Essential oils aka what the heck are you rubbing on your neck

It’s all over your news feed, Twitter timeline and Instagram. People are talking about them and how they changed their lives BUT what the heck are essential oils anyway?!?!?

This week I will be posting all about essential oils. Today’s post is all about the WHAT of essential oils. What they are and more importantly what you can do with them.

So let’s get started……..

Essential oils are defined by Webster’s as a natural oil typically obtained by distillation and having the characteristic fragrance of the plant or other source from which it is extracted.

Basically think of olive oil and how the olives are “pressed” to release their oils for us to cook with. It is almost the same with essential oils. Take for example lavender, one of the most versatile essential oils out there. Thousands and thousands of pounds of lavender plant are harvested from farms and brought into a distillery. The most effective way to get from plant to oil is through steam distillation. The plants are placed in huge vats and then “steamed” the same as you would carrots for dinner. The only difference here is when the lavender is steamed it gives up its lifeblood, it’s oils. That is then bottled and there you have essential lavender oil.

You can then apply them directly to your skin, diffuse them into the air or in some cases take them internally.

So what can the oils do for you and your family? My oily friends and I have a saying… “There’s an oil for that.” Literally anything you can think of that would require you to walk to your kitchen medicine cabinet for relief you can use an essential oil for. We use them for everything. Allergies, pain, sleep, anxiety, stress, cuts/scrapes, focus/energy, headaches, bug spray, sunscreen….you name it I can tell you an oil that will help.

Here is a great graphic that shows how essential oils an become your all natural solution to so many ailments.

Later this week I will talk about why we started using essential oils so stay tuned for my story.

Here is a cool video from the company I purchase all my oils from (which will be tomorrow’s post, the WHO of essential oils)

Distillation video

I hope this helps you understand what all this talk is about and what essential oils are. As promised tomorrow will be all about WHO I get my essential oils from and why it is so important to trust your source. Feel free to leave me questions in the comments. See you back here tomorrow for day 2.