It Smells: Aromatherapy Dosed by the Drop and Blended With Essential Oils for Specific Health Affects. (Part #1the Basics.)

Aromatherapy is the art of blending aromas or very distinct smells to create very specific health affects in the human body.

"True aromatherapy" is created using the essence of pure flowers, leaves, bark or the root components of plant material.

Most commonly these pure essences are made from soaking the plant material in over-proof alcohol and then, evaporating the alcohol off to leave a very small quantity of essence in its place.

 

This pure essence is called an essential oil. (This photo shows dried rosemary leaves and an over-proof alcohol which contains 47% alcohol, requires a special license to purchase, and typically costs just over $100 (Canadian dollars) per litre. The over-proof alcohol is used to extract rosemary essential oil from the dried rosemary leaves.)

It is fair to say that the essential oil contains a "purer" signature of the plant material and it is incredibly potent.

What makes essential oils valuable and often expensive is that it takes a huge volume of plant material to make a very tiny amount of highly potent, finished oil.

A ratio of 10 to 1 or higher is not out of line. The whole process is very labour intensive and the finished essential oil quality is dependent on several factors, including the soil the plants were grown in, when the plants were harvested, what the plants were feed and what material was use in the extraction process.

I've held certification as an Aromatherapist for over 20 years and I have shopped at the same essential oil store for about the same amount of time.

When you find ethical sources for essential oils that are good quality, it instills confidence and brand loyalty. If I don't make my own essential oils from the plant material that I have personally grown in my garden, then I buy them directly from sources that I have come to trust, over the years.

This is a picture of my friend Anne and I in the essential oil store where we both buy our oils. Anne is wearing the red jacket. She had purchased her first cool air, ultra-sonic essential oil diffuser and you can see the stream of vapour in front of us, from the store's display model.

Behind Anne, is a big blue drum with a hand pump on the top. That drum is filled with oil. The store buys oils from all over the world. They re-package it into different sizes of containers to be re-sold, but if you want to buy it by the drum, you can. It is what they specialize in.

Just like fine wine, essential oils are graded by quality. Not all essential oils are created equally and that is why it is prudent to do some research before you make a purchase.

For example, the best lavender essential oil is produced in France. It typically costs over $50 for a 10 ml bottle of oil. The second best lavender essential oil is produced in England and will typically costs approximately $20 for a 10 ml bottle of oil and the third best lavender essential oil is produced in South Africa and will cost approximately $8 for a 10 ml bottle.

( A 10 ml bottle of Lavender Essential Oil, produced in South Africa.)

Knowing the different grades of oils, what your intended end use for the oils are and if the oils will be blended with other oils are all determining factors used to decide what level of oil investment makes the most sense for your particular application.

If I'm using lavender essential oil to clean my kitchen counter tops, I'll use South African Lavender. If I'm applying lavender oil to reduce or eliminate the scarring of a skin burn or blemish, you can bet that I'll be using the best French Lavender that I can get my hands on.  

I typically group essential oils into 5 separate categories which are as follows:

• Oil coming from flowers;

• Oil coming from citrus;

• Oil coming from trees;

• Oil coming from herbs;

• and oil that I describe as being the strongest and  exceptionally medicinal in nature. They are often from the tree or herbal categories and there can be cross-overs. 

If I'm treating someone with the oils I will take them on a "sensory journey" and let their body choose which oils it needs to create balance or restore homeostasis. This is often a hard thing for the Aromatherapist to do because we study the affects of the oils and know what aliments each of the oils are known to treat.

For example, if someone presents with a migraine headache, I know that rosemary essential oil is a great oil to treat the pain of a migraine with, but the better oil for the body might actually be peppermint essential oil because of its cooling properties and because it will also settle a nauseated stomach. I would have been justified in choosing rosemary for the individual, but it would have been accomplished through my ego of thinking that I know what's best...not what the body actually requires at that particular moment.

In true aromatherapy, it is always better to let the body choose what it needs to restore balance. The therapist should only be the guide, (in my opinion).

With this in mind, I could use my knowledge to select 6 different but all really good oils to specifically treat the migraine. Then, I would let the person choose the oil through their sense of smell to determine the exact oil from the choice of 6. This approach, although more time consuming for the therapist, allows for very fine tuning of their treatment, making it way more precise for the person's system.

It's a better, more tailored match, that produces a far superior end result. It is exactly like muscle testing, but instead of using muscle strength or weakness, we are using the person's sense of smell. They'll either love it, hate it or be indifferent to the aroma. 

Always use the aromas that the person just loves and reports that they wish that they could swim in because that's the best oil, for them on that day.

Tomorrow, they may choose an entirely different oil all together.

It will forever change, so never assume and always make the time to test the oils, against the body, every time.

Once we get beyond inhaling the aroma of 3 separate oils, during the sensory journey oil selection process, we would use the aroma of ground coffee beans to cleanse the person's olfactory palette.

This let's the person continue to smell different oils without their sense of smell becoming muted to the aromas. It can become tricky after a short period of time to discern the different nuances between oils. The re-set for the sense of smell can be very simply achieved just by inhaling the aroma of ground coffee beans after every third oil or so.

Smelling ground coffee beans between small groupings of oils will let the person be able to tell the difference between lemon, lime and bergamot essential oils, for example. All those oils are in the citrus family and their aromas share similarities but each are decidedly different.

This is also an excellent strategy to employ when you plan to shop for expensive perfume or cologne. Usually perfumes and colognes are so over powering in their blends of essences that after about two "inhalation tests" they all start to smell the same. Take a small jar of ground coffee beans with you whenever you go oil, perfume or cologne shopping.

Learn to trust your nose because it really does know what's best for the body and its systems.

I could write an entire book on the different facets of aromatherapy. In my next post on the subject, I will explain the different apparatuses used to diffuse essential oils, the carriers commonly used as the delivery method, how to store the essential oils and the components used to describe how multiple essential oils are balanced into complex blends.

I welcome your comments and invite you to follow me on my journey.

~ Rebecca Ryan