🧘🏽 Beat stress: techniques for stress relief

Using Essential Oils relieves stress

Besides making your home feel like a spa, using essential oils for stress has risen in popularity in recent years. Whether one is adding these compounds extracted from plants to a bath or drops in the corner of the shower for relaxation or diffusing them in the bedroom to promote a long night’s sleep, the holistic use of aromatherapy to heal physically and mentally is something worth looking into if it helps ease any stress or anxious thoughts.

It's not surprising that people are looking for new treatments when you consider that we've seen a 25% increase in anxiety and depression worldwide since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK, a professor of health communication and education at the University of Chester, and the host of the popular Feel Better, Live More podcast.

He explains how stress first evolved to help keep us alive and why it’s become a significant problem in the modern world. 

At 9 minutes and 15 seconds, Rangan outlines some of the shocking health effects of long-term stress. To go straight there, follow this link.

Aromatherapy is mostly used as a solution to calming nerves. But do essential oils work? Are essential oils safe? And do essential oils actually have health benefits?

First, let’s start with the basics: What is aromatherapy? it is the practice of using essential oils for therapeutic purposes. Essential oils, which she describes as “plant-created volatile compounds extracted through distillation,” can be used mainly through inhalation or massaged into the skin. For more information please read our beginners guide

FOR PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY, TISSERAND SAYS, SMELLING AN ESSENTIAL OIL CAN BE USED ALONG WITH OTHER STRATEGIES THAT HELP GROUND SOMEONE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. “FOR A MORE LONG-TERM ANXIETY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, PEOPLE CAN USE ESSENTIAL OILS AS A MEANS TO CREATE A MENTAL ANCHOR,” SHE SAYS. “THEY USE AN ESSENTIAL OIL OR A BLEND AROUND A TIME WHEN THEY FEEL CALM AND RELAXED, WHETHER IT’S WHEN THEY ARE SITTING OUTSIDE AND DRINKING TEA OR WHEN THEY ARE WITH FRIENDS AND FEEL HAPPY AND SAFE. THEY CAN THEN HARNESS THE SMELL WHEN THEY DON’T FEEL WELL. JUST EXPERIENCING THE SMELL CAN TRIGGER A MEMORY AND BRING SOMEONE BACK TO THAT HAPPY PLACE.”

This positive association to a particular smell may help someone become at ease if they are trying to ground themselves while suffering from an anxiety attack. “When we inhale essential oils, especially certain ones that can create a sense of calm and peace, these oils can quickly stimulate our bodies to influence our emotions through olfactory receptors in our nose that can stimulate the brain in 22 seconds,” Jaclyn Tolentino, senior doctor at Parsley Health. “Essential oils used via aromatherapy can also have an effect on the body’s endocrine system. For example, the cortisol hormone is often heightened during anxiety, and a series of slow breaths with the aroma of an essential oil can calm down the cortisol response (the stress hormone) and create a grounding and soothing effect.”

100% agree using essential oils to treat the root cause to maintain positive health, prevent this growing resistance to and reliance on prescription pills and relieve the burden on our NHS.

How can I use Oils at home?

WELLBEING NEED OIL SETS

Tips & Tricks: 

• Diffuser: Add 5-8 drops to 100ml cool water in your diffuser. Or use with other BCALM organic pure essential oils, to blend some magic depending on your mood! Start with our signature day or night scent for inspiration. 
• Pillow talk: A few drops of oil on your pillow will help relax and help you drift off to sleep
• Quick fix: A few deep inhalations from the bottle can help when you are at work, in the car or anytime you need a quick break.
• Inhalation: Place 3-4 drops on a tissue and breathe deeply for maximum benefits or place in a bowl of hot water and inhale. Some oxide rich oils are irritants to asthmatics, the eucalyptus family, tea-tree and some of the tree oils. Please speak with a clinical aromatherapist if you have asthma or a respiratory condition. Asthmatics must not use the water inhalation method. Our diffuser keyring for inhalation.
• Shower: Add 2-3 drops to the corner of the shower and enjoy the benefits of steam inhalation.
• Bath: Add 2-3 drops (or more) diluted in a carrier oil or salts (like our bath brew). The BCALM bath brew is filled with rose buds, lavender, orange peel, epsom and pink himalayan salt. Stir the water to disperse the blend and relax in the bath for at least 10 minutes. For children under the age of 12, use 2-3 drops of essential oils. Do not drop neat essential oils neat into a bath of water.

• Topically: Mix 15-30 drops (5-10%) with 5ml carrier oil (sweet almond recommended) and apply to wrists, chest or back of the neck. Can aid healing of bruises if applied twice a day to the area. For a headache place on the neck, temples and hairline to help. Our Roller ball to apply topically.
• Hand or foot bath: Add 2 drops to a bowl of water.
• Compress: Add 2 drops to a bowl of water. For treating inflammation or to cool down use cold to room temperature water. For aching tight muscles use warm to hot water. Agitate a face cloth in the water, wring out excess moisture and apply cloth to the affected area. Repeat two or three times as the compress cools down or warms up.
• Steam Treatment: Add 2 drops of essential oil to a bowl of steaming hot water. Place your face close to the bowl and cover the back of your head and bowl with a towel to trap the aromatic vapours. Caution due to risk of burns or scalding and keep eyes covered during treatment.
• Vacuum Cleaners –  4-6 drops on a cotton wool ball/pad in the vacuum bag
• Steam irons – 1-2 drops in the water inlet
• Room Spray – 20 drops in 500ml spray bottle, shake and spray towards the ceiling
• Disinfectant – 200ml water into a spray bottle, 10 drops of tea-tree and 5 drops of lemon oil, shake to blend

There are some family members and our pets that may need oils to be more diluted. 

Babies and young children, pregnant and breast-feeding mothers, the frail and the elderly. Topical applications need to be at much lower dilutions, as low a 1% (1 drop in 10ml of carrier oil) and not all essential oils are recommended.

Please see our faq here and if you unsure always take advise from a clinical aromatherapist for best practise. 

Sending Healthy Wishes and happy stress free living!

Richie, Becky, Bella and Betsy x

References: Oils for Anxiety Glamour Magazine