Aromatherapy for Yoga Part 1 - Guest Author Nico Anders

Hellen Keller once said scent was the fallen angel of all the senses. After growing more and more involved with aromatherapy, I couldn’t agree with her more. We often forget that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. Having an affinity or distaste for certain scents is also completely unique for each person. For example, for me, the smell of leather brings back wistful memories of practicing ballet as a child, while I find the sweet smell of carnations disconcerting, as they remind me of funeral parlors. While we develop personal scent profiles that align with our experiences, what is often disputed is the belief that scent, and most notably, essential oils can help us therapeutically, in ways that go beyond preference and memory. I have found that using essential oils in my yoga practice and on my yoga students has exponentially improved physical and mental health of my students and myself. We all know lavender, tea tree, eucalyptus, etc. for their many forms of antiseptic, calming, bug repellant, skin and hair softening qualities, etc. While I love these scents, there are so many less-mainstream scents that can help your life and yoga practice by setting the mood, providing hormonal balance, creating a peaceful atmosphere, aiding in digestion, exciting the nervous system and much, much more. What Are Essential Oils? Essential oils make up the mass of a natural product, whether they be stems, bark, flowers, seeds, etc. These ingredients are distilled to abstract water and other bulk materials, leaving the oil, or in a more relatable way, the blood or immune system of the plant. Since we have a symbiotic relationship with plants; such as how we help trees to breathe by exhaling carbon dioxide, while they produce oxygen for us to inhale. Even the way we use manure to accelerate plant growth, or bury our dead in the earth, giving minerals back to the soil, our relationship with the natural would around us exhibits this symbiotic relationship. Essential oils thus are an elixir of life that humans are able to use to improve health, mood, and body systems. How can I use essential oils? There are three ways essential oils can be used – inhalation, ingestion and absorption through the skin. While not all essential oils should be ingested or absorbed through the skin, inhaling essential oils can affect body systems through the respiratory system within 40 seconds of that first whiff. Using oil burners to disperse essential oil scents throughout a room may smell nice, but this actually burns off the medicinal quality of the oils. I suggest ultrasonic diffuser that disperses the purest form of essential oil fragrances, without damaging their most volatile qualities in the process. Are all brands of essential oils the same? Be warned, that not all essential oils, (even if their labels say) are 100% pure. Many are diluted, or made impure in other ways. The lax laws of naturopathic medicine allow companies to list their products as 100% pure because there is no regulated standard for these amazing elixirs of the earth. I use Young Living Essential Oils. Not only have they been around much longer than many of the other brands I’ve come across, they have farms around the world that any one of us could visit and participate in the distillation process. Not only does their transparency promote trust, but I have also tested these oils against their competitors, conducted blind smell tests – and the results have been unanimous – Young Living smells purer and produces the best output physically and emotionally. While there are many ways of using the sense of smell to improve practice, what I am suggesting is that synthetic chemicals block us, and that using perfumes or impure incense is more of a distraction than a tool. I have become all too familiar with the headache and nausea that come from using impure essential oils, or incense full of synthetic chemicals, much like the hangover of a cheap boxed wine, maybe it gets the job done, but the hangover leaves us in a worse place than where we started.

If you have any questions regarding essential oils, where to get them or would like more information regarding using aromatherapy in your life or yoga practice, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at moonyoganico@gmail.com.

Nico returns next week with how Aromatherapy can be used in a yoga practice! Stayed tuned and feel free to like, comment and share.