Oils Ain’t Oils.

Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils to treat emotional and physical conditions. It is a therapy and like any other, relies on the quality of the practitioner and their tools for its results.

Aromatherapy is more than the art of blending fragrances together to make a sweet scent for your home or bath. If that was all there was to it then why waste money on essential oils when fragrance oils are so much cheaper? Aromatherapy is the understanding that the oils will enter your body one way or another, and have a direct impact on it. Even oils in the vapouriser will enter via your nasal passages. Oils in the bath or body preparations will enter directly through the pores in your skin. Unless you want to pollute your body with chemically created fragrance oils then it makes sense to go straight for an essential oil.

Not all essential oils are equally good for you, and one of the main problems is that they can be diluted with inferior grade oils, or even with substitutes. Oils that are expensive to produce are the first target. Jasmine and Rose oils take many kilos of blooms to produce tiny amounts of oil. Jasmine is sometimes adulterated with Ylang Ylang, and Rose with Palmarosa.

Buying your oils from a reputable supplier is the safest way to obtain your oils. They will know the source of the oils. If you find yourself a seller of bargain oils then before you buy, check the colour, liquidity and scent of each oil. Sometimes you can tell a poor quality oil because it is pale in colour or too watery in consistency. Even allowing for seasonal variations in scent, the oils should still look the same.

Essential oils are not something that should be played with. They will definitely have an impact on you. For that reason it is better to buy only 2 or 3 oils from a good supplier than a whole range of cheap oils at a market somewhere. Remember, these oils are all entering your body, so give it the best that you can manage.

Oils ain’t oils, so buy the best you can.