0 In Aromatherapy/ Health + Wellness

I’m Not in the Business of Selling Essential Oils

I'm Not in the Business of Selling Essential Oils by Timmie Horvath Aromatherapist Edmonton Reiki Training Crystal Healing Certification

I’m not in the business of selling essential oils . . .

. . . I’m here to share Aromatherapy education. My hope is that this website and blog becomes a valuable resource for you, whether you represent a brand or not; whether you’re a retailer or work for one; or whether you want to learn how to use essential oils on your clients or for your own personal use.

I love essential oils and the practice of Aromatherapy. There is SO MUCH to be gained from learning how to incorporate aromatherapy into your holistic health practice. And, when used appropriately, using essential oils is a cost-effective and powerful way to tap into the healing properties of plants . . .

But they are not plants, or herbs.

Using essential oils is not the equivalent of chewing on fresh mint leaves, or drinking chamomile tea, for instance.

Essential oils are highly concentrated, aromatic, plant substances, which are extracted from plants via steam distillation, cold pressing, or solvent extraction.

This is a highly mechanized process which does not happen by accident. The extraction of EOs is not exactly “natural”; it’s a purposeful, technical, scientific procedure, that results in the isolation of plant compounds that have medicinal value.

Because they’re so highly concentrated, a few drops of essential oils go a long way in creating a therapeutic effect. However, and also BECAUSE they’re so concentrated, they are the least biocompatible parts of the plant.

Wait, what…?

First, a definition. According to Merriam-Webster, Biocompatibility is defined as: “compatibility with living tissue or a living system by not being toxic, injurious, or physiologically reactive and not causing immunological rejection”.

What this means, basically, is that when used correctly, EOs can have be very therapeutic due to their high level of concentration; however, by the same token, EOs also have a high level of risk for side effects and adverse effects, especially when used incorrectly.

It’s a bit of a paradox, but it’s an important one, because as the popularity of EOs has grown, so has the incidence of poisoning and injury due to the misuse of essential oils – most of which, is due to internal ingestion.

As you may know, I’m currently studying to be a Certified Aromatherapist (235-hour program), as well as receiving my Aromatherapy Teacher Training (100-hour program) from Aromahead. My decision to focus my education on this field was inspired by my own personal experiences with EOs, as well as the many stories I’ve heard from others – both positive and negative.

As a holistic health practitioner, it was a no-brainer to learn to incorporate essential oils into my family’s everyday wellness practice. I signed up with both Young Living and doTERRA, and even “worked the biz” in doTERRA for a few months. Now, I’m the type of person who does something full throttle, or not at all; and I wanted to make sure that the information I was receiving about essential oils from those companies actually stood up.

I wanted to make sure that their recommendations for usage were consistent with those from Aromatherapists, Herbalists, and other Third-Party Healthcare Practitioners who did NOT represent any one essential oil brand, and therefore, did NOT present a CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Ultimately, I found so much conflicting information, that I actually stopped using essential oils for a while because I was afraid of them! I stuck with home herbalism, because there was much more consistency in herbal education available, and the nature of dried and fresh herbs is such that they are much more biocompatible, and therefore, much safer to use in a folk remedy capacity.

Of course, that’s not to say that you can’t overdose on dried herbs – you certainly can! – but I knew that I was more likely to accidentally overdose on essential oils than on dried herbs. It was a risk I was simply not willing to take.

And, as a bonus, I became pregnant with my third child! The weight of my decisions with regards to EO use became even more clear to me. Soon, I will have THREE kids under 10 (ages 9, 5, and newborn), and I will transition from being a pregnant to a lactating mother. The Aromatherapy practices for our particular demographics are a whole other world! I value my kids and myself, so I decided to err on the side of caution and use essential oils sparingly.

After a few months of avoiding essential oils (aside from having them as ingredients in my natural perfumes), I started to miss them! I have a very sensitive nose, and I LOVE aromatic substances. I missed how they made me feel, and I knew I was missing out on some seriously beneficial therapeutic properties.

I knew there was a better way, a “middle ground”, if you will.

So, I started learning from the experts. I would only read material that was scientifically sound, and from people who did not pose a conflict of interest with regards to the information they represented. I read articles from Aromatherapy Schools and their instructors. I learned how to identify legit essential oil companies; i.e., companies that sell pure, unadultered, organic, essential oils and are completely transparent with their consumers about all of the details of their oils (e.g., chemical composition, extraction methods, plant parts used, country of origin, etc).

I learned that “therapeutic grade” is little more than a marketing term, and that “Are these oils ingestible?” is the WRONG question.

PLEASE NOTE: There are many companies out there that sell oils that are suitable for ingestion, however, NOBODY should be callously ingesting EOs without the guidance of a trained Aromatherapist and supervision of a physician. 

Eventually, my fear of essential oils turned into RESPECT.

And, because I was no longer “chained” to any one particular brand (I closed my YL account and transferred my DT account to another consultant), I explored the many different carrier oils and essential oils available with abandon . . . And in doing so, I learned that Aromatherapy is so much more than just essential oils – hydrosols/hydrolats and carrier oils in and of themselves have tremendous benefits and are so often overlooked!

Anyway, I couldn’t keep quiet about everything I had learned, and all of the great experiences I was having. Fuelled by both my passion to share the benefits of essential oils and to help others avoid injury, I decided to enrol in Aromatherapy School so that I could add Aromatherapy and Essential Oil Education to my offerings.

So, here we are! I’ll be offering live courses and workshops soon, and you’ll find them on my Events + Workshops page. In the meantime, I will ALWAYS be writing/blogging, so you’ll have a wealth of information at your fingertips. There’s so much that I want to share about the wonderful world of Aromatherapy, but if you have any specific questions, please ask! Send me an email at timmiewellness {at} gmail.com and I’ll be happy to respond personally, or via a blog post 🙂

Yours in Wellness,

Timmie Horvath Policarpio Wanechko Edmonton Reiki Training Crystal Healing Aromatherapy Essential Oils

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