What are Essential Oils?

Aromatherapy oils are known as essential oils.



These oils are the concentrated extracts of plants and their roots, stems, flowers and fruits. These oils form the base of aromatherapy and influence your body, mind and spirit. Any fragrance that uses an animal product like musk is not pure aromatherapy oil.



Similarly, fragrances and perfumes too do not categorize as essential oils though they may smell similar to the aromatherapy oils and do not carry the therapeutic value.

Aromatherapy oils or essential oils are extracted from the plants usually by the means of distillation. The plant matter is treated with steam to soften the plant, break down its tissues and release the pure essential oils.



The steam is then cooled down since it contains the essential oils and the water is separated from the oil. This oil is then filtered to get pure aromatherapy oil.

Sometimes they can also be extracted by pressing the part of the plant. E.g.



if you twist the rind of a lemon or orange, you get a smelly liquid which is the essential oil of the fruit and can be extracted by the presses.

The price of aromatherapy oils varies greatly, depending on the number of plant parts used in manufacture. The greater the number of part plants used higher is the price. Also the oils extracted from the exotic plants are expensive.



Lemon oil is cheaper since the rind of lemon contains a lot of oil. But the lavender oil is expensive because flowers contain very little oil and it takes about 45 kilograms of lavender flowers to extract a pound of lavender essential oil. Jasmine, rose and lavender are the most expensive of aromatherapy oils.

Only a few pure essential oils like lavender and tea tree can be applied directly to the skin.



The rest of the oils are concentrated and must be diluted by mixing up with carrier oils which are made from nuts and seeds like apricot kernel, grape seed and jojoba, before application.

You can benefit from the use of aromatherapy oils in wide variety of ways like inhaling the oil, massaging it on your body and by soaking yourself in the bath water to which are added the essential oils. Massaging the oil onto the body is the most common method of getting the benefit of aromatherapy oils, since skin is the largest absorption organ that you have.