AROMAPROFILES

Complexity and Flexibility- AromaProfiles

Essential oils are like people - complex. One person called Rosemary might be a fabulous ballet dancer, and a computer buff, a mother, a cook, a driver, a chess player, a tennis player and a poet. likewise, the essential oil, rosemary, can do many different things.

Just because you might have read, somewhere that rosemary oil is used for rheumatism, for example, don't assume that is its only use. It's also good for depression and fatigue. Essential oils are flexible and adaptable - like people.

In a clinical setting, an aromatherapist will individualize the formula of essential oils she or he uses on a client. No two people are alike, and even if they were, circumstances or situations can be different. In a book it is obviously impossible to individualize, but the format of this book allows you to get around this problem to a certain degree.

Alongside the standard clinical formulations I give for each situation, you will find a list of essential oils from which you can choose to design your own formula, tailor-made for you. Look at the individual oils listed for a particular problem, emotional violence say, and cross-reference them with what else is said about them throughout the book.

Smell the actual oil next time you go into a shop, if you like it, buy it. You can personalize a formula for you, which might change with time and circumstances. There are many possibilities because essential oils are so flexible: there are lots of options to try.

One of the great things about aromatherapy is how you get a synergistic effect when you blend two or more oils together. Bergamot is a great confidence booster, but blend it with geranium which is an emotional balancer, and you have a winner.

Single essential oils can be vibrant and dynamic on their own but put in a blend , they become more than the sum of their own component parts - with a unique character of their own, and with an extra energizing and harmonizing potential.

With approximately 300 essential oils in common use , you can see how many permutations their are to try!

Two of this and one of that, two of that and one of this, or two of each = all these different blends. It would take a mathematical genius to work out all the possible permutations, even given certain restrictions.

Reference: The Fragrant Mind: Valerie Ann Worwood