When my son Max was killed in a car accident, his surviving sister was only 14.
It was the week before the start of her first year of high school, and we were both in shock.
Presumably, well-intentioned friends and family felt the need to “warn” her that I—her mother—would never be the same after losing a child. That prompted a moment that would forever change the course of my life.
I was trying to fall asleep when she came into my bedroom hysterically crying. When she calmed down, she shared that these “well-intentioned friends” had told her I would never be the same. Then she said:
“I need you to be the same because you are all I have.“
It was true.
Her younger brother had just died in a car accident. Her father was in jail for the incident. Her best friend and second family had just moved to another state, and her brother’s best friends—whom she loved like brothers—were in the hospital fighting for their lives.
I was all she had, and I needed to find a way through this to be there for her.
In that moment, I made her a promise that I had no idea how I would keep. I promised her that I would find a way through.
I had no idea what tools or skills I would need to acquire or develop to navigate the
difficult road ahead, but I knew I had no choice but to figure it out.
Burn the Boats
I was recently reflecting on how this situation—where my life blew up, and I had no choice but to create a new life—forced me to learn really hard things that I would never have chosen to learn had life remained easy .
My history-loving fiancè Pete labeled it a “burn the boats” moment.
Pete shared the story of how, in 1519, military commander Hernan Cortes took a small army to the shores of Veracruz to steal treasure from the Aztec Empire. This treasure had been defended for over 600 years despite various attempts from larger and better-equipped armies. After the army disembarked on the shore, the commander issued an order to “Burn The Boats” with the implication that the army was either going to take the treasure and return home in the Aztec’s boats or they were going to die trying.
By burning the boats, Cortes removed their comfort zone and the army’s ability to retreat to the familiar. In doing so, he forced his men to push forward with relentless determination, allowing them to take the treasure and conquer the entire Aztec Empire.
I often say that “necessity is the mother of invention”. Burning the boats intensifies that necessity. By destroying their boats and eliminating retreat as an option, the military commander created a point of no return where all effort needed to be focused on creating a new life.
When my son was killed, my old, comfortable life died with him, and I had no choice but to embrace my new path and learn the new skills necessary to navigate it.
Mystics call this an initiation. Joseph Campbell describes it as the Hero’s Journey in his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The common thread is that you have to completely sever your connection to the safe, comfortable, ordinary, familiar, “known world” and enter the “unknown world” where you “commit to fully engage with the journey and transformation of self.”
This initiation can be triggered by death, divorce, financial ruin, change in your health or that of your partner or loved one (more here), or change in the world, including war, economic collapse, or even the election of a leader who was not your first choice.
The transformation process itself is NOT FUN. It is NOT EASY. It is not something any of us would intentionally place on our bucket list.
BUT if you are willing and able to surrender to that which you never would have asked for and allow yourself to learn the lessons you never wanted to learn, you will learn things that you will be truly grateful to know. You will transform in ways that make your life better than you ever imagined possible.
Essential Oils to Help After You Burn the Boats
Essential oils may help you embrace and work through the mental and emotional discomfort accompanying significant turning points like “Burn the Boat” situations.
When you have no choice and no backup plan, essential oils may help support your emotional flexibility and shift your focus from what you cannot control and overcome fears in areas where you have no choice that may feel uncomfortable, risky, or overwhelming.
Essential oils can be powerful tools to help you surrender into your “flow” to release stuck energy, literally burning your energetic boats. Connecting to nature can help you connect to your ability to increase flexibility, reduce rigidity, and be better able to surrender to and flow with life.
Oils derived from plants can help support flow and gently break up stagnation and increase movement on both the physical, mental, and emotional levels.
Whether inhaled or used topically, essential oil compounds influence the chemistry of your brain and body by activating your olfactory receptors located in the nose or through skin absorption.
Your sense of smell connects directly to the part of your brain that regulates the release of hormones that impact your mood and emotional state.
Essential oils travel through the nasal passageways to the brain, where they bind to olfactory receptors. From there, they reach the emotional center of the brain—known as the limbic system—where they can stimulate the release of neurotransmitters, like serotonin, which can influence your neurochemistry, helping to enhance mood and reduce anxiety.
Research validates this, noting that “inhalation of essential oils can communicate signals to the olfactory system and stimulate the brain to exert neurotransmitters (e.g., serotonin and dopamine), thereby further regulating mood.” Additional research shows that essential oils can significantly impact the brain, calming emotional states and decreasing blood pressure, heart rate, and skin temperature, indicating decreased autonomic arousal.
Citrus oils, for example, are known to lift moods as their chemical composition of monoterpenes like limonene may help lift spirits, calm anxiety, alleviate depression, and literally make you feel lighter. Citrus trees and their fruit are the embodiment of sunshine. Growing in the warmth of climates found close to the equator, citrus fruits absorb the sun daily and bring us their fruit amid winter, just when that lightness is needed the most.
Research on the Effects of citrus fragrance on immune function and depressive states found that “citrus fragrance was more effective than antidepressants.” Similar animal research found that lemon essential oil reduces anxiety.
READ THIS NEXT: Releasing Control
5 Essential Oils for Burn the Boat Moments
- Heart™
Heart™ balances the heart to enhance self-compassion and support, integrate, and reset all body systems, including supporting feelings of receptivity to self-belief and self-forgiveness.
“Burning the boat” may prompt you to reflect on previous mistakes, which can bring up uncomfortable feelings of guilt or shame. Heart™ blend may help you easily release these emotions so you are better able to move forward without feeling embarrassment, shame, or guilt.
Your heart integrates and balances your physical, emotional, and mental bodies, providing blood to every cell and every organ. It also serves as a complex information processing center, influencing brain function, the nervous system, the hormonal system, and most of the body’s major organs. When any part of your body isn’t functioning optimally, your heart has to work harder. For example, when your body is in a state of stress, it needs more oxygen, increasing your heart rate. Your heart is your body’s reset button. Still, a state of constant stress can fatigue the heart and compromise our ability to reset, leading to inflammation, infections, toxicity, and heart disease.
By returning your heart to balance, you support the cardiovascular and circulatory system, regenerate the structure of your heart, and help reset the homeostatic mechanism for your entire body. Heart™ is formulated with powerful calming oils, including Jasmine, an oil found to be as calming as the anti-anxiety drug valium, according to a 2010 study. Jasmine has a mildly soothing and calming effect, allowing it to alleviate anxious thoughts, relieve stress, and ease depression. Jasmine oil stimulates the brain, helping uplift the mood and promoting feelings of self-confidence and optimism.
Heart™ blend also contains Neroli, known to soothe anxiety and frantic thoughts, calm negative emotional responses, and support optimism.
Apply Heart™ over your heart (left side of the chest) to balance the heart and support, integrate, and reset all body systems, including mental clarity, physical health, and emotional balance. Heart™ blend also supports feelings of open-heartedness, expansiveness, and receptivity while mitigating loneliness, sadness, and grief.
As you deeply breathe in Heart™, try to breathe in the deep sense of worthiness and allow yourself to receive love and praise. As you slowly exhale, allow your breath to dispense of any patterns of low self-worth or self-limiting beliefs. Consider writing in a gratitude journal that shows increased optimism. - Parasympathetic®
Parasympathetic® calms your nervous system and helps you be present in the moment, to both your own body and your mental, emotional, and physical needs.
This blend of clove and lime essential oils helps energize your physical body and mental capacity, helping to support the brain to help you remain steady, calm, and optimistic, even in difficult situations or when confronted with challenges.
Your sympathetic “fight or flight” state turns on when survival and safety are threatened—which can occur during unexpected, intense, and sudden stress or change. When you are stuck in a cycle of sympathetic dominance—not activating your parasympathetic nervous system—your body’s alert mechanism for survival remains on high. You can become trapped in a perception that you are not safe, which lays the groundwork for pessimism and negative thinking.
The parasympathetic system restores a sense of safety and balance, which calms the brain and the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system to help you identify and support your own needs. The research found that when stimulated, your vagus nerve releases anti-anxiety chemicals that help you focus on positive emotions, decrease mental distress, and improve mental well-being.
Parasympathetic® empowers a flexible mindset and the ability to pivot when necessary, which can be valuable in a rapidly changing environment. Although external events— such as death, divorce, illness, and even election results—fall outside of your control, the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system allows you to intentionally and thoughtfully choose how you react to these events. As a result, you may feel empowered to sustain resilience, identify the most efficient path forward, and demonstrate the ability to make wise decisions even in turbulent times while guiding others.
Research has found that your parasympathetic nervous system supports the development of learned optimism by thinking about your reactions to adversity in a new way and consciously challenging negative self-talk. This learned optimism involves cognitive restructuring, where you can help yourself and others become more optimistic by consciously challenging negative, self-limiting thinking and replacing it with more optimistic thought patterns.
When you do not feel safe envisioning a positive outcome, you might activate what is known as a freeze response of your nervous system—also known as disassociation so that you don’t feel pain. This often includes a disconnection to your sense of smell. Smelling essential oils, like Parasympathetic®, can help thaw the freeze response and restore your ability to sense your environment and feel safe in it. This sense of embodiment and safety may help you feel better engaged, attentive, and present in the moment, which may help you avoid worrying about future events and things that are outside of your control.
Apply Parasympathetic® over the vagus nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) to activate the vagus nerve. This activation helps discharge energy and shift from the frozen state into the healing parasympathetic.
READ THIS NEXT: Releasing the Freeze Response with Essential Oils - Limbic Reset™
Your limbic system is a network of structures in the brain that processes emotions, social interactions, learning, and motivation. When the limbic system detects a stressful situation, it activates the amygdala, which then sends signals to the hypothalamus to release stress hormones (like adrenaline) into the bloodstream, which triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response.
Research finds that “stressful and traumatic events (like ‘Burn the Boat’ moments) sensitize limbic regions, which might compromise their cognitive and emotional adaptive functions and result in maladaptive coping with stress.” This is also known as “Amygdala hijack” where your brain reacts to psychological stress as if it’s physical danger. (More here)
In other words, “Burn the Boat” moments trigger a maladaptive limbic response. A limbic reset is then required to restore a healthy stress response.
Inhaling essential oils is the fastest and most efficient way to reset the volume of threat perception and help calm the over-firing of your limbic system.
This is because smell can access the limbic system of the brain to lower limbic system activation, which then enables your body to enter the parasympathetic “rest, digest, and repair” state.
Your sense of smell is vital to survival! The scent is often the first warning of safety or danger. For this reason, your sense of smell has direct anatomical and functional access to the amygdala in the brain’s limbic lobe, which is physically located near the olfactory bulb.
In fact, on a physical level, only two synapses separate your amygdala from your olfactory nerve. No other sensory system has this direct and intense contact with the neural substrates of your brain’s emotional control center. Your other four senses—sound, sight, taste, and touch—must travel to different regions of the brain first before reaching your limbic system.
Smell travels through your olfactory system to your hypothalamus through your amygdala. When you smell an essential oil, it stimulates your hypothalamus to release hormones that trigger a rapid emotional response, directly impacting how you feel and function.
Limbic Reset™ contains a proprietary blend of essential oils designed to calm threat arousal and send safety queues to help reset your limbic system and support healthy emotional regulation. Limbic Reset™ was explicitly formulated with essential oils such as Frankincense and Sandalwood that contain the chemical constituent sesquiterpenes, which may help to increase the oxygen in the limbic system, which in turn “unlocks” the DNA and allows the release of emotional baggage from cellular memory.
The citrus oils contained in Limbic Reset™ help to lift your mood and clear your energy so that you do not take on or carry negative emotions or a pessimistic mindset for others. For example, Melissa oil is known as an antidepressant that possesses uplifting and emotion-balancing compounds.
Limbic Reset™ also contains Helichrysum oil, which is touted for brain function and known to cross the blood-brain barrier and carry oxygen to the limbic system to help rewire neural circuits in your limbic system and calm an over-active stress response.
READ THIS NEXT: How Smell Stimulates Your Brain - Fascia Release™
Releasing fascia helps to “unstick” emotional energy and release tension in areas of your body that correspond to difficult emotions. It may help create space for you to release your emotions gently without having to relieve them.
This gentle process of cultivating physical flexibility opens the space for enhanced mental and emotional flexibility. In other words, you experience the full range of emotions without getting stuck in any mental or emotional state.
Fascia is the tissue that surrounds, supports, and protects every organ, blood vessel, muscle, and nerve in the body. As such, fascia is highly innervated and rich with blood vessels, lymphatics, and hormonal and neurotransmitter receptors. It appears to play a role in storing emotional memories.
Fascia is believed to house 25% more nerve endings than skin and 1000% more than the collective innervation of muscle, so fascia could very well be considered our richest sensory organ, and your senses are highly correlated with storing your emotional memories. This may explain how releasing fascial adhesions helps release stuck emotions that keep you in emotional rigidity.
Fascia Release™ helps you unravel deeply held tensions and mental, physical, and emotional constrictions to promote physical and psychological flexibility in all areas of your life.
Fascia Release™ helps release adhesions and constrictions, creating space to allow you to feel and release your emotions without getting stuck in any mental or emotional state. This state of fascial flexibility or coherence empowers you to move through your mental and emotional landscape without getting fixated or stuck in any pre-existing rigid patterns.
Formulated with essential oils derived from flexible plants with deep roots in the earth, like Frankincense, Fascia Release™ helps support muscle relaxation, reducing muscle tension and promoting a sense of ease in the body, which may support improved mental and physical flexibility.
Fascia Release™ blend contains Lavender oil known for its calming and soothing effects. Lavender is known to help relieve muscle tension and promote relaxation, which can indirectly support flexibility. Cypress allows for improved flexibility and resilience. Frankincense helps calm your nervous system and promotes mental flexibility. Black pepper and Rosemary oil are stimulating and invigorating, which may help improve circulation and alleviate muscle tension, supporting flexibility.
Apply on the back of the neck and back of the heart to improve mental and physical flexibility.
READ THIS NEXT: Essential Oils for Fascia Release - Attention™
Attention™ blend was designed to support children with ADD/ADHD. It works because it helps ground these kids into their bodies, and when they are grounded, they are less distracted, impulsive, and more focused. Grounding your body by topically applying essential oils to the bottom of your feet can generate a sense of internal balance so you can witness your thoughts and emotions without getting stuck or overtaken by them.
Grounding enables you to move through various mental and emotional states while remaining grounded, which helps support the self-awareness necessary for growth in the face of “Burn the Boat” moments. My therapist likes to say that growth only occurs when it is uncomfortable to make the hard changes. Connecting your energy to the earth and your feet may help you through those awkward moments by preventing you from getting rigid or stuck in your head because it brings your awareness into the body.
Attention™ contains Vetiver, a perennial bunchgrass with very deep roots that help ground it to the earth. Vetiver essential oil is extracted from these deep roots. It is known to ground you mentally, physically, and emotionally, often helping you explore the root of your emotional issues. Attention™ also contains Frankincense™ and Cedarwood, which helps us ground and feel connected to the planet and each other. Apply 2-3 drops of Attention™ on the bottom of the feet and back of the neck to help with grounding.
READ THIS NEXT: How Grounding Supports Emotional Release
Featured Oils:
- Limbic Reset™ available here
- Fascia Release™ available here
- Parasympathetic® available here
- Heart™ available here
- Attention™ available here
References:
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/essential-oils-for-hope/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23531112/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8646568/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14972656/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/releasing-control/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4176918/
- https://www.verywellmind.com/learned-optimism-4174101
- Releasing the Freeze Response with Essential Oils – Vibrant Blue Oils
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436805/#:~:text=These%20studies%20along%20with%20our,in%20maladaptive%20coping%20with%20stress
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/3-essential-oils-for-the-amygdala/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/how-smell-stimulates-your-brain/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/essential-oils-for-fascia-release/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/how-grounding-supports-emotional-release/
