Essential oils are so popular right now, and they are everywhere! I’m a huge fan! I use them myself, with my family, and with my clients daily. They date back thousands of years, but I’m guessing there are a few things you may not know about them, so here we go:
1. They are like herbs on steroids!
We are all familiar with herbs; either we use them ourselves or at least have some belief in their benefits. Essential oils have been relegated to the seemingly boring realm of aromatherapy – smell nice – but aren’t as commonly accepted for their healing benefits. You may already be all over using essential oils, but I thought I would explain how powerful they truly are. Healing in the body works primarily through vibration, due to electrons and physics and such. I saw this cool microscopic video years ago, showing a white blood cell attacking a bacteria. All the white blood cell did was come up to the bacteria and vibrate the crap out of it until the bacteria just exploded and died – poof! What looked like magic taught me that healing really all comes down to vibration – the higher the vibration the more powerful the healing. Don’t believe me, just Google it and you’ll find endless examples. So back to essential oils and their power. Dried herbs, which is what you take in a capsule or a tincture vibrate anywhere from 10-25 MHz. Essential oils, which are literally the volatile oils from within the plant (like the plant’s blood) vibrate between 50 and 320 MHz! 320 MHz being rose oil – that’s the highest natural plant medicine vibration I know of! Essential oils pack a seriously healing punch!
2. They are used in Multi-Sensory fashion!
For starters you put them on your skin, mostly, instead of taking them orally. I love this because they don’t have to go through the rigors of your digestive system, meaning they aren’t destroyed by the acids or don’t irritate a sensitive digestive tract. Did you know anything you put on your skin is absorbed into you body within seconds? I’ve seen estimates that anything put on the skin reaches the liver in as little as 20 seconds. So the oils applied to your skin are throughout your entire blood stream, going to work for you, FAST! When we take herbs orally, they are often in capsules so we don’t even get to taste them. Some of you might be saying thank goodness, as some herbs can be quite unpalatable. And, if you’re making a tea or using a tincture, you will get the taste and possibly a faint smell, but essential oils deliver an aroma that is divine! The molecules of oils go up your nose, and via your olfactory system, get a direct line to your brain. They literally start to work instantly with just the smell of them, hence the term aromatherapy. Straight to the brain creates a healing pathway for your body – that is powerful stuff! So, you put them on your skin, smell them, and can taste them too!
3. What/How/Where Matters!
What type of plant, how it is grown, and where matters – big time! Not to mention chemicals used and the very loose rules for what we put on our skin. Did you know that when it comes to labeling that skincare (the category essential oils fall under, as opposed to food) has its own set of rules? You can label it organic if it is only 70% organic! That means the other 30% can be the toxic chemicals you are trying to avoid in the first place? And, with essential oils, you can label them 100% pure if you dilute them by only 50%? Yes, 100% pure if only 50% pure! Once you dilute them, they are no longer therapeutic and don’t do anything for you or your body healing-wise. So, skip anything you can buy at a health food store and get truly pure, organic oils from one of very few companies in the U.S. actually produce clinical grade essential oils. I use one I believe is the very best, if you want to contact me about it. Back to the what/how/where matters part… each plant has different phytochemicals available, due to how it has survived and evolved. These constituents are a huge part of how the plant heals itself, and ultimately what it can offer to us humans. Each species, of say lavender, is different in its constituents and therefore its healing capabilities. Then add in growing it in the perfect vs. stressful environment, or produced by loving farmers vs big commercial automation – each produces a vastly different plant with totally different constituents present, even within the same exact species. So what/how/where really matters when it comes to what a particular oil is going to do for you or not. That’s why you’ll see a lavender that is dirt cheap (read massed produced from cheap species) and one that is priced to be of therapeutic value to your healing process (read healthy plants, grown with care from the best species under ideal conditions). With essential oils, if you want to use them for your own healing, then go big or go home! Use the real deal to get the real deal benefits!
So to recap:
1. Essential oils are powerful, like superhero powerful!
2. Experiencing them on a multi-sensory level adds to their super powers!
3. Crap oils won’t do squat for you!