Herbal Aromatherapy |

by Michelle Allen

Essential oils are a curiosity to many folks — they smell nice, but they’re just not sure what to do with them, never mind how to get the most from aromatherapy’s science-proven benefits. So where to start?! Inhale! Breathe them in! The simplest means is through diffusion: evaporating the oils into your home, office, or other living space. By using a diffuser to accelerate the evaporation of oils in the air around you, one can both enjoy the wonderful aromas of pure essential oils, and go so far as to use them for their therapeutic, medicinal effects.

Diffusion of an essential oil means to distribute the oil in the air around you. Essential oils easily evaporate — more easily than water — so this is a pretty straightforward thing to do. At the same time, there are ways to get even more essential oil in the air, at a higher concentration than, say, if you just let a bottle sit open on a table. This is where an aromatherapy diffuser comes it. The diffuser evaporates the essential oil faster, using one of many possible methods (more on that in a moment). And why would you want to evaporate the oil faster? If you just left a bottle sitting open, you and your family would occasionally smell the aroma coming from the bottle; if you’d like your whole room or house to be filled with that aroma, you’d use a diffuser.

The least expensive diffusers work very well for bringing aroma into the air. They often use heat to evaporate essential oil — others use a small fan — and both these types often have a small replaceable pad onto which a few drops of essential oil are placed. These diffusers have the advantage of low cost and ease-of-use, though they generally are only for small spaces, like a single bedroom or small office. More advanced diffusers, called ultrasonic diffuser, are like small ultrasonic humidification units, built to diffuse essential oil along with a mist of air. They are well-liked, particularly in dry environments — the ultrasonic diffusers are also made to fill a somewhat larger space with aroma.

Another very inexpensive diffuser is called a “reed” diffuser. It draws up essential oils in some sort of base formula and evaporates it from the tips of the reeds. These are generally avoided in aromatherapy, because the base mixture often contains synthetic chemicals that are not excellent to breathe in. One can do away with the base chemical altogether, putting the reeds only in pure essential oil if you so desire. Also available are tea lights, which use a candle to warm a small bowl of water from which the essential oils evaporate from the surface of. These are lovely to use, though they do require close attention such that the burning of the candle is safe, and that the water does not evaporate before the oil.

The most advanced aromatherapy diffusers produce a fine, concentrated mist of pure essential oil, without water or heat. In medicinal aromatherapy practices, therapists will sometimes have their clients actually breathe the visible vapor of an oil or oil blend to help them get well. In Europe, one can find an apparatus that looks like an oxygen tent, though instead allows the patient to breathe in oils that are considered highly anti-viral or anti-bacterial. This employs what is called a “nebulizing diffuser” (this is not the same as an “ultrasonic nebulizer” in that no water is used). The nebulizing diffusers are wonderful in that they can be used in both small spaces, just for aromatic needs, or for larger areas where a high concentration of essential oils are desired in the air. At the same time, they can take a little more attending to — needing the occasional cleaning — and typically use precision glass pieces to make the fine mist of essential oil evaporate properly. Even so, the best of these available today are small, quiet, nice looking and easy to maintain.

The choice of oils you can use in a diffuser is even more diverse than the kinds of diffusers available. It is really best to start with your desired reason for diffusing oils, then select your oils following this guideline. For general use, Citrus oils are very lovely, and combine very well to make your own unique scents. Try Lemon, Lime, Bergamot, Orange and Grapefruit together for example. Or the “evegreen” oils all blend together well: Fir, Spruce, Pine and Juniper create a very welcoming and warm atmosphere. Floral oils can be easily blended too, as can the woods and the herbs. Once you venture outside of blending oils from the same family, you’ll want to pay a little closer attention to the ratios of each oil you use, as it’s easy to make odd smelling recipes if you just start putting in “a little of this and a little of that”! On can always use a single oil at any time, particularly if you really enjoy one, but in the long run, blends can often be more interesting to the advanced aromatherapy user.

Blend recipes can often be found that are made for specific therapeutic needs — though in many cases, a single oil is called for in a “therapy”. Sleep can be helped for many people through just diffusing a high quality French Lavender essential oil; Memory and concentration can be enhanced by cold pressed Lemon oil or a steam distilled wild Rosemary. Immune system support is often provided by many of the oils from herbs, such as Melissa (Lemon Balm), Hyssop (a highly-regarded anti-viral oil), and Eucalyptus Radiata (recently shown to improve the efficacy of our white blood cells in their immune system action). Without too much work, you can find the right oils for your needs, and blending needn’t be too precise for these actions from a diffuser (though you would want to take care to be more precise with other modalities, like topical application, and in extreme cases, oil ingestion with the guidance of a doctor).

So there is a primer on diffusing essential oils. To recap, first pick the diffuser style that will suit your needs, whether you’ll just like to smell the aromas in a smaller space, or diffuse significant quantities for health reasons. Next, you can blend one oil at a time (diffusers usually do not require one to clean them between oils, nor are the therapeutic effects significantly altered by this), by a pre-blended formula, or create your own diffuser mixture. Just be sure not to include any fixed or carrier oils for diffuser use (many massage formulas can be converted to diffuser use simply by removing the carrier oil). Start slowly, remembering that you’ll generally need less oil than you think to produce the effect you need. And welcome yourself to a whole new world of natural medicine!

About the Author:
The author is a regular contributor to several sites in the areas of using aromatherapy oils and Bach flower remedies. She can be contacted at www.AnandaApothecary.com