Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Anxiety


Yestarday I had a friend mention that she uses lavender for dealing with anxiety and that she wished she hadn't left her bottle of lavender essential oil at home because it was a stressful day. Gee, what a bummer I thought. Since this freind works in the Whizin Atrium where my perfumery is, I told her I had made a perfume using three lavenders from Ojai combined with three from France and that I would bring her over a little tub.

When I went back upstairs I prepared a little "Anxiety Relief "solid sample pack of three which included Vera (lavender & sage, master healers), Lyra (floral, feminine, soothing and relaxing) + Terrestre (earthy, grounding with some rose for the heart).



It seems that anxiety is quite a popular theme the last few weeks, at least here in the United States of Surrealism! Not only our many of us concerend about the future of "the land of the free" but many are having some sort of crisis financially, spiritually or an awakening bekoning them to live their life in a different manner.

The stress is likely to be compounded for those who don't spend much time in nature and or get their information from the corrupt media that is intent of fueling fear. Fueling fear was a manipulation tactic used during the Hitler regime as a means to control people. When people are in fear they are much easier to control.

An article I read last year in the National Institute of Health cited that anxiety disorders affect 18 percent of the adult population of the United States, or about 40 million people.

So, lets go over a few things that can facilitate some relief, beginning with dumping the news!

1. Breathing

When stress or fear enters our arena our breath will become shallow, shift to a rapid pace that feels like its going to jump out of our mouths or stop all together.

Awareness of our breath in those situations is the number one item to become conscious of. Number two is centering ourselves to harness our power and not only control the breath but also our emotional state. I see this as taming the AIR element that has gone awry. Breathing and out of control thoughts are like a tornado thrashing through our village. We want to command our inner cowboy/girl to lasso that tornado and use it later for something that will serve us, not destruction.

2. Daily Acts

Creating daily acts that nurture our spirit is critical. The most simple are getting in nature. If at all possible remove your shoes and walk or lie on the grass or the earth....or head to the ocean side.

3. Use authentic essential oils and essential oil rich products.

Fragrance oils ARE NOT essential oils! Essential oils come from plants, fragrance oils are derived from petroc-hemicals and or a combination of petro-chems and byproducts of other industries. I believe the current misconception between "fragrance oils" and "essential oils" might be from the usage of the term oil.

Many studies can scientifically validate essential oils, this one, indicates lavender reduces the human body’s stress response. While teaching aromatherapy to massage students in the 1990s I shared Hippocrates message, which I still do today "The way to health is to have a scented massage and an aromatic bath every day." That can be as simple as putting your feet in a bucket of warm water with a bit of salt and 8 drops of essential oil.

Here is another study that finds massage with lavender has the ability to lower blood pressure associated with stress.

4. Laughter

Spend time with people that make you laugh, if there aren't any around you then go out and find them! In easy way to do that is go to a Comedy Club, if that's not an option than find a copy of the Sunday comics. Don't bother with the rest of the newspaper, since that is basically fear based, depressing or makes us wish we made more money so we can buy more stuff we don't need.


5. Get lost in a good story that is uplifting and inspiring

My daughter and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix. Not only is this series really well written and beautiful but it always makes me feel good. There are lots of other great series out, in fact, loads of them. However, not many leave you feeling good. The other Netflix series I highly recommend is Chefs Table.

For more about stress relief check out this post here at the journal from December back in 2007!
More http://www.treehugger.com/health/8-natural-remedies-anxiety.html

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