All About Aromatherapy
What is Aromatherapy?
Aromatherapy is more than just smelling plant juice. It is the use of high quality plant extracts (essential oils, hydrosols, and carrier oils) in a variety of ways to facilitate the body’s healing response of the mind, body, and spirit.
It is both an art and science because of how aromatherapists use knowledge of the chemistry of essential oils and the art of blending and intuition.
Aromatherapy as a practice can be done by anyone without any special training, as long as the intent for holistic healing is pure and present. Aromatic plants have been used by humankind for thousands of years. It is only in recent history that practices and chemical understanding has been written down for preservation and wide-scale teaching.
The Purpose of an Aromatherapist
As a Certified Aromatherapist, I have completed coursework to satisfy Level 2 certification with NAHA (National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy). I am able to help you recognize your own body’s healing ability through managing stress. Managing your stress caused by medical conditions, diseases, disorders, medications, pharmaceutical drugs, and pain, helps your body heal itself.
I am able to help you manage your stress, work through goals and limiting beliefs, replace the items you use in your home with plant-based and natural alternatives, and improve your mood and emotions.
My role is to empower you to make your own decisions when it comes to your health. I do this through encouraging you to think, reflect, and take action. Nothing that we discuss is a command or requirement, because the choice is ultimately up to you.
For those that have worked with me in this capacity, they have loved the experience and personal growth they have witnessed in themselves. But the decision to make a change is yours and yours alone. I just encourage you and cheer you on.
How Essential Oils Work
What are Essential Oils?
Essential oils are the volatile (evaporating) molecules coming from plants. They are so small (and natural) that they can easily and safely pass through the blood-brain-barrier to both enter the brain and/or permeate the cell walls.
The Power of Scent
Oil molecules evaporate and enter through the nose (through the olefactory system). They then pass through the blood/brain barrier and cycle through the blood, stopping off at cells that need a little love. From there, essential oils can do a number of things:
- Lower the fight/flight/freeze mechanism of the limbic system
- Allow the thinking brain to actively take back over
- Remove faulty information in the cells (cells like to hold a grudge)
- Clean cellular receptor sites
- Provide antioxidant support to help cells get back on track
- Pinpoint happy memories, experiences, and feelings
Can I Be Allergic?
Because of the chemistry of essential oils, they are not large enough molecules to trigger a true allergic response. A carrier oil, however, because of its heavier proteins, may cause an allergic reaction.
The exception to this is when an essential oil has been extracted with solvents, chemicals, or blended with larger molecules in carrier oils. In those cases, one may have an allergic or sensitive reaction.
Absolutes (Jasmine, Neroli) and cold pressed citrus oils are not extracted through the same steam distillation process, so there is a chance you may have an allergy to one of those oils if you are allergic to the proteins in those plants.
Even with pure essential oils that are free from pesticides, heavy metals, or inclusions, some individuals experience skin reactions. This is most often connected to detoxification reactions. If this happens, apply a carrier oil to the spot to dilute the essential oil further and drink extra water to help this natural detoxification process.
Where should I buy essential oils?
I have a page where I have documented how different companies answer some sourcing, testing, and company policy questions. It also includes the most up-to-date information about which oils I am personally using.
Oil Company Recommendations
As an aromatherapist, I have been interviewing several smaller essential oil companies to learn about their standards regarding testing, farm relationships, shipping, and other common questions. You can note their responses here.
EO Companies:
On Demand Learning: Intro to Energetic Aromatics
If you are looking for basic aromatherapy training and safety, but from the lens of an energetic perspective, this at-home and on-demand course may be perfect for you. In this course, I have gone through a decade of training and have found a way to transform that information into an effective and intuitive method of understanding essential oils.
With over 2.5 hours of video content and more than 40 total lessons, you will feel confident and ready to use essential oils safely for yourself and your family. You will also gain experience in application techniques and strategies so that you will know what oil to pick and when to pick it.
Lessons are taught in video and written format.
Experience: The Somaroma
Advanced breath work, aromatherapy, and healing arts + infrared sauna session
In our modern lifestyles, we often find ourselves in a constant stress response, and it is challenging to fully release and return back to a truly relaxed state. This can lead to a number of physical and emotional problems, including burnout.
The Somaroma is a technique that will bring your body to a true reset, allowing the nervous system to ease its stress response – allowing you to finally feel rested and refreshed more permanently. It is an advanced technique of aromatherapy, breath work, and somatic (body/mind connection) that bring about inner harmony, cellular clearing, and a mental reset to combat the damage from chronic stress.
The Somaroma starts with some breath work and relaxation techniques to ease the body and mind into a restful state. We then use a series of essential oils on the bottom of the feet, the spine, and along the back of the head and neck. These are placed on specific points, using different hand placement techniques sn tools (such as a gemstone massage wand or tuning fork).
This technique helps balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, moving from fight/flight/freeze into rest/digest/heal.
These sessions take 90 minutes and include an additional complementary 30 minute customized full spectrum infrared sauna session.
BENEFITS:
- Mental clarity
- Lasting inner calm
- Vagus nerve tone improvement
- Cellular balancing
- Deep relaxation to assist organ function
- Stimulation of nerve endings throughout spine
- Energy balancing
- Precursor to detoxification
Learn at Home: The Unwind Approach
The Unwind Approach was created as a way to combine energetic aromatherapy, healing processes, breath work, and somatic vagus nerve techniques into one modality.
Its purpose is to bring the recipient into a state of relaxation, when the body has been tightly wound in a more chronic state of fight-or-flight.
The approach can be used with children and adults, and it does not have to be performed by a professional massage therapist. The techniques that you will learn in The Unwind Approach course will give you the basics for how and why each step will occur, and as your intuition and comfort grows, you can add onto the approach.
SPECIFICS COVERED IN THE UNWIND APPROACH:
- Step-by-step walkthrough on oils, application, and hand placement
- In depth training on the purpose behind energetic oil choices
- Training manual and downloads
- How to Breathe Properly (prerequisite course) – breathing mechanics, practices, activities, proper tongue placement, and posture
- Energetic Aromatherapy (prerequisite course) – aromatherapy basics, safety, sourcing, and how focus on the energy/frequency properties of essential oils
- Mastering Muscle Testing (prerequisite course) – ways to understand and explore applied kinesiology, energy testing, and pendulum work to get a deeper understanding of body needs
- Balancing the Vagus Nerve (prerequisite course) – gain understanding of how the nervous system works and the part that the vagus nerve plays in the entire body. You will also practice specific research-backed maneuvers and techniques that will bring proper vagal tone