Candles provide a glowing history as an object of exoticness and reverence; its use is as old as the human history itself. Many great civilizations and modern societies have held candles as an instrument of radiance; its radiance properties surpass any other similar objects. Candles have long been used as a ‘mood-setting’ addition to a room or occasion and now more innovative aromatherapy candles enhance that goal.

Aromatherapy practice uses natural essential oils that are absorbed through massage, ingestion or olfaction (also called sensory). Aromatic oils are also use to make candles, which candles have a physiological or therapeutic effect on mood through their fragrance. How ever, scented candles should not be confused with aromatherapy candles. Scented candles simply contain a fragrance, most probably artificial, whereas aromatherapy candles contain natural essential oils.

Probably, one of the most well-known aromatherapy oils for alleviating stress and anxiety is lavender. A bowl of floating lavender aromatherapy candles to accompany your bath will help you relax after a long day. A small candle on your dining table will sway your desolate mood in to feeling of satisfaction.

For every mood and moment, there is an aromatherapy candle. Some of these top-rated essential oils might be found in aromatherapy candles:

Sage: This oil helps with insomnia and relaxation; Chamomile: Exciting oil used for relaxing, helps with sleeplessness and anxiety; Rosemary: An out of the world oil, which is stimulating and uplifting and good for mental stimulation; Grapefruit: Freshly uplifting and refreshing Eucalyptus: A strong oil which helps with respiratory problems and boosts the immune system; Ylang Ylang: Soothing oil as a good antidepressant that helps you relax and sleep; Geranium: Its sober effects help with relaxation while also being uplifting; helps balance hormones in women; Peppermint: Sweet aroma helps with digestive disorders, headaches and muscle aches; Lemon: Invigorating oil which uplifts and relaxes you senses;

As with any health product, you should understand what you are using when burning aromatherapy candles. You must know which type of oil is used in your candles. Certain essential oils can be harmful; it is always advised to be careful. Any type of candle can be formulated to serve as an aromatherapy candle, whether it’s a floating, pillar, gel, votive or even jar candle. Even though the doubts around the effectiveness aromatherapy are still present, all of us do know that candles and aromas are effective for evoking mood and emotions. You will notice candles labeled as “aromatherapy” candles range greatly in price; the price ranging from a low to high cost depending on the quality and availability of oil. Several factors effect the price such as types and qualities of wax, additives or purity, as well as other factors related to manufacturing. How ever, one main ingredient which can make or break the success of a candle as well as the price is its fragrance. You can make your own aromatherapy candles too at your home! The best waxes for aromatherapy candles are of course a bit more expensive. Many natural waxes such as soy, palm and beeswax burn cleaner and do not emanate soot and are not petroleum or polymer based such as paraffin or gel waxes. More natural cotton or zinc core wick should be used instead of leaded wick because of health hazard issues. Instead of adding dye to color the candle, include natural substances like herbs and flower petals. Always use pure essential oils for fragrance. This is definitely expensive, but worth it plus you can mix and match your own blends. Palm wax or palm/beeswax blend candles are always better, because they burn so long and clean and they blend quite easily with your oils. Essential oils should be added after the wax has melted and started cooling to preserve the integrity of the fragrance as they easily breakdown and evaporate. Decorating your candle can be as easy as tying a ribbon around it to adding pressed flowers to it. Make several small motiffs or round candles and add to a basket for a great gift idea. Candles attach emotional importance to any occasion and moments; a great aromatherapy candle has that great ability to enhance the mood and ambience of any environment.

About the author:

Find more great aromatherapy information at http://www.essentia laromatherapy.co.uk

Written By: Lorna Findlay

Contemporary healers, therapists, and marketing gurus are grabbing hold of a phenomenon that insects and animals instinctively understand: the power of aroma.

Scientists pursue aromachology (the study of scent and its ability to change human behavior) for its role in everything from medicine to marketing, migraines to memory loss, and relaxation to revitalization.

Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils to treat ailments. These conditions range from physical conditions to emotional problems. The essential oils of aromatherapy are extracted from aromatic plants and herbs–from the flower, bark, root, twig, seed, berry, rhizome, or leaves–generally through a process of steam distillation. These oils may be inhaled or massaged into the skin, after combining with a vegetable, nut or seed oil.

Massage with essential oils is most commonly used to alleviate skin ailments and muscle pain or tension. Lavender, orange, marjoram, and chamomile are particularly effective aromas in the use of massage.

Essential oils can be inhaled with the help of a vaporizer, an electric diffuser or an aroma lamp.

–>How does it work?

Our sense of smell is more complex than you might think. Your nose contain thousands of olfactory nerves. While your tongue has the ability to taste sweet, sour, salt, and bitter, it is your sense of smell that creates all the delightful flavors you experience. The olfactory bulb is part of your brain’s limbic system, which is not under conscious control. The limbic system controls digestion, libido, and emotions.

So, it’s not your imagination that scents evoke emotion. Aromas actually trigger the release of chemicals in the brain that create a feeling of well-being. Scientists say your body’s response to an aroma takes just four seconds.

–>Which Essential Oils are Right for You?
Essential oils are available in natural and synthetic forms. Natural essential oils are not oils but non-oily, non-water-soluble substances, which dissolve in alcohol and combine with true oils. Pure, natural essential oils may be as much as 70 times more potent than the plant source itself.

Some synthetics are derived from natural products. The exact formulation of an essential oil is virtually impossible to reproduce in the laboratory. Even the smallest variation can produce significant changes in the oil’s effect. Some synthetic oils fall into the category of artificial fragrances, entirely made of petroleum products. These products generally do not produce the same therapeutic effects as essential oils.

Each essential oil is comprised of different hormones and vitamins, which combine to create different effects. Furthermore, the effects of each essential oil can vary depending on the botanical species and where it is grown. The effects of particular aromas also vary among cultures and individuals, so the results of aromatherapy are not universal. Still, aromatherapists have developed a roster of scents with relatively predictable effects:

Aphrodisiacs
Jasmine, ylang ylang, patchouli

Energizers
lemon, basil, bergamot, sweet orange, peppermint, eucalyptus,
tangerine

Hair Care
(dry hair) cedarwood
(normal hair) lavender, ylang ylang
(oily hair) rosemary, lemongrass

PMS
cedarwood, clary sage, fennel, geranium, nerali, Roman chamomile

Relaxation
lavender, myrrh, cardamom, cedarwood, German chamomile, clary sage,
frankincense

Skin Care
(all skin types) Lavender, geranium, ylang ylang
(dry skin) rosemary, rosewood, carrot seed, sandalwood, peppermint,
rosemary
(oily skin) basil, eucalyptus, cedarwood, cypress, lemongrass,
ylang ylang, sage

Susie Cortright is the founder of http://www.momscape.com and Momscape’s Natural & Organic Living Channel. She is also the creator of Free-Article-Bank.com, featuring free, quality articles for your website, ezine, newsletter, or blog.

Copyright Susie Cortright – http://www.momscape.com

Written By: Susie Cortright

Aromatherapy has been around for at least 4,000 years, and is known to have been used by the ancient Egyptians for massage, healing, and embalming. But its uses for making our homes enjoyable places to live are just as applicable today as they were during Egyptian times.

Scents and Sentiments

Although its not generally known, our sense of smell is the one we human beings use more than any other. We have to open our eyes in order to see; our ears hear only sporadically; we need to eat something to taste it; and we need to touch something to feel it. But we don’t have to do anything in order to smell. With that in mind, we should be able to enjoy any room in our homes just as much with our eyes closed as with them open.

Human Reaction to Scents

Our olfactory senses have a profound impact on our emotions and can arouse powerful memories. For instance, just close your eyes and remember about how you felt the last time you smelled fresh bread baking in the oven. On the other hand, being constantly bombarded by unpleasant scents will make people irritable and more likely to act out in anger.

Human beings have strong reactions to scents, and some people are more sensitive to scents than others. A homes occupants eventually get used to their homes odors, and often aren’t even aware of them. After all, humans are territorial by nature, and the scent of our home is reassuring to us. But scents can also be used to enhance the positive feelings we want to encourage within our homes.

If you want to promote harmony and good feelings in your home, for your family and for visitors, you must introduce scents that support pleasant memories and behavior while ridding your home of offensive odors that can have a negative effect.

Which essential oils will bring about the most desirable effects?

Aromatherapists recommend using only natural oils, rather than synthetic ones, even if those artificial oils have been derived from natural sources, because the exact formulation of an essential oil is virtually impossible to reproduce in the laboratory.

Essential oils help with virtually every human condition, and aromatherapists have developed a wide array of scents to help their clients cope with whatever situation they may be facing in their lives. Therapists formulated essential oil aphrodisiacs, energizers, and oil combinations designed to help with relaxation, hair and skin care, and even the symptoms of PMS.

Your home should be a place harmony and good feelings, and the use of aromatherapy can be a powerful tool in your quest to bring peace and joy into your interior living space.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Jeanette J. Fisher

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

Reprinted from: http://www.ezinearticles.com

Written By: Jeanette Joy Fisher

Lavender is considered the most useful of all essential oils. Lavender is known to help relieve headaches, insomnia, tension and stress. Its therapeutic properties have been well chronicled all over the world.

Originally an inhabitant of the Mediterranean countries, this perennial herb has long been recognized for its exotic perfume and medicinal properties. Used in past by the ancient Romans for its healing and antiseptic qualities, the name itself comes from the Latin “lavare” or “to wash”. Tibetans still make an edible lavender butter to use as part of a traditional treatment for nervous disorders. Today, the essential oil of lavender is widely used across Europe and North America for a number of illness and medical problems.

Lavender is just a beautiful herb in your garden. It has gray-green, pointing leaves that grow in a bushy, spreading manner. It is crowned with tall spikes of beautiful pale violet flowers during summer. As an ornamental flower, lavender is unique, sporting exotic fragrance, beauty and a rich harvest of sweet smelling blooms. Old English Lavender, a popular inhabitant of a cottage garden, can grow up to two to three feet high, producing fragrant grayish leaves and blue/purple flowers. The more compact variety Hidcote, has darker blue flowers, grows to around a foot high and is very pretty in any flower or herb garden. The easiest way to propagate lavender is to cut softwood cuttings in the spring. However, as lavender benefits from a light pruning in early autumn, these clippings make excellent new plants too, as long as you protect them from frosts and winter bite.

With its flowery fragrance Lavender is the most versatile and useful oil. If you are a newbie to essential oils, you may need to start here by using lavender oil. Called the “Swiss army knife of essential oils”, because of its versatility, lavender is very soothing to sun burnt skin and is used to cleanse cuts and skin irritations.

Essential oil of lavender is used in aromatherapy practices to get rid of depression, fight tiredness and get relaxation. It has strong disinfectant properties and was even used on the wars to prevent infection and relieve pain. A drop of lavender oil mixed with a teaspoon of carrier oil, such as grape seed and massaged into the temples and back of the neck will drive away headaches. Mixed with any massage oil, it also helps relieve the pain of arthritis or aching muscles. Occasionally, just a small cotton ball with droplets of lavender near your pillow can help you drift off to a deep sleep.

Lavender essential oil can help reduce anger and frustration, while improving your self esteem. Lavender is found to elicit the emotion of happiness. Lavender has a property of calming and sedating effects. You can also use lavender, by scenting a relaxing and antiseptic bath by slowly adding lavender droplets and letting the bath water run over it as it fills the bath. Fresh lavender flowers are excellent for bath too.

Dried lavender is a tool to experience the sheer aromatic properties in a relaxed ambience. To dry your lavender, strip the leaves or the just opening flowers from the stalk and spread out in a warm place, before using in pot pourris to fragrance your rooms. Around your home, dried lavender stalks can be burned like incense sticks or burned on the fire for their wonderful fragrance.

About the author:

Find more great aromatherapy information at http://www.essentia laromatherapy.co.uk

Written By: Lorna Findlay

Candles are commonly used for lightening a dark room when your homes power is gone or more often in a candle light dinner. But, the usage of candles is not confined to this only. Introduction of aromatherapy candles have added a new perspective to the usage of candles, candles now serve as a basis to achieve health, vitality and rejuvenating of the body as well as mind and spirit. Aromatherapy candles are made with beeswax, soybean wax or vegetable oil. One can even find pure essential oil candles in the market. The best thing about aromatherapy candles is that they are environmental friendly as they are derived from natural plant sources.

Uses of aromatherapy candles: -

Set the atmosphere
Improve the ambience in many situations
Can be used in any room of your home and provide a wonderful enhancement.
Scented with essential oils or herbs that send messages of relaxation or rejuvenation to the mind and body

Aromatherapy candles are available in different styles, sizes and scents. You can choose the appropriate candle as per your requirement and aspiration. Scented candles can add warmth to any home, they can give a clean, refreshing feel. Many candles are scented with essential oils, or oils that some from plants.

If by now you have decided to buy an aromatherapy candle, learn what kinds of scents they are available in and what are their benefits: -

Frankincense is warming
Peppermint is strong and minty. Can aid with alertness
Lemon is also a stong scent and can help dispel fatigue
Jasmine smells as good as it sounds can help spark romance
Grapefruit is another citrus scent that can lift your spirits
Vanilla is very rich and helps to relieve tension and irritability
Lavender is fresh and floral. This can help dispel a soor disposition

Aromatherapy candles are cost effective and are natural candles. They have many benefits over candles made up of paraffin. Soy wax that is most commonly used in making aromatherapy candles is natural non-toxic, biodegradable renewable resource. It also burns slower and produces very little dust and smoke.

Internet has made it easier for all to access the desired aromatherapy candles with ease without going out for shopping. You can access infinite number of lenders with just a few clicks. Look for lenders who provide pure aromatherapy candles with essential oil.

Aromatherapy candles are the best cost effective means to relax and can rejuvenate your senses and body. Choose the desired candles with caution, a little bit of research can help you get the desired candles at reasonable rate.

About the Author:

Bryan Josling is working with the Horticultural Research Station in Adelaide. He has also been involved with research on plants. To find Aromatherapy essential oils, Aromatherapy Candles, Aromatherapy Massage Oil visit http://www.ndaroma.com

Written By: Bryan Josling