How Essential Oils Can Help You Heal And Evolve
Our bodies yearn to connect with the earth and the elements. Even the latest research points to the fact that we feel better when we surround ourselves with natural surroundings or allow nature to envelop us. While we came from dust, it’s dirt, trees, rivers, and vast sky that gently nudge us from depression to happiness.Â
The more we learn about how the natural elements at our fingertips can help us, the more choices we’ll have to improve our attitudes and states-of-mind when we feel disconnected, lost, confused, or negatively impacted by a life-event.
“I believe that for every illness or ailment known to man, that God has a plant out here that will heal it. We just need to keep discovering the properties for natural healing.” ― Vannoy Gentles Fite
What Are Essential Oils?
Essential Oils are some of the loveliest substances found on planet earth, extracted from nature’s most beautiful living-Beings: plants and flowers! The most popular scents include Lavender, Peppermint, Frankincense, Orange, Ylang-ylang, Patchouli, and many others.Â
Most essential oils are extracted through the process of steam-distillation, also known as hydrodistillation. The process begins when the botanicals are packed into an enclosed compartment within a pressurized still. Water is boiled, and steam pressurizes the plant’s material. This results in the extraction and release of the plants’ aromatic and bioactive compounds into the steam. This vapor is a combination of water and scented oil, which are condensed during the final stages of the process. After the byproduct is cooled, it’s bottled and labeled as our favorite essential oils.Â
Other production processes include cold pressing (CP) and microwave-accelerated distillation (MAD). According to several studies, yet currently less widespread, microwave-acceleration and cold-pressing result in faster extraction times, cleaner production, larger yields, and potentially essential oils of higher quality. However, these processes may reduce the vibrational frequency of the oils. It also might be likely, in terms of application, benefits, and improvements, there are very few differences.Â
Only you know what will improve your connection to your nature and the universe. The most impactful results and research will stem from experimenting and learning by and for yourself.
Essential Oil Companies
There are many producers of essential oils. Most of them tend to market their oils using contrived, incentive-based structures like MLMs (multi-level marketing organizations) and misleading, hype-based lingo like “We produce the only farm-to-home organic oils.” It’s all baloney.Â
Once you cut through the weeds, you understand that essential oils are part of your birthright. You don’t need a membership card to invite these powerful fragrances into your life. Through mindful intention and research, you can attract quality, affordable essential oil product lines into your life.
“It doesn’t get much greener than essential oils: when used correctly, they are among Mother Nature’s most potent remedies.” ― Amy Leigh Mercree
How To Use Essential Oils
Essential oils can be used in a variety of ways, most notably to improve your feelings about life, others, and yourself. You can add drops of oils to your liquid soap, massage oil, and in some cases, beverages. You can place a few drops on your fingers and massage the oils into your temples, chakras, wrists, and tops of your feet (the places where your skin is thinnest or nearest to a vein).Â
While most Essential Oil packaging states that these oils should not be consumed, many people ignore this and do it anyway. Use your best judgment. I believe that ingesting a few drops of essential oils (ones that we love dearly) can only improve our states-of-mind and vibrations.
Use essential oils in rituals and prayers. Hold a bottle of your favorite Essential Oil in the palms of our hands and pray for someone to receive its attributes. Use oils to anoint the sick and bless your loved ones. You can also use essential oils to protect specific aspects of our life and health.Â
Before using an essential oil, I hold it in the palm of my hand, and I pray for it to achieve its highest possible vibration. I ask that the universe extend this vibration to those in need. Sometimes, I’ll use different combinations of oils to improve my energy levels and feelings. I’ll place a few drops in the palms of my hands, rub my hands together, then press my hands against my face. I’ll take five deep breaths through the nose and immediately feel an upward shift.Â
A Heart-Clearing Ritual With Essential Oils
One of my favorite rituals involving essential oils is to use specific oils to cleanse each chakra. Here’s how to heal your heart chakra:
- Use rose oil to unwind (counterclockwise) your heart chakra and then peppermint oil to rewind the chakra (clockwise).Â
- Place a few drops of rose oil on your fingertips.
- Reach under your shirt, press your fingers onto your skin, at the location of your heart chakra.
- Move your fingers in a counterclockwise direction, making a small circle.
- For a few minutes, breathe white light and love into the center of your heart.Â
- When you’re ready, place peppermint oil on your fingertips and do the same in a clockwise direction.Â
- When done, rub your hands together and press them against your face. Breathe deeply for a minute or so.Â
There is an unlimited number of ways to use essential oils to improve your health, heart, mind, overall wellbeing, and connection to our divine universe.Â
“Labeled apothecary bottles filled with raw material oils lined the risers: flowers, resins, leaves, woods, mosses, spices, herbs, seeds, grains, roots, bark, and fruit. From the animal kingdom came fixatives: civet, musk, and ambergris. The absolutes, the resinoids, the essential oils.” ― Jan Moran
Essential Oils That Can Improve Your Attitude and Vibration
Here are some of the more popular essential oils and a few of their attributes. While this list might help get you started, you will always be the best judge of something’s value and specific use.Â
Sandalwood
Feel more grounded, reduce your internalization of external stressors, know yourself more deeply, and improve your general awareness.Â
Sage
Connect with your emotions, feel more accepting of yourself and others, be more connected to your surroundings, and achieve a relaxed state of mind.
Pine
Feel more energized and improve your mental clarity.Â
Pink Grapefruit
Improve your mood, increase your connection to your desires, and be more open to up-leveling your patterns.Â
Jasmine
Build a bridge between your mind and heart, release the effects of minor upsets, and recall how sweet life can be.
Tangerine
Purify your blood, boost your metabolism, and use this oil as an antiseptic.
Orange
Increase the level of activity in your life, feel more cheerful, and celebrate positivity.Â
Lavender
Feel more peaceful, reduce inflammation, heal minor burns, reduce anxiety, depression, and insomnia, and cure your restlessness.Â
Lemon
Cleanse your liver, heal your adrenals, improve your energy level, and feel more rejuvenated.Â
Rose
Open yourself to more love and heart-centered beauty, connect with the universal Divine Mother, and improve your peacefulness before bedtime.Â
Ylang Ylang
Improve your connection to grounded masculinity, improve your self-confidence and sex drive, and relieve a broken heart.
Peppermint
Stimulate your mind and heart for an awakening or rebirth.
Patchouli
Let go of the past, feel more connected to others in the present moment, and move forward with a clear resolution.Â
Bergamot
Calm your emotions, reduce activity, and enjoy the sweetness of life.
Cinnamon
Reduce inflammation, breathe more deeply, create internal space and flow, and connect more intimately with yourself and others.
Frankincense
Reduce fear and anxiety, open your heart, improve concentration, and be more creative.
Chamomile
Relieve feelings of anger, worry, or anxiety; add feelings of joy and calm to your daily life.
Myrrh
Enhance your ability to meditate, forgive, and connect with the divine.Â
There are hundreds of plants being distilled into essential oils. You have so many choices! Also, since tincture bottles are inexpensive, you can customize a personal blend of the essential oils that inspire you most.Â
To create a custom blend, place 100 drops of several favorite oils into a small tincture bottle. You can make it more robust by adding carrier oils, including single uses or combinations of Coconut, Argan, Brahmi, Jojoba, Olive, Avocado, Grapeseed, and Moringa oils.Â
Use essential oils to improve your relationships, business pursuits, health, intuition, and reality. These oils are your subtle-body friends. You can even talk with them and ask them how they can help you. Chances are, they’ll answer you.
While we are each alone in the universe, we can enhance our connections with eternal consciousness and divine by connecting with nature and inviting nature-born products into our lives. This might include essential oils, Bach Flower Remedies, candles, wood-burning fireplaces, cotton sheets, hemp clothing, bamboo comforters, and anything else of nature that appears to you.
As you seek to improve your mind, heart, and health, consider embracing and exploring essential oils to invite feelings of peace, joy, and abundance.
Research Shows Effectiveness of Breathwork in Healing
Breath, most of us take it for granted, and yet as an influx of recent studies show, when we learn to control it, it can be the key not only to our physical wellbeing but to our spiritual transformation.
Breathwork is the conscious awareness and control of the breath through the practice of various techniques. While breath practices have been incorporated for millennia in many religious and spiritual traditions, they were largely forgotten with the rise of the modern western world. Today, however, we are in the midst of a massive resurgence in interest in these ancient practices.
Ben Stewart is a filmmaker who has been researching and practicing breathwork for years. “We always have breath, it’s free, and it’s relegated to the subconscious for the most part of our lives,” he said.
When we bring it back into the conscious realm, just the very act of bringing awareness to the breath is something that augments the experience of what the breath is doing to us, but also just becoming aware of your breath allows you to realize how much we actually hold our breath, how interrupted and inconsistent our breathing really is.”