Lifestyle Choices

Aromatherapy is the art of using essences of plants to treat the skin, the emotions, and the body as a whole. It is one of the most interesting areas of beauty care. For each plant essence has its own unique qualities, yet like a piece of music or a painting will evoke slightly different responses from different people depending on their personalities, needs, and tastes. Learning about aromatherapy, the essences themselves, and some of the things you can do with them is sheer delight. It is also a wonderful way of looking after your skin, calming your nerves when you are overwrought, and creating interesting atmospheres in your living and working environment. If I were allowed only one luxury I could easily dispense with makeup and trips to the hairdresser, but I would never want to be without the beauty of aromatherapy. Let’s start at the beginning.

The origins of aromatherapy, like the plant essences it uses, are still shrouded in mystery. The ancient Egyptians used these essences for their beauty treatments and to embalm their dead. Alchemists from China and Tibet used them for altering states of consciousness and the ancient Greeks and Romans turned to them for their medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities. Traditional Indian medicine, called Ayurveda, has formulas using these special volatile substances for healing and rejuvenation that go back at least three thousand years to when the “rishi” yogis, who lived in the Himalayas, wrote the Vedas: in these books you will rind long and complicated formulas for treating almost every imaginable illness. In many of these mixtures plant essences play an important part.

Fascinated by what I’d heard about the powerful effects plant essences properly used could have on the mind and body, I went to India to take a look at some of the Ayurvedic hospitals that use them. I spoke to patients who had made remarkable recoveries from chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, polio, paralysis, and mental illness, thanks to treatment from these plant-based formulas given merely by applying them to the outside of the body. In India I also met scores of women with exquisite skin for whom the use of plant essences formed the basis of skin and body care, as it had for their mothers’ mothers and grandmothers before them.

ETHERIC OILS

Plant essences are the fine, light, almost etheric essential oils taken from plants in their prime of life. Although they are technically known as essential oils, they have little in common with the fatty oils we know, like olive oil or lanolin. For they are complex hydrocarbons that look more like water than oil. For centuries they have been used for blending perfumes and making incense for religious rites. They are found in tiny droplets in specific parts of different plants in a concentration of between 0.01 and 10 percent; in roots and barks (calamus and cinnamon, for instance), flowers (jasmine and rose), leaves (rosemary and basil), and the rinds of fruit (lemon and orange). Highly volatile, these substances are what give a plant its distinctive smell. They seem to contain the vital essence of the plant that is probably responsible for their beneficial effects.

These effects are so varied and so profound that it is hard to list them all. Many essences stimulate the generation of new cells. (Lavender and orange blossom are particularly good for this.) Some, like fennel, contain plant hormones similar in their chemical structure to estrogen. Mixed with a good carrier oil they make an excellent antiwrinkle treatment. Others have different phytohormones that can be of equal benefit to both dry and oily skin. Many essences profoundly affect the psyche as well, both when they are rubbed on the body and when they are simply inhaled. All essential oils are powerful and, therefore, used only in minute quantities diluted in other oils. Most are easily absorbed into the skin, probably through the hair follicles, which contain sebum, an oily liquid with which they appear to have a natural affinity. From there they can be carried either by the bloodstream or via the lymph and interstitial fluid (the liquid that surrounds all the body’s cells) to other parts of the body. Experiments with animals, for instance, have shown that when an essence is applied to the skin it can reach an internal organ in half an hour.

The synthetic versions of the plant essences, although they include the main components reproduced chemically, do not have the same beneficial effect on people. Some scientists believe that this is because the components of these natural substances have a synergitic quality—they work together to produce an effect greater than the sum of each working part.

Ayurvedic doctors who use essential oils in treatments in India believe that their power depends largely on the vitamins and enzymes they contain, although they freely admit there are probably a myriad of other substances in plants as yet undiscovered that may be responsible for their potency and healing abilities too.

HOW THEIR QUALITIES WERE DISCOVERED IN EUROPE

Many years ago a distinguished French chemist named Gatfossé severely burned his hand while working in his laboratory. In a spontaneous reaction to the agony, he immersed the seared flesh in a container of pure lavender oil. He was astonished to find in a few hours that the hand had virtually healed. This led him to investigate and experiment with (and categorize) the healing and cosmetic properties of a number of essential oils. Then an Austrian biochemist, the late Marguerite Maury, who was twice awarded the Prix Internationale d’Esthétique et Cosmetologie for her work, developed a range of aromatherapy beauty treatments that consisted of applying specially selected essential oils to the skin, particularly along the nerve centers near the spine and on the face.

Maury believed that since each oil has its own special qualities and since each woman is completely individual, the mixture of oils that would treat a particular problem in one woman would not necessarily eliminate the same problem in another. So she mixed her oils on personal prescription, using a pendulum and radiesthesia to select which essences to use. Her main interest was rejuvenation. She strongly believed that aging could be retarded and the degenerative processes, which take place too rapidly in the skin because of neglect, could be reversed with the use of essential oils. She developed a remarkable reputation for her work, curing case after case of intractable acne and restoring the bloom of youth to wealthy middle-aged women in France and England. It soon became obvious that her beauty treatments were far more than skip deep. Clients left her salon feeling renewed and revitalized, a sensation that often lasted weeks or months after the treatments had finished. They slept better, their migraines and arthritic ailments disappeared or greatly diminished, and most remarkable of all, their mental state often improved dramatically, so that they felt happier, more enthusiastic, and more energetic. Madame Maury became fascinated by these psychological effects. She wrote, “Of great interest is the effect of the fragrance on the psyche and mental state, of the individual powers of perception becoming clearer and more acute, and there is a feeling of having to a certain extent outstripped events. They are seen more objectively and, therefore, in a truer perspective. It might even be said that the emotional trouble which in general obscures our perception is practically suppressed.” It is the ability to affect the mental and emotional states of people, common to most plant essences whatever their other properties, that more then any other fascinates me.

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