Sara Panton - Essential Well Being A Modern Guide to Using Essential Oils in Beauty, Body, and Home Rituals

My life over the past few years has been dynamic, to say the least. Building a company from a passion project comes with a lot of risks and many moments spent in the discomfort of the unknown. Despite years of late nights followed by early mornings and many lessons of patience and diligence, I wouldnt have it any other way.

Living in the relentless momentum of entrepreneurship has forced me to think creatively about the ways I fit personal wellness into my day. After building vitruvi, a wellness company, and seeing all the different ways it can be approached, I believe that the pursuit of living naturally and finding balance can get overly complicated pretty quickly. My approach and the philosophy of vitruvi is quite the opposite. I believe that we can create and carve out simple (even secret) moments throughout our days to reconnect with ourselves, find perspective and restore our energy.

In this book, youll find more than 100 DIY essential oil recipes, small rituals, tips and suggestions that create what I believe to be a well-rounded experience for living. This isnt a complex 10-day plan or 21-day detox for living more naturallythis book is composed of recipes that you can pick and choose from depending on how you are feeling and what your body (and home) need at a particular time, daily habits and beautifully simple botanical practices from around the world that I have collected over the years, either through my own experimentation while working on my degree in global health or by interviewing people I admire. For example, youll find a leg stretch to try while doing a simple face steam, or an ancient pressure point technique to try on your hand after you use a focusing mist at your work desk. The essential oil recipes all take less than 15 minutes of your time to create and are organized into three sections: Beauty, Body and Home. Each section is further organized by moments of your day or rooms of your house. Its meant to guide you through specific rituals for morning, afternoon and evening and to help you incorporate botanical-based products into more rooms of your home. My suggestion for how to use this book is to first sit quietly and think about what daily rituals or spaces of your living environment you would like to be more natural, then go from there.

For centuries, moments of self-care have been times to reconnect with yourself, and the intention of this book is to get back to thisits not about wellness for the sake of wellness but about creating moments that leave you with a little more inspiration and energy to take on whatever work or pursuit you believe is important. Each day, as I make my morning matcha and get ready to go to the office, I revisit my intention: creating products and content for women that inspire them to nurture and take care of themselves, so that they will have a little more energy, stamina and inspiration to go into the world each day and make a positive impact. If these little bottles and simple recipes offer even a sliver of what I envision for you, I will be so very happy.

Take care,

Sara

We grew up in a small farming community on an island off the west coast of Canada. This idyllic place was a mixture of farms and ocean. Growing up on the beach, my brother Sean and I were two of the few kids in the area, so becoming friends was basically a necessityplay together or alone. We would spend our evenings and weekends building beach forts, collecting berries from farm stands and paddle boarding. Although at the time we didnt fully understand the beautiful simplicity we lived in, we now appreciate how our parents were early adopters of organic produce, non-toxic cleaning products and an overall curiosity about health and well-being.

Needless to say, our belief in natural and simple living came from our mom and dad. They were very influential in the way we regard nature and our respect for the natural world. As a family, we would frequently go hiking or camping and spend time outdoors, planting our own vegetables and picking apples with our grandparents. We didnt travel internationally during our childhood, nor were we introduced to business, yet I was always curious about cultures and places around the world, and Sean was always very entrepreneurial.