Aromatherapy Advice

You have probably experienced times in your life when you felt stress resulting from events that were job related, relationship-induced stress (such as marital problems, death of a spouse, or divorce), and or money problems.  While it may not seem major, soon, you may start feeling anxious, your heart starts racing, you sweat and tremble, feel restless, experience insomnia and difficulty concentrating. You feel fear, worry, nervousness, and tension, and those feelings seem to hang on regardless of your best efforts to avoid them or stave them off.

This is when I turn to one of my favorite essential oils, lavender.  The most frequently studied of all the essential oils, lavender has been found both in the lab and in clinical environments with actual human beings to be a powerful anti-anxiety oil.  Inhaling lavender oil brings calm in a variety of conditions.  In fact, only Frankincense has a somewhat similar effect, but not nearly as effective as Lavender.  Lavender’s effect has been compared to that of Valium and it can improve sleep and reduce the amount of pain medication needed by recovering hospital patients.  In one aromatherapy study essential oils, including lavender, marjoram, geranium, mandarin, and cardamom, were used in a hospital to help patients get to sleep in place of sedatives, and were found to be quite effective.

So how do you use essential oils?  Inhalation is the most rapid method of absorbing essential oils. This method of essential oil application allows the effects of the essential oil to be experienced in two ways: the oil is absorbed into the body through the respiratory system, and the aroma of the oil is perceived and analyzed by the olfactory system and the brain.  There are special essential oil diffusers which can be purchased in which you place a few drops of the oil in a tbsp of water and light a candle beneath it.  Essential oils can also be placed in an evening bath for deeper sleep or any time of day to treat anxiety.