Chapter 1

Making Sense Out of Scents

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding the wonder behind the words "essential oils" of "aromatherapy"

Viewing essential oil medicines

Using and applying essential oils

Seeing the potential benefits of essential oils

Playing botanist to sort through oils

How many times have you leaned into a bouquet of flowers to inhale their fragrance? Perhaps you've taken a deep breath of pine or fir while walking in a park or forest or brought a fresh Christmas tree into your home. Stroll through a flower or herb garden, and the scents that waft around you with each step engage your imagination. Maybe you've sat down to a cup of peppermint tea and enjoyed the aroma as much as drinking the tea. With so many different smells surrounding you, you probably don't give them a second thought. Or at least you may not yet.

In this chapter, I begin to explain how all this scent-sation (from a bouquet of flowers, a pine forest, or your cup of tea) is due to essential oils. This chapter gives you just a sniff of essential oil basics and the study and practice of aromatherapy. The rest of the book digs deeper into various subtopics.

Defining Essential Oils

Essential oils are derived from medicinal plants that are commonly referred to as herbs. You may have gone in search of some herbal remedies to take care of a headache or reached for cough syrup or throat lozenges that contains medicinal herbs. Herbs that are aromatic contain essential oils that produce a plant's scent. Not all plants contain essential oils, but the ones that do hold them in special glands. It's easy for you to identify the plants with these oils: Simply smell the plant. If there's a scent, it contains essential oils. Roses, violets, rosemary bushes, and even Christmas trees all owe their distinctive aromas to essential oils.

Essential oils can be extracted from a plant using several methods. Once extracted, a pure essential oil is slightly oily to the touch. Although technically an oil, it is much thinner than vegetable oils used in cooking, such as canola or olive. Essential oils are composed of such tiny compounds that the oils feel thin and seem to disappear when you rub them between your fingers. They also don't leave an oily stain on cloth and evaporate easily into the air. Because they dissipate so quickly, another name for essential oils is volatile oils. That's a good description of them because volatile means "vaporous" or to be "like gas." (See Chapter 15 for more on the science behind the oils.)

The scent glands in a plant that produce essential oils can occur anywhere, but they are most likely found in the flowers and leaves. Not all plants need essential oils to survive, yet those that do have them, put them to good use. For a long time, botanists couldn't figure out why plants went to the trouble of producing these oils. Now they know that essential oils play important roles for plants.

• They attract bees and other pollinators.
• They repel harmful insects.

  FOLLOWING YOUR NOSE

  
  

  Nowadays, they're sold everywhere, but it's relatively new that you can purchase essential oils. Although they have been distilled for hundreds of years, and quite possibly long before that, they were obtained from aromatic plants only by early chemists - the alchemists. These rare essential oils found their way into a few exclusive cosmetics but were not generally available. Even a few decades ago when I started working as an aromatherapist almost no essential oils were available. I could only find peppermint and birch (sold as wintergreen) essential oils, and that was only in drugstores. I had to search out large essential oil companies distributing to the food and perfume industries for my first set of essential oils. Times have certainly changed.

  WHAT'S SO ESSENTIAL ABOUT THESE OILS?

  
  

  Aromatic compounds that were first distilled from plants were coined essential by poetic alchemists of long ago. They believed that a plant's fragrance represents its "inner" nature, or essence. Fragrance is invisible, so it was easy to consider it etheric and akin to a person's soul. It was commonly used to inspire prayer and meditation. Indeed, one of the earliest uses of fragrant plants was as incense for religious ceremonies - an application still popular throughout the world where it has moved into Hindu and Buddhist temples, Japanese Taoist and Shinto practices, Catholic churches, and Indigenous American and African healing ceremonies.

• Some repel other plants so that they don't crowd the space.
• They kill bacterial, viral, and fungal infections.
• They seal and heal the plant's wounds.
• They help make the plant waterproof.
• They increase the plant's immunity to disease.
• Acting like plant hormones, some influence plant reproduction.

Defining Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is the technique of using essential oils, which are always aromatic, for healing therapy. The beauty of essential oils is that they are an aroma-based therapy. All those good scents make working with essential oils and using them a wonderful experience. After all, if essential oils have an emphasis, it's that they make you feel great just sniffing them.

What I love about aromatherapy is how it is truly holistic (aims to treat the whole person). It embraces the body-mind-spirit concept by working on all these levels. That means the essential oils used in an aromatherapy practice address healing on several levels as they have done in traditional medicine around the world. No matter where your ancestry lies, your people certainly used aromatic plants for healing. In fact, the use of aromatic plants is thought to be one of the oldest forms of healing. A tradition-based practice, it works in our modern world as well as it did ages ago.

As an herbalist and aromatherapist, I always view aromatherapy as a part of herbalism. If you look at the most important types of healing compounds in herbs, essential oils are right at the top because essential oils are responsible for many herbs' healing attributes.

Although most of Western medicine typically relies on medical procedures and pharmaceuticals, modern science has also turned its attention to the healing capabilities of essential oils. When researchers looked for possible candidates to study, they first investigated the uses of aromatic plants that have been recorded in herbal manuscripts and embedded into worldwide folklore. What they discovered is that the old manuscripts were right. Yes, chamomile really does reduce pain. Lavender can help you sleep. Rosemary helps you think better. Some essential oils reduce bruising and inflammation. From these first aromatic findings, research moved on to explore a potpourri of aromatic experiences and provided a scientific foundation for essential oil use.

Aromatherapy is often used in conjunction with other forms of therapies to heal various ailments. This is because it's a perfect, non-intrusive way to balance emotions. For example, incense can be burned during a yoga class. Someone experiencing an anxiety attack can simply spray an essential oil into the air, and a beneficial effect wafts through the room. As an adjunct therapy, aromatherapy can promote relaxation or focus and relieve anxiety and nervousness. I often refer to it as a feel-good therapy to improve almost any situation. (Check out Chapter 6 for many ways to create a mood room with scent.)

In addition to affecting mood, aromatherapy can help to heal a long list of physical problems. Aromatherapy is especially useful when you're dealing with conditions that you normally treat yourself anyway, such as a headache, muscle spasm, or insomnia. Instead of heading to the drugstore, you'll be reaching for rose geranium or peppermint essential oil. To use aromatherapy wisely, read Chapter 4.

There's no denying that certain fragrances from essential oils put your mind into a relaxed focus that promotes prayer and meditation. How aromatherapy addresses the soul is fascinating and a little mysterious. Science hasn't backed this use . yet. I like how the essential oils that traditionally have been used in religious settings to inspire devotion are now non-denominational. The scent of essential oils like frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, and juniper work for everyone. While you may be using frankincense to relax a muscle, its scent floating in the air touches a spiritual aspect, which can help you create or tap into a core of strength to deal with whatever physical and emotional conditions come your way.

Aromatherapy is becoming a household word, and you'll find a large assortment of essential oils readily available online and in brick-and-mortar stores. See chapters in this book that cover more information on individual topics. Refer to Chapter 8 for tips on using aromatherapy to create romance. Chapter 6 explains how to scent your living and workspace. The guides at the end of this book help you find the right oils and scents for your needs.

Using Oils for Healing

Essential oils have a lot in common when it comes to medicine. Due to their general makeup, most essential oils are highly antiseptic and able to kill an assortment of harmful bacterial and viral infections. Many...