LAVENDER A VERY VERSATILE ESSENTIAL OIL
Lavender is from the same family as Rosemary and can be used in much the same way as Rosemary in cooking, often used in French and Moroccan dishes, it is relatively easy to grow and has a multitude of uses but here I want to talk about the use of Lavender as an essential oil.
Like all essential oils do not use in pregnancy or breastfeeding and in epilepsy and a known allergy
Lavender is the only essential oil that can be used neat on the skin (its extremely rare for anyone to have a reaction) and very useful to have in the first aid kit for MINOR burns where the skin is unbroken and the appropriate first aid routine as taken place first i.e. placing affected area into cold running water for 20 mins. It helps prevent scaring, its good to apply with a cotton bud on spots (unbroken skin) and insect bites and in fact applied onto pulse spots like the wrists, backs of knees and temples, neck etc. will help avoid being bitten in the first place. However for massage of large areas a 1% dilution for the head and face and 2% dilution for the body in a suitable carrier. If adding lavender to a bath either dilute in carrier oil and if you have no carrier it can be diluted in some milk and added to the bath.
It's one of the most popular of essential oils in Aromatherapy and has been used in healing in one form of another for centuries. Dried lavender bags have been used in time gone by to deter moths and insects in linen drawers as well as to fragrance them. It was used as an antiseptic back in Roman times who used it to cleanse their skin and wounds and the word comes for the Latin "Lavare" meaning to wash. Lavender was also very popular in Elizabethan times and English lavender was cultivated around Mitchum Surrey and now cultivated extensively in Norfolk.
It's properties were discovered or rather re-discovered by the French chemist Gattefosse quite by accident when he burned his hand and having no water to cool it he plunged it into a vat of lavender essential oil, he noticed how well the burn healed with no scaring and so heralded the birth of modern Aromatherapy.
It can lower blood pressure so can make the user feel a bit dull and drowsy so some caution is needed. It has a calming effect on the mind and can help insomnia however only in small doses if too much is used it will have the opposite effect. It's good for muscular aches and strains and beneficial for the respiratory system helping ease catarrh, laryngitis and colds (a couple of drops to some hot water for inhalations). It helps menstrual cramps massaged over the lower back and abdomen. Its good for headaches either a drop neat on the temples or better still added to some tepid water to make a compress to apply across the forehead
On a spiritual level Lavender helps stabilises the physical, etheric and astral bodies therefore induces a calm state of mind and helps dispel anger and soothes the spirit and helps dispel negativity.
There are so many ways to use this valuable essential oil both neat on the skin for spot treatments in dilution for massage and in the bath, as an inhalation, on pillows to help insomnia and in a burner and can be made into a room spray (a few drops of the essential oil added to some water add a drop of liquid detergent this acts as an emulsifier to disperse the essential oil throughout the water and can be placed in an atomiser
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Astrid Brown (Author)
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