A century ago, young women recognized the power of aromatherapy though it hadn’t yet been called that name. A dab of vanilla served as a perfume and rose petals were dropped into soap as it was being made. There were plenty of other places that scent was used to make life more pleasant.

There are few things more inviting and relaxing to many people than a tub filled with warm water, delicious-smelling bubbles and several candles giving off their particular scents. That’s really all there is to aromatherapy – using various scents, oils and elements to create a specific atmosphere. But it’s more complicated than simply dropping some stuff that smells good in the same cooking pot and lighting the fire.

Aromatherapy has become an art with an entire industry built around it. Aromatherapy has – in one way or another – prompted several million dollars in buying and selling each year. From candles to bath oils, the tools of the trade are sometimes very complex. One can earn degrees from several schools on the arts related to aromatherapy. But if you’re just looking to learn some on your own for your own personal information, you’ll find some very interesting sites online. You’ll find lots of information about essential oils, including what’s good for you and what’s not.

There are two reasons people choose the various oils and scents used in aromatherapy. One is simple – they like the smell. It may be something that reminds them of another place and time (cinnamon, ginger or vanilla are among the top choices here), or just a smell they like without a real reason.

The other reason to choose a particular scent is for its healing and restorative powers. Grapefruit is one of those smells that some people may not care for, but it’s cited as oil that can help with situations of stress, fear or tiredness. Think it’s so much nonsense? A study released recently cited the fact that men tended to guess women’s age at an average of six years younger than their true age – when that woman was wearing a grapefruit scent. The study was reputable, but it gives rise to the question, “why?” Were the men affected by the smell of grapefruit? Or was it that the women found confidence and lost some of their fatigue when they smelled the grapefruit? Either way, the study gives at least some credence to the art of aromatherapy.

You’ll find that aromatherapy takes some time and dedication if you want to garner the intended effects. You may have to experiment some to get the scents and oils that are best for you.

Aromatherapy is a type of alternative medicine involving the use of essential oils that has been around for about 6000 years. It is a holistic therapy which means that aromatherapy practitioners consider not just your physical symptoms, but also mental, spiritual and emotional factors. Holistic therapy recognizes that these factors are essential to take into account as they all have a great influence over your health.

There are three main ways that the essential oils used in aromatherapy enter your body:

* through your skin
* through olfaction – your sense of smell
* through your lungs

The Skin
Using essential oils in massage is the most common use of aromatherapy. The massage oil is made from a carrier oil with a few drops of essential oils added, this allows the essential oils to be absorbed into the skin. Applying heat will increase the rate at which the oils are taken in. The massage itself will produce a bit of heat, and covering the area with towels or blankets or a heated wheat bag is also common.

Once the essential oils are absorbed into the skin they work their way into the underlying tissue thereby affecting the nerves, organs and blood stream.

Here’s a quick and easy experiment to prove that essential oils really can enter your body through your skin. Cut a clove of garlic in half and rub the liquid (garlic essential oil) from the cut end on the bottom of your foot. See how long it takes before you can taste garlic on your breath (usually about 15-20 minutes).

The Sense of Smell (Olfaction)
The olfactory receptors, which are called chemoreceptors, are nerve endings embedded deep within your nasal passages. Fragrance chemicals in the air are inhaled and dissolve once they hit the fluid lining in your nasal passages. This allows the chemoreceptors to pick them up and send the ‘chemical message’ to the brain.

These chemical messages are sent first to the frontal lobe of the brain where the smell is analyzed, and secondly to the limbic system and autonomous nervous system. This is where emotional and physical responses to the fragrance are created. For instance, you might feel calm or sleepy, or you might sneeze. You might also be reminded of something in your past, and this experience will have an emotional response attached to it.

Some essential oils actively mimic neurotransmitters which have a powerful ability to alter mood. These can be helpful for conditions such as stress and depression.

The Lungs
Inhaling essential oils is the fastest way to get them into your bloodstream where they can start working. This is because the lungs are very efficient at absorbing oxygen, and vaporized essential oils that you breathe in. Since your respiratory system is designed to get oxygen into your bloodstream, when you inhale the fragrance of essential oils, they too are carried quickly into your bloodstream.

Some Benefits of Essential Oils
In France, where modern day aromatherapy originated, it’s a part of mainstream medicine in the control of infections because of the strong antibacterial, antiseptic, antiviral and antifungal properties of many essential oils.

All essential oils are antiseptic to some degree. However, a few of the more powerful antiseptics are lavender, thyme, clove, cinnamon, tea tree, manuka and oregano.

Essential oils are extremely beneficial in skin care. The ancient Egyptians, who invented cosmetology, used essential oils in skin care around 5000 years ago.

A study in Japan showed that lemon, vaporized in a room, reduced typing errors by 54%. Lemon is well known for it’s antiseptic and antimicrobial properties which would also make it beneficial throughout office buildings.

These are just a few of the many uses of essential oils in aromatherapy. But there is also an important aspect of aromatherapy that doesn’t get mentioned often – the pleasure aspect. Using essential oils is fun, even if you aren’t a qualified aromatherapist. Have some fun discovering which fragrances you enjoy, they are bound to have a beneficial effect even if you just use a few drops in your bath water.

Downloading aromatherapy recipes is all well and good, but if you really want to learn how to make aromatherapy essential oils, you need to actually take a course. It is not as simple as just getting the right aromatherapy recipe and plugging in all of the ingredients. As with everything, there is a lot to learn to do the first time that you try out aromatherapy recipes. To begin with, you have to know how the aromatherapy essential oil is supposed to smell. If you are making aromatherapy recipes that involve flowers, for example, this will determine when in the life cycle you should pick them. They will have a tart smell early on, and be overflowing with sweetness when they become ripe of over-ripe. This can really change the effect that aromatherapy recipes have on the emotions, so you should do all that you can to learn the ins and outs before calling yourself an expert on them. The simple fact of the matter is that aromatherapy recipes must be carefully carried out by someone who actually knows what he or she is doing, or they will not work out quite right. And that can cause more harm than good.

Of course, if you are just using so-called aromatherapy recipes to extract essential oils, then go about it anyway that you wish, but do not go calling it aromatherapy. Essential oil recipes can be good for all kinds of things. You can use variations on aromatherapy recipes for basic fragrances to give you a nice scent, or even for skincare. There are many botanical extracts that really have great healing powers, and you can take advantage of them by using aromatherapy recipes to mix them in particularly appealing ways. This can be a great way to get good scents and oils to use in a variety of applications. You should experiment and see what works for you. It can be so rewarding to discover a new way of employing aromatherapy recipes to improve your health and beauty. I can not recommend trying these aromatherapy recipes out enough. It really can do a lot for you. In the first place, it can give you a new and rewarding hobby, but even beyond that, it can give you an opportunity to start to understand the full power of nature. And the power of nature is something that everyone should learn to understand.

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