This is a transcript from an interview with Elizabeth Mulvey and Sharon White on aromatherapy oil & stress.
You can see part 1 of our conversation where we talk about essential oils for stress.
Use Of Oils
Inhaling is the quickest method. You can just put a drop of lavender in your palm. Run your hands together, cup your hands and take some nice breaths in. That will really quickly get into the nervous system and help settle down your system.
Topically we could massage it. We could put it in our daily routine as an ongoing daily support.
So once you choose certain oils. The ones that you decide are the best to support you, you can add these into your daily routine.
You can add your choice of oils to a bath at night. You would obviously choose the more sedating oils, because you want to relax and unwind at the end of the day and promote sleep. You wouldn’t be choosing the citrus oils in those cases as they are too uplifting.
These are the two main methods, inhaling and topical application.
There’s a really good way that you can do this with little inhalers. You can use one of the Vicks inhalers. You can put your oils into that so you’ve got a support system in an inhaler, when you’re at work and when you are out.
You can just unscrew the top and inhale the oil, so you’re still doing the inhalation but you don’t have to carry all the oils with you. It’s all compact and it’s your blend. That’s something that’s going to help you have that support on the go, all day long.
Sharon says;
That’s a brilliant idea I haven’t thought about that. I also burn my oils at home.
If I have a client and they’re coming to me for either a massage or for a counselling session and I know they’re particularly stressed, I’ll burn some oil and it works in conjunction with the other types of therapy I am using.
Elizabeth says;
That is the infusion method. You’re diffusing the oil into the atmosphere it’s a very nice gentle way. It’s a lovely way to come home to some aromatherapy.
If you come home first, you can set the environment with a really nice soft blend of something like lavender and maybe a little bit of a citrus oil (if it’s not too late in the day). It is welcoming, somewhere people can walk in and just feel relaxed.
It’s a gentle smell that’s in the air and you’re inhaling that. As you walk in you smell the oil and you relax.
Sharon says;
You were saying before that each client you see will have a different cause of stress and that is why you decide on a different oil for each client or a different blend of oils for each client.
Can you give an example of somebody who might come to see you with a certain condition and what oils you might use for them?
Elizabeth says;
If I had someone that was feeling very burnt out and exhausted, I know that they are going to have some kind of adrenal issues. I want to be supporting and tonifying those issues.
At the same time they still have to go about their daily day-to-day activities and they’re exhausted, so we would look at doing a blend with basil where it would be in the blend to tonify.
It would be something that they could use to support their adrenals twice a day, in the morning and in the night. Then they can have the little diffuser that they have ongoing with them. They can put lemon, orange, bergamot or any of those mixes.
So we blend it and then I always get my clients to smell it and see if they like the smell because if they don’t like the smell, they’re not going to use it. So we then have to tweak it a little bit to fit them, and what appeals to them, then they can use that during the day.
You have other oils like cedarwood. Cedarwood is one that I like and it’s great for sleep. Cedarwood is great if you massage it into your feet at night.
You get a really nice sedating and relaxing action, so that you can have a good sleep at night, Vetiver is another one that you could do that with.
So I would look at something like cedarwood and basil with maybe a little bit of lavender just as a balancer to help as an ongoing tonifying and balancing the system.
You can use the citrusy oils which energizes in the morning when you’re trying to get going and you’re feeling exhausted. Having some lemon and orange will uplift you so that you feel a bit more energized about your day. So then you’ve got the balance of both things.
Liz is an expert for Holistic Living Magazine.
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Sharon says;
Thank you. Actually just listening to you now excites me about aromatherapy because I actually studied to be an aromatherapist back in 1996. It’s not really something that I use very often.
I burn the oils and I remember how beautiful it is to use the oils and to use it to sleep. I’ve got the spray but I don’t use it on my body. So thank you so much for your knowledge.
One thing I do want to say is our bodies are so smart and they know what is a good oil for us. So as you said it’s very good to smell the oil because your body will know if it’s suitable for you. Your body will tell you, ‘Hey that’s a really good smell’. Our bodies are really smart.
Elizabeth says;
As an aromatherapist I may think that a certain oil would be perfect for a client.
I sometimes get people who come in and say, ‘I hate lavender, just don’t give me lavender give me anything but lavender’, but I might think that lavender is a really good oil to use overall, looking at the full picture and the properties of lavender.
This to me means that we have a journey to go before they’re ready for lavender.
Sharon says;
I think that’s why it’s really important to come and see an aromatherapist because you’ve got a really wide knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. There are bottom notes, middle notes and top notes and they smell differently.
As an aromatherapist you blend them and make them smell and they work together, but if you don’t really know what you’re doing, it can smell like a big disaster.
Elizabeth says;
You want it to be nice. You don’t want to be walking around and people saying what’s that smell? You want them to say that smells very nice. What are you wearing?
Sharon says;
That’s the thing, it smells like perfume when it’s really good.
I think that’s a really good starter for people who may not have used aromatherapy before. You’ve given us some really good oils to start with.
If anyone does want to find you, I know you do Skype interviews so people don’t have to be in your town, they can be anywhere in the world and set up an interview with you.
So how will they get hold of you? What is your website? You’re also one of our experts on Global Healing Exchange so you have a profile on our website.
Elizabeth says;
I do have a website and its www.elizabethmulvey.com and they can contact me through the email portal there, to let me know what they want to do and then we can converse as to what it is that they want and what we’re trying to achieve.
They can purchase my books and there’s also a range of my oils which is called the Being Me Range.
This has set of seven oils. They were developed by me through my own experience as a mum and for my family.
The first one I developed was actually called Bite Me so that was developed because of the symptoms that occur after people get bitten by various things to reduce the itching and inflammation and the healing process
The second one was Soothe Me and that was to relax muscles.
The next one that came along was Remember Me that was when I was doing a lot of study and also my children were both going through high school and at uni, so that supported us through the focus and concentration we needed to have when we were studying.
Of course when we’re doing all this study, you know sleep can sometimes be an issue because your mind is working overtime with the information that you’ve taken in.
So Sleep With Me was born so hence we went to sleep much easier.
As I developed and I wrote my book, I was asked to present more and it was something that I hadn’t done. From there came, Talk With Me. That was for me to help support the nervous system.
It’s something that I work with while I’m preparing a talk, so then I can take that kinaesthetic que that I’ve developed with an aroma, with a talk. Then I use it during the talk as well to help me get through the talk.
We also have Positively Me. The last one which was an issue at one time when I experienced a lot of anxiety when driving is Drive With Me as driving became a thing and I needed to support myself, so the oils in there supported me to feel more relaxed, secure and confident while driving.
Sharon says;
They sound amazing. We’ll have to talk about getting those in our shop. To have a set of oils like that would be amazing for people that come to our website.
Thank you so much for talking to us today. It’s been a real pleasure. We’re going to be interviewing you again in the future on other topics and finding out about different oils and different things that you do.
So thank you so much for being here today and we’ll see you next time.
Elizabeth says;
Thank you for having me. You’re welcome.
Liz is an expert for Holistic Living Magazine.
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You can see more from Elizabeth here.
