Heather Dawn Godfrey - Essential Oils for Mindfulness and Meditation: Relax, Replenish, and Rejuvenate

Essential OilsforMindfulnessandMeditation

There is a unique way to enhance psychological well-being waiting to be explored. This book tells you how meditation and aromatherapy, classic tools for modifying the mind, can work together to maintain a state of calm and insight. Familiar oils like rose and frankincense add serenity and inspiration to the practice of mindfulness meditation. Diffusing an essential oil during meditation practice can even return your awareness to that meditative mode if you smell the aromatic oil again later.

The author is an aromatherapist who not only uses essential oils professionally but also conducts research into the effects of these powerful plant ingredients. The reader will find out how knowledge of traditional practice and subjective experience, backed by scientific evidence, is an ideal path for discovery; how mindfulness meditation and essential oil inhalation relieve anxiety or calm the mind, as explained from the perspectives of ancient history, religious practices, and modern complementary medical practice. Scientific studies involving human subjects and essential oils tested in laboratory models are described in easy-to-digest detail that adds value and validity.

Advice on how to use the pure essential oils comes with a thorough briefing on dose and safetya prerequisite for these concentrated and potent plant extracts. In passing, learning about the many everyday food, drink, and cosmetic products that contain essential oils is an eye-opener on the hidden influences on the mind and body.

This book is bound to have a long-lasting impact on both meditation and aromatherapy practices, thanks to its inspired author, Heather Dawn Godfrey.

ELAINE PERRY, PH.D., PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF NEUROSCIENCE AT NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

Essential Oils for Mindfulness and Meditation fills an important gap in the field of essential oils. Where many other books are contented with the properties and the handling of oils, Heather Godfrey provides us with a profound scientific background of the different oils and opens up the field toward awareness and meditation. This book is a wonderful guide to using essential oils as valuable helpers for everyday life, as a source of knowledge for well-being professionals, and for a deeper understanding of oneself and nature.

EWALD KLIEGEL, AUTHOR OF CRYSTAL WANDS AND HOLISTIC REFLEXOLOGY

This interesting book melds the science and alchemy of essential oils and their use in meditation with a mix of personal anecdotes and evidence. Taking the reader on a journey through these highly topical disciplines, it is a timely reminder and how-to guide of the importance of stepping back from the maelstrom of modern life to find a sensible inner balance.

SOPHIE [PETIT-ZEMAN] OLSZOWSKI, PH.D., AUTHOR OF DOCTOR, WHAT'S WRONG? MAKING THE NHS HUMAN AGAIN AND EDITOR, NHS RESEARCHER, AND DIRECTOR OF SPZ ASSOCIATES LTD.

Preface

I was introduced to essential oils many years ago, when I worked for Robert Tisserand in London, during those early days when he first began developing his business, the Aromatic Oil Company, later Tisserand Aromatherapy. Then, I was a teenager, naive and idealistic, believing that I had so many years ahead, my life spreading out before me with endless possibility. So, when a friend beckoned me to join her in Corsica to work for a season, I went without hesitation, assuming I could simply pick up the threads when I was ready to return. Within a year, however, I was married and expecting my first child, my path decided and etched to a distant horizon.

One day, four beautiful children and some years later, I serendipitously found myself in a bookshop, waiting for a friend. Browsing the shelves in front of me, I noticed with pleasant surprise a book written by Robert, The Art of Aromatherapy. Intrigued, I flicked through the pages. Memories instantly flooded through me; the air I breathed seemed suddenly imbued with the scent of rose, ylang ylang, and chamomile. I recalled, as if only the day before, weighing dried chamomile and rose flowers and packing small brown bottles of essential oils with Robert and Jonathon (Jack and Hans, as they were known then). I remembered the indulgent ambience the scents createdsweet, spicy, earthy, leafy, fruity, woody, floral, deeply rich, or playfully lightpermeating every corner of the space, dispelling the dank background smell in the small old building we occupied then.

From that chance moment in the bookshop, revisiting the comfort, the familiarity, the tingle of excitement I felt, my inspiration was rekindled. My children were growing, and it was time to pick up the threads I had started to weave and complete the journey I had begun during those early years in London.

I earned a joint honors degree in counseling and complementary medicine at the University of Salford and master's certificates in integrated mindfulness and supervision of counseling and therapeutic relationships, going on to work in several capacities at the College of Health and Social Care at the University of Salford, including running the aromatherapy clinic for staff and students. I've also offered essential oil therapy in private practice for over 25 years.

I have had the good fortune to work with a range of clients (parents, grandparents, caregivers, teachers, researchers, managers, nurses, acupuncturists, counselors, and a variety of health-care professionals, among others) who have sought treatments for many different reasons. These include balancing physical and psycho-emotional well-being while working in demanding roles; managing stress or a stress-related condition, such as insomnia, mild depression, or anxiety; and support during challenging life events such as bereavement, job loss, or relationship breakdown, and, conversely, exciting events such as moving, changing jobs, or getting married. Sometimes it is for the simple but possibly most significant reason of all: to relax and enhance a sense of well-being.

Indeed, the inspiration to write this book evolved from observing my clients' responses to the scent of essential oils. I observed how the experience of aroma absorption and perception drew their attention and awareness into the moment. I also noticed how those moments were enriched as the scent permeated their psychic being and appeared to trigger a psycho-emotional response and effect. These responses were initially observed through a softening of facial expression and calmer breathing, after which clients reported their experience of increased energy, clearer thinking, and a sense of feeling relaxed and grounded. Their experiences have also been substantiated by measurable physiological responses in the nervous system.

Just as my connection to essential oils began many years ago, so did my relationship with meditation. When I learned to meditate, meditation was regarded as a fringe or hippie-type practice, encapsulated and epitomized by media images of the Beatles sitting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, developer of Transcendental Meditation. Meditation has not changed my destiny or my life's lessons, but it is an invaluable tool, consistently grounding my sense of reality, anchoring my psyche when I feel insecure, calming my racing mind, and uncluttering my perspective. I do not meditate every day, but whenever I do, the experience is unconditional, unfailing, always just there, if I choose to notice, to focus my awareness.