Vaporization of essential oils

This must be one of the most enjoyable applications of essential oils, and involves vaporizing the oils in a variety of devices into the air that we breathe. This differs from having synthetically fragranced potpourri placed around a room, since with essential oil vaporization, you get both the benefit of a fragrant smelling room, plus the benefits of the therapeutic effects of the essential oils.

The most common way of vaporizing a room is to add the essential oils to a vaporizer which comes made in different materials - from ceramic, terra- cotta, metal and glass etc - all with two separate containers - the top one for water and essential oils (or crystals and essential oils) and the bottom one housing a night candle to provide the gentle heat.

Vapor therapy can also be as simple as dropping some essential oil onto a tissue or handkerchief and smelling it at interval.

When buying a vaporizer opt for one with a large top reservoir - it will help as you would not need to constantly top it up. The general rule is about 6 - 8 drops of essential oil to the water in the top reservoir, but that will also depend on the size of the room.

As soon as the candle starts to heat up the water above it, the essential oil in the water will start to evaporate and the aroma will dissipate.

Use this type of vaporizer with care when around children or elderly people, since the candle is an open flame, and the water can be quite hot.

An alternative to the candle type of diffuser is to use an electric diffuser or an aromastone.

Light-bulb rings are also useful, and are available in ceramic as well as metal. The oils are placed on the ring, and the ring is then placed on a cold, turned-off light bulb. As soon as the light-bulb is switched on, the essential oil starts to evaporate and the aroma dissipates.

Another way to vaporize a cupboard, is to place a few drops of essential oil on a small ball of cotton wool, and then to place the cotton wool ball in a cupboard or drawer - but take care that it does not touch your clothes, since the oil may stain.

Some people use this method to keep fish moths and other undesirables away from their clothes and to add a fragrance to their clothes cupboards. An oil often used to combat fish moths is clove oil, and although strong smelling is a very nice fragrance to have in your cupboards.

Vaporization and fragrance therapy

Since essential oils have their own therapeutic benefits, they are used in fragrance therapy, and although this may be a slightly controversial subject, research has shown some very interesting results of how essential oils when diffused in the air.

Vaporizing the essential oils forces the molecules to become airborne, where we then can benefit in two ways - we trigger our limbic system through our smell sensation by means of the olfactory bulb, plus we can absorb them when we breathe them into our lungs, where they are also absorbed by the body.

The benefits of vaporization is to help with