The Complete Essential Oils Sourcebook: A Practical Approach to the Use of Essential Oils for Health and Well-Being. Julia Lawless

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      Fuller’s earth is used for scalp treatment.

      WARNING

      Some oils, including ylang ylang, cedarwood, cypress, lemon, lime, juniper, mandarin, and pine, are not stable in shampoo or detergent and should therefore not be used.

Aromatherapy and perfumery

      The psychological effects of fragrance have long been recognized, while herbs have probably been used for their specific effects by so-called “primitive” peoples since the dawn of time. It is certain that in the past natural aromatic substances were often employed successfully for their hallucinogenic, sedative, stimulating, sexually arousing, or anesthetizing effects on the mind, but a proper study of the action of scents, and specifically of essential oils, on the mind and behaviour has never been completed.

      Psycho-aromatherapy

      Psycho-aromatherapy, which focuses primarily on the psychological potential of essential oils, consists of two separate but interrelated fields—aromatic medicine and perfumery. In psycho-aromatherapy, the physiological effect of specific essential oils on the systems of the body is combined with the individual’s emotional or psychological reaction to their fragrance—with both aspects working together in a psychosomatic unity. It could be said that there are three different dimensions involved:

       the physiochemical dimension: the chemical structure of the odor, its quality and concentration or intensity

       the physiological dimension: the primary and secondary biological processes that are initiated upon contact with the oil

       the psychological dimension: the subjective individual response to an odor—how the individual describes and is affected by it.

      “He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life …”

      OSCAR WILDE

      Responses to scents vary, but the rose has a perfume that is universally appreciated.

      Some fragrances are generally experienced as pleasing, while others are widely perceived as repugnant, yet it is difficult to make hard and fast rules about how any individual will react to a particular smell. This is because the physiological effect of a given odor can be overridden by an individual’s specific emotional associations and psychological preferences. Sometimes even an unpleasant smell can have beneficial results if the associations are positive.

      The close connection between the sense of smell and the experience of emotion has often been noted. It is suggested that, physiologically, molecules of odor in some way stimulate the same brain centers that signal the drives toward or away, which underlie almost all human emotion.⁵

      Our sense of smell influences our moods, emotions, and memories. In view of the idiosyncratic quality of smell, it is virtually impossible accurately to assess in advance an individual’s reaction to a particular odor, or to prescribe a fragrance for therapeutic purposes without taking all the following considerations into account:

      Strong odors such as frankincense are thought to affect mood and emotion through a physiological effect on the brain.

      CARDAMOM

      LEMON

       biological: the effect the odor is likely to have physiologically on the systems of the body—whether it is stimulating or sedating

       archetypal associations: any universal associations the odor may have—the scent of the rose, for example, suggests femininity, love, divinity, and sweetness in all cultures

       cultural connotations: certain scents take on a specific meaning according to the environmental, social, and cultural factors involved—the odor of frankincense, for example, will be especially significant in a culture that is Roman Catholic

       individual responses: personal associations and preferences due to first-hand experience, which may be either positive or negative.

      Since our response to scent is so individualistic, to what extent is it possible to use odors to bring about a predictable response? The writer Michael Stoddard asserts that although there is no odor capable of systematically inducing a given reaction in human beings, it is nevertheless possible that we are still subconsciously manipulated by odors. Since the sexual and social instincts of human beings are no longer controlled by scent-signals as they are in other mammals, odors do not bring about overt changes in human sexual or emotional behavior; rather, they create changes in mood or feeling states, often at a subliminal level. Such changed states, as studies have shown, can subtly color and redirect our thoughts, often without our noticing.⁶

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