We’ve seen how aromatherapy
developed over the years. It was originally used in both healing and to make
people, places, and objects smell better.
Those who came before us didn’t bathe
with the same zeal we do and they didn’t have modern medical techniques and
treatments to help them improve and maintain health.
Fortunately, because
modern medicine can be so invasive and chemically based, there are people who
are reviving the natural healing arts. One of these is aromatherapy.
There are several definitions,
but it generally means an art and science that uses plant essences to help
balance our minds, spirits, and bodies. Aromatherapy studies how various scents
act on the whole person and seeks to maximize our natural healing abilities. It
is used as both a treatment and a preventative.
It’s also non-invasive, meaning
there’s no cutting, injecting, or pill popping, although the oils are absorbed
by the skin. We’ll go into that in greater detail later on.
Practitioners
stress that aromatherapy is an interaction between the client, the healer, and
the oils themselves.
There was a period of time when
technology started making inroads into the areas of medicine and cosmetics. It
seemed as if aromatherapy had gone by the wayside. Thankfully as with so many
good things, it’s been making a comeback for some years now and is even
recognized as a valid industry. In our fast-moving world, we experience a great
deal of stress. People have long loved a good massage, and are learning once more
that essential oils can make it both special and truly healing.
Aromatherapy is
practiced in a lot of places where it wasn’t used before, thanks in part to the
noxious fumes we are forced to breathe. All kinds of toxic materials are used
in putting buildings together and we live and work in these places. We are
crammed into airplanes like sardines and the recycled air is disgusting. There
is now such a thing as “sick building syndrome”. Natural healers are helping by
introducing aromatherapy into hospitals, retirement homes, schools, airliners,
and work areas. Instead of recycling germy air over
and over, some places are actually using oils such as Tea Tree to freshen the
air we breathe and make it safer for us to inhale.
