Aromatherapy is more than just something that smells good! Check out some of the ways pure essential oils work powerfully with our brain and our overall health!
Did you know?
Memories are not actually stored in the brain!
When we have an emotional experience, especially a traumatic or painful one, the amygdala assigns a part of your body to remember that experience until you are ready to deal with it. The emotional brain can delegate any place in your body to store a feeling or an emotional memory.
Stored emotions can make us sick. If they are stored in the stomach, you can have stomach ailments. If in the pancreas, you can have diabetes. If in the liver, you can have many problems. If in the thyroid or other endocrine glands, you will have hormonal problems. If in the joints you can have arthritis.
Even excess weight can simply be caused by storage of emotions or memories that have not been dealt with.
When an essential oil penetrates into the central brain, it makes it possible for us to access forgotten memories of emotions with which we need to deal. This is because when you breathe oil molecules into the back passages of your nose, they go straight to the amygdala. This part of the brain does not understand words and cannot be communicated to with spoken or written language. It responds only to smell. Hence, essential oils provide a powerful means to contact that nonverbal portion of our brains that stores our feelings any motions.
When essential oils trigger an emotionally upsetting memory, it gives us an opportunity to deal with that emotion and release it from our systems, thereby affecting a healing. Sometimes this healing is instantaneous with the release of the emotion and sometimes it takes longer. In either case, a healing results.
Source: Healing Oils of the Bible by Dr. David Stewart
The Science behind Essential Oils
In studies conducted at Vienna and Berlin universities, researchers found that sesquiterpenes, found in essential oils such as Cedarwood, Sandalwood, and Frankincense, can increase levels of oxygen in the brain by up to 28% (Nasel, 1992).
Such an increase in brain oxygen may lead to a heightened level of activity in the hypothalamus and limbic system of the brain, which can have dramatic affects on not only emotions, learning, and attitude, but also many physical processes of the body, such as immune function, hormone balance, and energy levels.
A series of studies over the past few decades show that suppressing your emotions can and does affect your body and your mind. In fact, a 2013 study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester showed people who bottled up their emotions increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30%, with their risk of being diagnosed with cancer increasing by 70%.
“All emotions, even those that are suppressed and unexpressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like small ticking time bombs—they are illnesses in incubation.”
~Marilyn Van M. Derbur
In 1989, Dr Joseph Ledoux from NY Medical University discovered that the amygdala (in the limbic centre of the brain) plays a role in the storage and release of emotional traumas. He also suggested that aromas could trigger an emotional release.
In addition, essential oils carry molecules known as sesquiterpenes, which are capable of penetrating the blood-brain barrier. These molecules have a significant oxygenating effect on the brain. The combination of oxygenation on the brain and the stimulation from aromatic molecules appears to assist the amygdala in facilitating the release of emotional blockages.