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Meditation Tips:
Seven Great
Essential
Oils
to
Ground, Focus and Uplift
Your
sense of smell is closely linked to your emotional center. Enjoy these
aromatherapy meditation tips to deepen your practice.
 The use
of aromatherapy to
ground, uplift and focus practitioners for
spiritual practice is a very ancient tradition.
People have
been smudging, anointing, and inhaling scent for centuries.
Churches and temples around the world burn incense.
In a
most interesting case of scent connecting spiritual practice, William
J. Broad, in his book "Oracle", describes how the ancient oracles of
Delphi derived some of their prescience from hallucinogenic vapors from
faults in the earth.
While most of us won't inhale sulphurous gases to prepare for
meditation, aromatherapy can still play an important role.
- Essential oils can bring oxygen to
the brain which can increase
alertness at the same time increasing focus.
- Certain scents
have long been recognized to ground practitioners
or to remind them of
their Divine Purpose.
- Many spiritual masters will use scent
to link a memory to them; scent and memory are closely linked
in our
brains.
The next time you meditate, try inhaling
an essential oil before you
begin and notice any changes that come to your practice.
After you have found an oil that you enjoy, use it regularly until you
have the scent firmly associated with meditation. You
will find that merely getting a whiff of the smell will quiet your mind
and put you in a meditative frame of mind.
Meditation Tips: Seven Great Essential
Oils
- Frankincense.
Frankincense
is a very
ancient oil and it has been used in spiritual practice for
centuries. It is both uplifting and grounding.
It
plays a major role in Christian religious practices.
In the story of Jesus, the wise men brought
frankincense, gold and
myrrh. Gold obviously is useful to an honored baby to give
wealth. Frankincense was known as a powerful cure.
At times
it was more valuable than gold in the ancient world. It was
used for healing many
health complaints. And myrrh was used to prevent evil
spirits, heal the mother after childbirth and to prevent infection of
the umbilical cord. The wise men brought health and wealth
in these 3 gifts.
I have had the experience that certain ancient
essential oils feel
deeply familiar to me--almost encoded in my DNA. Try it
yourself. Experiment with the ancient oils and see if you
recognize them.
- Rose.
Rose has the highest
frequency of all the oils. Many spiritual teachers from India
use rose to lift your vibration and prepare
you for meditation.
For me, rose has the smell of being completely and totally loved by the
Divine Mother.
- Sandalwood.
Another ancient
scent, and common in many traditions from Christianity to Hindu,
sandalwood is often used for meditation. Sometimes people are
anointed with sandalwood paste to remind them of their true
nature.
- Cedar and
Sage. These two
scents are used in Native American traditions, although most often one
burns the dried herbs and smudges with the smoke.
However, in
at least one Native American meditation group, the essential oils are
used in an effort to address some people's sensitivities to
smoke. I have not found that the essential oils feel "right"
the way the smoke does, but it still creates a sacred
vibration.
- Rosemary.
One of
the best
meditation tips is to prepare a room for meditation with
rosemary. Mix a few drops of rosemary in a spritzer bottle of
water and spray a room to raise its vibration, and
to prepare it for
sacred practice. It is also good just to make a room smell
nice.
- Ylang
Ylang. This is an
interesting oil to experiment with meditation. It balances
male and female energies, filters out negativity
and attunes one to the
Divine. It is very balancing to a meditation
practice.
A true meditation practice is about being present and quiet.
These meditation tips are not meant to substitute the quietness, yet
for centuries, great teachers have recognized that certain tools help
people to get to the quiet state.
Try using essential oils
and see what effect they have on your thoughts.
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