For anyone who has ever felt their stress melt away like butter under the artful hands of a talented massage therapist, it is hard to imagine that anything could get better than that. It can, and the Greeks had the scoop on it in the 4th century.Hippocrates, our father of medicine, defined medicine as "the art of rubbing". More specifically however, he advised that people take "a daily aromatic bath and scented massage". He theorized that to obtain true health one had to be balanced, and that the body had to be treated as a whole, not just a series of parts.
Like the ancient Egyptians and practitioners of traditional Chinese and Indian medicine centuries before him, Hippocrates also believed that essential oils could heal. Though many of Hippocrates' practices lost favour over the centuries, aromatic massage is one that is having a major revival.
Aromatic massage combines the topical benefits of essential oils with the therapeutic benefits of the massage. Essential oils, simply put, are the concentrated form of the oil of the plant from which they are taken. Each individual oil represents the unique scent and characteristics of its source plant. In aromatherapy, each of these scents or characteristics has noted therapeutic properties.
We all know about endorphins and can relate to how the scent of Grandma's lavender perfume on a forgotten sweater can momentarily wrap us up in one of her cocooning hugs. Interestingly enough, lavender was actually central to the freak incident that led to the development of the term 'aromatherapy'. In the early 1900s a French chemist named Rene-Maurice Gattefosse burned his hand in a lab accident. He quickly doused it in the nearest container, one holding pure lavender oil. His hand healed so quickly, and with so little scarring, that he became fascinated with essential oils. He later went on to publish a book appropriately called 'Aromatherapy'. With over 300 essential oils and a seemingly infinite combination of those to choose from, you are sure to find one that targets your specific needs. Give your therapist as much ammunition as possible in terms of lifestyle and health information, and you could find yourself healing, de-stressed, replenished and satiny smooth—all in one day. And remember to breathe. That can be the best part.
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