Used in alternative medicine, tourmaline is a protective stone that detoxifies your body, eliminates paranoia, improves dyslexia and hand-eye coordination, and treats bronchitis, diabetes, emphysema and pneumonia. A powerful mental healer, tourmaline balances the right and left hemispheres of the brain, author Judy Hall says. You can choose from a wide range of colors of tourmaline, and each variety provides additional healing benefits.
Physical Properties
Tourmaline becomes electrically charged at both ends when heated and allowed to cool. This is known as "pyroelectricity," the International Colored Gem Association says. When it is under pressure and creates a charge, it is called "piezoelectricity" and attracts dust and dirt particles, Minerals.net says. Tourmaline is found throughout the world and has a hardness of 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale. In the U.S., the stone is mined in California and Maine. Other large deposits are in Sri Lanka, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya and Tanzania.
Benefits
Tourmaline helps you reduce levels of stress, anxiety and confusion. It calms your nerves, removes toxins from your bloodstream, reduces lower back pain, relieves migraines, helps with constipation, heals burns and reduces arthritic pain and swelling. Individual colors of tourmaline have additional healing properties.
Types
Pink tourmaline heals your inner child and children who suffered abuse and is a fertility stone, Gemstone Gifts says. Black tourmaline, or "schorl," protects you from harmful radiation and deflects negative energy, including anger and jealousy. Green tourmaline relieves chronic exhaustion. Rubellite, a dark pink or red stone, brings emotional balance and stimulates fertility, Gemstone Gifts says. Watermelon tourmaline contains red and green and improves the immune system, heals life-threatening illnesses and balances your metabolism and endocrine system. Dravide tourmaline, a brown stone, improves intestinal disorders and skin diseases.
History
In an ancient Egyptian legend, tourmaline is considered the "gemstone of the rainbow" because it passed through a rainbow on its way up from the center of the earth, the ICA says. Black tourmaline once was used as a stone of mourning because of its gray to black hues, Minerals.net says. Paraiba tourmalines are blue to blue-green and were discovered in 1987 in Paraiba, Brazil. Canary tourmalines, which are yellow and come from Malawi, Africa, were discovered in fall 2000.
Methods
Wearing tourmaline as jewelry, meditating with tourmaline stones or drinking tourmaline-charged water--also known as an elixir--are some of the ways you can infuse tourmaline's many healing properties into your body. Carrying a tourmaline in your pocket or placing it strategically in your home or office also will provide benefits. Burying a tourmaline in the soil of a plant will keep pests away and encourages growth.
Tags: additional healing, Black tourmaline, colors tourmaline, Gemstone Gifts, Gemstone Gifts says, Gifts says, healing properties
