Essential Oils & Aromatherapy, An Introductory Guide

That’s what makes them easy to inhale in aromatherapy, and it’s what makes them effective for other medicinal uses.

Most essential oils are obtained from plants by one of three basic methods: distillation, expression, and either solvent extraction or hypercritical CO2 extraction.

But essential oils vaporize when they’re heated. That’s what makes them easy to inhale in aromatherapy, and it’s what makes them effective for other medicinal uses.

Not only do these compounds give plants their powerful scents, they also make plants particularly potent for a wide range of uses

Each plant species has a unique combination of 100 or more terpenes, which make the scent of that species different from the scent of any other.

They come from a group of chemical molecules in plants called terpenes (or hydrocarbons), the cellular-level compounds that create a plant’s scent.

Although essential oil methods are not complicated, it’s important to lay the groundwork and build working knowledge about essential oils

part of their allure is that the methods are quite simple

Different regions have different plants, but people’s reactions are almost universal: the sudden thrill at a familiar perfume, an immediate uplift in mood, an automatic smile, and often a sigh of relaxation.

Different regions have different plants, but people’s reactions are almost universal