Essential Oils for Rest and Relaxation

Essential oils can be used for a variety or purposes and in a variety of ways. Before delving into the specific uses of essential oils, you might want to read two beginning essential oil articles first: Essentials of Essential Oils and Dangers of Essential Oils. Once you have a firm grasp on the basics, you can then begin to experiment with the specific uses and benefits of essential oils in aromatherapy, bathing, fragrance, and therapeutic benefits.

One of the more popular uses for essential oils is to help reduce stress, aid with sleep, and help with relaxation. Since these three topics seem to go hand in hand, this article will focus on all three. The first step is to relieve stress, so you can get your mind off the things troubling you. The second step is to relax and unwind. Once you have done both of these, the next step is to get restful sleep.

While there are many essential oils on the market that can help alleviate stress and aid with sleep, this article has chosen the most popular and least expensive and easiest to use essential oils for this purpose, while also choosing oils that work in combination with each other to provide stress relief, relaxation and to aid with sleep. Using any of these individually will have an affect, but using them together as a routine to aid with stress relief, relaxation and sleep right before bedtime each night or several times per week can help establish a routine and provide optimum results.

At the end of the article, more information on how to use essential oils will be provided.

Essential Oils to Reduce Stress

Essential oils can be used to help relieve stress. While many essential oils on the market can help you relieve stress, the following five are some of the most common and least expensive essential oils that are known to promote stress relief while also providing additional relaxation and sleep benefits.

Tangerine Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for calming nervous tension.

Lavender Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for its relaxation, mild anti depressant properties, and calming qualities.

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for regulating cardio and respiratory rhythms while calming nerves, mild anti depressant properties and helps relieve stress.

Geranium Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for calming nerves, balancing adrenals, and has a mild anti depressant property.

Essential Oils to for Relaxation

All of the listed essential oils for reducing stress also can be used to help with relaxation. In addition to those listed above, the following essential oils also help with relaxation:

Jasmine Essential Oil – this essential oil is known to soothe nerves, calm, and help with relaxation.

Sandalwood Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for having a harmonizing and calming effect, aids with relaxation, nervous tension and exhaustion.

Rose Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for a wide variety of calming and relaxation properties, including: depression, anger, grief, fear, nervous tension.

Essential Oils to Aid with Sleep

The essential oils used for relaxation and stress relief will also help aid with sleep. In addition to those oils already listed, some essential oils that aid with sleep are listed below.

(Roman) Camomile Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for its calming and mild inflammation healing properties, can aid with PMS symptoms in women.

(German) Camomile Essential Oil – this essential oil is known for a calming and anti-inflammatory property, especially when applied to skin.

Neroli Essential Oil – this essential oil has a calming effect, aids with tension, fear, nerves, and helps with mild depression. This is one of the strongest sedative essential oils for help with sleeping.

Marjoram Essential Oil – this essential oil has muscle relaxation properties when applied to the skin, is calming, slightly warming, and can help with sleep and relaxation.

Combining Essential Oils

Essential oils should generally be diluted when used, and usually are added in small quantities to another oil carrier. Grapeseed oil is the most common oil carrier for adding the therapeutic essential oil, but just about any massage oil or lotion can be used to add the essential oil to.

All of the essential oils in this article can be combined together, but it is recommended when first starting to use essential oils that you use each one individually first, to ensure you respond well to the essential oil and do not have any allergic reaction to it. These essential oils should NOT be used while pregnant. As always, consult your health care professional before using any holistic treatment or medication while pregnant, nursing, or on a child under the age of 12.

The essential oils can be used in one of three ways:

Heaters or Vaporizer – using an approved essential oil warmer, you can place a few drops of the essential oil into the warmer or heater and breathe in the fragrance of the oil. For use with a vaporizer, a few drops of each oil in the vaporizer and breathing the vapors will have a very calming and quick reaction time.

Lotions or Oils – using essential oils in lotions or massage oils help provide both topical (on the skin) therapeutic benefits while also providing fragrance and aromatherapy benefits. Add a few drops of each essential oil to the base oil or lotion and mix well. Once mixed the essential oil mixture can then be applied directly to the body, massaged into the skin. Pulse points at the temples, neck behind the ears, chest, wrists, behind the knees and on any location where there is pain or stiffness are all good locations to apply essential oil topical treatments. Keep away from open wounds, scratches, rashes, sensitive skin areas, eyes and mucous membranes.

Bath or shower – essential oils can be placed into a small dish or shallow plate and used in the shower for an aromatherapy benefit. The steam and humidity from the shower will release the essential oil fragrance, which can be inhaled. If soaking in a tub, both a topical and aromatherapy benefit can be achieved.

Knowing How Much Essential Oil to Use

It is important to never apply undiluted essential oil directly on your skin. All essential oils must be diluted either with water, such as in a bath, or in a cream, lotion or carrier oil base.

When adding essential oils into an oil or lotion base, use three drops (essential oils should be measured with a dropper) for every 6ml of base.

When adding essential oils to a bath, you can use three to six drops of essential oil per tub. The important thing to remember is to never use more than six total drops per tub, so if you want to use more than one essential oil fragrance, balance them all so as to not use more than six drops total. Allow at least 20 minutes in the tub for the oil to absorb into your skin and the fragrance to have aromatherapy benefits.

Never take any essential oil listed above internally. There are teas and other products with the same name as the essential oils listed above that offer the same therapeutic results, but they are weaker and distilled differently, specifically for internal consumption. Essential oils are not for internal consumption.

For a burner, warmer or vaporizer, use 1-3 drops of each essential oil. Experiment with the fragrances listed in this article to find a combination that is pleasing.

Because this article listed many essential oils, you may not be able to use all the essential oils at one time. A good routine could include a combination of one stress relieving essential oil, one relaxation essential oil, and one sleep aid essential oil in each medium. In other words, one from each category used in a warmer, then use one from each category in a bath, and then one from each category in a lotion or massage oil.

Lastly, using a water spray bottle, you can add three drops of essential oil to every 12 ounces of water, shake the bottle vigorously to mix the oil with the water, and lightly spray your pillows and bedding. Allow the spray to dry, and the light fragrance of the oils will help lull you into a peaceful sleep.

Sweet dreams!