Gregory White - Essentail Oils and Aromatherapy

Essential Oils and Aromatherapy

How to Use Essential Oils for Beauty, Health, and Spirituality

Gregory Lee White

Copyright 2013 Gregory Lee White

White Willow Books

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0615858104

ISBN-13: 978-0615858104

DEDICATION

For my Grandfather, W.T. White. He taught me by example to appreciate cooking, plants, and to be fearless when concocting new recipes and formulas.

OTHER BOOKS BY GREGORY LEE WHITE

CLUCKED The Tale of Pickin Chicken

MAKING SOAP FROM SCRATCH: How to Make Handmade Soap A Beginners Guide and Beyond

CONTENTS

Chemistry of Essential Oils

Debatable Essential Oil Therapies

DISCLAIMER

The essential oil descriptions and aromatherapy methods found in this book are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any illness or disease, nor are they intended to replace proper medical help. Essential oils are not used to treat medical problems. Rather, they are meant to be used in conjunction with modern day medicine to bring a sense of balance to the mind, body and spirit.

LAVENDER

Lavender attracts love; ask anyone who knows plants. It whispers secrets of first kisses and sprinkles the air with luck when lovers pass by. It tells romantic tales to women who sleep beside it and sings purple lullabies that only children can hear. When the moon is full, it gives comforting advice to the daisies who know theyll be plucked petal by petal in the name of love. Lavender is humble, and bears no grudge against the roses who think they know all about human emotions. And sometimes it weeps for the lonely who have turned their backs on its magic.

-Gregory White

INTRODUCTION

Back in the 1990s, I didnt know an essential oil from a glass of orange juice. In fact, I am sure I had never even heard the term essential oil before I began working in the bath and body shop known as Garden Botanika. The store had a custom fragrance bar filled with fragrance oils where the customer could scent their own lotions, massage oils, and shower gels. While there were scents on the bar such as patchouli, peppermint, and lavender, they were artificial fragrances not real essential oils from plants. But, I didnt know that. I was a newbie to the world of scent. I remember a customer asking how much an entire bottle of scent would cost (we only sold enough drops to scent their lotion) and I began spouting off how it would be very expensive since oil is extracted from plants. NOT. It was just a fake bottle of scent called patchouli.

A few months after the store closed, I actually learned what an essential oil was. I was embarrassed that I had given the customer bad information. When I started reading about essential oils, the massive amount of information in the books available was overwhelming. It was too much information things a newbie just did not need to know yet, such as the in-depth (page after page) chemical composition of the oils.

I just wanted to learn which oils worked on what ailment and how to use them properly. When I set out to write this book, I remembered that experience. I decided to present a thorough book about aromatherapy and how to use essential oils, but not bog it down with technicalities that a beginner would skip over to get to the meat and bones of the subject.

So, this is the book I have written how to use essential oils safely, what they are good for, how they are made, and how you can apply their use in your everyday life.

I decided to focus on the most-used essential oils. Based on my research and experience, I settled on what I consider the top fifty-five oils.

THE BACK STORY HOW MY OWN AROMATHERAPY JOURNEY BEGAN

If someone had told me that one day I would own a bath and body company, I would not have believed them. After all, I had never even taken a chemistry class. In the big scheme of things, that did not matter because life eventually guides you in the direction it intends for you.

Back in 1998, I went to see a movie called Practical Magic starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. In the film, Bullocks character Sally, a witch, opens up a little botanical shop called VERBENA. The visual of the store peaked my interest. Its harsh white walls and shelving lined with dark glass bottles; corks dipped in beeswax with unknown beauty potions lurking inside. The parchment style labels, the botanical wall hangings, a basket of bright green pears on the checkout counter; it was all eye-candy for someone who had read a lot about herbs and herbal remedies.

Shortly after that, my friend offered my previous life-partner a job as assistant manager in the Garden Botanika store she managed. The chain was in the process of closing approximately 200 stores, including hers, and her current assistant manager had already found another position. It was hard for her to find someone who only wanted to take a job for four or five months. My partner wasnt interested. I was working as an interior house painter at the time, mainly repainting vacant apartments. With flexible hours and free time, I said, Ill do it!

The next week I was standing behind the counter of the bath store, demonstrating hand creams and lotions, talking about soaps and body washes and helping customers blend their own fragrances in the custom fragrance bar.

Before the closing of the GB store, we began talking about starting our own bath company and began reading books of recipes and ordering in samples of fragrances. At first, like so many people, I didnt know the difference in a fragrance oil and an essential oil. Our company, Mind and Body Bath and Perfumery launched in May of 1999 selling bags of bath salt, bottles of oil burner oil and scented melt-and-pour soap. That summer, I made my first batch of handmade soap plain, unscented. I did not use enough sodium hydroxide (lye) because the batch never really got as hard as it should have and it eventually turned rancid. So much for making soap, so we went back to the melt-and-pour.

By that autumn, it became obvious that we had different ideas about what we wanted for the Mind and Body company and decided to dissolve it, but, I was still very interested. I began searching for a new name for my own company. Having recently discovered real essential oils, I wanted something that sounded like aromatherapy. I knew that once I had learned all about them, I would eventually try to start using all natural oils in the future.

Hmm, a company owned by a guy named Gregory that sounds like the word aromatherapy? Thats when I settled on Aromagregory Botanicals. In the spring of 2000, I made another batch of soap this time using a stick blender instead of a wooden spoon and scented it with juniper breeze fragrance oil. (I hadnt gone completely natural yet.) It turned out great. Hooked, I cleared out the last of the melt-and-pour soaps and leaned completely towards the handmade soap.

Still, sales were minimal. The manager of the apartment complex took another job and the new manager had her own painter in mind. My day job disappeared along with most of our household income. There were still a few odd painting jobs here and there but I managed to talk my way into a job with a local candle supplier. I began buying supplies from her before I ever made my first batch of soap. By the time I went to her looking for a job, I was knowledgeable about everything she sold. She taught me how to make jar candles, votives and pillars and I taught her what I knew (so far) about soap and bath products.

Summer of 2001 rolled around and I began setting up at an indoor flea market in Smyrna, TN, just outside of Nashville. My life-partner wasnt especially interested in my little company and we both knew our relationship was winding its way down. So, one weekend a month I would go by myself and set up my folding table with stacks of soap on paper doilies scents like: gardenia, cucumber melon and blackberry sage. Of course, by this time I was also including my latest discovery jar candles.