March is “Smell” Month

We enjoy life most when we are using all of our senses fully. I had a reminder of this a few weekends ago in a class about Essential Oils and Aromatherapy. How often do we take a moment to smell our environment? Lots of the time, our environments are smell deprived. Recycled air- air pumped through ventilation systems does not smell like “outside air”. Think of all the wonderful smells in our day: fresh rain-washed air, coffee or tea brewing, flowers, fresh laundry, or food cooking.

Smell is a sense that we cannot manipulate too much with our conscious minds. Smell immediately activates our limbic system in the brain, tipping a cascade of brain chemicals that usually have an emotional response in our body. Good or bad feelings can come from a pure wiff of a smell that our body remembers on a level deeper than our thinking brain.

Using our sense of smell in a therapeutic way is what Aromatherapy is about. I think the term Aromatherapy has been much abused in recent years- I have even seen it on dish soap bottles. Pure oils, not found in commercial products, carry a vibration of the living plant in them, according to Peter Holmes, master herbalist. The smell as well as the chemical constituents in a pure oil can bring your body into balance similarly to an herbal formula. When properly selected and used therapeutically, Essential Oils are pure plant healing for all manner of health imbalances. Oils can be taken internally, but taking them externally means that we can also really enjoy our treatment- doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Some of my top ideas for patients are Essential Oils for muscle and joint pain (massaged on topically daily); for insomnia; for headaches; to lift mood or calm anxiety. Let’s not forget allergies and cold/flu, too. And this is just scratching the surface of what these oils can do for us. This therapy provides a way for us to eliminate the nagging problems that keep us from really enjoying our lives, or to enrich our already full lives.

How often to do we think about healthcare and self-care to enrich our lives? Using our sense of smell more fully can open another dimension of enjoying our physical and emotional experience day-to-day.

If you have questions or comments, please direct them to:

marian@marianhughesacupuncture.com

Wishing you excellent health,

Marian