Kathi Keville - Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art

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The word aromatherapy conjures up images of people magically alleviating their depression or insecurities with wonderful scents. But aromatherapy is much more than that. Incorporating aromatherapy into your life enhances your overall health, beauty, and psychological well-being. Aromatherapy can reduce stress, improve sleep, and give you more energy. It can improve your complexion, treat annoying itchy skin, and eliminate a stomachache.

Since writing our first edition of this book, aromatherapy has entered the mainstream. We see it everywherebeing used in clinics and hospitals to relax patients, as well as their families, to sell products, and to enhance everyday life.

Perhaps the best thing about aromatherapy is that engaging in it is so easy and pleasurable. Few people will complain about receiving a prescription to bathe with scented oils or apply fragrant body oiltwo of the most popular aromatherapy techniques.

Essential oils give plants their characteristic odors, enabling us to take deep drafts of a fragrant rose bloom or drink in the perfume of lilacs and lavender. Because essential oils are by their very nature aromatic, the therapy involving their use has been christened aromatherapy.

We can use fragrance in healing in two main ways: One is through inhalation alone, which has its most significant impact on mood and emotions but also produces physical reactions, such as lowered blood pressure. The other route is the physical application of essential oils to the bodyby massage, for example, or by applying antiseptic oil to stop infection. Of course, anytime you use aromatherapy oil medicinally, the fragrance cant help but do double duty as it is inhaled.

Exactly how aromatherapy works is still unclear. Some researchers speculate that odors influence feelings because the nasal passage opens directly to the part of the brain that controls emotion and memory. Others believe that fragrance compounds interact with receptor sites in the central nervous system. Psychic healers believe that fragrances work on subtle, still-undiscovered energies in the body.

What we do know is that merely smelling a fragrance can influence us physically and emotionally not only by affecting thoughts and emotions, but also by altering hormone production, brain chemistry, stress levels, and general metabolism.

The many books on herbs and aromatherapy do not address their joint application. Encouraged by our combined seventy-five years experience studying and teaching the healing uses of plants, we decided to join efforts and write about aromatherapy from the herbalists perspective. We hope that this book conveys our enthusiasm, love, and appreciation of plants in all their varieties and that it inspires you to connect more deeply with the green world. May aromatherapy be as much of a healing journey for you as it has been for us!

It is an inspiration for us to see people get excited about the aromas and healing power of plants. If you wish to become more familiar with plants, we recommend that you observe them in nature, grow them, taste them (cautiously), pick and dry them, and use them to make your own medicine. Most of all, give thanks for them.

We would like to acknowledge the efforts of all those in the field of aromatherapy and herbal education who work to promote personal and planetary healing through the use of plant medicines.

Sincere thanks to all those who helped make this book possible: Evelyn Leigh, Ron Stringer, Julia Fischer, and Mary Greer, for their editing suggestions; Marianne Griffeth, for her samples and technical information; Kurt Schnaubelt, for his contributions, generosity, and patience with endless questions; John Steele, for his inspiration and teachings; Galina Lisin, for her technical editing; Jean-Claude Lapraz, Daniel Penoel, and Pierre Franchomme, for their contributions to aromatherapy research and education (many of their teachings are reflected in this book); Robert Tisserand, for technical information; and to our students, who are always an inspiration to both of us.

Kathi Keville and Mindy Green

My heartfelt appreciation to Ron Bertolucci for his support and assistance in making this book a reality, for his skill in blending fragrances, and for sharing with me his passion for aromatherapy.

Kathi

I give my heartfelt love and gratitude to my grandmother Alice Solem, for her encouragement, support, and faith in my abilities. Id especially like to honor Rosemary Gladstar, for her inspiration and guidance in my lifelong work with plants, and James Green, for his encouragement in writing about my work.

Mindy

As a child, I was drawn to the wonderful smells around me, and some of my most distinct memories are associated with those smells: my grandmother Irenes Chinese potpourri jar filled with rose petals, my grandmother Jannas cookie jar, the pine-scented woods where we went camping, and the great variety of fragrant plants that abound in southern California, including the pungent sages of the desert. But my real exposure to olfactory delight began with my first herb garden. Every visitor who came by was dragged outside, usually without much protest, to sniff pineapple sage, coconut, geranium, lemon verbena, and cinnamon basil. The potpourri of scents never failed to evoke plenty of smiles and dreamy, faraway gazes!

Kathi

Ill never forget the first time I smelled the fruity fragrance of essential oil of carrot seed. I was instantly, dramatically, and emotionally transported to my youth in the tropics. I saw myself as a child on a seesaw, surrounded by hundreds of mango trees. I could feel the humid tropical heat. I remembered the safe, carefree feeling of that moment. I felt again, and strongly, the love I had had for that place and for our housemaid, who served me that delicious fruit. All of this happened in an instant! In that brief moment, years of memories floated effortlessly back into consciousnessfor me, a clear example of the unconscious power of scent association, memory, and emotional programming.