Aromatherapy for Women: How to use essential oils for health, beauty and your emotions. Maggie Tisserand

an alternative form of medicine, when I decided that I no longer wanted to take aspirins or antibiotics. Homoeopathy was the alternative science that I chose to study, but whilst living in a sort of ‘medical commune’ with other like-minded young people, something happened which was to imprint itself forever in my memory – the miraculous healing power of essential oils! One day a friend turned up on the doorstep, nursing a badly burned arm. He had removed the radiator cap from his Jeep, and a jet of steam had seared the skin from his forearm. He resolutely refused to go to hospital, insisting that we treat him. Annie (an SRN nurse and trainee acupuncturist) diagnosed the injury as being a second-degree burn, and tidied up the site of injury with sterile instruments. I administered homoeopathic arnica to lessen the shock, and Robert Tisserand applied neat lavender oil on sterile gauze. The essence stung at first, but then reduced the pain, and this treatment was employed twice a day for a little over a week. After two weeks the arm was completely healed, there was no scar tissue, and our friend was able to return to work.

      Lavender oil had been chosen because it had been used by Gattefosse in the 1930s and later by Dr Valnet – both in the treatment of burns, and both with remarkable results. Witnessing for myself the incredible healing power of essential oils in this way was the start of a long love affair with aromatherapy.

      During my 11-year marriage to Robert Tisserand, now a leading aromatherapist, I literally ‘lived and breathed’ aromatherapy, utilizing essential oils for health, beauty and well-being, and although I am now divorced from Robert, my love for aromatherapy and my appreciation and respect for essential oils just gets stronger.

      The subject of aromatherapy is so complex, yet at the same time so very simple to put into practice, that anyone can embark on the journey of aromatherapy, beginning with an aromatic bath and then, if so inclined, to go on studying aromatherapy for the rest of his or her life. There is always more to learn.

      Having confidence is important when treating your family’s minor ailments using essential oils. I have confidence to treat my children because of my knowledge of the essences, my intuition, and my trust in the loving power that put the essences into the plants. When we are sick we have to put our trust in someone or something, and that someone can be a doctor, a pharmacist, or yourself, and that something can be a doctor’s prescription, an over-the-counter drug, or aromatherapy. The choice is yours.

      Throughout this book, I have expressed opinions which may offend some medical personnel. I am not ‘anti-doctor’; in fact, several of my friends are doctors, but I strongly oppose the over-use of prescribed drugs. Modern medicine has much to offer, especially with regard to technological life-saving techniques, and if I were ever run over by a bus, I would certainly be thankful for this facility. However, I see nothing to be proud of in the way that our hospitals are used as an outlet for the drug companies’ products, costing the National Health Service millions of pounds per year, when cheaper, more effective, and more user-friendly remedies are available. A few hospitals in the UK are now incorporating aromatherapy into their patient care, with quite astounding results (in one Oxford hospital ward the administration of night-time sedatives has been significantly reduced as patients are offered an aromatherapy massage instead, and some wards are using essential oils on burners to purify the atmosphere); however, the use of essential oils in hospitals is still only employed on a very small scale. A recent report outlines the dangers of picking up infections whilst in hospital, and according to this report, the longer your stay in hospital, the more likely you are to acquire an infection which could prolong your hospital stay. This reinforces my observations and comments about maternity hospitals being dangerous places for babies and for the newly-delivered mother, and emphasizes the need to take our ‘healthy atmosphere’ with us. By surrounding ourselves with the protective aromas of plants, we can prevent the likelihood of succumbing to airborne bacteria. Aromatherapy is not just to treat an illness which has developed, but is a very real protection from environmental pollutants, bacteria and viruses. Instead of waiting for the body to manifest the pathological changes of disease, we have the tools available to protect the body and to build up resistance to disease, so that ill-health does not occur. We are at the beginning of a health revolution. Preventive medicine is the medicine of the future, and aromatherapy is one of the important therapies of the 1990s.

      By keeping ourselves healthy and functioning efficiently, we automatically pay fewer visits to our doctor, thereby freeing him or her from the humdrum and repetitive prescribing of nonessential medicines, and allowing his or her skills to be channelled to the very sick and dying patient.

      The reason for taking a trivial complaint to a doctor can no longer be excused in terms of ‘well it’s free – I have already paid for the NHS in my taxes’. Now that each prescription charge is several pounds in value, it is possible to purchase a bottle of essential oil for almost the same price. As nearly all essential oils have excellent ‘keeping qualities’, every time we buy an essential oil, unlike the ‘course’ of prescribed drugs which must be finished or thrown away, we are investing in long-term health by building up a collection of potent plant medicines. Furthermore, by utilising plant oils for our health needs, our bodies are no longer excreting antibiotics and other harmful drugs into the sea, via the sewage system. Aromatherapy is a truly holistic therapy, not only for humans but also for the planet.

      Aromatherapy is very important to me, and my knowledge of aromatherapy has been the best investment, in terms of health and beauty, that I have ever made. I hope that by sharing my experiences with you, opinionated as they may seem, you will find in aromatherapy a valuable adjunct to other forms of alternative medicine and a very practical, highly enjoyable way of feeling and looking good.

Chapter One

       GETTING THROUGH THE DAY

      DEPRESSION

      A big black cloud, blotting out the light from the sun, is how I describe depression when it happens to me. But as depression is something that affects most of us at one time or another, the way in which it manifests itself will vary from one person to another. One friend of mine describes it as like ‘wandering through thick fog, not knowing in which direction I am walking, and not knowing when or if the fog will lift’.

      Another friend describes depression as being like an invisible, suffocating weight which she has to carry, and which makes her so exhausted that she feels tired all of the time. She told me that when recently depressed, and lying on her bed in the middle of the day thinking about her dire financial problems and wallowing in self-pity, a thought came into her head ‘like a distress flare at sea’, to turn to aromatherapy for help. Knowing that certain essences are beneficial in lifting depression she got up off the bed, sorted through her oil collection, and put three drops of clary sage onto her fragrancer, closed the door and window and again lay down on her bed, thinking that although she was beyond help, she ought to give it a try. This is how she described the following half hour:

      ‘It was incredible. Within minutes I was feeling lighter. I began to feel happier and less worried. The money problem was still there, but somehow I felt detached from it, as though it had been put into a balloon, which was floating above my head even though it was still attached to me by a string. The stifling weight which had robbed me of my energy and inner harmony was not there any more, and after 30 minutes I felt like getting up and getting on with things.

      She experienced more energy than she had had for several days, and began to function normally again. Contrast this with the stories of women who have become addicted to tranquillizers, having been prescribed them for depression.

      Some people find clary sage to be euphoric, and will not use the essence in their working environment for fear of becoming too light-headed. I like to use clary sage in my office occasionally, possibly because I don’t really like paper work, and doing it makes me feel moody. I have a theory about clary sage. Imagine that our emotions are like an elevator or lift, and that our normal state is the ground floor; when depressed we travel down to the lower ground floor, and when euphoric, we are on the first floor. Imagine that clary sage has the ability to take us up one floor