Aromatherapy

by C.B Love

Aromatherapy originated in France and is based on the pharmacological properties of essential oils.

Aromatherapy is an increasingly popular form of holistic therapy and is the systematic use of essential oils to improve physical and emotional well-being.

There are some 400 essential oils extracted from plants all over the world. Some of the popular oils used in aromatherapy today include chamomile, lavender, rosemary and tea tree.

These oils are used to treat a number of ailments and are particularly useful for stress-related problems and a variety of chronic conditions.

These natural plant oils are applied in a variety of ways:

· Massage (most used method)
· Baths (add a few drops to warm water)
· Inhalations (not for asthmatics)
I have to say that, as an asthmatic, I would not rule inhalations out. Just make sure you use the correct oils with the correct dosage (remember: LESS IS MORE).

My favourite oils are lavender, chamomile, peppermint, neroli, rose (I find it is best to use absolute. Although very pricey it is worth the expense), rosemary (great for muscular pain!), frankincense (wonderful for respiratory problems such as asthma), bergamot, sweet orange and petitgrain. Lavender is so versatile as it can be mixed with virtually any other essential oil. I prefer Roman chamomile to the German one, only because it has a wider range of properties. I use Sweet Almond, Jojoba or Coconut Carrier Oil for massage blends, but these carrier oils are by no means the only ones I would use. Take consideration into the oils you are blending, their purpose and the type of skin you might use the blend on.

I could wax lyrical about aromatherapy since I have found great release in its application but instead I prefer you find out for yourself. I can only recommend you acquire books such as the Complete Illustrated Guide To Aromatherapy by Julia Lawless (an authority, if not THE authority in aromatherapy) from Element Books or Essential Aromatherapy by Carole McGilvery and Jimi Reed (the both of them have written a plethora of guides on holistic therapies and techniques) from Acropolis Books.


Info

Complete Illustrated Guide To Aromatherapy by Julia Lawless, Element Books
A comprehensive guide which includes a directory of essential oils with properties and use, a detailed index of ailments and treatment, a massage section complete with pictures and directions. Julia Lawless is also the author of The Fragrant Garden.

Essential Aromatherapy by Carole McGilvery and Jimi Reed, Acropolis Books
A very similarly put together book as the one mentioned above. The plus is the excellent section on massages with plentiful of pictures regarding their administration.

Also the The Aromatherapy Bible by Gill Farrer-Halls  from the "Bible" collection from Godsfield Press, I have a few myself, namely the "Crystal Bible", the "Wicca Bible" and my friend Jo's "Meditation Bible". They are a fountain of knowledge for curious minds!

Aqua Oleum – Alec and Julia Lawless
http://www.aqua-oleum.co.uk/
You can find a huge range of high quality essential and carrier oils for a very fair price.

Aromatherapy Council
http://www.aromatherapycouncil.co.uk/
if you’re looking to get aromatherapy treatment, then the Aromatherapy Council is your first port of call. Whilst an aromatherapist can practice and without having to be AC Registered, I would strongly recommend you seek treatment through a registered practitioner. That way you have someone to turn to should things go wrong. The Aromatherapy Council can help you find registered practitioners.

Mother Nature’s Goodies eBay Shop
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Mother-Natures-Goodies
I love eBay and I am a regular customer at Mother Nature’s Goodies. Liz runs her shop from home and I highly recommend her products and excellent service.

Home Aroma
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Home-Aroma
I get all my blending bottles from this eBay shop. My favourite ones are the 30ml with droppers. I only go for brown or blue as they’re the best to keep light away from the contents.

I also use a wooden box (or several) to store my oils. They’re a great way to keep them from light and keep organised. I am also currently looking to make my own aromatherapy perfumes and cosmetics, which is yet another aspect of aromatherapy!

I hope you will find as much pleasure in using aromatherapy as I have!

Synchronicity: Inner Path of Leadership

by Joseph Jawaorski

http://www.amazon.co.uk

After I had read this wonderful book I had thought of writing my own review, but when I looked on the Amazon.co.uk web site to see what other people had written I could see that someone had beaten me to it. This review from Amazon says it all:-

This book was first published in 1996 and has an introduction by Peter Senge. Senge refers to Robert K. Greenleaf's book "Servant Leadership", as the best book on leadership (to that date) and says that Jaworski builds on Greenleaf's thinking and goes further especially in dealing with the path of personal transformation that the effective leader must undergo. Senge also refers to the transformational effect that a meeting in 1980 with David Bohm had on Jaworski.

Jaworski's account of the influence of synchronicity on his life is well written and interesting. He describes how he became dissatisfied with his successful life-style, he was a highly paid trial lawyer, and wanted to do something else. He resisted this, but details a number of influences and incidents that were important for his own development and growing awareness.

One example he gives is of an encounter with an ermine, in the Grand Treton Mountains of Wyoming; he says of the ermine, "She couldn't have been more than ten feet from me. All at once she appeared with her almost black eyes looking directly into mine … She sat there staring straight at me, moving not a whisker."

He added, "We communicated, that ermine and I, and for those few minutes, I experienced what I can only describe as a kind of transcendence of time and a feeling of oneness with all the universe."

Jaworski became to believe in the importance of teaching people the importance of good leadership and eventually founded the American Leadership Forum which focused on developing leadership in American communities, businesses and administration.

He had no formal training in leadership, but was heavily influenced by the writings of Robert Greenleaf who wrote that the essence of leadership is the desire to serve one another and to serve something beyond ourselves, a higher purpose, Greenleaf described this as "servant leadership", the leader as the servant of the people he or she leads.

For Jaworski, with his growing sense of the inter-relatedness of everything Greenleaf's ideas made perfect sense. He saw relatedness as the organizing principle of the universe.

Jaworski has a concrete sense of the importance of following your own destiny, his description of his departure from his law firm to set up the new venture puts this well:
"At the moment I walked away from the firm, a strange thing happened. I clearly had no earthly idea how I would proceed. I knew no one who could help me on the substantive side of things, no network of experts. …. Yet, at this point, strangely enough most of my concerns and doubts about the enormity of the project were erased. I had a great sense of internal direction and focus, and an incredible sense of freedom that I had never felt before in my entire life."

Jaworski believes that when we focus on what we have to do then something miraculous happens. He says: 'The day I left the firm, I crossed the threshold. From that point on, what happened to me had the most mysterious quality about it. Things began falling into place almost effortlessly - unforeseen incidents and meetings with the most remarkable people who were to provide crucial assistance to me'.

Jaworski describes how a meeting in 1980 with David Bohm, the physicist, had a profound effect on him, coming as it did after he resigned from the law firm.
Bohm had just published "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". Bohm told Jaworski that the concepts of time, space, and matter no longer applied, they talked about what happens in a "bubble chamber", in the bubble chamber particles sometimes move backwards in time and notions of earlier and later are no longer clear; time-space processes sometimes run in reverse casual sequences.

They discussed Bell's theorem, which proves that the world is fundamentally inseparable. Bohm said that everything is connected to everything else, and told Jaworski that, "The oneness implicit in Bell's theorem envelops human beings and atoms alike."

Bohm said that everything is enfolded in everything, "If you reach deeply into yourself, you are reaching into the very essence of mankind. When you do this you will be lead into the generating depth of consciousness that is common to the whole of mankind and that has the whole of mankind enfolded in it."

Bohm said that we are all connected, but that people create barriers between each other, but if these barriers are removed then human beings could operate as one mind, and pull together.

Jaworski goes on to describe the successes and setbacks he met, and of the way in which synchronicity operated.

That when he tried too hard things did not work, but that when he let go then things flowed. He experienced the effectiveness of collective thinking, or dialogue. Jaworski also notes Bohm's idea that the fragmentation of thought is reinforced by a world view inherited from the 16th Century.

Jaworski describes the traps he encountered; the trap of responsibility, the trap of dependency and the trap of overactivity. But this book is above all a description of a process that transcends the "normal" existence of many humans.

As Jaworski says:

"If we have truly committed to follow our dream, there exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will a powerful force that helps us along the way and nurtures our growth and transformation. Our journey is guided by invisible hands with infinitely greater accuracy than is possible through our unaided conscious will." He uses the metaphor of the journey or the quest.

At the end of the book he also refers to the inscription that hung over the entrance to Jung's house in Switzerland: Vocatus atque vocatus, Deus aderit - "Invoked or not invoked, God is present".

I strongly recommend this unusual book which was published in order to inspire business people dealing with the issue of leadership, but one which deals with the real development of people and the need to connect to the higher powers that we are linked to. At their best the authors of "business" literature are trying to inspire - Jaworski achieves this.

What Is Enlightenment? – The Magazine.

by Colin Whitby

http://www.wie.org/

As you will have noticed this edition of The Magic of Being was inspired by a magazine called What Is Enlightenment? which it’s introduction advises ‘is not a spiritual magazine’.

Well, it’s not just a spiritual magazine, they say. It is a spiritual, cultural, philosophical, and otherwise category-busting magazine committed to bringing a new perspective to politics, business, science, the arts, and the environment.

WIE is the engaged, evolutionary movement that has emerged from our passionate pursuit of the question of what enlightenment really is, and what it means in the world today.

At its core, WIE is about finding new ways to think: new answers to the difficult questions that are the challenge of our moment in history. Those answers, we strongly believe, can only be found by looking freshly at the emerging reality around us, without relying on older solutions that were sufficient for simpler problems.

And what we need are not just answers, but new ways to find those answers. This is the real mission of WIE, for which we need not only radical individual creativity, but radical collective engagement.

The latest edition of WIE explores Ecology, Politics, and Consciousness, Rebooting Environmentalism for the Twenty-First Century. Will a new environmental movement's fearless embrace of technology and human ingenuity help pave the way to a “bright green” future? Does integral philosophy have what it takes to solve the seemingly impossible puzzle of global politics? Can the human potentials currently being discovered at the leading edge of consciousness help guide the way?

WIE explores these provocative questions—and others—in an attempt to envision a truly life-positive twenty-first-century world. Featuring Ken Wilber, Steve McIntosh, Thomas de Zengotita, Jim Marion, and more.

We loved reading this magazine, and we found it enlightening too….