One of my brothers loves to push my buttons.

In our family chat, he sometimes writes things—usually so politically provocative—that I wonder if he’s really my brother.

In the past, I would get angry. Sometimes his comments would stay with me for a while as I thought about what he had said and how I wanted to respond. Most of the time, I decided it was better to say nothing.

Then something changed. I began to recognize how I truly felt, and it wasn’t anger at all. I felt disappointed, misunderstood, and sometimes hurt.

But that turned out to be only a transition.

Over time, I stopped feeling reactive at all.

Now I respond with compassion, understanding, and sometimes firmness. As a result, we’ve had some genuinely good, emotionally balanced conversations about subjects that could once have turned into arguments.

I love this change in myself. I feel much more in control of my own responses.

And something else has surprised me.

Being honest with myself about what I really feel feels good.

What Changed?

Around this same time, I had begun wearing Dumortierite & Carnelian regularly. My reason had nothing to do with my emotions.

My heart had been damaged by last year’s chemotherapy, and I was working to rebuild it. Along with a new collection of medications, Dumortierite & Carnelian was the energetic support I had chosen to use.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the change I began noticing in myself emotionally.

My conversations with my brother were different.

I was different.

Soon after—and perhaps entirely coincidentally—I began studying the Circulatory System more deeply for my Systems project. I was asking the same question I’ve been asking about each of the body’s Systems:

What is this system’s fundamental activity, and how does that activity express itself emotionally, causally, and mentally?

That’s when a possible connection dawned on me.

What Does the Circulatory System Actually Do?

At first, the answer seems obvious: it moves blood around the body.

But movement is the fundamental activity I identified when we explored the Muscular System. Movement is necessary for circulation, but it doesn’t tell us what circulation is for.

The Circulatory System transports.

Physically, blood carries oxygen, nutrients, hormones, immune cells, wastes, and other things throughout the body. Their presence in the blood isn’t enough. They have to reach the tissues that need them. That’s what the Circulatory System does.

That led me to a deceptively simple idea:

Just because you have resources doesn’t mean you can always access them. They have to be adequately transported and distributed.

Was this also true in the emotional body?

Is Your First Emotion Only the Tip of the Iceberg?

In my work, I understand the emotional body to contain raw materials from which emotions are formed. My current thinking is that the emotional Circulatory System helps transport and distribute these materials throughout the emotional body.

If that distribution is incomplete, perhaps the emotional body forms an emotion from only the readily available materials.

Was that why my initial response was so strong? Was anger only the tip of the iceberg?

Yes, I know. The tip of the iceberg is a cliché. But in this case, it works remarkably well.

The first emotion that forms may sometimes reflect only the emotional raw materials that are immediately available to us.

When more of them became available, something different could form. Instead of anger, a fuller emotional response could emerge. I realized I felt disappointed that he saw life so differently. I felt hurt that a family member could have such different beliefs. I felt misunderstood.

And once I recognized those feelings, they too began to resolve.

At first, I thought better emotional circulation might simply be helping me move beyond anger by giving me access to more of what I was feeling.

What If the Emotion Itself could change?

But then I stopped becoming reactive in the first place.

That made me wonder whether something more fundamental was happening.

What if fuller access to the raw materials of the emotional body changes the emotion that forms in the first place?

Perhaps anger wasn’t something I needed to get through to reach my “real” feelings. Perhaps, when only part of my emotional material was readily available, reactive anger was the only response that could form.

It made me wonder whether better emotional circulation might allow a more complete emotional response to form.

What Does This Have to Do With Dumortierite & Carnelian?

This was the question that suddenly became very interesting to me.

Dumortierite & Carnelian is the gemstone formula I use to support and vitalize the Circulatory System. Dumortierite supports and vitalizes the structures through which energies flow, while Carnelian vitalizes what flows through these structures and encourages its healthy movement. In the physical body, these structures are the blood vessels, and what flows through them is blood.

I had been thinking primarily about the formula’s relationship with my physical and supraphysical Circulatory Systems.

But could the gemstones I was wearing also be helping distribute emotional raw materials more fully throughout my emotional body?

Could that be why it had become easier to move beyond my initial reaction, recognize what I truly felt, and eventually experience our interactions differently altogether?

And could this emotional transformation be one reason my relationship with my brother was improving?

I would love to know exactly how much wearing Dumortierite & Carnelian contributed to these changes in me.

How I Make Discoveries About Gemstones

Apart from my inner-world investigations, much of what I’ve learned about therapeutic gemstones has begun with observation.

I consciously and purposefully work with particular gemstones, with myself, and with my clients. I pay attention to what is happening and to changes I observe over time. When something unexpected happens, I become curious.

I use the subtle-energy perceptions I’ve developed through my years of working with gemstones to help me untangle possible relationships. I consider what makes sense in light of what I already understand about the gemstones and the Systems they support, while also paying attention to where my intuition leads me.

None of this allows me to say scientifically that wearing Dumortierite & Carnelian caused the changes I’ve experienced. There are too many other variables in a human life to make that claim.

But it does give me something worth exploring.

And sometimes, that is how a discovery begins.

Perhaps Emotional Honesty Requires Access

My experience with my brother has made me think differently about emotional honesty.

We usually think being emotionally honest means being willing to admit what we feel.

But perhaps there is another requirement.

Enough of our emotional raw materials have to be available for us to know what we truly feel.

That distinction matters.

During the transitional period I described earlier, I wasn’t denying that I felt disappointed, misunderstood, or hurt. I simply wasn’t immediately aware of those feelings. Reactive anger was what formed from the emotional materials that were readily available to me.

As more became available, a fuller emotional response could form.

And eventually, something even more interesting happened. I no longer needed to look beneath an initial reaction to discover what I really felt. The initial reaction itself had changed.

This makes me wonder whether emotional honesty is about more than our willingness to acknowledge our feelings. Perhaps it also depends on having sufficient access to the emotional raw materials from which those feelings are formed.

And for me, the remarkable result has not been that I suppress my feelings or try to be nicer to my brother. As more of my emotional raw materials seem to have become available, my emotional response itself has changed.

Compassion and understanding now come much more naturally.

An Invitation to Explore With Me

I still don’t know for sure whether wearing Dumortierite & Carnelian was entirely responsible for the changes I’ve noticed in myself.

But the possible relationship between what I was experiencing and what I was discovering about circulation has opened an entirely new area of exploration for me.

What else might the Circulatory System be transporting throughout our subtle bodies?

As I continue exploring the Circulatory System, I’ll be looking more deeply at how its fundamental activity of transport may function not only physically, but throughout the supraphysical, emotional, causal, mental, and intuitive bodies.

I’ll share what I already know, what I’m observing, what I think may be happening, and the questions I haven’t answered yet.

And I’d love for you to explore along with me.

Because perhaps, by paying closer attention to these Systems together, we can begin to understand a little more about who we are—and the many different levels on which we exist.

Shop Dumortierite & Carnelian Necklace

Isabelle Morton, B.S., is the founder of the Gemstone Therapy Institute and GEMFormulas, and the original visionary behind Diamond and Gemstone Therapy, which she began developing in 1987. She continues to study and explore the therapeutic properties and applications of gemstones and Diamonds. Isabelle continues to expand her library of educational material. Thousands of people and pets around the world have benefited from her work. Her dream is to see Diamond and Gemstone Therapy recognized as meaningful energy medicine modalities.

Learn more at gemformulas.com