.

You want to wash your stones really well with soap and water and then you want to oil them. It’s going to help that oil soak in to the body of the stone and over a period of time they’ll just stay oiled even though you’ve washed them. Even though you’ve put them in the dishwasher. They’re going to stay that darker color because the oil will eventually soak in to their body. It might look solid, but it’s made up of atoms, a nucleus of electrons and protons so there’s space to absorb that oil. So over a period of time your stone will stay dark. Whether it’s a red stone, a green stone, a multi-shaded stone. Once you get it oiled it will do that.

When you’re out harvesting those stones you need to take a bucket of water or a spray bottle of water. You need to have some kind of liquid with you in order for you to know whether or not that stone will get dark. Will it get dark red, a maroon color, a green color, a jade looking color or will it turn black. If it doesn’t turn dark then it might not hold the heat for you. But it might because the middle of that stone might be solid iron and then it’s going to hold the heat for you. And sometimes you won’t even know until you get it hot and then you know. And again, remember it’s only going to be 30 seconds to 40 seconds where a stone is considered summer or hot while moving on the body. You’re not going to get much longer than that.

When you want to challenge the body to vasodilate and vasoconstrict and the stone is moving it’s about 30 to 40 seconds of life of that challenging to the system. To the nervous system and the circulatory system to respond to temperature. That’s when you need to keep getting another stone and another stone. You can’t expect one stone to stay hot for two minutes. It’s not going to happen. I don’t care what it’s made of.

Unless you use a stone that has a battery in it. They are making stones now days that have batteries in them. I personally would never use them because for me that’s not natural and my whole technique about LaStone is about connecting the body, mind and soul to the Earth. We live on this planet. We’re spiritual beings walking on this earth. And the goal is to bring the vibration of Mother Earth to the body in a sacred way. I would never use a stone that was filled with a battery nor would I use those sea shells that they’ve glued and they’ve put some kind of silicon in it to heat that up because it’s not natural.

Even though we have to cut our cold stones, and you may not consider that natural, it’s still a natural stone. You cut a diamond. You cut rubies and you wear them. So why not cut those cold stones to do the size and shapes we need? Luckily we can find the size and shapes we need of basalt stone naturally on Mother Earth.

So enjoy harvesting or enjoy picking our your stones. Look for TIR Massage Stone sales on Facebook and have fun shopping.