Essential Oils: The Beauty of Just Trying Stuff

We have been conditioned to think about wellness and sickness in a certain way in our culture.  Generally when we are sick we go to a doctor, or some other kind of an expert, they prescribe us something, we take it, and a certain amount of time later we experience relief of our symptoms. We are generally not encouraged to think about why we are sick, or what lifestyle changes we could make that may help to keep us from getting sick in a similar way in the future. Just take a pill and feel better. Then if we get sick again, we follow the same process.  Most of us that choose to take a more integrative approach to healthcare tend to look at this process with suspicion and disdain. We have abandon the "traditional medical model" for a better way! We have taken responsibility for our own health! We no longer strive to eliminate symptoms only, but rather to address that actual problem that is causing the symptoms! We are not going to be roped into taking medicine for the side effect of a side effect of a side effect of a drug that we started taking for something completely unrelated to our current problem.  We have been changed from the "Take two of these and call me in the morning" route to wellness! But have we really?

Often times, even when we begin to transition into a more natural way of thinking, we still bring some of the same old thinking with us in the process. We see this in the essential oils community when we constantly see questions like, "What is the regimen for this sickness?" "How do I go about treating my child's this or that?" and "What would you recommend for someone who has this disease?" These kinds of questions abound in our discussion groups and our business builder groups, and they are all good questions.  There isn't anything necessarily wrong with any of them.  The problem is that they demonstrate that often times we approach essential oils in the same way that the traditional medical community approaches medicine. We use oils when we're sick. And we need to find the perfect combination for our specific problem.  But this isn't the way that natural wellness works. Oils may help your body overcome sickness, disease and other impediments to wellness, but the goal of using essential oils is not to just relieve this symptom or that symptom.  The goal of using essential oils is to help your body achieve optimal wellness and avoid sickness as a whole. 

This brings me to my point: the beauty of just trying stuff. I love to answer a question with a question.  I believe we are often to quick to answer questions, and as a result we give bad counsel because we don't have all the necessary information to give a good answer.  So when people approach me with specific questions about how oils may help with this problem or that issue I usually respond with an important question of my own. What oils do you use everyday? I actually don't so much care what oils they use. What I do care about is that they use oils every day. Often times they don't.  They use oils like drugs.  They "take" them to relieve a certain symptom. Drugs are synthetic compounds designed to address a specific symptom. Essential Oils are organic compounds that are designed (by God) to work within your body to achieve optimal wellness. STOP THINKING OF OILS LIKE DRUGS! Oils do not "cure" "diseases" both of those words have been co-opted by the medical model. Only the FDA can say that a product cures a disease. The goal of using essential oils is not to cure diseases. The goal of using essential oils is achieve wellness.  Sometimes, that means helping sick people become well.  Sometimes that's  helping people who are generally healthy achieve a higher level of wellness.

With all of that in mind I want to encourage you to start doing two things today: First, start using oils every day. I have three oils, a blend and a meal replacement that I use every single day. I rub Frankincense around my ears and along my jaw line every day, because over the last two years I have discovered this oil helps me to think more clearly, and it helps me not to be dizzy. I also put a drop of peppermint in both hands, rub them together and then spend 5 to 8 minutes with my hands cupped over my nose heavily breathing in and out. I use Goldenrod every day for men's health purposes. I put a drop of Thieves under my tongue every day to help build my immunity  because I work with people who have all manner of sicknesses through out most of my day. Finally, I drink two ounces of NingXia Red every day to help with general health and well being.  In addition to these 6 things I use every day, I also rotate three new essential oils in every week. On Mondays I pick three new oils to use for the week, and I use them in completely random ways throughout the week.  If I find one to be incredibly helpful in a certain way then I will incorporate it into my daily activity.  This is what I do every day. I'm just trying stuff! In addition to my every day routine, if I'm sick, or have a problem, then I do seek out how oils may be a remedy to my problem.  I'm not saying that there isn't a place for seeking out a regimen for specific issues, and learning how oils may have helped others with those issues, but what I am saying is that when cases arise where you need to do these kinds of things you should add them to whatever you are already doing in your daily life to achieve optimal health.

Second, I want to encourage you to start thinking of oils in terms of helping you achieve wellness, and not in terms of curing sickness and disease. Your bodies immunity system is an incredible blessing from God, designed to protect your body from sickness and disease. Think of essential oils as tools to help build your immune system, and to help contribute to the overall proper function of your body. The essential oils themselves do not cure anything. They only help your body do what God designed for it to do. If we think of essential oils as tools to help with our wellness then we will approach the way that we use them, and the way that we communicate about them in a way that promotes wellness, and not just in terms of sickness and disease.

Start today. Use your oils everyday. Talk to people about your oils everyday.  But do so in a way that celebrates them as God's gift for promoting wellness, and not in a way that is shackled the traditional medical models way of thinking.