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Sept. 29, 2022

55: How to Use Subtle Aromatherapy for Energetic Healing

55: How to Use Subtle Aromatherapy for Energetic Healing

In today’s show, Liz shares one of her favorite aspects of using aromatics; Subtle Aromatherapy.  Liz shares why she loves it, what it is, and how you can incorporate this gentle practice into your life or professional work to support healing, meditation, and spiritual practices.

What You Will Hear in Episode 55:

  • Liz's definition of Subtle Aromatherapy
  • What do we mean by "energy" 
  • 3 Methods of Subtle Aromatherapy Application 
  • 5 Essential Oils to get you started in Subtle Aromatherapy
  • Smell My Life - Liz confronts a porta pot 

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Transcript

EPISODE #55 TRANSCRIPT

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 Liz Fulcher: You are listening to the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast, episode 55. Today I'm going to be talking about one of my very favorite aspects of using aromatics. It's called Subtle Aromatherapy, and I'm going to share specific ways in which you can use essential oils and their unseen energetic properties to support healing, to support the subtle body, the psyche, and even the soul.  Oh, and PS I'm going to be giving you a discount code to one of my online courses. 

Announcer: You are listening to the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast with your host, Liz Fulcher. If you're interested in learning about essential oils, hearing interviews with industry experts, and discovering ways to grow your own aromatherapy business, this is the podcast for you.

For more information and show notes, visit:

Now, sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and enjoy as Liz shares a dose of Aromatic Wisdom. 

Liz Fulcher: Hello friends, how are you this week? Thank you so much for joining me again for another episode of this podcast. It is fall officially the autumn season here in Pennsylvania, and the leaves are falling and everyone's got out there pumpkin spice coffee, and I've been diffusing more clove and cinnamon essential oils.

Friends in the southern hemisphere are going into summer…lucky things!

So here's a question for you. Do you find that your relationship to aromatics changes as you go into a warmer season that you're using, say, lighter essential oils? Maybe you’re using hydrosols more often, or maybe you avoid essential oils altogether when it's hot and humid?  I'd be curious to know that. 

And by the same token, as we here in the northern hemisphere move into the cooler season, I noticed my tastes for essential oils changing to things that are more warming and spicy like Black Pepper Essential Oil, and I'd be interested to know if you are personally affected by the seasons and your use of essential oils, hydrosols, CO2s; whatever aromatics you are using, even carrier oils. Do you find that those change for you with the seasons?

I don't have any announcements today other than, as I said in the intro, I'm going to be talking about one of my online courses and I'm going to be giving you a discount code so you can get the course at a reduced price.

All right. Let's get into today's topic of Subtle Aromatherapy.

So you know that I'm going to have to start with a definition of Subtle Aromatherapy. But before I get into that, I just want to give you a little backstory about my personal interest in energetic work. 

I've always been open to the idea that there's more to life than what we can see and touch, and feel. And of course, I've been working with essential oil since 1991. Well, in 1996, I found a book by Patricia Davis called Subtle Aromatherapy. It was published in 1996, and when it came out, I was over the moon with the contents of the book. Patricia Davis combines energetic concepts with essential oils. I sat down and I think I read that whole book in one sitting. To this day, I still practice subtle aromatherapy frequently and sometimes almost unconsciously. 

For example, if I go out to a place where people are congregated kind of close to each other like a movie theater, shopping mall, a concert, or any place where there are a lot of bodies, I know that my energy is mixing with the energies of other people.  I am not talking about anything to do with Covid.

We have this energy field that surrounds us. It extends several feet outside of our physical body, and when you get close to someone, they intermingle. So when I come home, I know that I may have picked up energies from other people, so I use Juniper Berry Essential Oil which is a classic detoxing essential oil.

It's interesting, it detoxes the physical body and it detoxes the energetic body. I don’t make a big production of it. I might simply put a drop on a tissue and waft it around my body. In particular, I make sure that I run it through my solar plexus area. It's like washing your hands when you come home. I do that too, and then I sort of wash my energy field with essential oil. That's a great example of practicing Subtle Aromatherapy. 

In a second I'm going to give you my definition of Subtle Aromatherapy. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what I mean by energy then I'm going to then give you a couple of ideas for methods of application so that you can immediately begin to practice, Subtle Aromatherapy.

Any essential oil you have can be worked into a Subtle Aromatherapy practice, provided you exercise essential oil safety. Then I'm going to give you just four or five essential oils to get started with so you're not overwhelmed.

I'd love to think that when you are finished listening to this podcast episode, you can go right to your essential oils, choose one and use it in a subtle way, applying the concepts of this practice. 

Here's my personal favorite definition of subtle aromatherapy, which comes right out of Patricia Davis's own book

“What is Subtle aromatherapy? In using this expression, I have in mind primarily the use of essential oils in non-physical ways. Subtle aromatherapy makes use of oils to affect the subtle body, the psyche, and indeed the soul. In doing so, the user draws on the subtle, energetic, or vibrational qualities rather than their physical properties.

Subtle aromatherapy may be described as one form of vibrational healing. It also embraces the use of essential oils as an aid to meditation, affirmations, visualization, and all transformative techniques based on inner work.” 

As you can see, this is a very gentle practice. It takes sensitivity, it takes intention on the part of the practitioner because you're working with very subtle energies, the energetic and vibrational qualities of the essential oils, or the hydrosols, or even the CO2s;  whatever aromatics you're working with. Today I'm focusing on essential oils because I think that's commonly where most of this work happens.

I do a lot of Subtle Aromatherapy with hydrosols as well. Some other forms of energy medicine you may have heard of are Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Qigong, Distant Healing, and Spiritual Healing. These all come under the category of Energy Medicine and Subtle Aromatherapy is right there.

What I love about Subtle Aromatherapy is that it’s so versatile. It's really easy to incorporate into anything else you're doing, whether you have a Clinical Aromatherapy practice, you are a hobbyist, you have a yoga studio or you are a stay-at-home mom. It makes no difference. There's really no wrong way of using Subtle Aromatherapy as long as your intentions are good, and as long as you're using essential oil safely. That's always a given.

Anytime you pick up a bottle of essential oil, absolute or CO2, you need to first understand the safety, aspects of working with that aromatic. Actually, if you're new to essential oils, I'll put a link in the show notes to a blog post I wrote about essential oil safety called Dumb Mistakes I’ve Made with Essential Oils. It's kind of funny because I write about all the things I've done wrong with essential oils over the years.

Some are horrific, and then I follow up with, you know, the correct things you should actually be doing. It's interesting. I love the chemistry of the essential oils, and I've had students say, Liz, how can you be into all this weird vibrational, energetic, unseen stuff when you are so grounded in science essential oil chemistry? 

My response is always this: It’s two sides of the same coin.

On one hand, we are physical beings with a physical body that we need to protect from substances that are caustic or toxic, or dangerous; and essential oils can be if you don't know what you're doing. So we study chemistry to have a better understanding of those very complex molecules that make up essential oils. Some of those will affect the shelf life. Some of those will affect safety. That is the benefit of studying chemistry. It gives you just the deepest understanding of the substance that you're working with. 

Now, on the other side of the same coin, you have our energetic body.

It is widely understood and accepted in scientific circles that everything's composed of energy. Everything has its own unique pattern of vibration called frequencies, and the human body is no different. It is actually made up of layers of energy known as the subtle energy bodies, and they interconnect, they interact, and this forms our personal energy field or our ORIC field.

You know what, I'm going to put a link to a really good book on this topic. I'll put the link in the show notes. The book is called The Subtle Body and Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy. That may answer a lot of questions for you. 

When there is a disruption in this subtle energy body, it eventually works its way into the physical body, and we begin to express it physically.

We get challenges, we get pain, we have deep emotions, depression, fatigue, and so forth. So when you stop and think about energy and plants, essential oils are strong broadcasters of energy because they're very concentrated and they have the imprint of the original plant, which produced it. So it's understandable how the energy of the essential oils, i.e., the plants, can interact and affect the energy field of the human body, and this becomes especially clear when you start studying and learning the energetic properties of the essential oils. 

So yes, it is absolutely true that essential oils have important chemical properties and it's important to understand them, but in my opinion, this is a very limited perspective. It's only half the story of what is happening in our human body and also only half the story of the potential that we have as Aromatherapists to work with and heal the body and maintain wellness. If you're using essential oils with the physical body and the energetic body, you've got a very powerful combination.

All right, let's move into a different area of Subtle Aromatherapy, and that is the 
Methods of Application. 

There really are unlimited ways that you can use essential oils energetically and subtly. You can even do distant healing with essential oils. But I thought today I would just go ahead and give you three that are super easy to start with, that are probably already familiar to you as an aroma therapist, and they are misting, diffusing, and anointing.

Subtle Energy Method #1: Misting. 

Misting is when you add essential oil and water into a misting bottle and spray it around. You can use a mist if you're not doing it subtly to just make the room smell better. You can use them for killing bacteria and things like that. When you're using a mist energetically, you clear and cleanse the room to bring in positive energy or to clear negative energy. Again, Juniper Berry Essential Oil or Hydrosol is my go-to energetic cleanser. If there's been an argument in the room, I will often make a little spray. Actually, I'm probably more likely to use a diffuser, to be honest. If, however, I've had someone stay at my home, or in the case of when  I was teaching from my home, I would always make sure I had made up a glass spray bottle with Juniper Berry and a couple of other oils, and I would spray the entire classroom after my students left.

I would mist every room. My students had been in my kitchen, living room, and the bathroom. Spray denotes more water, so I actually did a gentle mist. I would mist the chairs and the tables and I'd wipe everything down. And the whole time that I was misting, my intention was to clear away their energy, to clear and clean the space so it was fresh and sparkling new so my family would not absorb the student’s energy. 

Create a whole bottle! It’s nice if you have a yoga center or if you want to mist your entire home. If you have an Airbnb, you absolutely want to mist between guests. If you’ve had an argument at home or your kids are fighting, you can just use the diffuser. 

You can mist a room before and after energy work, after an argument,  after any negative experience. Mist your hands before and after any kind of session like bodywork or Reiki. You can mist the receiver of energy. You can mist just the area of the chakra that you're working on.

Keep in mind, if somebody's wearing nice clothes and you're misting them, you may want to put a sheet over them or something to protect their clothing. How much do you use? I do a 1% or less blend, even a half percent. So if you figure that five to six drops of essential oil, let's just say six drops of essential oil in one ounce of water is 1%.

Remember, this is a very subtle vibrational method, and essential oils are highly concentrated, so you don't really need very much at all. You could probably put in one drop and it would still be effective, but there is the joy of the aroma of the essential oil and that makes the experience more pleasant. Let's see. Add five to six drops of essential oil to one ounce of spring water or hydrosol in a misting bottle shake before each use. You don't, for something like this, you don't really need to put in an emulsifier if you don't want to.

The less you put in there, the better. So just remember to shake it every time because the water and the essential oil will separate. I would use a  4 oz glass bottle or PET hard plastic.

 

Subtle Energy Technique #2: Diffusion. Again, diffusing will clear and cleanse the energy in a room and can bring in positive energy. If you're doing a meditation for, say world peace, you can have the diffuser near you and the energy kind of concentrates your intention, your vibration. Whatever you are emitting, the essential oil can augment that and, and make it bigger.

You can use a diffuser, a big one in a whole room, or just a little tiny one if you have a meditation corner.  I have a really good podcast episode, if I may say so myself - it is AWP 55: Creating a Sacred Space with Essential Oils. In that episode, I talk about several Subtle Aromatherapy techniques that are used to help clear a space.

Subtle Energy Method #3: Anointing with Essential Oils. We tend to think of anointing as with priests and in a religious context. But anointing can be used for a number of purposes.

Anointing with essential oils can be used to bless a situation, to help balance energy and the energy centers, and to give a special meaning or recognition. Anointing can be used to set boundaries to protect and ask for guidance. You can anoint a doorframe so that everyone who walks through that doorframe into your home or your office is blessed and brings peace.

Once again, intention is really key when you're doing energetic work. If you're doing a doorframe you can spray it, you can also just add one drop neat on the doorframe (depending on the wood). But for human body anointing, you would mix the essential oil in massage oil and apply it to the appropriate place such as an energy center, the forehead, or the top of the head with your fingertip, or just use it in a body massage. Again, in terms of the amount I would go, very light, half a percent, or a 1% blend is plenty for anointing. And finally, this conversation would not be complete if I didn't give you some essential oils to get started with.

Essential Oils for Subtle Aromatherapy

Any essential oil that you have can be used in subtle energy work, but you don't always know what they do. So I'm going to give you five essential oils to start with and just give you a very quick one or two sentences about the energetic properties of each. Then, when I'm done with that, I'm going to tell you about my online course that I'm giving you a discount on.

Five oils to get you started with subtle aromatherapy. 

Number one is....what do you think?

You're probably saying, Juniper Berry. That's actually number two. Number one is Lavender Essential Oil (Lavandula angustifolia). Because Lavender is a universal energy cleanser and one of the most important energetic oils because it balances all energy states.

It's great to clear and cleanse, a room. It brings in positive energy. It calms, comforts, stabilizes, and settles the emotions of the heart. Honestly, Lavender is good for everything externally and is also great for us on a subtle level. 

Number two is Juniper Berry Essential Oil. This is my favorite essential oil for clearing negative energies.

As I said, use it in a spray or in a diffuser. If you’re a sensitive person like I am, you will feel other people's energies. If someone comes to visit or you have lunch with someone, you may need to clear yourself, and your energy field afterward with Juniper Berry, just to clear their stuff out of you.

Juniper Berry is great for protection. It is a very good protecting essential oil (or hydrosol) against negative influences and clearing energy blocks. ‘

Eucalyptus is another great essential oil for clearing. It also clears and cleanses a room. It dissolves energy blockages. I like to use eucalyptus when I feel suffocated by responsibilities.

The more you work with essential oils and their energetic properties, the more you'll begin to see a relationship between the benefits that essential oils give to our physical body and often translate into our energetic body. So just as Juniper Berry is a physical detoxifier when you’ve overindulged with food or drink, it’s great for clearing energetic congestion in our subtle body. Well, Eucalyptus is a bit like that. It's great for the lungs, and I find it's also great if you feeling emotionally suffocated by the responsibilities of another person. Eucalyptus is super.

I also like Sweet Orange Essential Oil. A lot. I love the smell of it. It's just such a great mood lifter, and it resonates very deeply with the second chakra. I haven't talked about chakras at all in this episode other than what I just said, but that is an energy center in the body that helps us open our creativity,  joy, sexuality, happiness and self-confidence.

Sweet Orange has this beautiful childlike energy that's a great one to start with. And generally everyone likes the aroma of Orange.

And finally, any of the Conifer Essential Oils are great for clearing and cleansing as well. Pine is inexpensive, and that would be a great one to help to repel and clear negative energy, but it can also increase the energy in your subtle body if you're feeling depleted or stagnant.

So there are five essential oils that you can use just to get started. You probably have at least one of those in your kit. 

So this feels like a good place to talk to you about the online course that I've created and which I'm offering a discount for you. The training is called Clearing Energy with Essential Oils.

It is a nugget of a course. It's not huge, and it is meant to be an introduction to the concept of working with essential oils in a subtle vibrational manner. It is self-paced. It will teach you 12 essential oils that are effective for clearing energy. The focus is primarily on clearing negative, congested energy.

I will give you three simple methods of application, which actually they're the ones that I talked about today, but I go into them in a little bit more in-depth. It's perfect for beginners to the practice of Subtle Aromatherapy, but also fun for anyone who's not a beginner because I offer, and this is my favorite part of the course, Seven Blessings and Aromatic Rituals with little recipes for using the recommended essential oil. 

So that's, as I said, that's my favorite part of the course. I'm now accepting the coupon that I made for it for my podcast listeners. The code is AWP55. That would be Aromatic Wisdom Podcast number 55. The course is currently $27. You can get it for $10, that's good until October 16th, 2022. 

I'll put a link in my show notes to where you can find the course. But if for some reason you can't get the show notes, if you go to my website, AromaticWisdomInstitute.com/courses. The course graphic is bright yellow. 

That ends the segment on our main topic, Subtle Aromatherapy. 

We talked about:

  • What is Subtle Aromatherapy
  • What is Energy
  • What are some Essential Oils to start with
  • What are three Methods of Application

I hope this information was enlightening and that you have been introduced to a whole new way of using essential oils.

It is time now to Smell My Life! *Children Cheering*

This week in Smell My Life, the way I used an essential oil was so unique and so clever in my little mind, you're going to laugh. :-)

James and I went to a Celtic Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. James bought a kilt and we had a wonderful time. But whenever I go to any of these public outdoor festivals, I just clench my hands in terror at the porta pots. 

I cannot stand to use a porta pot. I would, honestly, prefer to go behind a vehicle before I would go in the Porta Pot. So, for those of you who are not from the United States, a porta pot is an outdoor bathroom facility, a little plastic box like a telephone booth with a hole in it where you go to the bathroom.

It doesn’t flush so I armed myself with an “aromatherapy protection mask”. 

I took a mask, the kind that is shaped like a beak, and I took an aromatic salve - I always have some sort of a salve or ointment or essential oil with me. I'm pretty sure I used Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) because I wanted a strong essential oil.

Actually, I wanted any essential oil high in the component 1,8 cineole. So I took the ointment, put some in the palm of my hand, and added a drop of essential oil to make it strongly aromatic. Then I took this glob of ointment and smeared it in the middle of the inside of the mask then closed the mask. The mask sort of folds in half, so I did just that and slid it inside a small plastic bag and put it in my purse. 

When would go into the porta pot, I'd put the mask on before going in and my nose would be full of this beautiful scent of Bay Laurel. If you wonder why I used an ointment, it's because I did not want the essential oil to evaporate during the course of the day plus I wanted to make sure that it would cling to the inside of my face mask. 

It was brilliant!

I was so happy. I put my little mask on, went in immediately, turned my back to the hole, did my business, and as soon as my pants were up, I was out that door. I don't even think my zipper was up yet.


So if you’re faced with a situation in which you’re going to be confronted with a bad aroma, don’t just put essential oils inside the mask, but put it in a heavy carrier, then, put it in the mask. 

When I came home, I threw the mask away because it was goopy.  So that was how I confronted a public porta pott with courage… and Aromatherapy!

Thank you so much for joining me for episode 55 of the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast.

If you go to AromaticWisdomPodast.com you will see the word REVIEWS on the navigation menu at the top of the page. You can leave a 5-star review if you enjoy this episode - or any of the episodes - and find value in what I share. If you do that I will be delighted and it does help other people find the podcast. 

All right, until next week, my friends, 

Be Happy, Be Well

Liz Fulcher
Podcast Host, Aromatherapy Educator

AromaticWisdomInstitute.com