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The Benefit of Applying Essential Oils to the Feet

By Jodi Cohen

I have long heralded the feet as the best point for the topical application of essential oils as topically applying essential oils to the feet can help improve systemic circulation, stimulate muscles, reduce tension, and ease pain throughout the entire body.

Oils absorb faster through the feet as the pores on the bottom of your feet are the largest on your body, making them particularly absorbent as they can quickly pull the essential oils into the bloodstream.  

When essential oils are applied to the feet, traces of the oil can be found throughout the entire body in less than 20 minutes, according to research on the chemical constituents of Lavender essential oil. The book Clinical Aromatherapy also found that essential oils rubbed on the feet affected the autonomic nervous system within minutes.

Your feet are also free from hair follicles – which produce sebum oil that lubricates your skin and acts as a barrier that can hinder or slow down the application or absorption of the essential oil.

The skin on your feet is also thicker and much less sensitive to “hot” oils (More Here) than other areas of your body, making it safer to be applied safely and directly without dilution and less likely to trigger an adverse reaction. This means that many people who might experience irritation when they apply certain essential oils to other parts of their body often don’t have any issues when they apply the same oils to their feet. The lower sensitivity of the skin on your soles means you can often apply essential oils undiluted. It also makes a great location to apply “hot” oils like Breathe or Immune Support, which can sometimes cause issues for people elsewhere.

What’s more, essential oils can easily be applied to the feet and covered with socks if you don’t like the smell of the oil.

Essential oils are lipophilic (fat-soluble) and comprised of super small molecules that easily penetrate your skin for easy absorption into the bloodstream.  As an extremity, your feet are located furthest from your heart, making it more difficult to receive healing remedies, especially if circulation is challenging.  For example, cold tingly toes, plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, hammer toes, and fallen arches are examples of poor blood flow to the feet, which can impact your posture, and how you move, sit, and stand.

Topically applied essential oils impact the feet immediately and directly as well as allowing the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of the essential oils to reach multiple organs, systems, and areas of your body that are in need of support.

Your feet are literally the foundation of your body – playing an intricate role in every part of the body from alignment to health.   Your feet play host to 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments in each foot, the health of our feet matters A LOT to our overall health.

If your feet as the foundation of your body are off, it throws everything upstream – throwing the rest of the body out of alignment.

Foot reflexology is a form of massage therapy that involves applying pressure to specific points on the foot that are believed to be correlated to other organ systems and regions of the body.

Your feet have around 72,000 nerve endings each – more nerve endings per square centimeter than any other part of your body – and it is believed that every nerve line in the body ends in your feet. 

Traditional Chinese Medicine focuses on healing through the movement of energy along meridian lines.  It’s believed that when pressure is applied to reflex points along the meridian, the health of the area of the body that corresponds to each point is affected.  To this end, it is believed that applying essential oils to specific points on your feet may have a beneficial effect on specific organ systems.

You can find a detailed foot chart to help with oil application here.

Every organ and system in your body is connected through meridians of energy that end in your feet, hands, ears, and face. It is hypothesized that energy can become blocked and foot reflexology can clear the path for better communication between the organs and the rest of the body’s energy fields.

Research backs this up, with a study finding that ear, hand, and foot reflexology resulted in “a significantly greater decrease in premenstrual symptoms for the women given true reflexology treatment than for the women in the placebo group.”

Another study used foot reflexology to treat patients with breast and lung cancer and noted a marked decrease in both anxiety and pain. 

Research on Perspectives on Reflexology maintains that putting pressure on points in the foot during reflexology can help break up lactic acid crystals that stop energy flow.

In most reflexology systems, the big toe represents the brain and head. The next two toes represent the eyes, and the next two toes represent the ears. The top third of the sole is our chest, the mid-third is our stomach and digestive system.

Essential oils can be topically applied to the soles of your feet and between toes to create some space between those joints and help bring the body into balance.  For example, you can roll essential oils on the bottom of your feet to improve blood flow and mobility. Massaging the feet also improves circulation, stimulates muscles, reduces tension, and may ease pain.

Fascia is the band of thin, fibrous connective tissue that wraps around and supports every structure in your body, including the feet and the toes.  Fascia twists and turns from the feet up the body, helping to support the arch of the foot and playing an important role in normal foot mechanics during walking. 

When your fascia is healthy, it’s flexible and stretches with you. When your fascia tightens up, it can restrict movement and pull you out of alignment. Patterns in your fascia develop to compensate for the way you walk and stand. These facial misalignments can contribute to gait issues, including pronating, supinating, foot issues like bunions or even ankle instability.  These misalignments can impact everything up the chain.

My friend, Deanna Hansen who founded Block Therapy notes that “in all positions, you should be aware of your pinky toe as it needs to engage in all actions to ground the body and create the proper support so you can fully activate the core…a lack of connection diminishes the energy that would otherwise be available to the body to add support challenging positions, and without their involvement, create a heaviness in the body that is forced to be supported by other postural muscles.”

Helping to release fascial adhesions may help strengthen proper alignment and help unwind the challenges responsible for creating adhesions in your fascia and blocking your energy flow

Fascia can help with functional movement by reducing friction between structures. The collagen that makes up fascia is organized in a wavy pattern. Healthy fascia layers are flexible and can slide over one another. When pulled, these lines of tissue resist tensile and shear loads, helping to keep your feet and body parts together.

Stress and tension can limit flexibility and the fascia can become matted and form hardened areas, called adhesions. Fascial adhesions or hardened and adhered fascia – which can no longer slide smoothly – lead to restricted movement and back pain, especially if the fascia becomes so thick that nerves constrict. Fascial compartments may also become tight and not allow for normal movement of lymph and blood into and out of the compartment, contributing to pain and swelling.

As you may know, fascia lies just below the skin, so topically applying essential oils to the skin allows for easy and immediate access to the fascia. The skin is your largest organ and is relatively permeable to fat-soluble substances like essential oils that can permeate the tissue and may help release adhesions and fascial restriction, increase circulation, and decrease swelling in the tissue around the feet.

The essential oils in the Fascia Release™ blend are uniquely formulated to unravel deeply held tensions, constrictions, and energetic blockages in your tissues to reduce pain, improve blood and lymphatic circulation, and release fear, repressed emotions, and tension held in the body (organs, muscles, tendons, bones, and joints) or the mind.

Fascia Release™ contains Lavender™ oil which possesses analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsant, and antispasmodic properties, making it a great choice for calming pain. It is known to increase blood circulation, reduce inflammation, and calm nervous tension and nerve pain. Lavender™ also helps to soothe other symptoms associated with physical injuries, such as headaches, migraines, nausea, and depression. 

Research backs this up, finding that applying Lavender™ oil topically for pain relief was just as effective as some pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories and analgesics. Research found that Lavender™ effectively reduced pain immediately after the treatment, and remained lowered at 1 week post-treatment. Lavender™ also helps calm anxiety and relieve nervous tension to make pain from the injury more manageable. Inhaling lavender also had a morphine-like effect in patients recovering from surgery. The study also found that lavender was effective in reducing migraine pain and relieving lower back pain and neck pain.

Fascia Release™ blend can be topically applied to the soles of your feet and between toes to create some space in between those joints and help bring the body into balance.  For example, you can roll essential oils on the bottom of your feet to improve blood flow and release fascial adhesions.  Roll the Fascia Release™ on the back of the toes, then slide your fingers between your toes, pressing to the point of discomfort, and hold for three minutes.  This can undo the fascial holding pattern and tremendously help with your balance (be patient with this one, it could take some time to be able to fit your fingers between your toes!)

Topically applying the Anti-Inflammatory™ blend to the bottom of the feet before bed can calm inflammation in the body and the skin.  Users rave that it calms acne and other skin issues while you sleep.

Anti-Inflammatory™ is designed to reduce inflammation and encourage regeneration of damaged or stressed connective tissues. Anti-Inflammatory™ is especially helpful for calming inflammation in protective tissues around nerves, reducing the inflammatory compression that contributes to nerve pain. Anti-Inflammatory™ contains Ylang-ylang which has healing properties that repair nerve damage.  

It also includes Frankincense™ which is known for its anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and sedative properties. Frankincense™ has been shown to improve the accurate transmission and communication of messages between the nerves and the brain. Incorrect sensory messages can result in nerve pain, so improving the accuracy of signals can eliminate pain.

The Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2016 published a study showing how Frankincense™ has pain-reducing qualities. The oil works to block COX-2 (an enzyme connected with inflammation) and “exhibits significant anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects.”

In a 2003 study, patients with osteoarthritis knee pain were given either frankincense essential oil or a placebo. The group that was given the frankincense essential oil reported improved knee movement, better range of motion, increased ability to walk for longer distances, and an overall significant decrease in knee pain.

Anti-Inflammatory™ also contains ginger, an excellent antioxidant that helps reduce inflammation and kill bacteria to heal infectious areas. Ginger oil is a rubefacient which means it is warming in nature, which helps dilate your capillaries and increase blood circulation.

It’s particularly good for chronic joint pain, stiff muscles, and tendons and ligaments that need softening. Ginger works by directly inhibiting vanilloid receptors to soothe nerve pain, increase blood flow, bring down inflammation, and relieve achy types of pain when applied topically. Apply 2-3 drops of Anti-Inflammatory™ to the bottom of the feet before bed.

Circulation™ helps support the delivery of oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the site of injury to help speed healing and pain relief.  Formulated to support healthy circulation to deliver oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the body and the brain, while simultaneously carrying toxins and waste away from the cells to be eliminated, the Circulation™ blend may help open the vasculature to allow for optimal blood flow to both carry healing oxygen and nutrients to cells and allow a painful and inflamed area to heal faster.

Circulation™ contains powerful oils known to support bone repair, including Cypress oil which is an anti-spasmodic known to improve circulation and reduce fatigue and stress. Similarly, Nutmeg oil soothes pain, and research has proven its anti-inflammatory properties in reducing pain and swelling.

Black pepper is known as one of the best oils for alleviating deep tissue pain by warming muscles and increasing blood flow to the injury while reducing inflammation and pain. Black Pepper in combination with ginger essential oil in the Circulation™ blend helps enhance circulation, reduces inflammation, and blocks pain. The heat of these oils is known to speed up the healing process. Apply 2-3 drops of Circulation™ on the bottom of the feet or around the ankles to help increase blood flow.

Jodi Cohen

Jodi Sternoff Cohen is the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. An author, speaker, nutritional therapist, and a leading international authority on essential oils, Jodi has helped over 50,000 individuals support their health with essential oils.