|
Aromatherapy is the art and science of helping living things toward wholeness and balance using the essential oils which can be extracted from plants. Aromatic components of plants are used to facilitate healing. It apparently healed much more quickly than expected, and with minimal scarring.
These aromatic oils had been curative for lot of diseases in fact; modern Aromatherapy has scientific records of the mechanism of necessary oils and their curative abilities.
These are liquids obtained from plants, which evaporate at room temperature with characteristic aromas. They are also called volatile oils because of this skill to evaporate eagerly. One can experience essential oils by rubbing one's hands in the plants of a rosemary, lavender, or peppermint and sniffing one's fingers. They were believed to carry the essence, the soul or unique identity, of the plants they came from.
The majority of these oils have a protecting function, killing micro-organisms. One busy area of research in early aromatherapy was cataloguing the various bacteria and moulds that could be killed by different essential oils.
These liquids are not made of the fatty acids that are found in fats and oils. The chemicals involved are highly unstable, and a good quality essential oil should not leave an oil ring if dropped on paper to evaporate.
Science has diligently researched the effects of essential oils and found them to be antibacterial, as above, but also anti-inflammatory, stimulating, painkilling, warming, cooling, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, anodyne, and vulnerary, to name but a few of the physical effects that have been documented.
Conversely one may analyze the components of essential oils; there is an art to mixing them to make preferred effects. The art lies in the trained sense of smell needed to differentiate quality oils from watery or contaminated products. It also lies in the intuition needed to try new combinations for different purposes, for here as in much of plant medicine; the whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts: one may mix two oils with specific effects and find the combination does something astonishing.
|
