Essential Oils for Mindfulness and Meditation

A hands-on guide showing how essential oils can support and enhance meditative and mindful practices

• Details safe and effective methods to incorporate essential oils into your mindfulness or meditation practice

• Explains the many ways essential oils benefit the mind, such as how odors can immediately draw your attention to the present moment, trigger a specific state of consciousness, or provide a way to regain composure quickly

• Provides the latest scientific research on the emotional, psychological, physiological, and neurological effects of essential oils on the mind, body, and nervous system

• Includes an easy-to-follow chart to help you choose the right essential oil for you

For millennia, the spiritual power of odor--such as from incense or frankincense--has been used to symbolize intention, stimulate awareness of our spiritual self, and accentuate rite and ritual. Drawing on this power, as well as their healing qualities, essential oils can provide the perfect complement to meditation or mindfulness practice.

Outlining the practice and benefits of meditation and mindfulness in combination with the use of essential oils, Heather Dawn Godfrey explains how these practices hone and sustain a conscious awareness of "being" in the present moment, focusing attention on what you are sensually experiencing and leaving no space for regrets, traumas, fears, anxiety, or anticipation. Providing the latest scientific research on the restorative, rehabilitative, and psycho-emotional healing effects of essential oils, she explains how the sensory experience of odors can immediately draw your attention to the present moment, trigger a specific state of consciousness, such as a deeper meditative state, or offer a way to regain composure quickly when dealing with life's ups and downs. She shows how many essential oils naturally reduce stress and anxiety, promote a peaceful attitude, support concentration, regulate breathing, and stimulate serotonin and GABA pathways in the brain, making them ideal aids to mindfulness and meditation.

Explaining methods to incorporate essential oils into your practice, Godfrey introduces readers to the "Gem" essential oils--a group of oils specifically selected for attaining and maintaining a state of mindfulness, as well as a broad spectrum of therapeutic properties--and she provides an easy-to-follow chart to help you select the oil that is right for you. Offering a hands-on practical guide to integrating essential oils into mindful and meditative practice, the author shows how each of us has the ability to self-generate a calm, tranquil, and worry-free state of mind.