41: Using Essential Oils to Bless New Beginnings

 
This is the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast, Episode 41.
Today I'm going to talk about new beginnings, that exciting time when we're just coming into a new experience, a new idea, a new adventure; and I'm going to share some ways that you can use essential oils and some very simple rituals and blessings to help guide that new experience into a positive manifestation.

Introduction
You're listening to the aromatic wisdom podcast with your host Liz Fulcher. If you're interested in learning about essential oils, hearing interviews with industry experts, and discovering ways to grow your own aroma therapy business, this is the podcast for you. For more information and show notes, visit the website at aromatic wisdom institute.com. Now sit back, relax, take a deep breath. And enjoy as Liz shares a dose of aromatic wisdom.

Hi, everyone, welcome to the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast!
Thank you so much for spending some of your precious time with me today. If you are back after my absence, thank you so much for your patience. And if you're listening for the first time, thank you very much for giving it a try. I do hope you find some value and you can come back again.

If you have been a faithful listener to the Aromatic Wisdom podcast, first of all, thank you so much. You may have noticed that in the seven years that I've been recording, I've had chunks of time where I simply didn't do any recording.  I just didn't show up. So apparently, this is a thing with me.  My apologies. I don't really have any explanation for it.  Other than podcasting is a lot of work and it can be difficult. There's a lot with the editing, and sometimes I'm just focused on other things. But the truth is, I absolutely love this. I love connecting with you in this way. I love to talk, I love to share about aromatherapy and I love getting feedback from you so I have no intention to stop. I'm just hoping I can be more consistent. In the spirit of it being a new year.

I'm recording this in January, 2021. We have a new president in the White House, I'm getting back to podcasting. It really felt like blessing new beginnings, especially with our precious aromatics was a good theme for this episode for this first episode of this new year.

There's a lot of energy, really good energy and power and excitement that comes when you start something new, don't you think? It feels like a clean slate. Whether it's a new year, a new relationship, a new home, a new vision board, a new pair of shoes, newness is exciting!  It can also be an opportunity to bring along that wisdom that you learn from what came before, in particular with the bigger things in life like relationships and  jobs.  It's a good opportunity to find that balance between "Whoo, look what's ahead of me!" and "Now I'm going to learn from my past experiences and do it differently."

When you're facing a new beginning, I really invite you to approach it with mindfulness. What do I mean by mindfulness?  I mean really paying attention.  Rather than just running headlong into a new beginning, stop and ask yourself "what does this new beginning mean to me?"  We have beginnings all the time, every minute of every day is a new beginning. It's a new minute, a new hour, a new day, every second of every day, presents us with the opportunity to restart, to reboot, to be renewed.  If you're able to keep your focus on what you want to receive from the new beginning, and then bless it, it's really a powerful way to to move forward.

So what if we begin to bless these new beginnings? What do you think that would do to the energy the experience as you enter into it?

Let's look at this word "bless".  You know me, I love my definitions and like to start with one. So I did lots of digging around online to find the right definition.  Some of the definitions were a little bit too religious for me, but my favorite one was this:

"A blessing is to infuse something with Love, Holiness, or Divine Will, with resulting joy and prosperity."
 
I just love that. That, to me, is really what you're doing when you bless something, infusing it with Love, Holiness, Divine Will with resulting joy and prosperity.

So if you're going to bless a new beginning, why not further infuse that blessing with the energy of a beautiful aromatic plant! We have these amazing essential oils, we have hydrosols, we have CO2s, we have all sorts of gorgeous ingredients that come from our plants. There are so many ways that we can bless New Beginnings with with these aromatics.

So I'm going to give you an example from my own life.  About five years ago, my husband and I installed new windows in our living room and at one point there was just a big hole in the wall where the large window was to be installed.  As James picked up the new window, I said, "Oh, wait, hang on one minute, I want to do something!"   I ran into the next room and came back with Frankincense essential oil. I anointed the four sides of the window and did a blessing that we would only see beauty from our living room window. When you bless events like this, this starts to make every event a prayer.

Do you know that just before recording today's episode, I blessed my microphone with Frankincense (B. carteri) and Blue Tansy (T. annumm)!  Why those two oils?  First of all, they were what intuitively came to me: Frankincense, for imparting wisdom, and Blue Tansy for clear communication.

Blue Tansy is the color of blue, and blue resonates with the throat chakra, which is the chakra of communication.  I could have used German Chamomile or Yarrow or any oil that was extracted from a blue flower, but Blue Tansy is what came to me intuitively.  My intention was that the words that I send out would impart some kind of healing to whomever needs it.  These are just two examples of ways that you can bless any newness in your life.

What essential oils are best for blessing a new beginning?

This one's a little hard to answer because it's pretty personal; meaning it's going to be a personal choice on your part.  I'll give you some suggestions, but once you begin this practice, you'll start to intuitively know which oils to select and you'll know what to use.

But first, let's talk about safety. You want to consider always before using an essential oil for any reason, the safety of the oil for both your physical body as well as whatever the oil is going to come in contact with them.  For example, if you're blessing a piece of furniture, because you have a new chair or something, then be mindful where you're putting the oil.  If you are blessing your new suede shoes that you 'only walk the right path', maybe put a bit of oil on the sole of the shoe. We have to be practical here.  What's really key is the intention. The actual oil that you use is actually secondary.

In choosing an essential oil for blessing, these are my two rules of thumb:

1. The first is my intuition. I really stop for a moment before I offer this blessing and think about what oil calls to me or what oil I intuitively feel would be good in the situation.  What quality do I want to bring to this blessing?

•  Juniper Berry Essential Oil is a classic if you will want to clear or remove old or negative energy.  I buy a lot of things secondhand;  I really enjoy thrift stores and yard sales.  When I bring something home that has been handled by other people I first wash it then clear the old energy from the previous people that had it.  Juniper Berry essential oil is a classic for clearing energy.  As an aside, I'm going to be doing a live training called Juniper Berry Deep Dive with Liz and  if you're listening to the this recording after January, the replay will be for sale on the website. 
  NOTE: My online course on Juniper Berry:   Deep Dive with Liz: Juniper Berry Essential Oil
  
  
•  Cypress Essential Oil is also good for  clearing old energy. Cypress and Juniper Berry, in their therapeutic applications,  are good for moving fluid.  Those same therapeutic qualities can be translated into energetic qualities.
  NOTE: My online course on Cypress: Deep Dive with Liz: Cypress Essential Oil
  
  
• What about if you're looking for clarity? Then the top notes are great like mints, Eucalyptus, the citrus essential oils... they all bring a quality of lightness, freshness, clearness, brightness, joy. If any of the intentions are on those lines, the top notes are terrific.

I wrote a blog post about top, middle, and base notes here: Essential Oil Shelf Life 

If you want to feel Grounded, you can't go wrong with roots and trees - both embrace the ground and offer groundedness, rest, and calm.  The Base Notes are superb for these emotions. They tend to be therapeutically or chemically very calming to the central nervous system making them terrific to use in a blessing that is for staying grounded, staying calm, staying centered, balanced, and not overwhelmed.

For situations of Love, that can be romantic love that can be a family love. The Flowers are all terrific for blessings of love.  And of course the Queen - Rose Oil.  She's a perfect choice in every possible circumstance where love is, is what you want to be when you want to infuse and bless something with love.
Note:

For Wisdom, I always turn to Frankincense, Galbanum, Mastic,  Palo Santo, and Sandalwood. Those are all sacred oils that really can help to impart wisdom, understanding and knowledge into a situation.

These are literally just a few ideas to kind of get you started on the concept of blessing a situation with an essential oil.

When in doubt, if you if you want to bless a situation a thing, a new beginning, and you don't know what to use, just you can always bless anything with Lavender essential oil. Lavender is a wonderful all-purpose essential oil whether you're using it therapeutically,  energetically or spiritually so that would be absolutely fine.

In terms of how you would use the oils, meaning the methods of use for blessing, again this is up to you use what feels right for the situation.  Remember to always stay within your safety parameters. You don't want oils directly on the skin. And actually, the lighter the dilution,  the lighter the oil the better. It is really more of an let's see your what you're doing is infusing the situation with an intention.

So you do not have to be heavy handed. But you can use roll ons if you want to. You know what I mean? Like little roller ball or roller balls. If you actually wish to anoint or bless a part of the body object. diffusion is always fine if you are about to sit down to a new meditation, and you want to bless the meditation before you begin diffusers. Fine. spray bottles are great. And don't forget I this, this podcast talks about essential oils, but hydrosols are a terrific way to bless any situation because you still have the energy of the plant but the gentleness, you know of water, of a hydrosol.

Remember, you can do these blessings anytime, not just in the new year, but anytime during the day.  You'll know when when a situation comes up where it's something new. Perhaps you've just made a new friend.   I have a new friend who, actually isn't new.

I've known my friend Marilyn for over 20 years and she's is my neighbor.  Recently, she's been walking around the neighborhood and we kind of just connected and we've been going for 90 minute walks every day, and it is a brand new connection with an old friend and if feels so good to meet with her every day.   And now that I've said it, I will probably do this to bless that new connection to bless my new friendship with an old friend.

I would love to hear from you the ways that you envision using essential oils in blessing new beginnings. I just have a few ideas and much of what I do in this sort of this way of using essential oils is very intuitive. And I bet you've got some wonderful ideas that I've never even thought of I would love for you to share them with me.

This episode of the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast is 41 so you can find it on my website at AromaticWisdomInstitute.com/041.  At the bottom of the page is a place you can leave comments.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about blessing new beginnings with essential oils!

All righty then. I think it's time for that little segment I like to call Smell My Life! 
If you're new to the podcast, Smell My Life isa little segment where I like to share some way in which I used an aromatic in my personal life during the week. 

This week's is pretty straightforward.  I've been doing a lot of house cleaning and there was a lot of dust as happens when you clean the house.   My eyes became extremely itchy.  I got out some fresh Cornflower Hydrosol and put it inside a little dropper bottle with you know with those little rubber eyedroppers and continued throughout the day to flush out my eyes so that the dust would be cleared. I don't do this with many hydrosols and I only do this with the most fresh vibrant hydrosols.  Cornflower is particularly good for eyewashes.  So that was how I used an aromatic in my life this week.


That just about wraps it up for Episode 41 of the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast. 
Thank you so much for joining me this week and hopefully you've obtained some kind of aromatic wisdom that you can then take out into the world and use to enrich your life and the lives of other people. 

I will repeat what I mentioned in the middle of the podcast about my upcoming live training. It's called Deep Dive with Liz Essential Oil of Juniper Berry, and it'll be 90 minutes of me doing a live class on zoom  talking specifically about all the attributes of Juniper Berry Essential Oil, the therapeutics, the chemistry, the energetics.  I've been talking to some distillers about how they distill.   I just love doing deep dives I really enjoy looking at one particular essential oil in depth, I think it's a great way to really connect with an oil.  I've got all kinds of goodies to go with it. You can sign up at the link that I will put it in the show notes. But if you go to aromatic wisdom and look at courses, it'll take you there.

 Thank you so much for joining me this week for my return to the aromatic wisdom podcast again, and that you continue to be there for me so that I can share what I know with you. I appreciate that so much.

 Until next time, 

Be Happy, Be Well