So we’ve got to get our stones cold, on ice. We’re going to use just regular ice. You can add a little water in there, if you want, because iced water is 32 degrees. You want to put your stones in your ice so that they’re paired up so you can find them because you are usually going to use two at a time. Earlier I told you that it takes about 20 minutes for them to get cold. We already have some in here that are getting iced cold for us.

The reason you want to use cold stones on someone is because of injury, because of congested blood, congested lymph or some digestive problems. You always want to apply cold stones to someone who has an issue. You want to also make sure that you apply cold stones to someone who can tolerate that temperature.

When you are in one of our workshops and in some of our Teach Me Stone Classes online, we’re going to talk to you about the different contraindications and considerations for the client. Our body today doesn’t have any contraindications and considerations, but she’s having some tension in her rhomboids, her upper traps and her neck and that’s really common for most people on the planet.

I’ve brought my nice chilled cold stones. I’m going to hover them above the area that’s the most tension. I’m going to actually ask her to take a nice deep breath and as she exhales I apply firm pressure with no movement. This is at least half my body weight laying on her right now and the stones are not moving.   You absolutely must rest those stones in the area of need in that tension whether it’s chronic or acute, whether it’s inflamed because of inflammation or blood. You want to rest. You let that client breathe another breath. You flip those stone stones over and, again, you pause. It’s so important to stop long enough, for at least two breaths if not three for the client to discern whether or not this is a stone that’s threatening to their tissue.

A cold stone, initially applied to the tissue, whether the tissue needs that cold application or not, feels at threat and the client will actually think it’s a hot stone initially. But if you go slow enough it allows the body to figure out that ohhh it’s not going to harm me. The slower you go with cold the more beneficial, the more chemical response I can get. The more vassal constriction and vassal dilation I get within the temperature being applied to the tissue. I want to go very slow with a cold stone and you only go in the area that the client has issues. You don’t go everywhere.   You’re only going to take that cold stone where it’s going to create a change within the fluids within the system.

Remember these are dirty now. These have been contaminated so I can’t put them back in my ice. I have to lay them over here and I will have to wash them later. I still need to continue working on this part of the body because she still has some tension in here. I’m going to bring another set of cold stones. Again, I’m going to hover. She can feel that cold stone near her. Watching her breathe and this is cool. Again it’s firm pressure every single time you bring an iced cold stone to the body you must allow them to breathe through the experience. You must wait, flip, and wait again.

The beauty of that is that it allows you, as a therapist, to rest while you offer temperature to the body and ask the body to work hard chemically. The body is vassal constricting. The tissues, the blood is running away from the peripheral. The lymphatic system is running away. Any congestion that’s in here is running away because the slower I go the more I’m having vassal constriction happen. If I continue to use cold stones in this area, a series of six, eight stones, three, four, five rounds, up as many as ten, I will go from short-term cold to long-term cold.

I went from vassal constriction, dumping fluid out, to vassal dilation and I can actually create a hyperemia in the tissue. So it’s an internal heating response. It allows the body to internally heat itself because it thought it was that frostbite threat. You want to be able to do that so you can get that chemical change within that tissue. You have to take your time. You have to go slow. If you try to go to fast with the cold stone your client is not going to like it. So be patient and watch the tissue change with the temperature.