Essential oils are more versatile than you realize!
By Megan Bailey
For thousands of years, cultures around the world have been using the powerful properties of plants. These cultures have known the immense wellness benefits of plants, and in modern times, essential oils have brought to light what these cultures have known throughout the ages. Essential oils are derived from a broad range of plants and are made by distilling or extracting different parts of these plants, including the flowers, leaves or bark. This process creates highly concentrated oils with powerful properties.
There are seemingly endless amount of different essential oils you can try. There are so many varieties that have at least a dozen different uses each. However most of us have no idea how to use them other than as something good to smell. From blends to the basics, here we’ll give you some great ideas for just what to do with that impressive collection growing in your cabinet.
Disinfect Surfaces
Many essential oils have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. They are great options for use in simple homemade cleaning products, especially if you want to lessen the amount of chemicals in your home. Try adding a few drops of lemon, lavender, sweet orange, or tea tree oil into a small spray bottle with diluted soap. You can use it to wipe down different counters, including kitchen tops and bathroom surfaces. You can even use it to keep your toilet spick and span.
Protect Your Garden
Most chemicals on the market aren’t safe for pets and children, making it difficult to find a pesticide that you feel comfortable using. However essential oils can help keep pests from destroying your garden. Combine 10 drops of essential oil with 8 ounces of water and castile soap for organic pest control. Use a spray attachment with your hose and spray the insects away. These same types of combinations are also great for a simple bug repellant for yourself or other outdoor seating areas. If moles and gophers are the issue in your garden, try applying peppermint essential oil onto a cotton ball and placing it in their holes. They will scurry away before you know it.
Use as Herbs
Instead of buying heaps of herbs from the grocery store that you never finish in time, try replacing them with essential oils. The basic rule is one drop of essential oil per tablespoon of herbs in your favorite recipe. They can be used in desserts as well, such as using a drop of peppermint into your mint chocolate brownies. If you’re trying to drink more water but don’t like the taste, try adding a drop of orange or lemon essential oil to eight ounces of water to make it tastier.
Pain Reliever
You may have heard that essential oils have some medical properties as well. If you have a headache, you can choose this all natural route over using over-the-counter drugs. Peggy O’Kelly, essential oil expert and founder and CEO of Napa Valley Bath Company suggests to “combine almond oil with four drops peppermint essential oil, two drops rosemary essential oil, one drop lavender essential oil, one drop chamomile essential oil, and one drop frankincense essential oil.” Shake up the mixture then apply it to your temples, pulse points and the back of your neck. This will help ease your pain away.
Aromatherapy Bath
Are you in dire need of some relaxation? Add 2-5 drops of essential oil to bath water or use with Epsom salts or carrier oil. The aroma will help keep you feeling calm while you get some needed rest. Try out different blends of your favorite oils, while avoiding using cinnamon, cassia, oregano, wintergreen and lemongrass. These can sometimes irritate sensitive skin. Eucalyptus is a well-loved option.
Replace Your Candles
If you’re afraid of leaving a candle burning, essential oils can leave a wonderful scent that won’t pose a risk of your home catching fire. The best part is that you candecide what type of scent you’re feeling up to based upon your mood or the season. For example, if you’re hosting family and friends over for the holidays, you can diffuse a few drops of pine, sandalwood, or cedarwood oil. Certain oils are also great a eliminating cigarette smoke, pet odors, and the like! Try out different combinations until you find what’s best for your home.
Essential oils have been around for years, and we are always discovering new and powerful ways they can be used in our homes. These oils help to eliminate the need for such strong chemicals while still giving fantastic results. What is your favorite way to use essential oils in your home?
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” ~ George Moore
There is a place inside of you where there is eternal peace, a place where fear does not exist. A place where love feels at home and your inner light is always shining. This beautiful place is where you belong, it’s who you are….
By affirming and acting upon these 15 empowering messages that come from your true and authentic self, you will remember many of the things you have forgotten about yourself and you will start living life in a more beautiful, happier and meaningful way.
1. Don’t Take Life Too Seriously
Life is a gift — enjoy it, and please, “Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don’t take yourself so seriously.” – Norman Vincent Peale
2. Treasure Your Divinity
Learn to treasure yourself and your Divinity. Be willing to accept yourself completely. Be yourself, be graceful, be kind, be wild, be weird … be true to yourself.
“You surrender to a lot of things which are not worthy of you. I wish you would surrender to your radiance … your integrity … your beautiful human grace.” – Yogi Bhajan
3. Nurture Good Thoughts, Create A Good Life
You create your life with your thoughts. As you think so shall you be. Think loving thoughts and you will experience a loving life. Use your mind and don’t let it use you. Purify your thoughts and watch your life purify with them.
4. Let Go, Be Happy
Let go of all the pointless drama, all the toxic relationships, thoughts and behaviors that are present in your life. Let go of the heavy weights you have been carrying on your shoulders and decide to travel light. Bring your mind into the present moment. Create your life from a place of infinite choices and possibilities – the present moment, and no longer from a place of fear and limitations – the past. Shift your focus from the bad onto the good and watch your life transform.
5. Give Yourself, and Others, the Gift of Forgiveness
Forgive, release and let go of any negativity, hate, and resentment that is currently poisoning your life. Allow peace and tranquility to govern your heart. Forgive those that have harmed you, not because they deserve it, but because you do, and forgive yourself for holding on to poisonous thoughts and depriving yourself of all the love and happiness you truly deserve.
“True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
6. Build Bridges Instead of Walls
No matter how much you’ve been hurt in the past and no matter how much more you will be hurt in the future, don’t let fear convince you that you should close the door to your heart. You need love to feel alive. By depriving others of your love and affection, you are depriving yourself of the many beautiful things that come from love.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi
7. Appreciate Both the Good and the Bad
Learn to love and appreciate both your failures and successes; the happy experiences but also the unhappy ones. Look for the lesson in everything and by doing so, no experience will ever be wasted. They all contribute to your growth and expansion.
8. In Friendship, Choose Quality Over Quantity
Build your friendships on a healthy and strong foundation. It’s always better to choose quality over quantity. It’s wiser to have a few real friends than many untrue ones.
9. Be Kind to All Living Creatures
Treat all living creatures with love, kindness, and compassion. Keep in mind that this isn’t just our home, it`s theirs as well.
“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” – Immanuel Kant
10. Be Good to Your Body
Your body is your temple and the way you feel internally will reflect externally. Exercise whenever possible, make sure you drink plenty of water- water is life, and eat as healthy as possible. Treat your body in the exact same way you want your body to treat you and stay away from toxic addictions.
11. Live With an Open Heart
Allow love to rule your life. Put all your fears aside and allow love to rule your life. Embrace your authenticity and dare to walk through life with your head up high, always! Don’t settle for anything less than love. Learn to pour love into everything you do. Pour love into your relationships, your work, your life and into yourself. Allow love to rule your life.
“For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
12. Give Meaning to Your Life
Do the things you love the most, follow your heart, your passions, and your dreams. Ask your true and authentic self to guide you and to help you live your life in a loving and authentic way. Look for meaning, look for purpose and allow yourself to become the unique and authentic being you were born to be. Make the shift from ambition, to ambition with meaning.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl
13. Love Everything, Be Attached to Nothing
Nothing is yours to keep – not your friends and family, not your lover, not your material possessions, not your youth and vitality, not your struggles (which is great news) or successes, and not even your life. Things, people, experience, they all come and go. Everything changes, nothing remains the same. Love everything but be attached to nothing.
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” ~ Khalil Gibran
14. You Are a Soul; You Have a Body
You are a soul within a body. You are not your body and the body is not you. Your body is your vehicle in this life and it’s meant to help you achieve the things that your soul came here to achieve. But you are not the vehicle, you are the one that drives the vehicle.
“Never tell a child,” said George Macdonald, ‘you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.’ As we learn to think of things always in this order, that the body is but the temporary clothing of the soul, our views of death and the unbefittingness of customary mourning will approximate to those of Friends of earlier generations.”
15. You are ONE with Everything
At the soul level, you are connected to all living things. There is no separation between you and everyone else. You are ONE with it all that is. Look within for guidance and directions. Ask your soul to lead the way and you will become ONE with all that is.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
If you are a soul who has a body, what do you think happens to the soul once it leaves the body? You can share your comment by joining the conversation below
~love, Luminita
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