Aromatherapy Uses Are Vast
Aromatherapy’s uses are far-ranging. Not only do essential oils smell wonderful by themselves, they are a fantastic ingredient in bath and beauty products you can whip up yourself! Essential oils can also enhance your health and your mood, and are useful around the home, whether it’s for cleaning, freshening up, or eco-friendly pest control. Below, we’ve listed just a few ways that aromatherapy can pleasantly punch up your life.
Typical Aromatherapy Uses
Aromatherapy for Health
From bug bites to burns, chances are there’s an essential oil that can help you heal life’s minor scrape-ups. People use aromatherapy to help with pain, insomnia, nausea, burns, and inflammation. And whether you’re interested in soothing a headache or toothache, chasing away stress or stinky soles, or keeping colds, coughs, and congestion under control, essential oils can help. That’s because they contain powerful antiviral, anti-fungal, and antibacterial properties – among many other benefits. (Be sure to check out our Aromatherapy First Aid Kit section for a primer on what’s possible!)
Aromatherapy can be used as a complement to other alternative or conventional medical treatments. Over time, we’ll add to our Aromatherapy Resource Center, giving you the information you need to tackle minor health hassles with the help of aromatherapy and essential oils. For more complicated conditions, however, we suggest you seek out the advice of a trained professional.
Aromatherapy for Mood & Performance
Aromatherapy can have a powerful influence on your mood and performance. Whether you want to relax, perk up, or just infuse a little joy into your day, essential oils can help you do that. For example, if you’re feeling frazzled and stressed, nothing calms quite like geranium, sandalwood, or jasmine essential oils. Having trouble falling asleep? Lavender can carry you off to dreamland. Want to feel a little less anxious? Mandarin essential oil is just the thing you need.
What about performance? It turns out that aromatherapy can sharpen your memory, increase concentration, and make you more alert. Basil, peppermint, and rosemary, for instance, act as powerful performance-boosters because they stimulate memory and sharpen concentration.
And of course, aromatherapy can work wonders in the home, making it feel more cozy during the holidays, airy and clean in the summer months, and sensual and romantic whenever the mood strikes! We’ll be adding more information to our Resource Center over time, with tips on which essential oils can enhance or encourage specific moods.
Aromatherapy for Beauty & Massage
If you like beauty products that are as pure and natural as possible, you’ll love bath scrubs, lotions, lip balms, massage oils, makeup removers, and even shampoos and conditioners that are made with essential oils and other natural ingredients.
The problem with so many “conventional” beauty products you’ll find on store shelves is that they’re laden with chemicals, many of them unpronounceable and most of them not proven to be safe in the long run. The truth is that we really don’t know how all those chemicals can affect our bodies over time.
The beauty of essential oils, however, is that they come to us from nature, not from a lab, and are gentle and nontoxic to our bodies when used with wisdom and care. They also put high-quality, natural beauty solutions within anyone’s reach: be sure to check out our Aromatherapy for Beauty section to find out how easy it is to whip up your own healthy beauty blends!
Aromatherapy for Cleaning & Pest Control
If you care about what you put on and in your body, you’ll also want to pay attention to what you sprinkle and spray around your house. Many common cleaning products and pesticides contain harsh, toxic ingredients that are so dangerous they come with a skull and bones on the label!
But if there’s a cheaper, safer, and more natural solution available, why not use it instead? That’s where essential oils come in! It’s easy to create your own cleaning products with a few common ingredients. You can make a lot from simple baking soda, vinegar, water, and well-chosen essential oils.
For example, lemon, eucalyptus, pine, grapefruit, and lime essential oils are wonderful bacteria busters and a great addition to homemade cleaning products. Some of them – like lime and grapefruit – are especially good at deodorizing without leaving an overpowering aroma.
Essential oils are also great at deterring those pesky creepy-crawlies: moths and flies tend to steer clear of lavender, while mosquitoes seem to dislike peppermint. Using aromatherapy to deter pests – not kill them en masse with a load of toxic chemical agents – is a happier, safer solution for everyone involved. As we build our Aromatherapy Resource Center, we’ll teach you about gentle, effective aromatherapy solutions to your most common pest problems.