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What if I told you that the scent of an essential oil could help unlock emotions you didn't even know were trapped in your body? That aromatherapy could be so much more than a pleasant smell. It could be a pathway to profound emotional healing and transformation. Welcome back to Exploring Ways to Wellness.
Today I'm joined by Julie from Little Brown Bottles to explore emotional aromatherapy, a powerful modality that combines essential oils with talking therapy. To help people access and release stuck emotions. Julie's personal journey is remarkable from using essential oils to support her through antidepressant withdrawal, to maintaining over five years of sobriety, these plant [00:01:00] medicines became her constant companion through life's biggest challenges. But her story doesn't stop there. She's now helping others heal chronic conditions like asthma. Through beautiful combinations of scent, breath, and emotional release.
In this episode, you'll discover how emotional aromatherapy works with your limbic brain, where emotions are stored, why certain sense can unlock memories and feelings you thought you'd processed. And how unprocessed emotions can manifest as physical illness in our bodies. Whether you've only experienced aromatherapy as relaxing background scents, or are curious about alternative approaches to emotional healing or even wondering how plants might support your wellness journey.
This conversation will open your mind to the therapeutic power that's been growing around us all [00:02:00] along.
Sarah: Hello and welcome back to Exploring Ways To Wellness. I'm thrilled to have Julie with me today from Little Brown Bottles, and she's going to be talking to us all about. Emotional Aromatherapy. So thanks for joining us, Julie.
Julie: Hi Sarah. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
Sarah : I mentioned there emotional aromatherapy. Could we just start by, letting the listeners know. What the difference is between what they would consider traditional aromatherapy, emotional aromatherapy.
Julie: So emotional aromatherapy is a beautiful modality of using essential oils to help people to identify and essentially unstick emotions that may have got stuck or trapped or essentially unprocessed in their body. And so this could [00:03:00] be things like I dunno, childhood trauma or something perhaps a pattern in their lives, an emotional pattern that, that, that's kept occurring for them.
And over the years, what tends to happen is, unless people are able to talk about these things, but also feel the things that have happened to them. Then what happens to our bodies is we can end up with physical illness and ailments and disease.
And so it's a combination of using essential oils and talking therapy.
And so, essential oils are really powerful Forms of medicine. And when we inhale and use an essential oil aromatically, what it does is it accesses the limbic part of our brain, um, which is where our emotions are processed and stored, and it can help release potentially stuck emotions.
[00:04:00] And in releasing those stuck emotions and in talking about them with somebody. It can help people find, uh, relief from any physical illness and ailments they've been having.
Sarah: Okay. So that, that makes sense. So it sort of enhances that talk therapy
Julie: Yes.
Sarah: Area because it enables you to access things that maybe you couldn't.
Julie: Yeah, absolutely. So it's a combination of talking therapy and then also your, your body kind of in intuitively knows what to do. And the blends of oils that I work with, um, have been designed to, to work on different parts of our energy body, our physical body. And so, there, there's a particular sort of set of blends that I work through, uh, generally in order.
And we always start with an oil that helps people to like open their hearts and soften into the experience. And there's a lot there around, [00:05:00] uh, learning how to forgive not only the person who's receiving the treatment and the therapy, but also. People in their lives who, you know, the reason that led them to come and seek some alternative therapies in the first place.
And then over six sessions, um, we worked towards, going through the different layers of the body. Um, and in recent years, I've started combining it with. With the breath as well. So I use, uh, emotional aromatherapy and breath work together to really help empower people to, to heal.
Sarah: Yeah.
Amazing. And how did you discover that this even existed?
Julie: Yeah, so I, I mean, I discovered, um, essential oils just in a very basic sense. Back in, I think it was 2018. I'd been working a lot. Um, I was really stressed out. I was drinking quite a lot and I just, I had this sense that I needed to [00:06:00] do something differently.
Um, I'd, uh, I'd been prescribed, uh, antidepressants at the start of 2018. And so I found that whilst I was able to sort of function better than I had for a little while, I still had this feeling that something wasn't quite right. I was seeing a nutritional therapist who introduced me to essential oils, and it was literally like a little switch went off in my brain and I was amazed at the different things that they could do to help me.
Um, you know, simple things from helping me to sleep better, to perhaps helping me to boost my endorphins and feel better. And so I went on this whole journey of, I suppose self-discovery and exploration with them. Um, and I read all the books and I did lots of little like, online courses and learning and actually what.
What the essential oils for me did back then was that they helped [00:07:00] me to kind of build my own strength and resilience before I then decided to reduce my antidepressant medication and ultimately come off them a year later. I found they were. A real sense of support for me actually.
And then when I did start to come off the antidepressants, what I found was that some of those symptoms I dunno if any of your listeners have experienced this, but they can be quite, quite tough when you first start to reduce your dosage. And so the essential oil really stepped in and helped me to manage some of those symptoms.
So that was sort of. That was the first step on my journey, I suppose.
Sarah: That's really interesting. So the essential oils helped you while you were on Yeah. The medication, but also obviously helped you with other symptoms you had as you were coming off. Mm. Do you think that was also that kind of.
Feeling there was [00:08:00] something consistent the whole time. So you weren't coming off everything. You still had something to kind of hold onto.
Julie: Yeah, I think that's a really lovely reflection actually. And I think that they really did feel like I almost felt some days I couldn't leave home without them. Um, you know, over the years I've experienced, you know, varying levels and degrees of panic and anxiety, and so for the first time I felt that I had a toolkit that I could take with me.
So if I was, I don't know, in a supermarket and suddenly felt a bit overwhelmed, then I could just pop a little bit of lavender on my wrists and just have a little smell. And then everything kind of wasn't, it felt okay and I was like, oh, okay, I can do this. Yes. Um, and it wasn't, you know, I've used various things over the years to help me feel better, and to be honest, most of them haven't been for my best self.
And so to find something that was really good for me, that helped me feel better, and it wasn't, picking up a glass of [00:09:00] wine that was really lovely.
Sarah: Our go-tos can be quite self-destructive, can't they? Yeah,
Julie: absolutely. Yeah. I guess I was stressed out working a lot, taking antidepressants.
I was still drinking alcohol. And then essential oils just came in and just softened everything a little bit. And I found yoga as well. Then I think the following year was when I started to obviously use the essential oils to help me manage the withdrawal from antidepressants. And then by the end of that year, by the end of 2019, I was free from all of the symptoms of antidepressants and their withdrawal.
And then I was ready to look at my relationship with alcohol. And again, essential oils were a really big part of my sobriety journey. Um, and I'm now five and a half years sober, but certainly those early days, I really attribute the success of my sobriety to many things. But [00:10:00] essential oils have been this kind of constant thread.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's amazing how powerful something like a, an essential oil could be. So from my perspective, where I've come across aromatherapy, it's sort of more, I don't know, jost sticks, or as you say, like if you are smelling something, if you've got a cold, I know we've, we've got a bit of a cold at the moment.
Julie: Yeah. Such a great, I've been gargling with oregano this morning just to help. Oh, lovely. It was very anti-microbial. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. We were joking before, before we started the recording that Julie has this beautiful set of, alternative, ways to, improve her cold at the moment. And I just quickly grabbed a lemsip from the cupboard.
Julie: It's all good. There's no, there's no judgment.
Sarah: Whatever works. So yes, I have a way to go in terms of exploring this area. Yeah, so it's fantastic to hear these [00:11:00] practical applications. But certainly something like sobriety, I wouldn't have expected. Something like an essential oil to help.
Yeah. 'cause as I say, from where I'm coming from, it's more of a sort of nice to have or, you know, the potential when you've got something quite, lower level going on. So it sounds like it helped, you know, depression and sobriety and those kinds of things. They're quite, you know, they're big, they're heavy, they really affect the whole body.
Julie: Yeah.
Sarah: So that's, that's fascinating to hear. You said a nutritionist introduced you to those things. At what point did you feel that you had your own toolkit and you wanted to share that with other people?
Julie: So I think, so. I got obviously sober at the end of 2019. And then lockdown of course hit in March, 2020, uh, and I was newly sober.
And, but you know, being completely honest, it was a difficult time to, [00:12:00] to stick with my sobriety because, um, the support groups that I've been going to had all stopped. So I went to a sort of cognitive based behavioral therapy support group to help with that and that obviously all. All, um, went away for a while.
And so again, you know, essential oils were, were there. But then it was later on in 2020 that I discovered emotional aromatherapy as a modality. So a lovely lady called Rachel, um, who runs the Cambridge College of Holistic Health was advertising f or this emotional aromatherapy course. And to be honest, I didn't, I didn't fully understand what I was, you know, signing up to, but I felt a very strong calling to go and deepen my knowledge of essential oils because they'd been, you know, such a big part of, the last kind of 18 months for me.
So obviously it was online because it was lock down [00:13:00] and it was here that I learned more about our bodies as a whole system. So emotional aromatherapy has its roots in Chinese medicine, and so it looks at our, uh, the five elements and it also looks at our circadian rhythm. Our, you know, our, our body clocks.
And how if we are experiencing I don't know, food slumps or tiredness or insomnia at different times of, of the day, then we can usually be attributed to an, an imbalance within our bodies. Yeah. And so that was sort of underpinning all of that. So I really loved learning all about that.
But what I particularly learned was that as part of the course, obviously we had to experience what it was like to do emotional aromatherapy. And so, I remember the first week in the first blend of oils we had so much stuff just came up. And I was just sort of, I felt like I was releasing and revisiting things that I thought I'd.
[00:14:00] Processed and healed, but it came up again in a whole new light. But then what was really lovely was that there was kind of, there was an oil for that. The plants, because, you know, we come from nature, don't we? Ultimately, we're, we're all kind of part of this beautiful earth and we the plants that grow and the trees and the flowers are are all here to help us.
And so. Being able to learn about which oils and which blends help people with different parts of their sort of energy systems. It was such a gift actually. And then, you know, we obviously, we had to do, uh, several case studies. Over several months and write all of that up.
Sarah: It's really interesting.
And would you find then that you did the therapy first and then the healing would then continue with the aromatherapy? Or is it used at the same time?
Julie: It's simultaneously, so you work with the oils and conversation and talking at the same time. Right. So yeah, typically just [00:15:00] to give you a kind of sense of what a, a block of sessions would look like. And in fact, I'm going to use, uh, a lady that I worked with at the end of last year into the beginning of this year just to give a sense of what emotional aromatherapy did for her.
And I think that probably gives it a bit of context. So, a lady came to see me she got in touch at the end of last year because she'd had long COVID and shingles and she'd been really poorly. Um, and she was left with chronic asthma. And she was really struggling with just with her breathing. And so just before Christmas, I sent her a blend of essential oils which my aromatherapy teacher had, uh, actually used herself to cure her asthma and a a.
A form of breath work for her to practice, um, which started to make a bit of a difference. And then in the new year, she signed up for a block of six sessions. Now, when she first came to see me, she was on all sorts of [00:16:00] nighttime medication to help with her sleeping because she was she wasn't sleeping at all.
She she couldn't, she really couldn't breathe, actually. And sometimes just the slightest movements would cause, um, horrendous spasms and coughing fits. Her whole diaphragm would just like, go into spasm and, and almost con constrict and, and so she couldn't get the breath through, so she was signed off sick, so she was really poorly.
And none of the medicine, the steroids, the inhalers, the ventin that she had been given by the consultant at the hospital was helping her. And so I started working with her, with essential oils. With, with this sort of, you know, this protocol if you like to start to at least unlock some of what.
Might be being held in her body. And over the six sessions that she saw me, she completely reversed her asthma. She came off all of her medication that was prescribed [00:17:00] by the consultant. She learnt how to use her breath to manage the symptoms of her asthma and the blends of essential laws that we worked with, as well as, you know, talking.
So there was, you know, an an element of talking therapy. As part of, of our time together as I say, the end result was that she reversed her asthma and she's now, she's back at work. She went back to work in April and she's no longer taking any of the medication that the consultant prescribed for her because it didn't work for her.
So, yeah, that's, that's been quite a huge, huge thing for her actually.
Sarah: Yes. Yeah. And seeing that you can make such a difference to people's lives must be so rewarding.
Julie: Yeah, it is. It's really lovely. It is really lovely.
Sarah: And do you mix up the, um, essential oils yourself?
Julie: Yeah, the set that I work with are a pre-blended set of [00:18:00] oils. And that's very much for my emotional aromatherapy clients. Mm-hmm. But actually what I, I do sort of within Little Brown Bottles, which is my, aromatherapy business I create all sorts of blends myself.
So I have blends for grounding and balance. For managing sleep, for energizing and uplifting. And I've also got a lovely blend of chakra essential oils that help work on the seven chakras, which are lovely for yogis and, um, retreats. And I also have some nice aura sprays. So yeah, so I very much blend and create my own oils.
Uh, therapeutically. I tend to stick with. The what I learned about and what I was taught. Yeah. But actually I also, you know, if I need to, I will work instinctively and intuitively to give people something different if they, if I feel they need it.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And excuse my ignorance, but as with anything like this.
Presumably there's [00:19:00] like very strict guidelines around what you can and can't give to people, or I guess I'm coming from a place of, if they. Can have such a strong effect on people. Mm-hmm.
Julie: Do
Sarah: you know where those boundaries are of individual? Yeah,
Julie: absolutely. So there are contraindications to using certain oils, particularly if people are on different medications.
Mm-hmm. And so the first session is always doing a full medical history and checks. So, yeah, absolutely. You know, safety and adverse reactions. Although they're, they're not common. They are they can occur. But again, it's, it's a little bit like, you know, more traditional medicine in that what works for one person is not gonna work for another person.
And we are also unique in our makeup that actually, you know, my biggest advice for the people that I work with is listen to your own bodies. And I think we, people have, are forgetting how to trust what [00:20:00] feels right. And people are forgetting that it's okay if your body feels tired, it's okay to rest.
It's okay if you have a headache, but, and I think we have this mentality that we need fixing and somehow if we go to the doctors, we're gonna get fixed. We are not broken. Yeah. You know, we don't need fixing. We just need to re remember that our bodies have an incredible capacity to heal themselves.
And for me, when I work with plants and essential oils, that's a really gentle but powerful way to, to help people remember. Mm-hmm. That everything, you know, we have to heal ourselves is within us. And by using, you know, the right blend of oils and also just giving yourself the time and space to acknowledge that perhaps there are areas of your life that you need to revisit or address.
That in itself is, huge from a Yeah. You know, a healing and wellbeing point of [00:21:00] view.
Sarah: I love that approach. It's so important, isn't it? And as you say, we just kind of block ourselves off and it's all powering through and Yeah. No doubt, ignoring everything that's going on. But one thing I want to pick up on that I think is important is it sounds like as much as it can be safe to use essential oils, having the guidance of somebody like yourself is still important.
Can you do harm by just buying random things off the internet and assuming you are healing yourself, or is it not gonna do you any harm, but it's just going to take your money.
Julie: This is a, a quite a big question and I think different people would have different perspectives. My personal view is that as long as you're not kind of ingesting oils left, right, and centre, and if you'd say, for example, you walk into a shop and you'd like some help sleeping and you buy a nice sleep blend, you are [00:22:00] gonna be fine.
Yeah. So lavender and cedarwood and ylang ylang is not gonna kill anybody. So. I, I think listen to your body. If you have a, a reaction to it, stop using it. If it gives you a headache, drink some water and try again. If it still gives you a headache, maybe that oil isn't for you. You know, again, just it's, I think we can be afraid of taking our power back.
Yeah. I mean, there's a, you know, we shouldn't be afraid of. Nature and all of the beautiful, you know, plants and trees that grow and yes, I know some are poisonous and all the rest of it, but oils that you buy in shops are considered safe to use. I think if you want to work therapeutically with either a clinical aromatherapist and absolute, absolutely.
Or an emotional aromatherapist such as myself, then I think the guidance is good. But for kind of day-to-day stuff, I, I don't think you can go too far wrong is my personal view. [00:23:00]
Sarah: Yeah, I guess it's like if you're putting it on your skin, just check, just as you say, be aware of,
Julie: yeah. So for example, citrus oils will cause sun sensitivity, so you shouldn't put citrus oils on your skin.
And then go in the sun. So for 12 hours, you know, so that there's some kind of stuff around that which may or may not be on labels that you buy in the shops. I don't actually know. I've not, not had a look, but yeah, so, so knowing some stuff about that can be helpful. Definitely.
Sarah: Yeah, it sounds like it. So coming back to the emotional aromatherapy
Julie: Yeah.
Sarah: Um, your personal experience sounds, incredibly powerful. Do you find when people are bringing up issues when they're talking to you on a daily basis, you just kind of wanted to say but try this
Julie: yeah.
So there's something very much there about trusting the process, and actually just the fact that they're being given some space to be heard. What I find when most people come and sit [00:24:00] in front of me, or even through Zoom. Is that they've not carved out any time for themselves to sit and just share with another human what's going on for them.
Sarah: Yeah.
Julie: And so, you know, when, when we get together and they just have that space and somebody's there to really listen to them and I, without wanting to fix them, you know, like I said, we're not broken. We just need to remember how to be who we are. And so I think there's something quite subtle there about just giving people the space to come and experience who they are.
And again, the oils really help bring people out of themselves. They bring things, you know, to the surface that perhaps needs to be healed. And they also help people remember you know, what they used to love to do, um, where their creativities and passions lies kind of, it, it becomes so much more than the reason they walk through the door.
Sarah: Yeah. [00:25:00] Wow. That sounds, that sounds absolutely fantastic. And have you had anyone skeptical about the aromatherapy side of that?
Julie: No. People have been, yeah, sort of fully, fully in in, in terms of, of the oils, I think if people don't use them, so the idea is you work with an oil for two, three weeks.
And then you come back and see me and we have another chat and we work with another oil. So we kind of work through, as I say, these, these six sessions if you like. That seems to be the magic number. And people can find it difficult to find the time to incorporate the oils into their daily practice, into their life.
And so it's recommended that you sit with your oil and you apply it like to the palm of your hand. You rub your hands together, and then you just, you sit and you just breathe really slowly through your nose. And as a minimum, I'd recommend people find five minutes in the morning to do that, five minutes at [00:26:00] lunchtime.
Five minutes at the end of the day, and generally what I find is that people can manage the morning and the evening, and then sometimes in the middle of the day, life gets busy and that's okay. So whatever you can do is better. Yeah. You get the most from it by making the time for you. And then what we find, what I find is that people will then say, oh, and then I did a short meditation on calm, or, and then I went for a walk, or, and so what it does by just starting really small
Sarah: Yeah.
Julie: With, you know, a blend of essential oils and five minutes at a time, it then opens up all of these possibilities 'cause people start to feel better and they're like, well, what else can I do? So it, again, it's, there are so many levels to what it gives people. Yeah. It's
Sarah: so lovely. So it opens a door in a way Yeah.
To, to really looking after themselves or being more open to self-care in, in other ways. Yeah. So that's lovely. Is there anything else that you [00:27:00] find works for you?
Julie: Yeah. And so, you know, I, and I think I followed this path that the people that I work with seem to follow, which is I started with essential oils and then, you know, by sitting with the oils that then turned into a 10 minute.
Meditation. And then, you know, my yoga practice increased because I was feeling better. Uh, I then went and did, uh, my breath work training two years ago now, I think. And so I'd add a breath work to it, or sometimes I'd just get up and go and watch the sunrise. I also work with cacao as well, so some mornings it'll be a cacao and a meditation and some essential oils.
I think there are so many lovely things that you can access that there's not a right approach. I think, you know, my, my single biggest message to anybody listening would be just find what you love, find what makes you feel better, um, whether that's, you know, tapping [00:28:00] or yoga or walking or meditating or essential oils the list goes on, doesn't it?
Sarah: It does. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly it. That's the perfect. Approach, isn't it? Know yourself, know your body, know how you react to things and find what makes you feel good. And what you can turn to in those moments where you're not feeling so great. Yeah. So wonderful. So you've touched on there about some of your services that you offer, and I believe you've got some, you've got your online store, obviously, and you've got some wellness workshops coming up.
Julie: Yes. So in, uh, in September I'm going to be doing a monthly essential oils education workshop In rugby, I'll be teaching people how to use essential oils to make skincare products clean their house sleep with, um, you know, manage low mood and anxious feelings. So there'll be a different theme each month. So I'm very excited about that all coming together. And [00:29:00] I also, I pretty much use essential oils in all sort of areas that I work with.
And so when I hold women's circles and, and work with cacao, essential oils are always a big part of that. And also with breath work as well. Uh, I always use essential oils to help people grounding at the end of their breath work session. So yeah, for me there's not much that an essential oil can't do.
Sarah: Yeah. Fantastic. It sounds like they're woven in to
Julie: They are. They're absolutely woven in. Yeah. You can go around my house and there will be a bottle of, uh, oil somewhere on any given surface at any one time.
Sarah: Wonderful. And for those listeners who are a bit further away.
Julie: It's the little brown bottles co uk. Uh, and I have a sum up store as well, which is where you can, but you can access that from my website. So, yeah, that's, so it's all on there.
Sarah: Fantastic. Well, I'll be sure to include all the relevant links in the show notes. So if people want to keep in touch with Julie, hear more [00:30:00] about emotional aromatherapy or some of the products or services that she has available, then have a look in the show notes and join her mailing list or follow the links to the shops.
So thank you so much, Julie. That's been incredibly helpful, certainly for me to expand my knowledge on emotional aromatherapy, but I hope everybody else has enjoyed it too.
Julie: Thank you for having me. It's been really lovely to chat.
I have to say, this conversation with Julie has completely shifted how I think about aromatherapy. What I thought was simply about pleasant scents and relaxation is actually a profound therapeutic modality that can support everything from emotional healing to chronic illness recovery. Julie's personal transformation story [00:31:00] is so inspiring.
From needing antidepressants and struggling with alcohol to finding her strength through essential oils and maintaining over five years of sobriety. Wow. But what really moved me is how she's now channeling that healing into supporting others through their own journeys. That client story about reversing chronic asthma through emotional aromatherapy gave me goosebumps when conventional medicine wasn't working.
This gentle approach to combining essential oils with emotional release and breath work created complete healing. It is such a beautiful example of treating the whole person, not just the symptoms. I love how Julie emphasizes trusting our bodies and remembering that we have everything we need within us in a world that often makes us feel broken and in need of fixing.
Her approach is [00:32:00] about remembering our innate wholeness and capacity for healing. The idea that just five minutes with an essential oil can open doors to meditation, yoga walks in nature, and so many other wellness practices feels both manageable and magical. Sometimes the smallest keys unlock the biggest transformations.
It is important to remember that this is a complimentary approach, and as Julie mentioned, aromatherapy is not always suitable for everyone. People with certain medical conditions and those who are pregnant or anyone with specific medications should always consult their healthcare professionals and qualified aromatherapists before beginning.
Listen to your body. It knows what it needs and it knows when it's not right. You'll find Julie at Little Brown Bottles [00:33:00] for both therapeutic work and those lovely educational workshops. She mentioned. All her details are in the show notes. Thank you for joining me today. And remember, there's many paths to wellness and sometimes they start with trusting our bodies already know how to heal.
They just need gentle reminders from nature.
