The Intelligence of the Body

EP 1 | Can Smell Change Your Brain? The Truth About Essential Oils & Neurotransmitters with Anne Williams

• Paula Nutting • Season 1 • Episode 1

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0:00 | 1:09:32

Can scent influence the brain, emotions, and even the nervous system? In this fascinating Ask Me Anything episode, Paula Nutting is joined by aromatherapy educator Anne Williams to explore the science, myths, and therapeutic potential behind essential oils and their connection to brain function, neurotransmitters, and healing.

In this insightful and grounded conversation, Paula welcomes renowned massage therapist and aromatherapist Anne Williams for a deep dive into the world of essential oils, scent, and the nervous system.

Drawing from decades of experience in massage therapy and aromatherapy education, Anne shares how smell directly connects to the brain and why essential oils can have such a powerful impact on mood, memory, stress responses, and emotional regulation. Together, Paula and Anne unpack the science behind olfaction and neurotransmitters while also discussing the practical realities of using essential oils in therapeutic settings.

The episode explores how scent influences the limbic system, why certain aromas can create calming or energizing effects, and the importance of understanding essential oils beyond marketing hype. Anne also discusses safety, evidence-informed practice, and how therapists can thoughtfully integrate aromatherapy into bodywork and client care.

This conversation offers a balanced and human-centered perspective for therapists, wellness practitioners, and anyone curious about the relationship between smell, the brain, and emotional wellbeing.

In this episode:
• How smell connects directly to the brain and nervous system
• The relationship between essential oils and neurotransmitters
• Understanding the limbic system and emotional responses
• Why scent can trigger memories and emotional states
• Common myths and misconceptions about essential oils
• Safe and evidence-informed aromatherapy practices
• Integrating aromatherapy into massage and bodywork
• Stress regulation, relaxation, and sensory input
• The role of essential oils during the pandemic and client care
• Practical considerations for therapists using aromatherapy

Timeline Highlights:
00:00 – Meet Anne Williams
08:25 – Essential oils and mood
18:10 – Stress and the amygdala
28:15 – Using oils safely
49:45 – Diffusers vs nebulizers
55:10 – Choosing quality oils

 🎥 Watch on YouTube
https://youtu.be/xaOZzlBUffw

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Connect with Anne Williams:
🌐 https://massagemastery.online/
📘 https://www.facebook.com/massagemasteryonline
👥 https://www.facebook.com/groups/massagemasteryonline
📸 https://www.instagram.com/massagemasteryonline/
𝕏   https://x.com/massage_mastery

Disclaimer:
The following program is for informational and educational purposes only. The content discussed regarding musculoskeletal health, injury recovery, and physical therapy techniques is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapist-patient relationship between you and Paula or her guest presenter. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or physical injury.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or emergency services immediately. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast is solely at your own risk.

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SPEAKER_02

Hey guys, it's Paula Nutting, your musculoskeletal specialist, coming to you from Australia in our September Ask Me Anything presentation, which I'm super excited about. I mean, I'm I'm super excited about every single one of them because they're so much fun, and I get the opportunity to talk to these incredible people all around the globe about what they can offer us as therapists and how we can take what they're offering us and pass them out to our patients and our clients. Today we've got gorgeous Ann Williams who's got so much information to offer us. But just before I talk about that, I want to give a quick shout out to Q Academy, who are specialists in education for Queensland and also the East Coast of Australia. They run courses in diploma, in certificate, in myotherapy, and have got an upcoming advanced degree that's coming forward for accelerating people into practice in all facets of our industry and manual handling. So manual bodywork. So big plug out to Q Academy because they do a great service for people who are interested in becoming professionals in massage and myotherapy. Anyway, talk about them more later because they are the bomb. Right now I would love to introduce and bring on Anne Williams. So Anne Williams has been, she's from the States and she's been involved in our industry for quite a few years, but I'll get Anne to give us some more about her story when we get her on online. Anne, come on in when you can. Any moment.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I had to click in. Here I am. No, I didn't realize either.

SPEAKER_02

I just kind of sit here and expect that it's going to happen at the back end.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's supposed to be magic, right? I don't have to do anything. I just sit here and it all happens.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. So me too. Well, at least we both know that. So Anne's been, I've had the pleasure of having Anne on before. Not when it was the ask me anything as official like this, but we I got her to come on board and talk to us when the pandemic first started because as therapists we're all freaking out, can we treat what skills can we offer? Because like we're going, well, you know, can we touch our patients? Can we not touch our clients? What do we do in our treatment room? What disinfectants work? Do we have to wave chicken wings and smudge the sage or you know, what the heck is going on? But since then I realized that Anne has got all these superpowers, and one of them is in uh essential oils, and that's why we got you back on, Anne. So tell us about you and tell us about how you got into essential oils.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, I've been a massage therapist for 25 years, and I've been an aromatherapist for 26 years. So I really went to massage school in order to enhance my aromatherapy knowledge and skill. Um, but I've also spent a lot of time in the education sector, working with schools, working with students, and I'm also passionate about instructional design. So I've done that whole trip that all of us, many of us do, which is student first, then a massage teacher, then working in a private practice, then more massage teaching, then teaching CE workshops. And then I was the director of education for a large massage school in Washington state. And then I worked for associated bodywork and massage professionals for 13 years as their director of education. And just about three years ago, I left that organization uh to start a digital publishing company with my husband, Eric Brown, who everybody remembers from the World Massage Conference, uh, because we're real believers in how online education, how we can work with online education to improve some of the foundational learning that people do. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think that you can use online learning for everything, um, but you can do a lot of great stuff with online learning and it bridges a lot of gaps for learners. So all along that long journey, um, aromatherapy has been my core passion. And I don't always get to do as much aromatherapy as I like, so I really appreciate you bringing me on so I can talk about my favorite thing, essential oils.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's a very cool segue. And um, I'm gonna we are gonna get into the essential oils bit, but I really want to talk about how I've I've seen a lot of online learning and uh I'm with Massage and Myotherapy Australia, plug out to those guys. Um they are uh like the peer body for massage primarily in Australia, and they they link out. We're all over the world with different stuff. What I do notice is that they've got got you guys on board helping with designing some of our our online learning, our our online portals for ethics and education, and oh god, there's some boring as bat poo stuff out there, like it's just your stuff is really cool. I've noticed it like there's flip charts and it's really interactive. That's thank you. On behalf of any student who's gonna do any courses um out there that are online, you've actually helped me with mine too, because I looked at some of your stuff and went, okay, I'm gonna re-jig some of my self-paced online to be a little bit more less PDF reading.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And yeah, I think, well, one of the things, like, if you know Eric Brown and you do, like he is he always is pushing the envelope when it comes to technology. And so we've got an amazing platform that we've invested a lot of money in. Um, and it just does, it has all these bells and whistles that you're not used to seeing, and they're super fun. But we've also run into those challenges, which is it takes us twice as long to develop anything as we think, because the build on everything is so involved with, like you say, everything's interactive and engaged, but you have to set all that, it's all done by hand. So it's it's a pretty involved process, but it's also a lot of fun when it starts to come together. So we love it. And I hope people will check us out because and get a sense for what is possible with online education.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, Eric and I share the same birthday. We're both 24-7. So we're both because I always say 24-7, you we're going 24-7. Yeah. I just wish I had one in this much of his uh tech savvy, because on the other side, I'm I'm more of the different creativity of Eric stuff. And I noticed he showed me sent me some links to the essential oils, uh, that we can actually do some of the basic online learning for the essential oils on your your um massage.

SPEAKER_01

Massagemastery.online. Massagemastery.online. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Online, yeah, so that's cool. But um, and I and I actually was I will edit that out. No, we won't. Um I noticed in the journal, it was a couple of journals ago, it was the Easter journal for us, that you had an article on essential oils that I read through and actually was sitting with a group of friends who were camping for the weekend, and it was like going, check this out. I didn't know that essential oils worked for you know psychology psychological effects. I didn't know that we could use it. Now you're advocating bringing essential oils into the into the session, into the clinic room. Um, can you outline some of some of the effects that essential oils can have for psychology, you know, psychological wellness for us and our patients?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think it's really interesting because um, you know, this it's not that this is new when it comes to aromatherapy. And if you have ever practiced aromatherapy, I think you know instinctively that they are influencing you on some sort of a psychological level. But it was really in the 1970s when Candace Peart discovered the opiate receptor that we started to have this new understanding of the brain. And it wasn't until 2009 that the first real research on essential oils affecting neurotransmitters takes place. So it's pretty new research in some ways. Now, for a long time, we've had the kind of research that goes along with um how people spend money. So, for example, in one research study, uh they had a hundred different shampoos, and the one that was rated the very worst at the end of the first round of research, they gave to a French perfumer. He adjusted the scent, and then it came in first the next time around based on how it smelled. So people, based on its smell, were saying it makes my hair silkier and shinier. There's been a lot of research in that area about how aromas influence the way we spend money. But this research is much newer, and so you're gonna hear me talk about the same essential oils over and over again. And people often ask, does this mean that all these other oils don't have these effects? And my guess is no, it doesn't mean that. What it means is they've only been testing this very select few of few oils, and so we can say definitively these have some of these effects, but others don't. I'm sorry, I kind of left your question behind, but I'll come back to it. So when we look now at that range of effects that we that are psychological in nature, essential oils, inhaled essential oils can improve your cognitive processing ability, they can improve your ability to allocate your attention, they can improve just your ability to do effortful mental tasks. People with very ambient levels of neurostimulating essential oils in the room do better on tests and they make fewer mistakes on written documents. They can also reduce the symptoms of anxiety, balance a number of important neurotransmitters. Um, many act as antidepressants, they can enhance your mood or shift your mood, and they definitely influence adenosine levels, which have to do with our sleeping and waking patterns. So they can bring sleeping and waking patterns into alignment over time. Some can help you get to sleep and some can help you stay asleep.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, wow. So let's look at the sleeping wow, Ann, slow down. No, no, no, no. You're like me. People sit there and say it when you learn from me, it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. What I love is um, so if we talk about sleeping, are we talking about putting a diffuser? Hey Lauren, good to see you. Um, a diffuser in your in your bedroom that will just help throughout that.

SPEAKER_01

Because that's one of the things that's kind of interesting is oftentimes essential oils are tested at ambient levels, which means below conscious detection. So one of the things that I do, because it's harder for us with electric diffusers or even with nebulizing diffusers, which are the more expensive ones, it's always hard to get just the right dosage. So I'll diffuse something that's sleep promoting about 15 minutes before I plan to go to bed, and then I'll let it just dissipate and it's just right. Like a lot of people say, Oh, everybody tells me lavender for insomnia, but that's not true.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We're gonna have a real problem here, Paula, if you hate lavender. Um, it's like oh smelling lavender. They're using way too much lavender, is the problem. They're just using way too much of it, and it's gotta be very low level, ambient, very, very soft, or it will disrupt your your waking, you it will wake you up if you're using too much of it.

SPEAKER_02

So you well, that makes sense to me because I've kind of and if it should be that you don't smell it hitting you in the head like like your grandmother's soap. Yeah. It should just be quiet. So, what about the waking up? Does it by helping put people to get their circadian cycles or their rhythm, they go to sleep better? Does that mean they'll naturally wake up, or do you need a different oil for waking?

SPEAKER_01

Um, well, there are a number of different ways of looking at that question. Um, certain essential oils like lavender is one, um, sweet marjoram is another, bergamot's another. They bring you sort of into balance over time. Um, lavender, sweet marjoram, valerian, vetivere, they are neurosedative. So they'll help you get to sleep as well. Um now you shouldn't have any problems waking up with essential oils. It's not like you're taking, you know, they're not like drugs and they don't act on your body like drugs. So it's not like taking a sleep aid. Um, but you can also use neurostimulating essential oils to bring yourself back up in the morning. One of the things I love to do is I love to do a wake-up shower, and I use either eucalyptus, rosemary, or bayloral. They're all high in a chemical component called 1-8 sineol. And 1-8 cineol is a really powerful neurostimulant. So you put you plug the drain, you put like four drops in the bottom of your shower, and you just let them steam up with the shower. You wake up, you just shower as normal, and you feel it clears out all your congestion and you feel great.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, that's cool. I never knew that. And I'm totally pumped with that because it's it's yeah, that's good. Easy and yeah, simple. Could you do it the reverse? Put four drops of lavender and and margarine bergamer in the the bath if you have a nighttime shower, because I'm more of a nighttime, probably people don't need to know that, but you know, that's it.

SPEAKER_01

You absolutely yeah, because it's the most of the research is done through inhalation, and so it's just diffusing the air, the oils in your workspace, putting them on your body and letting them evaporate off your skin. Like when we use them in massage as the lubricant or mixed into the lubricant, they're evaporating off of the client's skin the entire time. So you're always inhaling them. And so the inhaled effects are part of the deal. Even those oils that are really working physiologically on the body, you're always getting some of your effects from inhaling the oils.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, cool. This I I don't know if you're reading through the comments, but I have to ask this, and it's got to be because this is obviously valid. But Eileen's saying, since we've included having our budgie as an indoor pet, you know, the little birds are budgies, budgery guys, um, I have greatly missed using aromatherapy. Is aromatherapy contraindicated with birds?

SPEAKER_01

Um, with animals, it's quite interesting because some animal uh there they will have very strong reactions to them. I have done absolutely no work with aromatherapy and birds, so I am in no way prepared to answer a question about birds, but um, I used to raise Boa constrictors long, long ago when I was a much younger person. And they loved, yeah, they probably will. They love the aroma of geranium, like they loved the smell of geranium, Pelargonium graviolins. That was their botanical species, and they just loved it. So I would say you have to just tread carefully with your pets and see what they like and what they don't like.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was so sad, Eileen. But that's like that's a really interesting point. I'd never thought of that. Um so okay, so Lauren says her horse loves a cherimic massage on her legs. Anti-inflammatory, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, anti-inflammatory. That's fantastic. I love that.

SPEAKER_02

That is really interesting. So um this is kind of he chews on the eucalyptus leaves and reeks of menthol. Oh, interesting. It's validity. This is the budgie. Always he chews on eucalyptus leaves and reeks of menthol.

SPEAKER_01

So I don't see these comments. So uh if I need to answer something, you'll let me know.

SPEAKER_02

If he clicked on the comments, it doesn't matter. You should be able to find the comments, but it doesn't matter. Oh, I see. Yeah, I see. Okay, got him. It's kind of fun to go through that. It's yeah, anyway. Look, I want to kind of come back into some of these talking about neuro uh neuroscenators and um with the um um amygadala, um I can never pronounce it, uh, soothers. How would you apply those in a session?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I I think what's really interesting is um how rampant anxiety is in our world today. And we're just dealing with day-to-day stresses, we're dealing, we're all so connected, we all know what's going on in the world, so we're not just dealing even with our own town or our own city or our own country. We're really dealing with warming, yeah, the stresses of the world.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, like there's there's people go like they're really it's it's a tragedy to lose someone like a head of state for a commonwealth, yeah. You know, they're yeah, it's very sad. And I'm not necessarily a monarch, but it's affected me that you know, you talk to anyone in any part of the world about the queen, and there's only one queen that they know you're talking about, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and she's really has served, uh, she has served so dutifully, yeah. And I think like with such stoicism and with such strength and calm and goodwill, um, it's hard to see somebody like that pass in the world, but also yeah, not feel it. Yeah, for sure. I definitely agree. But we were talking, we were really talking about anxiety, and one of the things that's really interesting is the research on the amygdala and how essential oils affect the amygdala. So, as massage therapists, you all know this probably already that the amygdala is kind of the brain smoke detector, and it's on the lookout for smoke, it's looking everywhere for smoke, and smoke is anything that's scary. And whenever the amygdala detects something scary, like, oh my god, a snake eating one of those cute little birds we were talking about earlier, it's you know, it floods your body with stress hormones, and we go into the fight or flight response. Um, and one of the things that we know now about anxiety is that the more scary stuff you're exposed to, like the evening news, the more hyper-vigilant your amygdala becomes. You start to view more and more people, situations, and things as scary. So your amygdala becomes supercharged and it's just ready to be scared all the time. Well, a number of essential oils work as amygdala soothers. And what they do is when you inhale them, they take down the hypervigilance of an overactive amygdala. And there have only been a few essential oils that have been really tested very specifically for this. I'm sure that the more research that's done, the bigger this list will get. But right now, lavender, bergamot, bitter orange, melissa, damas rose, valerian, and vetivere will reliably take down the charge of an overactive amygdala. And as a result, they address anxiety. So these are great anti-anxiety essential oils. And there's some research that shows that the more you are exposed to these oils, the better and better you get, the less anxious you get. So people often say, Well, I'll get a weekly massage with lavender and bergamot and bitter orange, and that will do the trick. But it's not that. You need to bring them into your life. All the time, you really want them very present in your working and living space. So running a diffuser all the time, um, having those oils diffused in your air so that you're inhaling them and you want them at ambient levels, like you don't need to be like, oh, there's the lavender, I totally smell it. It can be really, really soft, and you're still getting the positive effects. And in some cases, you'll get a better response if it's at very low levels, if it's not too strong.

SPEAKER_02

With do you need to take all of them? Like, like, because I know that we used to talk about saying only put like three, three different types, like a top note, a mid note, and a base note in yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You can, but you don't have to. Um, so what I really like, like bergamot, as you hear me talk about bergamot as we go on, what you're gonna find out is bergamot is the great neurotransmitter equalizer. It is balancing your brain chemistry, it balances your levels of dopamine, serotonin, and glutamate. So inhaling bergamot becomes a really important piece. So I often do a combination of bergamot, lavender, and um I'll sometimes then balance that. I love black spruce and I also love silver fir, Abysalba. And these two species are fortifying, they're really great for stress resilience. So I put and they haven't been tested, so they might very well be amygdala soothers too. So I'll do those three together because I like the aroma and because it it feels good when I inhale them. But if I just did bergamot, if I just did lavender, I would also be getting positive effects. So, yes, you can blend them in synergy, or you can do use single oils or two oils or three oils.

SPEAKER_02

I wonder if that's why some of us, like me, for example, I love um um, just lost the name. Not English breakfast, Earl Grey tea. Yeah, it is bergamot.

SPEAKER_01

Bergamot has this incredible cultural history. I'm about to get a little off topic and talk about the spiritual effects of essential oils. But bergamot bergamot was um really it's an Italian, it's from the south of Italy, it's from southern Italy, and it's a fruit, and it was really not very widely known because it's only cultivated in this very small area. But then this Italian-born perfume maker moved to Cologne, Germany, and he imported tons of bergamot, and people went wild for it. They'd never ever smelled it before. It stayed incredibly popular for around a hundred years. People just using it in colognes, eating it in foods. It was everywhere throughout Europe. And I think about this now, and I think it probably just felt good, you know, to wear it. It felt good to drink Earl Grey tea and have that aroma of bergamot. I think they were probably responding to the fact that it just balances you, it just brings you into a state of equilibrium. I am I'm a huge bergamot connoisseur and I go through 15 milliliters of it a week. So my bergamot budget, not as high as my car payment, but it's right up there.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, wow, that's incredible. And it and and when you were talking about you're rattling off some of the names of the different oils, so that Damasque Rose, I just think it's beautiful. Are we drawn to some of the oils that we may be lacking in our assisting us at that chemo?

SPEAKER_01

I honestly think it's a little bit the opposite. And it's it's like when I do, when I do my research on what I should really be smelling all the time, it's it's geranium, it's Pelagonian gravolence, it's geranium essential oil. I can't tolerate the smell of it. I just can't stand it. So I won't use it. I don't use it in anything, I never blend it in anything. Like I'm very, I'm very adverse to it. And I think often the things that we dislike are the things we really need to be working with and really need to be bringing into our lives in small amounts. And um, geranium on a spiritual level is about boundaries. It's about bending too much or bending too little, it's about being inflexible or too flexible, and never really being able to find that middle ground where you can hold your boundaries, hold kind of contain yourself at just the right level so that you feel satisfied and the people around you feel satisfied. And unfortunately, despite 58 years of working on myself, this is still true. So I'm always bending too much or bending too little. I can't find the right degree of bend.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, is it funny? Because it that to me, I love the smell of that. I think my favorite's neuroli.

SPEAKER_01

Neuroli, yeah. It's um, you know, orange flower blossom. Um, yeah, it's a great sedative, it's a great neurosedive, and it's a euphoric, which all the euphorics have small amounts of psychedelic substances in them. So when you're inhaling them, you're getting very small amounts of psychedelics, not like peyote or mushrooms or anything like that, but just very tiny amounts that sort of expand you in some way, make you feel a sense of expansion. So Neuroli might give you that sense of expansion, and it really just takes down the central nervous system like that. It's like smell your nervous system take goes down a notch.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, beautiful. Like it is beautiful. Uh, so when how can we use some of these oils in our massage sessions? Clearly, you'll think you're saying advocating that it's better to have it as a diffuser versus rubbing it the oil in.

SPEAKER_01

Not necessarily. I think both work great. Um, but if you haven't done a lot of aromatherapy, before you start applying stuff liberally to people's bodies, you should go get some training because some are very are definitely skin irritants. Um, and you wouldn't want to irritate somebody's skin. Um, but you can add for every ounce of massage lubricant, whether that's an oil, a cream, or a lotion, you would add 12 to 24 drops of total essential oil. So if you had three different oils, you'd be breaking those up in different ways. Um, but 12 to 24 drops per ounce of carrier. And if you're gonna use a carrier, I do suggest using a natural oil. And I know we've kind of moved away from oil. Like when I learned massage, everybody used oil, and now everybody uses these weird gels that are full of lots of chemicals, or they use you know, lotions that have lots of mineral oil in them. So I just remind people as natural as possible and no dye and no fragrance, because they don't interact well with the essential oils. But one ounce, 12 to 24 drops. That's your basic formula.

SPEAKER_02

And for the non-Americans in the group, we have to work out what an ounce is in. I'm like going, I actually don't know what maybe, maybe the girls in the back uh can do it, can go on the internet and find it for us. Find out what the equal is, so we can put this up here so that for for the rest of us uh we will think about that. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, that's fine. Um, before we go on, I actually want to do a quick shout out to Q Academy because they've actually got multitudes of um of different venues. So I'm Brisbane and I taught in Brisbane, the venue there for a number of years, but there's also Sunny Coast is up there um down the Gold Coast, and they're integrating all the way through. But I might just get a quick word from our fabulous Q Academy guys. I'm hoping. Click to link soon. One ounce is 30 mil, says um Eric. So while we're waiting for for um the guys to put up that small little snippet from Q Academy, I'm just getting another comment. Um Arlene used magnesium oil and then cup decline and it caused a chemical reaction under the cup. Are there any essential oils that would cause a similar response? Thanks.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yes. Um, I don't know what magnesium oil would do, so I can't say that essential oils would do the same thing. But um, there are many essential oils that are skin irritants, and anything irritating for the skin, if it's applied with anything hot or with heat, it becomes more ir irritating. So, like clove bud oil, that would be horrible to use with cupping. Um, you know, there are many oils that you'd want to stay away from. I'm also not a cupper, so um, I'm not sure. I think it's best for me to not delve into realms where I don't belong. Yeah, or where I have a travel.

SPEAKER_02

And sometimes I'll put a heat, like they put fire in to do the cupping, but this there are the more modern ones, you suction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And you need something with oil on your hands. Like if you're massaging six people or eight people a day and you're rubbing, like you're absorbing too, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01

You are, and you're inhaling it because oftentimes you know you're right over the top of that stroke, inhaling it. And that can be, I think that's good for you. I don't think that will hurt you, even if you do it all day long, which I have done in the past. Um, but it will definitely can make you feel a little bit like you're on a roller coaster ride, depending on the essential oils you're using. I have had the experience of doing something really sedative, then something really stimulating, then something really sedative, and it just sort of uh whoo makes you a little bit more less boundaries than before.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, we're gonna jump over and do that clip for Q Academy right now, and then we'll come straight to that.

SPEAKER_00

My name is Jade Afu. I studied uh CERT for massage in 2014 and then went on to remedial in 2015. I was working in Essex, I was retail yeah, Lorna Jane. The real reason why I went and studied was I my daughter was um she's been quite sick for about seven years on and off. She's had a couple of um chronic conditions, so um I found it hard working in a job and having to leave because my children are sick, or I've got to go to hospital, or there's just so many things going on. For me, I needed another option. I've been set up for about eight years now working from home. Having a home business has been like such a blessing to my life. I I don't think I could have done what I've done somewhere else just with my own circumstances. My life's very busy. I've got three kids. Um, and this year has been a little bit different again because now I've got three kids playing sports every afternoon. Um, so I do try, if I can, work in between school hours. I feel like you can make it work to your advantage. So you can either work as hard as you want and be stressed and all the things, or you can make it flexible.

SPEAKER_02

And they are a great group, as I said before. I work for them. They do accelerated learning techniques, which is actually kind of like more into that fun side of learning. So the brain breaks every 20 minutes or so, you know, the students are always engaged, which is very, very cool. I'm just coming back to that question that that that comment that uh Eileen made about the magnesium oil. Eileen, I'm just wondering, how long did that stay? Like, would it was did it come up pretty much as you'd been doing the work and and underneath the cup created some kind of uh reaction and then eased off? Because I I think that we have to be mindful as as practitioners that if we're going to be using any any whether it's oils or like I've got a lubricant that's got eucalyptus and anarchy or like whatever else, that we actually have to um get them to sign you know something that says that this is what we're doing. And are you prepared to accept that we're going to be using these oils and that there might be a skin reaction and that it may last for a short time or a long time? So I'd really like to know, Eileen, whether that lasted you know, an hour, a day, a week, a month. She's in surgery having skin grafts. Like what's the what it took off the dermal layers and it looked like a burn. I bet you were mortified. Yeah. So just just that makes me think on the ethics side, just we need to do little little um information. And really, magnesium oil shouldn't be too bad. It took weeks to heal because your health and we we're always putting magnesium oil on people because of the this is a new this is new to me.

SPEAKER_01

This is not like not something that we do a lot of. I mean, I'm not sure I've ever done it um in the US. So uh it's very interesting, but I agree with you on the ethics side, like we must have our clients' informed consent to anything having to do with their care. And that would include if we want to use essential oils, they have to agree to it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, um, make a mineral more than an essential oil, so we're not really not an essential oil, yeah. And we're looking at spraying that on to absorb into the muscle to access this with the muscles. No, okay. There, that disclaimers. What are the euphorics? What are the euphorics when it comes to essential oils?

SPEAKER_01

What are they and how do they work? Um so there are a number of essential oils that have small amounts of psychedelic substances in them. And one of my favorites is nutmeg essential oil, which has a chemical in it called meristocin. And uh the name of nutmeg, the botanical, is meristocin fragrance. That's its botanical name, which is an awesome name, you must admit. So it has a small amount of meristocin in it. And uh, if you were to take large doses of it, and I guess we can say this because some stupid people somewhere have done this, it it instantly spikes your blood pressure, but it gives people the sensation of flying and they feel like they fly or float. And in some cases, people have remained high for like five days, but they're taking ginormous amounts of it, and they're probably could kill themselves if they were not careful. So we're using it in tiny, tiny amounts. Very, very small amounts of maristocin are absorbing into our bloodstream or being inhaled. And in those small amounts, they give us this sense of expansion. And I like to say that they put us in our bodies and in the universe at the same time. And I always feel like the euphorics pull you forward into the world, they pull you down your path and they sort of expand you into your path. So they're really, really beautiful, and they all tend to smell good and we tend to really like them. Um, so let me see if I can rattle off a few of them. Neuroli is one. Neuroli is one, bergamot, blue lotus, um, oh, cardamom. Oh, beautiful Elateria cardamomon, absolutely spectacular. Lots of people don't use cardamom essential oil. And just get yourself some the next time you buy it and smell it because there's no going back. And spiritually, cardamom represents abundance, so it's about abundance mindset and just believing that there is enough, we are enough, we have enough. So I love cardamom. Cardamun's the same cardamom as in cardamom rice, Indians, you know, cook it. Yeah, it's the spice, it's the same spice, and it comes from southern India, and it's been traded for almost 5,000 years all up and down the Red Sea coast. So it's got an incredible history.

SPEAKER_02

And when you think about the the how they the profit and how they feel in in India as a as a group, it's we have enough, it is enough. Yeah, it kind of maps them culturally.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. Um, some others are cypress, uh, grapefruit, jasmine, uh, neuroli, rosemary, clove bud, clary sage. More and more are coming to me.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, clary sage, yes. We're always told, advised to be mindful of putting too much of that in there. Cloves. We used to do when when the kids were but when the when the little our kids were babies, if they were teething, we'd get a clove and just rub it off with that gum.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's it's high in utenol, which is a phenol that is uh analgesic. So it has long been used for toothache or for muscular aches and pains as well. Unfortunately, though, uh you have to be very careful with clove. I do use tiny bits of it for muscular system stuff, but it is a skin irritant and it will irritate people's skin. So you do have to be careful and just use a little bit of it, but a little bit still smells great. Yeah, yummo, yum-oh. So, Paula, I'm curious from our earlier discussion, what's an essential oil that you don't like?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I know. I was thinking before because I'm not pumped on lavender, but I thought it was because of my um negative mental experiences of going to see my great aunt and uncle, who um that their whole house, like we walked past the lavender bushes that were through up to the gates, and and it just always reeked of too much of that. And I'm I'm hypotensive anyway, so I don't need anything to drop my blood pressure any lower than it is, and I think that that's why I was kind of moving away from it, but I love frankincense.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay. Well, let's talk about frankincense then. Well, frankincense is a great antidepressant, it is also one of the euphorics, and it has over a 5,000-year-old history. So, in the ancient world, around the Red Sea region, what is now um Iraq, Turkey, Iran, those areas that were once Mesopotamia and Egypt, um, frankincense was traded up and down that Red Sea region, and the Egyptians were absolutely desperate for it. They burned copious amounts, mountains of frankincense, and they burned it for their sun god sun god Ra. They burned it in the morning before the sun rose to welcome the sun into the sky each morning. And it's very interesting because when you look at the history of different essential oils, usually moon god here, sun god here, moon goddess here, star goddess over here, it's always different. Frankincense, completely consistent in this massive region. Wherever it was used, wherever it was traded, it was dedicated to the sun deity. So it has a sense of the sun's power to heat and to burn up all the impurities and to sort of purify our spirits. And for the Egyptians, they thought of it as transcendent awareness, the ability to hold the big picture and see the universe and hold the detail at the same time. So it's being able to hold the big thing and the small thing in one moment.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's incredible. That's like very, very, very cool. And I remember going to uh I used to sing in choir for church, you'd make you get 20 cents singing on a Sunday, boom, and two bucks for a wedding. So like that was at school. Oh, yeah. That always walk up through and burn the frankincense.

SPEAKER_01

You can that that actually that practice transcends is is pre Christian and it dates back to Alexander the Great. He's the first person who uh is frankincense incense. Is burned in his funeral procession. And that's the first time that that happens. And then it's really adopted by Christianity for their funeral processions. And because a number of priests recognized that it made people come together. And it's again that psych that small amount of psychedelics, where when it's burned, it actually produces something very similar to THC. And the priests believe that it brought people's minds up to God.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Yeah, like it's it's so it's and like gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They're the that's your collateral, gold and the other two. Is there a is I just remember, you know, they talked about the burning bush and things like that when and that was you know in the Bible, but they say you know that maybe that was the resin that was burning from some of those oils that come from the saps of the tree. Is frankincense one of those that that where's it produced? Is that produced from the bark of a tree?

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm. They cut the bark, they put little cuts in the bark, and it oozes frankincense tears. And then usually after about 10 days, they go back and they gather them. And the very best frankincense comes from bark splitting that happens in extremely hot weather. So the hotter and more miserable it is for the humans who have to gather it, the better the quality of frankincense.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_01

It's produced uh in some in India, but not much. Most of it is in Saudi Arabia and Oman.

SPEAKER_02

This this is letting out a home truth. When I first I did my aromatherapy, but not the entire certificate, just portions of it in our diploma. And I was doing some aromatherapy and some massage and offering treatments, like I was going to one of the local, few of the local hospices and coming in and doing massage. So I'd go in during the daytime and say, Listen, where where would you like me to go? And they'd say, Well, Mrs. So-and-so in bed seven or Mr. Such and such at bed 18. I went into this, this, the um, saw the head nurse and said, Well, I'm coming to do a massage for Mrs. Smith. And she said, Well, she's she's feeling really unwell, she's heavily constipated, she's not, you know, she's not well, um, and she's in a bit of pain. If you could do some work, you could do some massage on her. And she can't get out of bed. I thought, okay, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna use some essential oils. She's constipated, so I'm going to try, I'll do some abdominal massage, you know, and I'm gonna use lavender because it's calming, and I'm gonna use frankincense because it's about letting go. And I thought, maybe that will help. It's not really a physical, but you know, so I massaged her and she moaned, but she seemed to enjoy it and went off at the end of you know, my own way, and then I came back at the end of the shift to see how she was. And I walked up to the the um the head nurse and said, I've just come back to find out how Mrs. Smith's going. How is she? She said, Oh, didn't you hear? I was like, No, she died. Oh, wow. Oh my god, let it go. No, I didn't mean I'm sure it just happened to be not completely coincidental. I hope I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But you know, it who knows. And it was uh it was probably better, you know, it was a soft going because lavender represents the noble heart. So um you had the noble heart, you had the universe, and the moment all together.

SPEAKER_02

Not too crash on on your CV, though, I'm gonna say, and killed one patient.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Not yeah. Well, there are a few that had some beautiful uh skin irritation because I used essential oils at too high a dosage. So there you go. Live and learn.

SPEAKER_02

So, what got you interested in essential oils, especially like in this research realm?

SPEAKER_01

Um well, one of the things that got me one of the well, of course, I'm just interested in the whole range of what happens with essential oils. But my first experience with essential oils was at a country fair and I was young and dancing around um being a hippie, and it was very fantastic. And somebody, here we are back to frankincense, dotted my forehead with some frankincense. I'd never smelled anything like it before. I kept trying to get my nose above it to smell it better, and finally I danced over to where this woman was standing, and I said, What is this and how do I get more of it? And she was the first person that I studied aromatherapy with. And then I just went on and studied with other teachers, and I'm very much a self-taught learner, so I did a lot of just research on my own. But my first husband, Eric Brown, of course, is my best and most adorable husband, but my first husband, who is also a lovely person, uh, was a botanist, plant taxonomist, and happened to be an expert in aromatherapy. So, uh, an international expert. So I learned a lot traveling with him and being exposed to different cultures and how they were using plants. So that was also a really important part of my education was just sort of being on the ground with this person who knew everything about plants and questioning him and getting good answers.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's interesting. I meant to ask before is there a difference if you diffuse versus burn oils? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The old tea like one of the things that's great about these cold diffusers is there's no heat in the process and you don't need heat. You really just want to disperse the essential oil into the air so that you can inhale it. Uh, so I would go that way. They're they're very prevalent. You can also get a nebulizing diffuser. And the difference with the nebulizing diffuser is they take a pure essential oil and they burst it into very, very tiny molecules. So they're around $100. They take a lot of work to keep them clean. But if you really have like respiratory stuff that you're dealing with, or um, you know, you're really trying to treat something, then that would be the way to go. But you get a great result with just an electric diffuser that you buy from an aromatherapist, uh, aromatherapy supply. Yeah, or Aldi, you know, when Aldi has it along with their 85-inch TVs and the hard thing is getting really good essential oils because the market is flooded with synthetics, and those are really bad for people.

SPEAKER_02

So two questions. One, if you've got like a three-bedroom house, how many diffusers would you need? Like I would put one small diffuser in each room. Yep. Okay. Can you have like the calmative in the bedroom and a stimulant in the kitchen?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you can do anything you want, and it's all good. Just keep inhaling essential oils. I do have this kind of interesting experience that I had when I um I wrote a 300-hour aromatherapy program for a school called Ashme College School of Massage in Washington State. They had five campuses, and the program launched at the Tacoma campus in one city. It was incredibly popular. So they asked me to launch it at two other campuses. So I taught it at one campus in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. I was being massively exposed to essential oils all day long, five days a week, five hours in each of the different classes. And I have never felt better in my life. That was the best I've ever, ever felt. And I had always struggled when I was younger in my early 20s with depression and um was on Paxel for a while and then took myself off of it. Because if you've ever been on it, it just makes you numb to the world. And that's a horrible way to feel. And after this experience of doing this term where I was exposed nonstop to essential oils, um, I never ever experienced clinical depression again. It just shifted me, it shifted my brain. And um it was effortless. And one of the things I would notice in these students who would go to school for this program, where they suddenly went from no aromatherapy to five days a week, five hours a day of aromatherapy, was their lives shifted. And they would go do this same pattern. I taught it for about three years in a row. So they would do this pattern, not all three campuses, but the program. The first two weeks, they were just in love with aromatherapy and everything was glorious. And then the two weeks after that, they were mad at the world and everything was horrible. And then at that month point, they just started changing everything. They left their husbands, they broke up with their girlfriends, they quit their job, they told their mother they were never gonna speak to her again. They, you know, they just shifted their lives in these really powerful ways. And for me, as my life was shifting too, I felt like there's something to this. Like we're just more at our core, we're able to be here in this body, in this mind, and be truthful, be authentic, because it just stripped away all of the garbage.

SPEAKER_02

So that so the first two weeks of euphoria that's just that the body's kind of working at a certain level, that going into that deeper area where they're telling, look, you know, I know we've been happily married for eight years, but I've actually been unhappily married for seven ten months.

SPEAKER_01

I've now I've now discovered my truth, right? I've inhaled enough frankincense where I'm just at my truth, and here it is.

SPEAKER_02

But there's an internal joy, right? Not an internal depression.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I think it I think it's uh an exodus of trauma in many ways. Like I think people are just sort of saying, I've held, held, well, you talk about letting go. Like I've held, held, held all this, and now I'm just doing the exhale and letting it out. And there's something about just constantly exposing yourself to essential oils that I think help you do that. Again, though, one of the things that worries me is I I do these little talks, and then people go by really crappy oils and expose themselves to really crappy oils, and then they're like, Lady, I got none of these results, and I actually feel horrible. And it's like, well, you've been inhaling synthetics, and there is nothing in our world that regulates essential oils the way that they need to be regulated for the aromatherapy community. So you have to be super careful. And I personally independently test my oils, which is very, very expensive, but I've now landed on some brands that I really like and I don't use anything else.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Can you give some pointers of what people should be looking for when they for my my first one is always never buy any from the markets because and anything that says five bucks because it's real.

SPEAKER_01

If your damn ass rose isn't 67 bucks for two milliliters, which is you know 40 drops, then it's not the real thing. It's it's and 47 bucks for two milliliters of jasmine. So um, and neuroli's right up there too. I haven't bought any neuroli for a while, so I'm not sure with inflation where it's at right now, but probably really expensive. So you do just have to be very careful about that piece of it. But if you look at aromatherapy teachers all over the place, like a wide variety, um, you'll find often that they're using the same brands. And it's because they've tested them or had them tested.

SPEAKER_02

We used to use, we used to uh advise Ahisma. I don't know if they're still around, and that's an Australian, like because we've got a lot of Australian botanicals here that we can use.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, amazing. Yeah. So many um, so many new essential oils are coming out of Australia and out of South Africa, and it's it's really exciting. So that's really cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So if they're looking at the bottle, is there some is it like if is there anything?

SPEAKER_01

The problem is, is there are a number of companies who have figured out how to make themselves appear super authentic and they're not. So no, I would just say um, no, get a good aromatherapy teacher and find out what they're using. Okay. My advice. Or I can tell you my four brands and market for them, but I'll save that. And if people want to email me, I'll tell them my four brands.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Well, I'll be asking that question when as soon as we we finish here because I would like to know are they all uh American brands?

SPEAKER_01

Nope, French, um, one French brand, and I've never used any Australian brand, so I'm not familiar with your brands at all. Uh French, um an English brand, a British brand. Um, and then one that's in Southern California and one that's in Washington State.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, cool. Wow, it's midday, which means it's eight o'clock for you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna have to wrap up in a minute, but can can you get Eric to open the door and let your cats in? Because I would die. I'm busting to see them. I'm sure everybody else who's listening has would love to see them as well.

SPEAKER_01

Eric, you want to bring in Delphi?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so uh before we bring that.

SPEAKER_01

I wanted I wondered, is is there anybody who had a question that I could answer? Or yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If if anyone's got a question in there, like they've been making comments all the way through, but if anyone has got a question, I've got time. If you got time.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, not Indu. This isn't oh Indy's scared. Oh, that was that was Indo. He's our um, he is our cat that proves that love conquers all. He was abused for the first seven months of his life, and then we got him, and he stayed under a cabinet for about you know eight weeks, and I would just sit in the bathroom with him and speak to him while he was under this cabinet. And eventually he came out, and then one day he flopped himself down in front of me and invited me to pet him and started to purr. And he is a real lover, but he doesn't like anything new. This is Delphi, she's our other little black cat, and she is so sweet, she is very cat, she is a tree climber, she will climb a tag.

SPEAKER_02

So we don't have this in Australia that I know of, but they walk the cats every evening. And oh, hello, Puss. This is Loki. And and they have a tag on so that they they know where the cats are walking around and they can track them so they you can actually walk.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, they they've got little air tags, so they're just the Apple AirTag that you can hook up to your phone and you can get a little collar. Yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_02

They're getting rid of the air tags apparently because people have been part ex-partners have been dropping them into their yeah, stocking them. We stock our cats with them, so I can imagine that it works.

SPEAKER_01

It's horrifying, it really is.

SPEAKER_02

And we haven't had anyone that's made any comments under here, but look, I would love to have you back again to talk about um anything that you've got because you've got this wealth of knowledge. Um I'm like shaking my head, yes, but that's more from just exhaustion and silliness than anything. Yes. Oh, wealth of knowledge, wealth. So uh, and also resources, anything that that you would advise and people come in and and tick on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um, if everybody wants to check out our website, we're massagemastery.online, and the coupon code is uh aroma 50 for any of our three aromatherapy courses, and we'll give you 50% off. And I do one called the aromatic mind, which is all about the psychological effects, one called Soul Sense, which is all about the spiritual cultural history of different essential oils, and then one's called aromatherapy foundations. It's long, it's eight hours, and it's lots of science and that foundation that you need to sort of take your aromatherapy practice to the next level. Um, it's people tell me it's a little academic, so a little warning, but I put lots of pretty pictures in there.

SPEAKER_02

And and if people here, most of the people that are here are listening who are manual therapists, so they're probably going to be the ones that are jumping into that space so they know how many drops of what to use in the diffuser or how much to use in the clinic for what kind of treatment. So that like still eight hours is not a lot, and you get continued professional education points with those, don't you?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, you know, I don't know what your system is in Australia. Um, I do I don't so you would know better than I if they could use them, but they're NCB TMB approved, if that matters.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for us, and and this is global, so most uh of the associations will allow you to have up to five between five and fifteen points per year on online learning of of anything that's that fits your pieces. Yeah, yeah. So that you've got it, that's an eight-hour, and the other two are about how long?

SPEAKER_01

Uh they're both just one-hour introductions.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, perfect. Hook you in. Yeah. I'm hooked. I'm back to hooked again. So I just wish I could have used an oil to calm the calm the mood of the house last night because we had the first um first of the three Bledslow Cup games, which was rugby union Australia versus New Zealand, and I had three men in the other room yelling and screaming at the TV set for 18 minutes.

SPEAKER_01

I don't I don't think there's any essential oil that's gonna solve that problem, but you can try. Well, it's always so delightful to chat with you. You're so fun and full of effervescent energy, and it's just a joy. So thank you all for having me.

SPEAKER_02

Unreal. And everybody, if you've got any questions, toss them down into the in into the stream, and I'll pass them on to Anne. Uh, and we'll be putting this up on my YMS page and then dropping it finally into the um massage mentor mastership portal for those people who want to help accelerate their their clinical practice and get to that next level. And I'll also be going over to Ann and Eric's websites as well, so you'll be able to um get any more information from them. But Anne, thank you. And we'll guys, we'll see you all next month. For I'm trying to think who I've got next month. I'll let you know when I remember. See you. Basil, rosemary. That's what I need, right? And and the rest of my coffee. All right. See everybody, take care, see you in October.