What is Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is all about the use of Essential oils to help treat different ailments/symptoms, to help the body relax and to improve mental,physical and spiritual well being.

What are Essential Oils

It is an extraction from a plant whether flower, bark, leaf, root or fruit that contains all the important therapeutic properties of the plant material including its fragrance, its chemicals its energy and life force, its very essence. It is a plants system of chemical communication that it uses to attract the right insects at the right time to pollinate and so reproduce and also to send and receive signals with one and other. To get this right they must be so unique that they can be distinguished from one and other and that is why each individual plant has a totally different chemical make up from the next and how they can be used to treat such a diverse selection of ailments. Many factors such as country/region of growth, time of harvesting, harvesting methods, preparation, equipment, length of time taken during distillation all have an influence over the end product.

Extraction Methods

Essential oils are stored in the plants microscopic cellular containers and not naturally accessible therefore needing methods of extraction. The commonly used method of extract these days is Steam distillation. Over the years many methods have been used but steam is the easiest and most economical.

What are Carrier Oils

In order to use essential oils on the skin it is important to dilute them in a carrier oil. Carrier oils are generally vegetable based.

They come under three groups

Basic oils

These are most commonly used, and most if not all of the massage carrier oil will be one of these.

Specialised Fixed oils

These are often very thick or expensive and are used only as a small proportion of the massage carrier oil.

Macerated oils

Some plants contain really good properties, but are too expensive or difficult to distill, so to get the benefit from these plants they are chopped up and put into a vat of vegetable oil, sweet almond for example, then agitated for several days filtered then bottled. This process ensure that the molecules of the chosen plant have been extracted from the plant and remain in the base oil.