How To Use Our Essential Oils

We often get asked, “How do I use your essential oils and for what?”

For several years now, we have been teaching and sharing that we no longer see essential oils as products that have a specific use. In mainstream aromatherapy, you’ll often hear or read “Lavender is good for conditions a, b and c. Eucalyptus is good for x, y and z…” To us, this way of thinking about essential oils is very limiting. Each essential oil is a manifestation of the unique soul of the plant. Each of them can teach us, reveal and transform many things, because they are living allies. In the same way you don’t think of you human friends in terms of specific uses, e.g. ‘Joe is my friend for eating pizza and Jamie is my friend for watching movies’, we shouldn’t think of essential oils that way. We have discussed more of this previously in our manifesto.

Nevertheless, the question “How do I use your essential oils and for what?” is a good one. We know that certain essential oils are masters for certain themes.

As you know we focus on working with aromatic allies for soul evolution and personal transformation, so we almost never discuss the benefits of our essential oils for the physical body, such as for wound healing or other symptom relief. We do discuss their effects on the physical body sometimes, because we view the physical body as one part of the whole psyche. This is the opposite of the still common view that the psyche is a part of or a creation of the physical body.

When we say that certain essential oils are masters or master allies for certain themes, we first have to stress the soul-to-soul relationship between us and the aromatic plant. Aromatic molecules are the Molecules of Connectedness. They touch us at the deepest level, from tiny olfactory receptors in our noses and every organ of our body to deep in our soul. We get goosebumps, a shift in awareness, tears and other emotional releases. We can’t mentally or automatically switch this off. We are touched and moved. The Molecules of Connectedness invite us to reconnect to our unconscious, our soul and to the souls of the plants and Nature all around us.

There is really only one disease, which is disconnection—the feeling the ego creates that we ourselves are all that matters, that plants are inanimate and we can exploit and destroy Nature. There is really only one cure, which is reconnection. These Molecules of Connectedness reconnect us viscerally, in body and soul.

When we are in this deep relationship with the aroma, the essential oil, we are open to receiving its teachings. For example, we use rose attar to open the heart doorway, which is also called the heart chakra and this allows us to enter heart awareness. The heart isn’t just a physiological pump, but also a center of awareness that is different than use default brain awareness. When we are in heart awareness, we feel connected, non-judging and the incessant chatter of the monkey mind is quiet.

Another example is labdanum, which we call the Master of Shadows. Used for soul transformation since ancient Egyptian times and deeply linked to the arch type of Osiris, labdanum is very powerful at revealing what is ready to be revealed from the Shadow, the part of the unconscious that’s closest to the surface. A fundamental part of our approach is to make the unconscious conscious. When we are unconscious of feelings, thought patterns, when we are in a complex, when we are projecting, we are unconsciously ruled by what’s in the unconscious. When we make parts of the unconscious conscious, we are no longer ruled by them and even though it may be painful to feel and be aware, this integration makes us more whole and heals. In a way you could say that all our essential oils are intended to work on the unconscious and each has a role at a different time.

The name of our school is AromaGnosis and Gnosis is the ancient Greek word for ‘knowledge’ or ‘awareness’ and, as seen in the philosophy of Gnosticism which is the origin of European Alchemy, means direct personal awareness of spiritual, which includes psychological and unconscious, truth. Our fundamental goal is to help us all reconnect through Gnosis.

Because we keep getting asked how to use our essential oils, we have developed a few kits and plan to develop more. The idea for the kits is to provide a selection of a few essential oils and other allies so you can explore your relationship with them and learn directly how to work with them and what to use them for.  The selection of the kits is thematic:

We have a kit that accompanies the “Alchemy of Menopause” workbook.

We have a kit of 5 essential oils that are fundamental allies for psychedelic assisted therapy.

We have a kit of grounding attars, so you can really get a direct sense, Gnosis, of the different ‘flavors’ of grounding.

We also have a kit of floral attars so can connect to these allies via the aromas of their organs of communication, the flowers with which they attract pollinators and communicate so much more.

Because insomnias are such a widespread problem, we recently created a Sleep Kit to offer a range of allies, including but not limited to essential oils, to empower you to address this widespread issue and find your unique relationships to this range of allies.

We also recently launched a subscription of seven monthly boxes of essential oils and other allies to teach the alchemical stages of soul transformation. Because of the success of this subscription, which is sold out for this year, and because we are getting a lot of interest. We plan to relaunch it next year. If you’d like to be placed on a waitlist for this Energy and Alchemy subscription, drop us a line.

Other sources of information for how to work with each of the aromatic allies are the individual pages for each essential oil, hydrosol, flower essence and tincture, which have descriptions of what they have taught us so far and which we add to occasionally as more is revealed. Furthermore, in our Cathy’s Attars Blog, we have discussed different allies in more depth. For example, here’s a blog post on the importance of grounding and aromatic allies for that, here’s a blog post on aromas for anxiety, one on PTSD, and here are more in-depth discussions of yarrow, marigold, yerba mansa and angelica, to name a few. Check out the blog for even more. We also try to feature an essential oil (& a flower essence…a deep topic for another time) each month.

So, while we don’t have a simple table or chart, we hope we’ve given you a way in to develop your relationship with our aromatic allies. If there’s a particular theme or issue you are interested in, drop us a line. We’ll try to reply, make post a blog or even put together another thematic kit.

Also, check out our online school AromaGnosis so you can learn how to deepen your relationship with aromatic allies. There are free resources on Shadow work, using aromas with addiction, journaling, and our blog with many posts on how to work with the unconscious. Consider one of our classes to learn more about how we work deeply with our aromatic allies.

 

On a practical note, we only work with our aromas by smelling them. We don’t make any products, such as creams or oils that could be applied to the skin. These molecules evolved to be smelled and when we smell them, they trigger the most nuanced and deepest reactions. We use scent strips, also called perfume test strips, because that way you can bring the aroma closer to or further from your nose and adjust the intensity. If someone doesn’t like an oil, they can just discard the scent strip and the aroma doesn’t linger. We also only use one or at most two essential oils at a time, since each essential oil is a microcosm and if we combine too many, the individual teachings tend to get drowned out. We don’t use diffusers, because many types of diffusers, i.e. those operated with steam or heat, can change the aromatic molecules and furthermore when a room has been filled with aromatic molecules it can be overwhelming and difficult to remove, when we want to introduce a different aroma.