What is Aromatherapy

AROMATHERAPY

Aromatherapy is a holistic healing treatment that uses natural plant extracts to promote health and well-being. Sometimes it’s called essential oil therapy. Aromatherapy uses aromatic essential oils medicinally to improve the health of the body, mind, and spirit. It enhances both physical and emotional health.

Aromatherapy has been around for thousands of years but practiced under the banner of Herbalism. The ancient doctors of their times used oils and balms from plant extracts for both physiological and psychological treatment. The term Aromatherapy in my mind is a blessing in one respect and a misnomer in another. Had it been called essential oil therapy instead of the coined term aromatherapy it would have spread with greater speed and notoriety than Gattefosse’s term aromatherapy (coined back in the early 1900’s) Gattefosse was a perfumer who accidently found out what the forefathers of aromatherapy knew centuries before. He had burned himself in his workshop as a perfumer and the only liquid around at the time was a vat of lavender oil. As luck would have it for him it quelled the pain and promoted healing with no scarring. So he called it Aromatherapy. 

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