Oils or Essences?

April 03, 2018

Essential oils have become common place. I hear my auntie telling her brother to use a little tea tree on a fungal issue. I hear a woman in passing raving about how lavender helps her sleep. I have clients informing me of their doctors supporting their choice to use essential oils. And on and on….

This is wonderful! All of it is wonderful!

But there is so much more….

Essential oil is a rather loaded term these days… it’s associated with many different feelings and ideas for each individual.

How did the name “essential oil” come about anyway?

During the steam distillation process of a plant/tree, when the steam is cooled and condensed, there are two products- a water soluble hydrolat (which is the bulk of the distillation); and the essential essence (also known as essential oil) which floats to the top of the hydrolat because it is fat soluble.

I like to speak of them as essential essences, not essential oils.

For me, it is way beyond semantic preference. We are talking about the condensed soul of a plant. A plant/tree has gifted us it’s most concentrated transference of it’s ‘Being’… in a form that can be readily absorbed into the human body on a physical, emotional, and spiritual realm.

Let me reiterate- we are talking about a conscious being that has either donated large parts of herself or given her life completely to share her soul with humans to help bring forth greater love, awareness, health, and well-being within ourselves and then outward to others. I just cannot bring myself to simply call this an ‘oil’.

There is a lot of emphasis in our culture on how essential essences work in the physical body. This is just a small and singular facet of the support they offer. Pure, single essential essences work in harmonizing the physical, spiritual, and emotional planes. It is all of these planes that work together to create the manifestation of our physical body, our 3D reality, and beyond.

For more on how the emotional and spiritual planes manifest themselves in the physical body, you may choose to read Physical Ailment.

And of course, there will be many more writings on the multidimensional facets of essential essences to come…

Love and light from me and the plants and trees! Thank you!

 

Kirsten Klaus is a certified Wisdom of the Earth Medicinal Aromatherapist and is available for consultations – pairing people with plants via single pure essences to support your spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being.

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