What Are Essential Oils?

Essential Oils are the life blood of the plant. You can pick up a flower or herb and squeeze it or prick it with your fingernail. Since the plant is a living organism, you will get some of the plant juices on your skin. As a child, we had this very tall grass growing in our yard. I loved to rub the grass on my arms and legs so that the wonderful smell would stay on me. I now know that what I was smelling from the grass were courmarins, which have bronchiodilating properties. Ah - the smell of new mown grass!!!

Distilled oils are living plant material that have been extracted with steam. You can use any part of the plant to make an oil, such as leaves, stems, root, bark, flowers, and needles. In the process of distillation, the plant material is separated from the "juices". These juices rise to the top of the steam (that is now reconstituted as water) and are skimmed off.

Therapeutic-grade essential oils are distilled in such a way that the underlying healing properties of the plant are retained.

The oils are called essential because they contain most of the compounds that the plants use to thrive and grow. Some of these plant protecting properties are antimicrobial, antifungal, and antibacterial. They also carry oxygen to the plant and remove wastes. What these essential oils do for plants, they can also do for humans.

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