I’ve been interviewing a lot of inspiring individuals lately and have noticed that they all have one powerful thing in common.
Every single one of them during the darkest hour of their darkest day hit a rock bottom moment where it occurred to them that they could just lay down and die from the intensity of the pain or trauma that they were living with.
And every single of one them individually decided that they were not getting to let this challenge kill them.
That they were going to find a way through.
And once they made that one critical choice, they started to heal.
That is the conscious and intentional choice I made after my 12-year-old son Max was killed in a car accident – I decided that this was not going to destroy or define me.
And once I made that choice, I was able to find solutions and make other choices to start to improve my physical, mental and emotional health.
I share this today because I truly believe that mindset and the choice to improve your situation is the KEY to health.
If you do not choose to get better, you are unintentionally choosing to stay stuck or get worse.
The Choice To Heal
Healing begins with a choice.
A choice to try to get better.
To continue making an effort.
Instead of backsliding into victim mindset, in which you feel powerless or taken advantage of by others. Victim stories can include feeling betrayed by your own bodies and powerless to change your circumstances.
You always have the choice to improve your health.
To let go of anything that gets in the way of healing, including any self-limiting beliefs, attachment to being a victim or patterns of judgement, guilt or shame that may prevent you from reaching your full potential or anything else that is keeping you stuck.
Essential Oils to Support Healthy Choices
Essential oils can help you calm your nervous system to create a sense of relative safety where you have the option to make the choice to support your health.
Your sense of smell is critical to your survival.
You smell food.
You smell water.
Smell allows you to detect and react to potential threats, including predators and fire.
Research in Science Daily on the Sense of smell notes, “The survival of all living organisms depends on their ability to avoid danger and seek rewards. In humans, the olfactory sense seems particularly important for detecting and reacting to potentially harmful stimuli.”
The research continues that “the olfactory organ takes up about five per cent of the human brain and enables us to distinguish between many million different smells. A large proportion of these smells are associated with a threat to our health and survival, such as that of chemicals and rotten food. Odor signals reach the brain within 100 to 150 milliseconds after being inhaled through the nose.”
This means that essential oils can be a powerful tool to help you feel safe and move out of immobility and stuck places. The more you can emotionally unplug and objectively observe a situation, the easier it is to clearly assess a situation and consider the different options before reacting or responding with a choice.
When you are emotionally triggered, your reaction is often exaggerated. Objectivity allows you to unplug from the emotional response so you might recognize and identify these triggers
My 3 Step Ground – Center – Shift strategy that helps me calm and stabilize intense emotions so that I might better access my objective perspective. The following essential oils help support this process:
1) Ground
Grounding allows you to feel safe so you can objectively observe a situation and decide if this is indeed the hill you want to die on.
Essential oils, especially those derived from grounded plants like trees which are intrinsically grounded through their root structure into the Earth. Essential oils comprised from barks, roots, grasses, needles and resin of plants also help you pull your energy centers down into the Earth.
Parasympathetic® Your nervous system is the key to unraveling overwhelm. Restoring your sense of safety by activating your parasympathetic nervous system can help you to feel calm and grounded so you allow yourself to experience your emotions and choose not to die on that hill.
Topically applying Parasympathetic® behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone can stimulate the vagus nerve where it is most accessible to the surface of the skin and turn on your safety response. We recommend applying Parasympathetic® to vagus nerve three times daily.
Supporting the parasympathetic state can also help the body ground which further benefits the vagus nerve. Further, the lime oil in the Parasympathetic® blend can help promote emotional grounding, encouraging a balance between the heart and mind, the connection of which helps you ground. Apply Parasympathetic® over the vagus nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone).
Attention™ contains oils from plants with very deep roots in the Earth, like Vetiver, Frankincense and Cedarwood which helps you ground and feel more objective Apply 2- 3 drops of Attention™ on the bottom of the feet and back of the neck to help with grounding.
Frankincense is a resin extracted from trees that grow in the challenging climates of northeastern African and the Arabian Peninsula. These challenging climates make Frankincense uniquely resilient and supportive to help with grounding. What’s more, the resin and sap of trees is reminiscent of life’s blood in the sense that it protects, seals, and heals a wound. And, just like a physical wound, essential oils derived from resins are known for their ability to heal the wounds within us as well. Frankincense is known for helping to purify, sanctify and connect you to your spiritual path, calming the mental chatter of your nervous system. It also helps connect you to the healing energy of the Earth.
2) Center
Once you are grounded and feeling safe, your heart can help you process through and discharge energy. Connecting to your heart helps you let go of any fears and allows you to choose not to die on that hill.
Your heart helps you regulate high arousal states (both physical and emotional) and redistribute energy mobilized for life-preserving action, while freeing that energy to support higher-level brain functions, clear away mind chatter and improve your self-awareness.
Centering in your heart energy helps you uncouple from the fear from of immobility. I just focus on intentionally moving awareness from the head or mental and intellectual focus to the heart and emotional center for love and joy.
Viewing situations through the lens of the heart allows the kindest, most genuine response and helps you access inner strength, resiliency, courage, integrity and authenticity. Your heart helps you feel safe and support feelings of self-acceptance, self-love, compassion, openness, and unconditional love of others.
Heart™ helps shift your heart into coherence and align with your healthy heart resonance. Apply Heart™ blend over your heart center, the area behind your breastbone, up toward the jugular notch, and back to between the shoulder blades. This area encompasses your physical and emotional heart.
Smelling essential oils like Heart™ can help keep your body grounded and feeling safe as you process through scary territory like the freeze response. Heart™ blend contains a proprietary blend of organic and/or wild crafted essential oils that helps you show love to others and yourself, including Blue Tansy and Jasmine. A report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry examined the impact of hundreds of fragrances on the brain and found jasmine to be “as good as Valium at calming the nerves with none of the side effects.”
To use, simply apply 2-3 drops of Heart™ blend over the heart (left side of chest) 2-3 times daily or as needed.
3) Shift
Once you are grounded and centered into your heart, it is easier to shift and choose not to die on that hill. By shift, I mean release old patterns and replace them with healthy new patterns. Intense feelings are painful to release and sometimes more manageable in small doses – think eye dropper, not fire hose.
Essential oils can calm the intensity of the flow, allowing you to chunk the release so that it feels more manageable. In this way, essential oils help you control the duration of the pain – releasing just a small amount of the intensity at a time, much like you would slowly and carefully unscrew the top of a carbonated beverage to gently release excess carbonation and avoid an explosion.
Inhaling essential oils can help you gently micro-dose the release of intense emotions as you exhale. Essential oils and the sense of smell allow you to activate and release intense emotions and sensations over brief durations – providing a small amount of stimulus to engage your body in releasing the pain without flooding and shutting down your system or keeping you stuck in freeze.
Uplift™ contains a blend of essential oils that help calm the intensity of painful emotions. Apply 2-3 drops of Uplift™ over the heart, around the ears or on the bottom of the feet as needed.
Just place the bottle under your nose and breathe deeply, fully inhaling the oil for 3 – 7 breaths. Try to extend the exhale and really allow yourself to release and shift.
Featured Oils:
Ready to get started? Click the links below to order today:
- Attention™ available here
- Frankincense available here
- Heart™ available here
- Parasympathetic® available here
- Uplift™ available here
References:
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211014100139.htm
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/7881819/Smell-of-jasmine-as-calming-as-valium.html
