What are Essential oils

Essential oils are not just ordinary scented liquids stored in teeny weeny amber jars. While you may think that people only use essential oils for just making a place smell nice, then you are awfully wrong too. Essential oils carry more than just the responsibility of scenting up the place. They have therapeutic benefits when inhaled, and physical benefits when applied onto the skin.

Is it safe to smell essential oils?

Essential oils, apart from scenting up a room, also has psychological and physiological effects that helps to improve the quality of our lift. In fact, essential oils are now more widely known to be beneficial in treating various ailments and alleviating health issues. While essential oils are not a replacement to medication, they are still strongly popular amongst those who opt the natural approach to health.

So yes, it is 100% safe to smell essential oils, even on a daily basis! In fact, studies have shown that essential oils aid in many daily activities, improving brain function, memory and alertness.

Choosing an Essential Oil

If you want to get your hands on some essential oils for a start but don't know which oil to get, an important tip you should never forget is to follow your body's reaction. Listening to hearsay and recommendations are some of the ways you can find suitable oils for yourselves, but if you want an essential oil that works best on you, then you'll have to be the doctor of your own health.

If you have never tried buying essential oils for yourself, this might be an eye opening read for you.

Here are some tips you can try when choosing an essential oil:

1. Smell from a scenting strip

When it comes to smelling the oils, it is best not to smell directly from the bottle as the scent that comes out of it is often stronger and more pungent than what you would be smelling when you are using it with a diffuser. Instead, drip a few drops of essential oils in a scenting strip and allow it to soak into the strip for a few seconds before smelling it. If you are smelling an essential oil that has been blended, you will be able to smell its individual characteristics at different time stages. At first whiff, you would get the first impression of the top note, usually the more citrusy or minty scents. After a while, when the top notes start to fade off, the middle to base notes will become more prominent, and that will be the true scent of the essential oil.

2. Test your reaction for a day

There is no need to purchase the essential oil in a haste. You have a scenting strip in hand and you can use that to test if you like the scent even after a day. You will be surprised that some essential oils will smell different after a day or two, so use this time to smell the scenting strip throughout the day to see if it is still a scent you like despite all the changes. To make the scent last longer on the scenting strip, keep it in a small air tight container or just keep it in a card compartment of your bag or pouch. Try not to leave it out in the sunlight or expose it to winds.

3. Drip the essential oil on different diffusing surfaces

Essential oils can be used on scenting clay, fabric, unpainted wood. Different surfaces will also emit different scents even when the same essential oil is being dripped on it. In some cases, the characteristics of the oil can be magnified or mellowed down. Take Sandalwood for example, the scent itself is a woody scent, but when you drop Sandalwood on a piece of wood, the woodiness comes out even stronger and more distinct, compared to when you use it on a scenting clay where the woodiness get a little faded out. By using this experiment, you can also realise that the type of diffusers you use also affects the scent outcome of the essential oil that you are using it with.

Ultimately, when you are choosing an essential oil for yourself, you should listen to your body's reaction and ask yourself if this scent is something you really like, instead of simply buying an oil from the "recommended" essential oils list from others.