Creative Uses for your Essential Oils Part II

Our article Creative Uses for Your Essential Oils, Part I, focused on the many uses for essential oils. In Part 2, we go into detail about how to use essential oils to improve your daily lifestyle in a personalized way. The uses we focus on are: Air Freshening, Hair Washing, and Foot and Hand Bathing.

If you have never used essential oils, many experts recommend that you do a skin test before using oils extensively.

Air Freshening

With a variety of essential oil fragrances to choose from, you can freshen the air in any room. Not only will your room be freshened, but you also benefit from the various therapeutic effects of the different oils.

To make an air freshener with essential oils simply do the following:

1. Take a clean spray bottle and half-fill it with distilled, filtered or bottled water.
2. Add 8 - 10 drops of your favorite essential oil(s) to the water and shake well.
3. Be sure not to spray near polished furniture, as some essential oils can damage polished surfaces.
4. Store the bottle in a cool, dark area.

Hair Treatment

To help your hair with dryness, split ends or simply to give it a natural boost, an essential oil treatment provides a personal, healthy, sensous alternative.

This oil treatment uses the following ingredients. You should keep the base oils, but the rosemary and chamomile are simply recommendations - we encourage you to substitute your own favorites!

Ingredients:
    * 10 ml Coconut oil
    * 10 ml Almond oil
    * 5 ml Evening primrose oil
    * 5 ml Jojoba oil
    * 5 drops Rosemary oil
    * 5 drops Chamomile oil

1. Melt the coconut oil over low heat (since it is semi-solid at room temperature) then add the almond, evening primrose and jojoba oil. Mix well.
2. Once the mixture has cooled, add your essential oils and mix.
3. Using your fingertips, gently massage the mixture into your hair and scalp for several minutes.
4. Pull your hair together and loosely cover it with kitchen plastic wrap or clean plastic bag (to protect the towel that you will place over it).
5. Wrap your head with a towel, turban style, and leave it on for about 30 minutes. The heat from your scalp will aid the absorption and penetration of the oil, and the towel will help keep the heat in. You can also use a hot towel for the turban, to further help absorb the oil.
7. After 30 minutes, before rinsing your hair, take some of your normal shampoo and massage it into your hair and scalp - this removes excess, unabsorbed oil.

This treatment has helped countless people give a beautiful boost to their hair!

Foot and Hand Bath

Foot and hand baths are a pleasurable way to prepare the feet and hands for a massage, or as a finale to reflexology or pressure massage.

In reflexology the whole body is represented in points on the feet, which may be the reason so many people experience such wonderful, positive effects from footbaths. They are good for helping to relieve rheumatic pains and aches, excessive perspiration, reviving tired and burning feet (and a tired body) and overall, a great way to pamper your hard-working, often forgotten feet.

Hand baths also offer a wide variety of benefits to your often-abused hands. A good soak helps with rheumatism or arthritic pain, eases cramps and is a way to give your hands some extra attention.

Selecting essential oil for a foot or hand bath:
Your choice of essential oil can be purely based on your favorite fragrance, but the therapeutic properties of specific essential oils also offer a good way to help treat personal problems.

Preparing a foot or hand bath

1. Pour warm water into a bowl large enough for your feet or hands, with enough space free to allow the water to rise when they are immersed.
2. Mix five drops of your chosen essential oil with one table spoon of apple cider vinegar and add it to the bath. Apple cider vinegar is a great way to help disperse the oil, and it also has its own therapeutic properties. Or, if you prefer, you can mix the oil with some powdered milk, forming it into a paste before mixing with the water. (Or, the essential oil can be used directly in the water.)
3. If you want to add another relaxing dimension to the footbath, put marbles or small pebbles at the bottom of the bath to run your feet over.
4. Electric footbaths have a massaging action which agitates the water and helps to aerate it, while increasing circulation.
5. If you are performing a footbath on your own, you could rest one foot on the other knee and do a gentle massage on each sole.