Essential Oils to help balance your mood

In today’s fast-paced world, life can get pretty stressful. We all need a pick me up from time to time.

While it’s easy to console ourselves with a bottle of wine or a jumbo bar of Dairy Milk, they only make us feel worse afterwards.

The good news is there’s a natural, healthy and calorie free way to boost your mood. Welcome to the wonderful world of essential oils.

The power of essential oils

Essential oils are natural aromatic compounds extracted from plants for their health and beauty benefits.

We’ve known about the healing properties of certain plant extracts for thousands of years. There are almost as many uses for essential oils as there are the flora that compose them, and they play a vital role in many a practitioner’s natural healing work.

Among other things, essential oils can calm stress, restore emotional balance and keep your body’s systems functioning in peak condition.

How do essential oils work?

It’s all to do with our sense of smell. In addition to being the sense most closely linked to memory, smell is also highly emotive. Scents can therefore exert a lot of influence over how we think, feel, and behave.

Aromatherapy harnesses the olfactory power of plants to enhance our state of wellbeing.

With this in mind, here’s our guide to the best essential oils to balance your mood.

i. Lavender

Lavender oil is considered one of, or perhaps the most medicinally useful plants for stress relief, anxiety and short-term memory improvement. The lavender plant contains compounds called linalool and linalyl acetate, which pass through the blood-brain-barrier and quickly affect brain activity. It’s the go-to oil if you’re in a bad mood. There’s probably no essential oil more versatile, whether you require rest, mood elevation or anxiety relief. And if your bad mood is brought on by PMS, lavender can be a great help.

ii. Bergamot

Bergamot has a fresh, sweet, citrus scent that’s familiar to many as the flavouring in Earl Grey Tea. Uplifting and relaxing, it’s good for building confidence and enhancing your mood. It also has a long history of use for oily and troubled skin.

A word of warning with this one though. Citrus oils should not be applied to skin that will be exposed to direct sunlight or ultraviolet light within 72 hours.

iii. Lemon

Like lavender, lemon oil is essential in more than one way. When diffused, it lifts your mood. It provides immune support and can even help you lose weight if you drink a couple of glasses of water with a few drops of lemon oil mixed in daily. What’s more, it’s a useful around the home too, and can make a disinfectant, and silver and jewellery polish. 

iv. Vetiver

Vetiver, a member of the grass family, is a thick oil with an earthy fragrance. It has a powerful calming and grounding effect on emotions, which makes it ideal for massage therapy. Vetiver offers wonderful support for relieving stress and helping with emotional trauma and shock. It also supports restful sleep.

v. Clary Sage

Clary sage is a great oil to have on hand at that time of the month, as it helps balance out oestrogen levels. It’s often used as a remedy for hormonal imbalances, being especially helpful for reducing mood swings, emotional stress, and even PMS cramps.

How to use essential oils to boost your mood

There are a number of ways to use essential oils, but the inhalation methods are usually the best. You can opt for individual oils or use blends. If you choose to blend the oils, you should mix blends in a dark glass bottle that comes with an eyedropper cap. Add a couple drops of oil at a time. Be sure to mix the oils properly by rolling the bottle between your hands.

You may have to experiment a bit to find a blend you like most. Just keep records of which oil you use and exactly how many drops you use. Once you have your blend ready, you can either inhale its scent directly from the bottle, or use a diffuser to spread its scent through your room.

At Castle Thai Spa, we offer a number of treatments that incorporate oils, to soothe, relax and invigorate. Call us on 0131 629 0794