Amateur aromatherapy has been a part of my life for nearly twenty years. I go through phases of using it regularly, and phases of leaving it all in a box on a shelf, but I always come back to it.
I first discovered it when I was at university, studying for my finals. I bought some essential oils and a terracotta oil burner from The Body Shop and made myself a 'study blend' of lemon and rosemary oils, that was meant to aid concentration and study. I used this same blend of oils a few years later when I was studying for my accountancy exams. Even now, if I put those two oils together it feels as if I should be sitting down and doing some work.
When I was pregnant I switched my attention to the safe, calming and relaxing oils. Lavender at first, and then further into my pregnancies I used geranium and clary sage oils too. Both geranium and clary sage oils are very good for any problems to do with a woman's hormones or reproductive system. Painful periods and menopausal hot flushes are both very much soothed by geranium oil.
I had grand plans for various complicated and useful oil blends while I was in labour, but both times I ended up with just lavender oil - getting rather obsessed with it though and demanding imperiously that the oil burner be topped up, or that someone warm up my lavender wheat cushion in the microwave again, while I sucked manically on the gas and air canister.
When the children were young, and in that phase of endless teething, coughs, ear infections and poor sleeping I started to investigate oils that were suitable to use with very small children. Lavender and chamomile were the two oils that got me through these years. Chamomile is a very drowsy-making oil, and just one drop, together with one drop of lavender, on a cotton wool ball placed behind the radiator, would pretty much guarantee a decent night's sleep from a sickly child. We find that one drop of chamomile knocks out adults with insomnia too - it is an expensive oil, but powerful, so even a tiny bottle will last for ages.
There are two indispensable books to acquire if you want to find out more about aromatherapy or making your own beauty products: The Fragrant Pharmacy by Valerie Ann Worwood and Natural Health and Body Care by Neal's Yard Remedies. Both of them have all the information you will ever need, and a whole load more.
At this time I also discovered the miraculous properties of an oat bath, which was the only thing I could find to soothe C's eczema. A large handful of porridge oats, tied into a thin muslin cloth and then dropped into the bath is an extraordinary thing. The creamy 'juice' from the oats is released into the water and calms inflamed or itchy skin in a wonderful way. Add a drop of lavender or chamomile oil to the oats and you have a bath that will soothe an itchy child AND send them off to sleep afterwards. Brilliant. One muslin package of oats will do two baths.
Having discovered this I also began to make other body care recipes. Sugar scrubs, face masks and bath bombs are very easy. Lip balms, hair conditioners and hand creams are only slightly more complicated. I don't make them because of any aversion to commercial products - and anyway, Radox is awesome - but because it is a fun thing to do, and the smells in body products are far stronger and more personal if you make them yourself.
The Body Shop no longer sells essential oils, but it does still sell really good value terracotta oil burners. Culpeper and Neal's Yard Remedies are the two places I buy all my essential oils from now, as well as the more obscure ingredients I need for making beauty products like beeswax and raw cocoa butter. Tisserand and Napiers are also excellent sources of essential oils.
I haven't made any beauty products for a while, but this half term I'm planning on making some with the children. They both love lavender oil, and smellies for the bath, lip balms and hand creams. Our house is going to smell divine!
