Ordering Aromatherapy Stuff

I treated myself to an hour of bliss a couple of weeks back. When I first started with aromatherapy, one of my greatest joys was going to a aromatherapy shop and picking out the oils I needed. That always involved lot of chatting, sniffing and information gathering. A totally pleasant and almost spiritual adventure. I loved spending an hour or two in a fragrant, calm oasis that exists wherever essential oils abound.

I can't do that anymore because the one and only place here that sells aromatherapy products, while perfectly delightful, is more of a gift shop is limited in their selection of oils. But I have found the next best thing, mail order. After trying a few places, I find the perfect website to suit my needs. Essential Aura Aromatherapy has a great selection and are offer many fair trade, organic products. Perfect. So once, may-be twice a year, I'll go through all my oils and see what I'm running low on and what I need. Then I'll grab my trusty aromatherapy books and look at profiles of oils I might want to try. With list in hand, I'll go to the website and poke around there for a while. It's just joy, looking and reading and learning. I've been doing aromatherapy for ten years and am still learning all the time. Then I'll make my order.

Within a week, it comes. A plain brown package all gussied up with tape, labels and a glaring red sticker proclaiming fragile contents, handle with care. I open it up and enjoy old familiar scents and delight in new aromas. The oasis has arrived.

Note: I am in no way associated with Essential Aura Aromatherapy, I just love their products.

Aromatherapy for Hair

Today I made some more stuff for my hair. I make my own shampoo, rinse and oil treatment. Hair care was one of the first things I tried when I began my incredible journey into the world of Aromatherapy. Shampoo is the easiest thing to make, I start with castille liquid soap, cut it with distilled water and add the essential oils for my hair type (old and dry). I did have to get over the whole mis-guided idea that shampoo lather has to billow like clouds to clean. That was easy once I saw how clean my hair was. I don't use cream rinse because I don't need it now that I use my own shampoo. I think cream rinse is one of the biggest scams out there, actually. I do use a vinegar rinse with essentials oils in it. It does the job and make my hair smell really nice.

Now I think my hair looks pretty good but I was amazed the last time I had my hair cut. The hairdresser cutting my hair said she had never felt hair as soft as mine before, especially she said considering how grey it was (ok, I'll ignore that part). She asked me what brand I used and could not believe I made it myself. She had no idea how easy it was to do. To be fair, neither did I ten years ago.

Pretty Comfrey

Five years ago a friend asked me if I wanted a clump of comfrey for my garden. I asked her what comfrey was used for. She answered, "Oh this and that. It comes in pretty handy in most circumstances." I took the comfrey, not quite knowing what to do with it. Now I can't ever see being without it, talk about a plant that can multi-task!

Way back when, comfrey was commonly known as 'knitbone' and 'woundwort' because of its healing properties when it came to broken bones, sprains and bruises. I always have a jar of dried comfrey leaves to steep in boiled water for stubbed toes, bumped knees and so forth. For broken bones, I much prefer casts and slings but when my daughter broke her collar bone and a cast couldn't be used, a comfrey poultice came in pretty handy after a bath and before she put her sling on.

`

The kind of comfrey I have is commonly known as Canadian Comfrey and grows quite high, I can cut it down three times a year easy. Which is good because I use a lot of it. A couple of times through the summer I will take a big black garbage can and fill it with cut comfrey, add water, put the lid on tight and let it sit for three weeks. Occasionally, I will give it a stir with a rake or pitchfork just to keep everything aerated. After three weeks, that garbage can just reeks! I have to steady myself and steel my nerves before opening the lid, it's one of the worst smells I have ever encountered. But it's a great liquid fertilizer for my garden, it does wonders for my corn and tomatoes. I take a shower afterwards and leave my rubber boots outside until they stop smelling, that takes about a week. The garden will smell funny a few days too but the plants just love their comfrey tea.

Comfrey also comes in handy for the rabbits. Usually my rabbits will ignore comfrey if I put it in with their greens. But if a bunny is not feeling well, she will eat comfrey if her ailment is a digestive issue. So comfrey helps me diagnose the problem and helps in tummy troubles.

Comfrey is a pretty plant. Mine will grow over five feet high and it sprouts new shoots easily, making it a breeze to propagate. I now have it growing in three different spots and when it gets too big, I cut it down and pop it in the compost box to add a little boost in nutrients. I gave a clump to a neighbour to grow since he was having trouble with an old shoulder injury. He has since started using it as a decorative plant. He says it makes a nice backdrop to his garden. I'm beginning to line one part of our old wooden fence with it and it does look very pretty with it's broad green leaves and delicate purple flowers. The flowers, pale and raindrop shaped, show up in little shy groups at the top of the plants. The dark green leaves brings out the weathered grey in the fence and adds a touch of strength to the washed out color.

Some people do use comfrey internally, usually in a tea or even salads. But a few years ago, a couple of studies came out saying when consistently fed to rats comfrey caused liver problems including cancer. Well hell, anything seems to cause cancer in rats if fed in high enough quantities as far as I can tell. Don't feed it to rats! All joking aside, I just use comfrey externally and avoid the whole issue. Comfrey certainly helps around here in many different ways. I guess I could say it makes life a little more 'comfreytable'.

Calendulas

When I first started with Aromatherapy, I kept reading about the amazing healing and soothing powers of Calendula for skin. Unfortunately, there is no Calendula essential oil, just too hard to produce, I would think. A tiny little 20 gram tube of Calendula cream can set you back twenty or so dollars and wouldn't last all that long anyhow. So I learned to live without...until I got a garden. The plants themselves are very hardy and self-seeding. I can usually see them popping up around April, which is awfully early around here for anything to even start thinking of growing.

I found out Calendula flowers can easily be infused in oil. The oil absorbs the Calendula's healing properties and I can use it in remedies, lotions and creams. Most of my lotions and creams have about 20 - 50 per cent Calendula oil in them. I think it's great stuff.

Calendula flowers are easy to dry, just pick the whole flower and put 'em on newspaper until the petals practically fall off. They say the darker the petal, the more medicinal it is so I like the double, dark orange blooms. The only way I use them fresh is when my daughter needs some for her skin care. I steep some calendula petals in with some green tea and she uses it as a toner, it does seem to really help the problems of teenage skin. Sometimes for an extra boost, I'll add a couple of drops of lavender essential oil.

I find infusing them is a piece of cake. Once the petals are completely dried, I put them in a jar and top it off with organic cold pressed olive oil. Fresh petals can be used instead of dried but then I'm mucking around with trying to syphon off the water from the fresh petals and if I don't get it all, there can be a mold issue, which I'd rather not deal with. Once the petals are in the oil, I put the jar in on a sunny window sill and or on top of a heat vent and shake once a day. And voila, two weeks later, I have a lovely golden oil that pretty much will keep until the next harvest. All I do is strain it, squeezing every drop of that lovely oil out of the petals and keep it in the fridge.

disclaimer: This is how I use calendula for Aromatherapy, I am not recommending you do the same.

Summer Aromathery

With the warm summer weather I like to use aromatherapy to deal with the sun and bugs. I'm a little late getting my act together this year what with everything else demanding my attention but today was a rainy-stay-in-and-clean day. Thank goodness we get days like that, or else the dust bunnies would get so big I'd need to get them vaccinated. At is was, it took me 20 minutes to find kitchen table surface.

I'm not big on using commercial bug spray but I do give in now and then. The mosquitoes are really bad this year, especially where we're building the chicken coop, probably because we are trying to have it in the tree shade somewhat. Sometimes I'll just take a few leaves of catnip, crush them and rub them on my skin. What I like doing is steeping lemon balm leaves, adding a little lavender,cedarwood and other bug-repelling essential oils. I put that in a large spray bottle and thus armed am ready to do battle. It works well but it doesn't last long. So I bring my bottle with me when I am outside. It is quite refreshing to spray this fragrant potion while in the sun gardening or whatever. Not only does it keep the bugs away it cools me off and smells nice. Not to mention the lack of poisonous, toxic chemicals all over me. I have discovered it works well as a body splash, too.

As far as the sun goes, I'm pretty lucky in that department. I rarely burn. I do try to stay out of the sun when it's at its peak when I can. I'm not crazy about sunblock, basically for the same reasons as bug spray. I found a couple of recipes that work well for me, something to wear while in the sun and something to use afterwards. For the sun oil, I like to use calendula infused olive oil. Apparently, olive oil has a natural sunblock factor of anywhere between 4 and 8, not real high but does give some protection against burning. I add a lighter oil as well and some aloe vera gel along with the essential oils. One of the added benefits to this that lavender essential oil is a great skin oil and mosquitoes don't like the smell. If they land on me, they just get oily and miserable, which is fine by me. The after sun recipe has beeswax in it and it absorbs nicely. It has light, skin nourishing base and essential oils. I managed to get some lovely unrefined, organic shea butter. I tried adding a little of that to the base oils. Seemed add a creaminess to the lotion.

I always try to use organic, cold press oils when I can. I can usually find them in the organic section of the grocery store. It makes no sense to me to spend money on good quality essential oils and then dump them into sub-standard base oils, especially considering the base oils make up 95 - 99 per cent of the recipe. The beeswax comes from a friend of mine who raises bees so it's pretty unprocessed as well. Happily, I have found a wonderful Canadian mail-order company that sells fair trade, organic essential oils, so that has helped quite a bit. I really like the fair trade idea and try to buy it as much as possible.

So now I'm pretty much ready for the sun and bugs. Next rainy day, I'm hoping to make creams and lotions - after I chase the dust bunnies around for a while.

disclaimer: This is what I do to protect myself from sun and bugs, I am not recommending you do the same.

Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is basically using the healing properties of plants in a very concentrated form. I got into Aromatherapy about 8 years ago. I basically got tired of buying medical or health products containing unpronounceable ingredients. I absolutely had no idea what these ingredients side effects were. I could find out if I wanted to spend hours and hours of research ferreting out the info. I'd rather spend the time learning how to make things myself. I know what's in them, I have absolute quality control and I don't have to worry about tampering.

I've gone from making very simple remedies and room diffusers to making my own creams, salves, sunblock and insect repellent, etc. Some are a lot more successful than others and I'm still on quite the learning curve. But I enjoy it and not only do we all seem to be going to the doctor less, we seem to be getting less illnesses altogether. My interest in Aromatherapy has naturally lead to Herbals and Flower Remedies. The herbals are getting be central to my remedies and recipes because I can grow and dry them myself now.

I started very slowly and gingerly; I knew just because something was 'natural' didn't mean it was automatically safe. All the aromatherapy I had could fit into a shoe box with lots of room left over. Now it's all over the place. I have two shelves in one closet devoted to the oils themselves, an old refinished kitchen cupboard holds books, bases oils, salts, etc. And a baker's rack stuffed with essential oil diffusers. I can't seem to get an interest without it turning into another collection of something or another. In this case, unique or interesting oil burners as the ones in the picture.