Ayurvedic Essential Oils For Depression

Please don’t disturb me……… Leave me alone……. I need some private space …… Are the 3 solid statements behind the killer problem ‘Depression’…. I’m not threatening you. Depression when left unnoticed will turn out as a major health issue leading to the extreme situation of all illnesses. It might even cause death. Sudden break in a relationship, losing your job, chronic health disorders, death of a dear one, work pressure and certain other traumatic conditions may be the reasons lying behind depression.

Ayurveda is one among the oldest healing methodologies, when studies reveal that it is more than 5,000 years old with proven remedies for a perfect and harmonized living with nature, how can it be without a remedy for the ‘dangerous depression?’ Of course, Ayurveda has the best cure for depression as it deals with mind and body together with the touch of senses, feelings and emotions. When depression being a disarray of the mind, what else than Ayurvedic essential oils can treat this from the scratch??? Think and come let’s discuss about depression in detail.

What is depression? Depression is a universal problem and it cannot be restricted to people of a particular country or a continent. According to the Medical Dictionary, Depression is defined as ‘a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty with thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal thoughts or an attempt to commit suicide’. In Ayurvedic terms, depression and other disorders related to the mind are known as ‘Mansik Rog’. When you are depressed, your days seem blue and ‘down in the dumps’ and the earth will look as if it has stopped rotating.

Ayurvedic way of healing depression: According to Ayurveda, essential oils are said to lighten tejas i.e. augment mental brilliance and clarity.  Unlike the modern antidepressants that suppress the depressed minds, Ayurveda kindles the mind and body by revitalizing the senses while giving a new life and a powerful wave of vitality. It aims at strengthening the nerves and supports the depressed person to strike the right balance of Ayurvedic doshas for complete fitness.

It is a well-known fact that Aromatherapy is a branch of Ayurveda, which uses aromatics as a vital tool for the treatment and prevention of numerous health disorders with the help of Ayurvedic essential oils. The natural and enriching fragrance of Ayurvedic essential oils rejuvenates the mind and senses through the limbic system. The most celebrated essential oils to treat depression are:

  • Rosemary essential oil: This oil is a mental stimulant that counters depression, nervous exhaustion, frequent mood swings, stress disorders and helps uplift your spirit. Inhaling the evergreen aroma of this oil from a tissue will give you clarity, relaxation and keep your thoughts focused towards a positive energy.
  • Lavender essential oil: Here comes my ‘darling’ essential oil. Lavender is an excellent stimulant that can invigorate your entire system with its antidepressant and stimulating properties. The magical fragrance of this oil when added to your bath tub or used as a massage oil with any of your favorite carrier oils can work the wonder by granting a calming as well as soothing effect on your body. It relaxes your muscles, strengthens your broken feelings, treats anxiety, alleviates stress and induces good sleep, helping you to recover slowly and steadily from depression. The rich and floral aroma of Lavender augments the alpha brain wave frequency in the backside of the brain, which is related to calmness.
  • Ylang Ylang essential oil: The name itself has a sense of sweetness blended with healing values. Known popularly as the ‘flower of flowers’, Ylang Ylang oil is trusted to treat depression as it instills a calming effect on the nervous system and guarding you in case of stress, depression, anxiety, fear, high blood pressure, sleeping disorders and hypertension with its antidepressant, sedative, hypotensive, nervine and antiseptic properties. Dr. Miriam Kinai’s book on ‘How to use Ylang Ylang Essential Oil (Aromatherapy)’ will be of great use to you in improving your entire health and vitality.
  • Frankincense essential oil: This is an extremely useful oil for its highly valuable therapeutic properties. The exceptional aroma of Frankincense essential oil grants you the promising ray of hope that you long for while you are depressed. Sadness, anxiety, loneliness, confusion, disappointment and other problems related to depression can be perfectly kissed with the benefits of this oil.
  • Jasmine essential oil: Ah! Jasmine! What a mesmerizing fragrance it has? This natural floral mist is a mood enhancer used in alleviating pains, treating anxiety and soothing depression. The attention-grabbing aroma of this flower boosts the beta waves in the front part of the head, which is generally associated with a receptive state of mind and vigilance.

Depression is easy to pronounce but exceedingly intricate to experience. If checked in the initial stages and treated in a systematic manner with the proper advice of your Ayurvedic practitioner can help you swim against the tide easily.

To experience the beauty of life, all you need to do is to just clear the spider’s web that has rusted your thoughts and feelings……..….If you can’t then who can??????

Thought for the day: Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well

Suggested reading:

  1. The Fragrant Mind: Aromatherapy For Personality, Mind, Mood and Emotion by Valerie Ann Wormwood
  2. Aromatherapy For Dealing With Depression by Dr Miriam Kinai

Reference Links:

  1. What is Depression? By Medical News Today
  2. Aromatherapy from Ayurveda’s Perspective by Yayoi Stavish
  3. Antidepressant Ylang Ylang Oil by Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

Best Ways To Use Ayurvedic Essential Oils

Ayurveda is a gift to mankind and it follows the implausible elements of nature. This safe science trusts and believes that human being is a part of nature and his illness should also be treated in a natural way using the gifts of ‘Mother Nature’. Here comes the importance of Ayurvedic essential oils which are derived from the natural plant extracts. These oils have therapeutic properties for which it has been used since ages in traditional medicine and folk medicine.

In the recent times, you might have heard about the essence and effective use of essential oils in Aromatherapy but won’t you get surprised if I say that Aromatherapy itself is one of the ways of healing holistically in Ayurveda? This ancient therapy of curing human beings have suggested numerous ways of using Ayurvedic essential oils and the best ways are here for your guidance.

  1. Aromatic bath: A popular adage goes like this ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’, as Ayurveda insists highly on keeping yourselves and your environment clean, it prescribes taking bath twice daily either with the use of herbs or Ayurvedic essential oils in your bath tub.  Adding few drops of essential oils to your bath tub will give you a refreshing bath, which would be energizing and help you stay calm physically and emotionally.
  2. Essential oils massage: You work all day long all through the week; won’t you feel that your mind and body needs some ‘Quality Time To Rest’? Don’t need to go in search of quality time to rest, instead your life partner can help you discover it apparently with a caring massage with the sweet-smelling Ayurvedic essential oils. You can also try exploring the real sense of relief and peace after a systematic massage by an Ayurvedic expert in a nearby Ayurvedic center if you really feel like having a space for yourself. Ayurvedic massage with healing essential oils are often said to alleviate stress, trigger your olfactory sense, make your skin supple and give a never before newness to your life.
  3. As a vitalizing household cleaner: Home is the best place to give a great start to everything and everyone of your family. Why can’t you try complimenting your home by adding few drops of refreshing essential oils to your floor cleaner, washing machine and at the time of washing your dishes and cleaning your toilets? Lemon essential oil is often recommended for laundry, cleaning dishes and other general cleaning as it has the potential to remove tough, oily and greasy stains. You can also try using essential oils with clean, fresh, flowery and woody aroma to bring the real effects of nature even when your doors are closed.
  4. For skin care: Nothing other than certain selective Ayurvedic essential oils can caress your skin and take better care of them. You can use a wide range of skin-friendly essential oils like lavender essential oil, lemon essential oil, rose essential oil, sandalwood oil, ylang ylang essential oil, palmarosa essential oil, tangerine essential oil, mandarin essential oil, chamomile essential oil, geranium essential oil and few other. You can add few drops of any of the above essential oils in your favorite lotions, creams, carrier oil, carrier lotion, cocoa butter etc, to get set with your ultimate skin care pack.
  5. Diffuser/Air-Freshener: Using essential oils in your diffuser or in your Air-freshener will help you kill germs, bacteria and other harmful viruses in the air while giving you an everlasting aroma especially in the rainy season.
  6. Cold/Warm Compress: Circulation problems, sprains, muscular tension and other pains can be easily treated either with a warm or cold compress. It will be a brilliant idea if you add few drops of essential oils with absolute healing properties like peppermint oil, eucalyptus oil etc to your compress the next time when you feel like getting instant remedy from excruciating pains like menstrual cramps.
  7. Vapor inhalation/ Facial steam: Adding few drops of Ayurvedic essential oils like Eucalyptus oil or Peppermint oil to steaming water and inhaling the steam will help you keep away from the persisting problems like sinus, bronchitis, cold, flu etc. You can also add few drops of refreshing oils like lavender oil or other cleansing oil like chamomile oil to warm water and use it as a facial steam for deep cleansing.

Note: The way of using Ayurvedic essential oils plays a dominant role on its healing potential. Do not use essential oils directly to the skin as more pure the oil, more concentrated it is.

Reference Links:

  1. Essential Oils by Wikipedia
  2. Methods of Application by Nature’s Gift
  3. How to Use Essential Oils Effectively by David Crow, L.Ac. Published in Yogi Times
  4. What is Aromatherapy by National Association For Holistic Aromatherapy

Ayurvedic oils for common cold

Catching up with common cold is as easy as falling off a log. Though it is not an acute problem, it has the worst power to completely spoil your routine activities. Common cold is often irritating, maddening, frustrating and disgusting. It changes your look and gives the impression of being completely sick. Over-the-counter drugs might often look attractive, appealing and seem to be the quickest way for treating your cold. Frequent intake of such medications might look like granting you instant relief but do not destroy the virus completely and have their own adverse side effects. This may be due to the excess intake of chemical formulas like acetaminophen, intranasal zinc, dextromethorphan (DXM), Tylenol etc.  All you need to take in at this time is a natural therapy like Ayurvedic oils that destroy the harmful virus from within, proffering you better health and a protective shield to prevent recurrent infections.

Causes and symptoms: This might occur due to seasonal changes, contagious virus spread through air, through minute air droplets from the affected person and much more during all times of the year. Each year billions of people in the world are affected by cold and a recent report says that it is over one billion people who are affected by cold in the United States every year. Little ones get cold often from their schools and day care centers when the other children next to them are affected by cold cough, sneezes or blow their nose.

Common cold lasts up to 7 days and the troubling symptoms are runny nose, itchy eyes, scratchy throat, nasal congestion, difficulty in breathing, headache, muscular pain, sore throat, cough, decreased appetite, sneezing and at times may lead to viral fevers also.

Ayurvedic essential oils for common cold: You will certainly feel great if you come to know that using Ayurvedic essential oils for your common cold can treat your illness without making you feel tired and drowsy like your cough syrups and other over-the-counter medicines. Few such energizing Ayurvedic oils are:

  1. Eucalyptus essential oil: This is a celebrated remedy for years together for common cold and its unfavorable symptoms. Eucalyptus essential oil helps in effectively fighting cold, cough, bronchitis, asthma, flu, sinusitis, fever and other such infections. You can use it as a vaporizer, rub or add few drops to your bath tub or to hot water for steam inhalation.
  2. Peppermint essential oil: Peppermint oil with its anti-viral properties is a proven remedy for respiratory illnesses like flu and cold. Peppermint essential oil blended with rosemary and lavender essential oil can be added to boiling water and this steam can be inhaled for getting complete relief from headache, cold, blocked nasal passage, congestion and mental fatigue inducing a peaceful sleep thereafter.
  3. Lavender essential oil: Lavender essential oil is always known for its therapeutic properties and is of great use in treating cold, influenza, cough, headache, insomnia, muscular pains and few other problems related to common cold. This efficacious oil inhibits germs and instantly kills viruses. It acts as a defensive mechanism and boosts your body’s immunity, helping you fight sturdily against cold. You can add it to your bath tub or use it as a room diffuser that will purify your environment by devastating the germs.

No more nervousness or uncomfortable feelings the next time when you get cold as these Ayurvedic essential oils will help you stay as cool as a cucumber and bid goodbye to your annoying cold.

Reference Links:

  1. Over-the-counter drug by Wikipedia
  2. Common Cold from A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia by PubMed Health
  3. Cough and Cold Medicine Abuse by Kids Health from Nemours