With it being back to school time, many of us are feeling the frazzling chaos of summer and looking for solutions to help us relax. Many of us will try meditating, and yet others of us will struggle with ‘meditating’ – often to the point it becomes a love-hate relationship for lots of people.
And for many years, I thought meditation was the answer to all my problems, whilst simultaneously struggling to actually find a sense of peace with it. I felt like I was just failing at meditation. Until one day, I thought I had found some peace when I went travelling to Bali and meditated a lot in my yoga training – and then I returned home, and I realised that it was likely more the fact I was in blissful Bali, because I wasn’t as peaceful at home. The thing I learned in that was; we often give our healing power away to the self-help tools – or swing to the other way when we find it challenging, and give up entirely – which was also what I did.
But what if we could be mindful, without needing a prescribed ‘fix’ like meditation? And, what if essential oils – nature’s medicine – could also help us to create that? I’m going to explore ways that we can become more mindful – and especially more connected to our body’s sensations, our surroundings, our thoughts, and our emotions – and cultivate presence in everyday lives to create a sense of peacefulness – without having to force ourselves to meditate.
This is important work, because so many people in our modern culture experience a sense of disconnection. We are conditioned to be either re-visiting the past and scrutinising our mistakes (often creating depression), or predicting the future, and problem solving (often creating anxiety). In a world that is so fast-paced and busy, we really need to ground ourselves back to the ‘now’ – the current moment – in order to feel any sense of fulfillment or ease. Our society deeply struggles with mental, and emotional health – stress, anxiety, overwhelm and depression being high on the rise; and mindfulness offers an antidote to that.
Not only that, but if we infuse being more mindful with having more compassion for ourselves, and a noticing of our body’s deeper wisdom and its messages for us, there’s so much healing available for these mental and emotional challenges so prevalent in today’s hectic, chaotic culture.
So, how can we cultivate more presence and mindfulness? And which essential oils can help? Let’s read on…
Practicing mindfulness with essential oils
Mindfulness is the state of becoming more conscious or aware of something. It’s achieved by becoming (non-judgmentally) aware of the present moment, acknowledging, and welcoming our thoughts, feelings and emotions – and our bodily sensations. And it’s really powerful work, which can be done at any moment.
Whenever we are consciously bringing our minds to this moment, right now, we are being mindful – and we can do this, no matter what we are doing, or where we are, so it’s a powerful way to begin creating a sense of awareness and compassion.
There are some simple invitations I can make for you to begin powerfully interacting with mindfulness.
Begin a ‘noticing’ practice
Firstly, the most important thing to do is to become more aware. The invitation here is into beginning to notice – sensations, thoughts, emotions, surroundings – anything you can notice is helpful. It is in the noticing that you are always bringing yourself back to the present moment, and able to ground back into your body.
Notice everything – this might be a new awareness of your body, or your surroundings – notice, how do they make you feel? Or your thoughts and emotions – what are you noticing around them?
Essential oils to help you ‘notice’:
- Rosemary – this herbaceous oil is really stimulating for the mind and can help you become more aware.
- Lemon – a stimulating citrus, this oil is really awakening for the senses, and will help you notice with focus and concentration.
- Myrrh – a more spiritual oil (and synchronistically popular for meditation for this reason), this woody, herby oil is really good for helping cultivate awareness.
Scan your body
As you’re beginning to notice more, you might also like to really intentionally create a focused moment to scan your body. This is a more intentional body scan to explore what sensations you are feeling in your body. It is helpful to name them – for example, when you wake up in the morning, what sensations are you noticing around lying in your bed? How do the sheets feel on your skin? How is the mattress supporting you? How do the water droplets in the shower feel on your skin? Name the sensations – are they soft, spiky, sharp, cool, warm? The more in tune we can get with naming the sensations in our bodies, the more in touch with our wisdom we can become.
And – to go one step further – as yourself; what are these sensations letting you know? What do you NEED? Never underestimate the power of body scanning and noticing what’s there.
Essential oils to help you body scan:
- Patchouli – a popular earthy oil, Patchouli is a great oil to ground you in the body.
- Cypress – another woody oil, this oil is very helpful in restoring presence and focus, in particular bringing you into the body.
- Cedarwood – another woody tonic for the nervous system, this is helpful for creating presence.
Slow down your pace
When you’ve been in the practice of noticing, then the next invitation is to slow down your pace. We live such chaotic lives, that the ‘noticing’ allows us to choose differently.
Perhaps that looks like taking a more mindful approach to sipping your tea, or to walking to work, or how quickly you eat your food.
Becoming aware of your unconscious fast-paced habits will allow you to slow down and create a life that’s more peaceful.
Essential oils to help you slow down:
- Chamomile – the ultimate calming oil, this one is perfect to help you slow down and relax.
- Rose – a floral ‘go slow’ oil, this rosy, honey-like aroma helps with embodiment of a more ‘yin’ energy.
- Lavender – another deep relaxant, Lavender is the oil to help you choose to be more mindful.
Savour pleasures
When you are slowing down, this enables you to start to savour your experience more deeply. What desire and pleasure do you feel as you engage with life? Do the soap bubbles feel gorgeous on your skin? Do you enjoy the taste of the food you are eating, where you’d have once not even noticed? Is there a beauty to the day – are there flowers you are walking past that you’d not have seen if you’d not noticed?
This will help you get more deeply in touch with pleasure.
Essential oils to help you savour pleasures:
- Ylang Ylang – an erotic, floral oil, this particular oil is great for attuning to feelings of desire.
- Sandalwood – this soft, woody oil of luxury and tranquility will help you savour what you’d have not noticed before.
- Geranium – a heavy floral, this aroma is the embodiment of pleasure.
Bring compassion
What can often happen, as we begin to notice more, though, is that we start to notice things that we wish we hadn’t seen; this is often why people don’t engage in mindfulness or meditation to begin with; so this important next invitation is to bring compassion to the parts of you that surface, as you become more mindful, that maybe don’t want to be seen.
This can include heavy emotions, anxieties, truths that don’t want to be suppressed any more – perhaps you don’t enjoy your job, or you have problems in your relationship, or perhaps you find you beat yourself up all the time. These things don’t want to be shoved down; they want to be loved. Can you bring compassionate awareness to even these things – and radically love yourself in them?
Essential oils to help you bring compassion:
- Bergamot – a cheery citrus – and an oil to soothe anxieties – this oil will help you to bring compassion to yourself, and feel what doesn’t want to be felt.
- Frankincense – another strongly ‘meditative’ oil, this fresh, woody, spicy oil can really lift the spirits when you are feeling all the emotions.
- Helichrysum – a soothing, spiritual and uplifting oil, this one is really helpful for compassion.
Appreciation
Finally, what are the things you are noticing that you can really appreciate in life, that you wouldn’t have appreciated before? This is a nice way to focus your noticing, as it’s unlikely you’ve been able to slow down enough to notice this before, and there may be joy you’d not witnessed.
Is the sunset really beautiful today? What is there to notice that you’ve not seen before; get intentional about finding something.
Essential oils to help you appreciate something:
- Yuzu – like joy in a bottle, this cheery oil is perfect for helping you find something to appreciate.
- Sweet Orange – this sweet, fresh, cheery citrus oil will help you find the joy in anything and lift the spirits.
- Lemongrass – an earthy citrus, Lemongrass is helpful for addressing pessimistic thoughts, which can help you appreciate more.
Ways to harness essential oils to supercharge mindfulness
There’s one particularly potent way to use essential oils to help with mindfulness – and that’s to create a Mindfulness Spritz that you can use to spray around yourself each time you start to feel tense and notice that you haven’t been ‘noticing’.
Use this formula to create your spritz, using whichever oils call to you from the above recommendations (or whatever scent you are drawn to).
- Select a 100ml bottle with an atomiser spray, and add in 100ml of hydrolat of your choice – Chamomile, Lavender, Neroli, Rose or Witch Hazel – and blend in up to 30 drops (total) of a mix of up to three different essential oils.
- Set a timer periodically (e.g. every 2 hours) to begin with, to remind yourself to begin your noticing practice. Each time you engage with noticing, spray yourself with your spritz – and over time, your body will learn to associate this spray with your mindfulness practice.
- Then, you can use the spray whenever you like – to cultivate a more mindful approach and cultivate presence, and each time you do, the scent will drop you into the peaceful state you’ve been cultivating, more quickly, by remembering that this is the scent that has you dropped into a more mindful way of being.
For ease, if you”re not sure which oils to try, you could start with 30 drops of our Mindful pure essential oil mixed into your chosen hydrolat.
Happy mindfulness cultivation.