Making my own blend: the start of my journey into aromatherapy

 

So over the past year or so, I’ve been looking more and more into what I can do to look after my body and my mind, which as someone with a number of physical and mental health problems, I believe it is always worth exploring different avenues of help and coping strategies.

 

Now I love modern medicine and I’ve had my fair share of medical treatment from scans, x-rays, blood tests, operations, etc. I am so grateful for ate fact I was born in a time I have access to all this, but when you’ve been in so many hospitals and are on so many daily medications you do sometimes find yourself yearning for something a little more natural and familiar.

In my personal opinion, I don’t want to use natural methods to explicitly treat my conditions as even the medical community doesn’t have complete understanding about some of them, and I already get overwhelmed with my symptoms and working out which one is caused by which condition.

It is for this reason that I would prefer to look into using slightly more natural methods to help me with some of these symptoms such as relieving the nauseous feeling I so very often have rather than taking strong anti-nausea medication or something to rub into my joints when they are painful or swollen so I’m not having to take so many anti-inflammatories or pain killers.

 It’s this last one that I sort of want to concentrate on first by making a massage oil blend using aromatherapy.

More specifically, making my own custom oil blends with essential oils to use for my specific needs.

PLEASE READ: I should pause here for a moment and give a bit of a warning/some advice. You don’t want to use pure, undiluted essential oils on your skin as they can irritate the skin and cause allergic reactions. You also always want to test every essential oil in case it gives you irritation anyway, so the best way to do this is to mix a few drops of your chosen essential oil with your chosen carrier oil and apply a few drops of this mixture to your skin (such as on your back, inner elbow, or inner forearm), place a plaster over it and leave it alone for 48 hours. If you have a reaction before the 48 hours are up, then wipe it off immediately, realise this is not the essential oil for you, and be glad you found out now rather than later on when you had already made your blends. If not, then you are good to go! 

Also, as good as they may smell, be sure to never ingest them and to keep them away from small children and pets who may ingest them by accident as it can cause a whole bunch of nasty side effects but should this happen by accident for whatever reason be sure to consult a medical professional immediately. 

And as a final disclaimer (don't worry, we'll get to the more exciting part in just a moment), I, as I stated in the title, am only just starting my aromatherapy journey so obviously I'm no expert on the topic, I'm here more just to show my learning process as a beginner and offer what help and advice I can to other beginners. 

Now let's get to the funner, nice to-pics of making blends, shall we!   

 

I’m very lucky in this regard that I have a grandmother who is also highly knowledgeable and interested in using natural remedies alongside modern medicine and has, over her life, collected many resources, including a very helpful book which if you are also looking into aromatherapy I cannot recommend enough.

 

It’s called “Aromatherapy: a guide for home use” by Christine Westwood

A copy of “Aromatherapy: a guide for home use”
 by Christine Westwood

Now onto my own adventures in aromatherapy. My first task was to collect the necessary equipment which in my case was a base oil to make my blend, some bottles to store my blends in, and a few more essential oils that I didn’t have in my collection (I have dabbled with aromatherapy in the past hence why I had them).

You can see in the photos here that I went for sweet almond oil, I decided on 100ml bottles (which are small travel bottles, and as you’ll see later I didn’t use them fully) and my entire collection of essential oils.

(The ones in the black boxes I already owned, but the others were acquired on a recent shopping trip)

 

100ml travel bottles

Sweet almond oil

 

My essential oils collection

My next step was to decide what exactly wanted to make blends for. I ended up making one for some of my mental struggles and one for some of my physical symptoms.

Having such a large number of both to choose from, I landed on the mental one to help with feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress and the physical one to help with the swelling and painful/difficult breathing that can often come with my costochondritis as it can also affect my asthma.

With those set in place, it was time to set up my mixing station by which I mean clearing my desk and wiping down the surface to make sure it was clean and sterile.

 

My rather cluttered desk

Making sure things are clean and sterile

 It was now time to get to the fun part (in my opinion, at least) and look through the book and find the best essential oils to help with my predicaments. Here is what I ended up selecting for each one and why:

 

Chosen oils for the anxiety, depression 
and stress blend

Anxiety, depression, and stress:

Cedarwood-stress

Lavender- Relaxation

Bergamot-Anxiety, depression, stress

Frankincense-Nerves

 

Costochondritis swelling and breathing:

Chosen oils for the costochondritis swelling 
and breathing blend

Cedarwood-Asthma

Eucalyptus-Asthma

Lavender- Joints (swollen and painful)

Chamomile-Swollen joints

To work out how much of each oil should go into the blend, you first need to know how much base oil you’ll be using. In my case, I had 100ml bottles and decided to fill them only halfway, giving me 50ml of base oil.

To know how many drops to use, you simply take how many milliliters of base oil and divide it by 2. So in my case, 50/2=25 drops maximum in my blends.

I then smelled each of the oils for each blend and lined them up in order of intensity, followed by working out how many drops of each were to go in.

A basic rule of thumb is that the more intense the aroma of the oil, the fewer drops need to be put in.

Here you can see how I worked out the number of drops I could use, the intensity lineup, and the number of drops of each I used.

Anxiety, depression 
and stress blend formula and intensity

Costochondritis swelling and breathing
blend formula and intensity

 

 

All that was left was to drop the oils into their respective bottles filled with base oil and to make labels for each bottle so I don’t get them confused for each other. The labels have the following information on them:

What they are for

The essential oils in the blend

The amount of blend that has been made

When they were made

I would recommend putting the date you made it on the label or at least making a note of it somewhere because the book talks about how the blend can be kept for up to 3 months

Label for costochondritis swelling and 
breathing blend

Label for anxiety, depression and
stress blend

 

All that's left to do is make the blends themselves. I started by filling 2 of the 100ml bottles halfway each with the sweet almond oil, placing the number of drops in each one I decided beforehand (making sure not to mix up the two different blends of course), placing the lid back on, and giving them a good shake to help it mix.

50ml of sweet almond oil in one
of the 100ml bottles

Adding Eucalyptus to a blend

Adding Cedarwood to a blend

And that’s pretty much it; I just have to add the labels, and I’m done!

 

The final blend for costochondritis
swelling and breathing

The final blend for anxiety, depression
and stress

 

I’ll be testing these blends now over the next few weeks, and I’ll be sure to update on here about how it’s going, what I think, what I may do differently in the future, and if I truly think it’s helped me.

I will also probably do a separate post in the near future about how exactly I’m using these blends/applying them.

I’m fully aware that I could end up experiencing placebo effects, but even if that is the case, if I end up finding relief from some of my symptoms. So that’s it; feel free to ask any questions you may have as I start this journey into aromatherapy.

 

Until next time, Abigail x