How do you decide what essential oils to use?

Hello! It’s spring time now and flowers are blooming, the temperature is just right to have the windows open, and the wind is blowing enough to make me want to go fly a kite.  This is a favorite time of year for me. 

This blog is here to address questions people have asked us or to give tips and ways to use oils. Today I was asked why do I love essential oils?  I love them because of how they make me feel.  Isn’t that really why we use them?  They make us feel good, feel cleansed, feel rejuvenated, happy, uplifted, energized, healthy, any number of feelings.  We want to do something good for ourselves.  Something to improve our quality of life.

That’s the criteria you should use when deciding which oil to use and when.  How do they make you feel?  How do you want to feel right now?  Do you have a headache?  Try some Peppermint.  Do you feel tired and worn out?  Try Energize.  Do you feel jangled and on edge?  Try Quiet Moments.  Find what makes you feel centered, strong, and yourself.  Then you will be using essential oils the way they should be used.

As for me, I want to think of spring and all of the new growth it brings so I am going to diffuse Revitalize and watch the neighbor kids fly their kites.  


--JC Shannon

We got an amazing question on Facebook today from a fabulous fan asking why essential oil scents vary from company to company.  We wanted to explore this a little more!  So, Judy, to go a little further, let's use Peppermint for our example. We could both go to the same farm and harvest the same plant, but if we use different distillation methods the essential oil will smell different. For this example, let us keep all variables the same except distillation method. The first method uses low heat and low pressure to maintain the highest therapeutic quality.  The other method really wants a strong smelling peppermint, and wants to increase the yield (or amount) of oil extracted so a high heat, high pressure distillation process is used.

The second method will have a much stronger or bolder peppermint smell, and some people may confuse that for potency or quality. Don't let that fool you! When the heat and pressure are turned up it does increase the yield and also gives a stronger smelling oil, but it also starts to remove parts or components that make up the peppermint, and you may lose some, or lots (depending on heat and pressure) of the therapeutic properties.

The example above may be one of many factors to producing similar smelling essential oils. There are many small changes that may occur. The weather and seasons also effect plants, as well as the amount of water available, when the plant is harvested, and which part of the plant is distilled. Some essential oil companies only use the leaves, or maybe the roots, berries, or it could be just  the bark that is required.

So the chance of you finding a company that sells essential oils with the same exact smell are low.  They would have had to purchased from the same farmer, and from the same distillation batch. With all this in mind, essential oil users should be looking for a company that understands the distillation process, and works with quality farmers. If a company sells the exact same oil year after year after year, with no change in smell, tone, or quality, this should be cause to raise a red flag.  Perfumes smell the same because they are engineered from exact formulas. Essential oils are from nature and plants don't follow exact formula's, their free spirits ebb and flow from crop to crop, and season to season.  Thanks Judy for asking such a great question!

The cold months of winter can be a dreary time. We want to help raise your spirits with our Uplift blend! http://www.rockymountainoils.com/shop/Uplift.htm