If you’re human, you’ve been stressed. Whether it’s an accumulation of little irritants or an unexpected tragedy, stress has reared its ugly head in your life. It’s no respecter of persons. Almost every age group is vulnerable to certain stressors.The question is, How do you handle it?

Does it rule your life, or do you take measures to combat it? I’m hoping it’s the latter, because I’ve got some suggestions of essential oils for relaxation.

You probably already know that short- and long-term stress affect bodily functions such as heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, digestion, adrenal production, and neurological processes. Short-term stress can actually help us to react quickly in fight-or-flight situations. Long-term stress, however, can be detrimental to our health if not handled properly. So let’s cover some general tips and then explore aromatherapy for stress relief.

General Tips to Handling Stress

• Energize with Exercise. If you’re feeling revved up, destress with a physical activity. Three of my favorites are Nordic pole walking, cycling, and paddle boarding. Find what you like and get out there  and move, as long as you’re healthy enough for physical activity. Check with your doctor if there’s any question.
• Add dietary and botanical supplements. Taking a multivitamin may help compensate for any shortfalls in your diet. I like to take a natural foods-based supplement.
• Eat healthier. Cut down on sugar and eat more leafy greens and other fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Calm Your Spirit. I like to read scripture, memorize Bible verses, and pray to help me calm down. Deep breathing exercises also help to slow down your body and mind.

Essential Oils for Stress Relief

In the late 1960s, Herbert Benson, MD, found a counterbalancing effect to the stress response called the relaxation response.

Aromatherapy is one technique that can be used to elicit the relaxation response. This can help bring about many positive changes in the body, including reduction of blood pressure, slowing of heart rate, increased production of endorphins, and improved insulin response just to name a few things. So now let’s look at five different ways you can use aromatherapy to help alleviate stress:

Five Methods of Aromatherapy Application

1. Aromatherapy Inhaler — An inhaler is a small plastic bullet-shaped container with a cotton center infused with essential oils. Aromatherapists make these for all different purposes, including stress, allergies, and colds. I love inhalers as they easily fit in your pocket or purse. When you feel the need, just whip it out and take a whiff. They are quick, convenient, and last for months.
2. Essential Oil Salt Baths — If you don’t have a tub in your home, no worries. Anyone can do a foot or hand salt bath and still get wonderful results. I, unfortunately, am in the no-bathtub club, so I purchased a large bowl and I use that. A current favorite of mine is a lemongrass and tea tree oil foot bath (recipe on link) with Epsom salts (or sea salts). Lavender is another favorite. *Caution: People with high blood pressure or diabetes need to consult their doctor before using salt baths.
3. Diffusors — Diffusing essential oils with an ultrasonic or nebulizer-type diffuser is a wonderful way to quickly absorb the benefits of essential oils. Rather than letting it run continuously, try running it for about 15 minutes out of every hour. If you don’t have a diffusor, put a few drops in a bowl of warm water and set it in a place where neither children nor pets can get into it.
4. Direct palm inhalation — In this method, put a drop of essential oil in the palm of your hand, rub both hands together, and inhale the fragrance. I like to use lavender for this, since it is safe to use undiluted.
5. Massage with essential oils diluted in oil, cream, or salve — One of my favorite ways to use lavender is in an essential oil cream that I quickly make using an unscented pre-made aloe cream. I apply this after showering and enjoy the delightful scent for the next few hours. You can also try any of the other oils I have listed below or a synergy of a few of them. When you’re creating a blend for stress, it’s important that you like the smell, because even if an oil is know for it’s stress-reducing properties, if you don’t like its smell, it will most likely make you feel more stressed.

Here are a few essential oils for stress that have used historically: bergamot, lavender, Roman chamomile, marjoram, ylang ylang, geranium, jasmine, rose, vetiver, and cypress. This list is by no means comprehensive, just some to get you started.

Try any or all of the above suggestions the next time you’re feeling stressed, and please share any suggestions you have in the comments below! If you’d like me to create a blend for you, please contact me or check out my workshops for hands-on creation of your own products.

 

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As an aromatherapist, I love experimenting with making body creams and body lotions from scratch. It’s fun adding herbal oils I have infused myself and experimenting with different butters, herbs, and essential oils to get that perfect blend and product.

Sometimes, however, I don’t have the time to make a luscious body lotion from the beginning to end. I need a quick product that will mix up in minutes but still have the healing properties and lovely scent I want. I’d like to share with you my go-to cream that I use when I don’t have time to make one and then show you how easy it is to customize it to your liking.

Favorite Body Cream

• Clean, dry jar (PET plastic or glass)
• ABC (Aloe Based Cream) cream or other unscented cream
• Essential Oils of your choice

Find an unscented cream that you like and keep a supply of it on hand to use for blending with essential oils. My favorite is called ABC Cream (you can click on the link to purchase a jar of it from my online store). You may already have one of your own that you like.

Take the clean, empty jar and fill it half-way with the body cream. Now, decide which essential oil(s) to use. You can choose your EO based solely on its scent, by its purpose, or a combination of both. For example, if you love the smell of lavender, then you may choose lavender because of its fragrance. If, however, you have a certain purpose in mind for your cream, then you will want to choose an EO based on its historical therapeutic properties. You may also create a blend of about three to five oils. Each of the oils enhances the effect of the other. If you are blending for fragrance, open each vial you are considering for a blend and carefully hold all of them under your nose, wafting the fragrance so you can see if it’s pleasing to you.

Here’s a chart of some of my favorite essential oils to help you choose. Of course, there are many others to explore as well.

Essential Oils

Essential Oil	Benefits
Bergamont	Antidepressant; uplifting; phototoxic, so use sunscreen
Clary Sage	Women’s Oil; antispasmodic; PMS; cramps; mood swings
Eucalyptus	Affinity with the respiratory system; expectorant; antimicrobial
Frankincense	Analgesic; anti-inflammatory; anti-microbial; stress; immune enhancer; irritated skin; mature skin
Geranium (Rose)	Balancing; mood swings; astringent; anti-inflammatory
German Chamomile	Anti-inflammatory; soothing for skin
Lavender	Sedative; soothes anxiety; mood swings; irritability; scars; stings/bites; burns (great added to ABC cream for sunburn)
Lemongrass	Antimicrobial; analgesic; antifungal; add to DIY cleaning formulas
Peppermint	Analgesic; relieves nausea; muscular aches and pains; cooling
Rosemary	Stimulating; affinity with respiratory system; enhances memory; use with caution if you have epilepsy or high blood pressure
Ylang Ylang	Aphrodisiac; calming; nourishing (can lower blood pressure, so use cautiously if you have low blood pressure.

Once you have decided upon your essential oils, you need to figure out the dilution rate. For a healthy adult, a dilution range of 3 to 5 percent is good for body creams. For a 4 oz bottle, that would mean you would add a total of between 72-120 drops of essential oils.

Add your oils to the cream and mix well. Then add the rest of the cream and mix well again to evenly dispurse the essential oils through the cream. You could also mix this in a glass or stainless steel bowl and then add to the jar when you are finished, being careful to get all of the mixture.

And there you have it! Be sure you write down the dilution rate of the essential oils so the next time you make your body cream you’re ready. Enjoy! What blend did you come up with? Leave a comment and let me know!

If room sprays, bath salts, and essential oils come to mind when you hear the word aromatherapy, you’re on par with what most people probably think. Aromatherapy, however, is much more than just a pleasing aroma or beauty product. It is a true healing modality whose potential is just being realized in the Western world.

Jade Shutes, founder and director of education of The East-West School for Herbal and Aromatic Studies, defines the term in the following way on the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy’s website:

“As a holistic practice, Aromatherapy is both a preventative approach as well as an active method to employ during acute and chronic stages of illness or ‘dis’-ease.

It is a natural, non-invasive modality designed to affect the whole person not just the symptom or disease and to assist the body’s natural ability to balance, regulate, heal and maintain itself by the correct use of essential oils.” 

Essential Oils: A Hot Topic

The popularity of essential oils has taken off in recent years due in part to two major MLM companies, doTERRA and Young Living. Both companies have put essential oils on the forefront of the home party scene, and many other quality and not-so-quality companies sell EOs online and in stores. But please keep in mind that you are wise to do your own research when using essential oils, especially concerning these two topics: using essential oils on children and the ingestion of EOs (ingestion if done, is best done under the care of an experienced, certified expert). Don’t just blindly accept what a sales rep or friend tells you. Essential oils are powerful — 75-100 times stronger than the dried herbs, so you need to exercise caution. I’ll be covering both of these topics in future posts, but for now I want to highlight a few points about EOs with children because there is so much misinformation out there that can be dangerous.

1. Always keep your essential oils safely stored and out of the reach of children.
2. Do NOT use essential oils on premature babies. They have high skin permeability, so it is not safe.
3. When a baby is 6 months old, you may choose to try a baby massage using 1 oz of an unscented carrier oil to which you add 1 drop of an essential oil, such as lavender (Lavendula angustifolia). This is a 0.1% dilution. Generally, do not apply EOs unless you have diluted them first in a carrier oil. It’s always a good idea when first introducing a new product to try it on a small area of the body before applying it everywhere to make sure your child will not have a reaction to it.
4. Do not use essential oils daily on your baby’s skin (dermally), as we don’t want the baby to become sensitized to the EO. A massage with EOs diluted in a carrier oil should be a periodic soothing treat for your little one. Of course you can do a daily massage without the EOs.
5. Don’t give your child EOs to ingest without proper consulation. Always consult with a health/medical professional trained in this discipline.

What Exactly Are Essential Oils?

EOs are highly concentrated aromatic extracts that are distilled or expressed from plant material. Essential oils can be found in either the flower, flowering tops, fruits/zests, grasses, leaves, needles and twigs, resins, roots, seeds, and woody parts of a plant. About 15 percent of plants produce essential oils and only about 5 percent are good for use in aromatherapy.
Certain EOs are located externally on the surface of the plant inside glandular trichomes. You can probably guess that some, though not all, herbs fall into this category, such as basil, lavender, Melissa, oregano, and peppermint, just to name a few. These essential oils are easily released by running your fingers along the plant. I’ve always loved herbs and their intoxicating scents.

Other EOs are located internally in cavities. A few examples are sweet orange, tangerine, lemon, eucalyptus, and frankincense. EOs that are found in ducts include dill, yarrow, and Roman and German chamomile. Finally, a few EOs are secreted in cells. Examples of these include ginger and nutmeg. Ginger is a favorite of mine with its pungent aroma.

Activity: Become familiar with the aroma that is released from the actual plant as well as the aroma of the corresponding essential oil. If you have time, take a few of your favorite EOs and then obtain the plant/fruit/root of it. For example, purchase a piece of ginger root and slice into it, smelling its aroma. Then open your bottle of ginger essential oil (Zingiber officinale) and compare the aroma. As you “train your nose,” you’ll be better able to distinguish pure essential oils from  fragrance oils used in the perfume industry.

In the next post, we’ll discuss EOs and the Bible and how essential oils are absorbed into the body. In the meantime, enjoy the recipe for Sweet Peace room spray that you can easily make at home.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you use aromatherapy in your life by leaving a comment below.

 

 

 

 

Jane VanOsdol has a Level 1 aromatherapy certification from Natural Options Aromatherapy, which follows the guidelines for certification from the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA). She is currently studying for a clinical certification with the East-West School for Herbal & Aromatic Studies and is developing a line of products. She is also available for workshops or one-on-one meetings. Visit (and Like) her AromaScents Facebook page for more information.