Chart Your Own Course with Emotional Aromatherapy!

Ever feel overtaken by knee-jerk emotional responses? Want to be less reactive and respond proactively? Need to feel more joy and happiness in daily living?
Emotional aromatherapy can help! That was the hopeful message delivered in a recent class by Amanda Porter—certified emotional healing facilitator, co-founder of Enlighten, and co-author of Emotions and Essential Oils: A Modern Resource for Healing.

Life is an Emotional Journey

Everyone will feel a full range of emotions throughout their life. We may think of emotions in contrast to rational thought, but Amanda asserts, “We’re intelligently designed to have emotions. Their purpose is to teach us, but too often we focus on feeling guilty about them instead. We have to accept, learn, and then change our response in order for emotions to serve us.” Otherwise, emotions can act as overbearing back-seat drivers, taking us where we don’t want to go—again and again!

Get in the Driver’s Seat

One of the most important neurological findings about emotions is that they exist as part of a chemical process in the brain. When an emotional stimulus is repeated, a pre-programmed chemical response becomes more entrenched.

An exciting property of essential oils is their ability to help create new neuropathways. Inhaled aromas directly stimulate the limbic system, which is responsible for processing smell, memory, and emotion. The unique chemical signals of essential oils offer new information to the brain, helping to interrupt old responses and create a new emotional experience.

Call for Roadside Assistance

To prompt desired shifts in feeling and behavior, essential oils that correspond to emotional states should be used both routinely and in the moment. Besides this chemical support, important helps such as meditation, prayer, and perhaps counseling or therapy should be part of an overall wellness pattern.

One of Amanda’s practical tools is the “Emotions & Essential Oils” Wheel, a double-sided, laminated chart that aligns 51 oils and blends to over 100 emotions—positive and negative. A companion resource book, Emotions & Essential Oils, helps further identify and understand emotions and oils. Rounding out the products are a companion CD and a new tear pad sheet, “Take the Wheel.”

    

This post is a review of a Wellness Wednesday class at Elevé Event Center—sponsored by AromaTools®. Click here to see more articles about Wellness Wednesday classes.