Aromatherapy
what it is and what it's become
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Essential Oils
The use of steam or solar distilled essential oils. Key here is the oils should not be solvent extracted nor fragrance oils. True the scent from fragrance oils trigger scent related memories, aiding us in transformation spiritually speaking. True aroma therapy requires one to fully exhale, then on inhale 1 to 2 times per nostril of the oil your using filling your lungs and being of the essence. You would not want to do this with fragrance oils. Diffusers help in getting the scent into the air and do help in the aroma therapeutic effect, but old school is to inhale as described above, but do be careful not to touch the bottle to your nose.
Every plant has essential oils and exactly how much varies greatly plant to plant. Solar extraction uses the heat from the sun to extract the oil using water. The oil will be found floating on top of the water since oil is lighter than water. This form of extraction does not extract all the oil and is very cost prohibitive since much oil is lost, still contained in the plant matter which is discarded. However it can be argued that this is the best method as no excess heat is exposed to the violate oils. In fact one method of just using the sun to extract the oils uses several weeks of exposing the finely crushed flowers or plant matter to the sun during the day, then covering and placing indoors anywhere where evening and night dampness or humidity will not effect the material.
Distillation is the most effective of 'natural extraction methods' and is compared to distilling liquor. A still is made that is sealed, much like a pressure cooker. The steam is allowed to escape from a coil which passes through water to cool. The oil drips out of the coil and it's open end and is captured in a glass container (or stainless steel).
The cost of this equipment can be fairly expensive as it must be large enough to hold several hundred pounds of plant matter. Yes you can do it on a much smaller scale but bear in mind the energy needed and amount capable of processing will yield extremely small amounts of essential oil. Roughly 20,000 roses yield 1 ounce of essential oil.
Solvent extraction is a much faster and complete extraction method but caustic chemicals are required to use this form of extraction and the results are oils that maybe far less expensive to produce but what is the quality of the end result? Certainly not aroma therapy grade!!
Fragrance oils and solvent extracted oils may be fine for making stuff but not for the Therapy. Cheap incenses maybe but then we don't care for cheap incense.
Essential oils have a medicinal value which is healing to the spirit which heals the physical. Ideal for use during meditation, as we have experienced through the SYDA Foundation during which Gurumayi used certain essential oils in the peacock feathers she would touch people with and wow what a spiritual experience!
Finer incenses use essential oils for their essence. This is how we produce our incenses and body care products, by using the finest essential oils we can find, and we've done this for almost 2 decades and have seen oils of all sorts of quality but always settle on the best. Best costs more but then since we use these for spiritual transformation why not use the best!