Even though the word “aromatherapy” was not coined until the late 1920s, this kind of therapy was found many centuries earlier. The history of the use of essential oils traces back to at least a few thousand years although human beings have used plants, herbs, etc. for thousands of years.
Essential oils have been utilized to improve a person’s health or mood for over 6,000 years. Its roots may be traced back to ancient Egypt when fragrant compounds like frankincense and myrrh were utilized in religious and spiritual rituals.
What is Aromatherapy?
Aromatherapy, often known as essential oil treatment, refers to a group of traditional, alternative, and complementary therapies that make use of essential oils and other aromatic plant components. Essential oils have been utilized for medicinal, spiritual, sanitary, and ceremonial reasons since ancient civilizations such as the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans employed them in cosmetics, perfumes, and medicines. Oils were utilized in the beauty business and for aesthetic pleasure. They served as both a luxury item and a form of payment. It was thought that essential oils extended the shelf life of wine and enhanced the flavor of meals.
It is a holistic therapeutic therapy that promotes health and well-being by using natural plant extracts. It employs the therapeutic use of fragrant essential oils to enhance the health of the body, mind, and soul.
Some of the Most Popular Essential Oils are:
There are over 90 different kinds of essential oils, each with its own distinct aroma and possible health advantages. Here is a list of prominent essential oils and their related health claims:
Peppermint: This well-known oil is used to treat headaches, discomfort, and gastrointestinal problems such as irritable bowel syndrome. It is also used to increase energy and help with digestion.
Neem: Neem is a plant that is used to cure nail fungus and acne. It’s also a good bug repellent.
Rosemary: Distilled from the cooking herb, it is believed to improve mental concentration and is being evaluated for dementia prevention.
Neroli: This pleasant oil is used to treat anxiety and may help reduce blood pressure.
Lavender: One of the most popular essential oils, lavender is used for relaxation, stress reduction, and insomnia treatment.
Sandalwood: This aromatic earthy fragrance, popular in meditation centers and spas, is believed to alleviate anxiety and promote sleep. It also helps to concentrate and soothes tensions.
Helichrysum: This oil has a therapeutic fragrance and is often used to decrease inflammation, improve wound and burn healing, stimulate digestion, strengthen the immune system, and calm the body and mind.
Bergamot: This citrus oil imparts the distinct flavor of Earl Grey tea and is believed to ease anxiety. Bergamot is also being researched for its ability to decrease cholesterol, reduce stress, and treat skin problems such as eczema.
Clove: Spicy clove oil is useful for treating toothaches and other kinds of discomfort.
Rose: One of the costliest essential oils, its calming floral fragrance may ease tension, anxiety, and enhance mood, as well as treat menstrual cramps.
Cinnamon: According to research, the oil in this beloved spice may enhance circulation, reduce tension, alleviate pain, fight infections, and aid digestion.
Methods of Performing Aromatherapy:
These essential oils may be prepared and utilized in a variety of ways, including inhaling them, massaging them into the skin in diluted form, and swallowing them as teas or tinctures. Some of the most popular aromatherapy techniques are:
Smelling: Take deep breaths of the essential oil’s aroma as you open the bottle. This is the conventional method of aromatherapy. When essential oils are breathed, the smell molecules go straight from the olfactory nerves to the brain, especially on the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center.
When essential oils are breathed, the smell molecules go straight from the olfactory nerves to the brain, especially on the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center.
Massage: To assist relax tense muscles during a rubdown, a massage therapist may add a drop or two of wintergreen to the oil. They also custom-blend therapeutic essential oils for each individual and provide ways of usage to elicit the desired results.
Bath: To provide a relaxing soak, skincare companies add different essential oils to bath salts.
Steam Inhalation: Place two to four drops of essential oil in a bowl of boiling water. While inhaling the steam, place a cloth over your head that covers the edges of the bowl. The towel arrangement will keep most of the vapors contained inside the space covered by it.
Diffuser Method: Electric diffusers and candle-based diffusers are available on the market. Simply place a few drops of essential oil in the diffuser and light the candle or turn on the electric diffuser. The essential oil is released as vapors, which you may breathe in.
Dry Evaporation: Place a few drops of essential oil on a cotton ball or a piece of fabric and sniff it to inhale the fragrance of the oil as it evaporates. You may place the drops on your pillow to help you sleep better at night.
The Benefits:
It is no secret that your health benefits from natural living. You undoubtedly know the benefits of aromatherapy if you live more naturally, but if you are starting, below are some of its benefits.
1. It Fills Your Space with the Essence of Nature
When you begin to fill your senses with the fragrance of essential oil, visualize your home (or even your vehicle) filled with that particular aroma, like rose. Visualize a garden that blooms with each rose as the breeze gradually spreads its beauty and reaches your breath as you inhale. By concentrating on fragrance, a stressful atmosphere may be transformed into a setting that enables you to meditate in peace and tranquility. It will make your journey much more pleasant!
2. Reduces Stress
Stress comes with life, and in various ways affects everyone. Our bodies may also feel stress when we encounter it. If long-term stress is not dealt with, it may cause several health issues. There are methods to control this, but it is very difficult to prevent.
By inhaling essential oils brain gives a signal to certain emotions that make you feel optimistic. You are extremely relieved by tension and anxiety using massage with aromatherapy.
In its oil form, lavender, when used correctly, is scientifically shown to minimize stress. Lavender relaxes your nervous system, decreases your blood pressure, heart rate, and guides brain waves towards relaxation.
Best essential oils for stress: Lavender, lemongrass, geranium, jasmine, camomile.
3. Helps You Unwind
After a hard day at work, many individuals turn to aromatherapy for a reason. The pleasant scents and calming effects are an excellent way to relax at night. It may be used to relax oneself and can be coupled with other soothing activities like reading, bathing, etc. Try diffusing some oils while doing soothing activities, such as bathing, performing a simple yoga practice, or meditating for a few minutes and see the magic. Search for fragrances that will help you relax, rather than energize.
Best essential oils for relaxation: Neroli, lemon, lavender, rose.
4. Eases Depression
The use of clary sage may improve your mood and frankincense, since it gives you calm energy and spiritual grounding, is excellent in treating anxiety and depression. Camomile may reduce overthinking, irritation, and uneasiness. Ylang-ylang oil contributes to increased pleasure, optimism and calms fear. Jasmine is often used as an antidepressant and creates a sense of trust and hope.
Best essential oils for depression: Basil, clary sage, jasmine, frankincense, camomile, ylang-ylang, bergamot, cedarwood.
5. Relieves Physical Pain
Aromatherapy, when combined with massage, may offer comfort to individuals suffering from chronic pain, particularly if the pain is primarily muscular in type.
For reducing pain—particularly, gynaecological, postoperative, and obstetrical pain—aromatherapy has a higher beneficial effect than placebos or control therapies, according to a study published in Pain Research and Treatment.
Best essential oils to reduce physical pain: Eucalyptus, turmeric, chamomile, thyme, ginger.
6. Boosts Your Mood
It will boost your mood by taking a few minutes from your day to indulge in self-care. In addition to self-care, the numerous beneficial advantages of essential oil diffusion also combine to boost your mood and enhance emotions of pleasure. Aromatherapy may help you raise up and make you feel better whether you are feeling happy or a little gloomy.
Best essential oils for mood upliftment: Black pepper, rose, roman chamomile.
7. Improves Meditation Quality
In modern life with regular work, fast mobility, dispersal of concentration, inadequate rest and often fatigue, meditation improves mental clarity, attention, spiritual purification, relaxation, and higher awareness to replace worry and divide attention by an illumination. Essential Oils with naturally pleasant aromas are reputed to support and sometimes enhance the quality of a meditative experience.
Even while the ideal essential oil depends on the individual preferences of the user, many oils have acquired popularity in meditation, prayer, and other practices of mindfulness. With each use of a particular oil, the chosen scent may come to facilitate the ideal meditative state, as each use strengthens the association of the scent to the ritual.
Aromatherapy may assist to center, ground, and concentrate the mind and are believed to help remove or decrease negative energy and self-talk from the body and mind by promoting perceptive, uplifting emotions of positivity, determination, optimism, appreciation, and self-respect. Furthermore, it is said to make the body lighter, calmer, and quieter. To get the most beneficial effects from meditation, it is essential to utilize only the finest quality oils.
Best essential oils for meditation: Rose, jasmine, sandalwood, neroli.
8. Boosts Energy
Aromatherapy may strengthen the senses and give you the pep. All citrus oil, in particular lemon, is full of antioxidant terpenes such as limonene that naturally have an invigorating impact.
The peppermint improves training performance, raises brain-oxygen concentration, performance and lowers fatigue, according to a research published in the Journal of the International Society for Sports Nutrition.
Best essential oils to boost energy: Mint, lemon, basil, grapefruit.
9. Assists in the Promotion of Healthy Hair
To minimize the use of harsh chemicals, essential oils are increasingly being utilized as a safe alternative to improve hair health in hair products. Peppermint oil may be used to treat both oily and dry hair. It aids in the improvement of blood flow to the scalp. Lavender essential oil conditions the hair, keeps it shiny, and helps to manage dandruff.
The quantity of hair grew substantially among participants in this research with androgenetic alopecia, often known as male or female pattern baldness, after six months of taking rosemary oil.
Best essential oils for healthy hair: Lavender, peppermint, lemongrass, rosemary, tea tree, myrrh, helichrysum.
10. Encourages Healthy Skin
Aromatherapy promotes fast recovery and healthy-looking toenails and skin. Whether you’re a bit hot after a day in the sun or recuperating from a small rash, diffusing essential oils may help minimize the appearance of minor skin irritations and blemishes. It also minimizes the signs of aging on the skin, such as small wrinkles, uneven pigmentation, and loss of suppleness.
Best essential oils for healthy skin: Coconut, lavender, tea tree, geranium.
11. Maintains Hormone Balance and Mood Swings
According to a research published in Neuro Endocrinology Letters, aromatherapy may influence estrogen and assist women suffering menopausal symptoms and low estrogen levels. Rose and geranium essential oils have been clinically proved to assist ladies who are suffering hormone imbalances.
Plus, many women experience mood swings before their menstrual cycle or as a consequence of other hormonal changes. Calming aromatherapy oils may help promote emotions of stability and serenity amid mood swings. If you feel like you’re always swinging between emotional highs and lows each month, diffusing essential oils may help you feel more balanced, particularly during the sometimes-tumultuous period around the menstrual cycle.
Best essential oils for hormonal balance and mood swings: Lavender, clary sage, black pepper, thyme, geranium, roman chamomile.
12. Boosts Feelings of Calmness
Aromatherapy is a wonderful complement to any routine, but it can also be a valuable resource during times of stress and tension. When your mind is racing, those sensations of peace and relaxation can help you take a breath, exhale, and re-center yourself. Furthermore, dispersing essential oils encourages deep breathing, which has been proven to alleviate tension at the moment.
Best essential oils for calmness: Bergamot orange, chamomile, clary sage, lavender, lemon.
13. Assists in Chakra Healing
Your chakras are powerful, and so are these oils. Spending a week connecting with a certain oil and its associated chakra is the greatest way to truly experience what the oils can do for you. Once you’ve figured out what each oil can accomplish on its own, mix them to bring levels of depth to your practice and self-awareness.
You may find a stronger affinity for some oils and chakras, as well as resistance to others. In this sense, they are excellent teachers, revealing both your strengths (what we pull toward) and your weaknesses (what we resist)—a road map to the self. However, since everything is linked, all the oils are beneficial. Healing one chakra eventually aids in the healing of the others and the whole system.
Best essential oils for chakras healing: Myrrh, lemongrass, lavender, sandalwood, helichrysum.
So, I hope the quick exploration of aromatherapy benefits will inspire you to go deeper and try it for yourself!
