Stop.
It’s time to bring back some peace and tranquillity to your life.
It’s not good for your body, mind or soul to always be on the go and there’s a reason why slowing down is good for you. You’ve heard the expression take time to smell the roses but we’ve got something even better.
Peace and calming essential oils.
If you’re looking for a natural way to bring a bit of zen back into your life - and keep it there - we can help. This guide tells you everything you need to know about using essential oils to bring a bit of tranquillity back to your days.
How to use essential oil for calming nerves
A recent survey revealed that nearly 80% of UK adults feel stressed monthly. However, this isn't something that we should simply accept as being the norm, especially not when there are ways to combat this feeling.
Essential oils are a brilliant, natural way to help us alleviate the stress and chaos we handle daily. The best part is that there are several ways you can use them, and each offers its own benefits.
Topical use
Diluted essential oils can take your massage and skincare regimens to the next level. You could make a roller blend so that you always have oils on hand, no matter where you are, and use it directly on areas where you feel pain or tension.
You could gently rub a calming essential oil blend recipe into pressure points like your temples, wrists, or third eye. Or you could place some around your nose so that you inhale them for longer.
Dilute your oils with a high-quality carrier oil and use them to massage your feet or hands when you’re stressed out. Or enlist the help of someone else to give you the kind of back rub that will go that much further in relaxing you.
You could also add a combination of carrier and essential oils to your favourite cosmetic products, whether these are lotions, muscle rubs, serums, or toners.
Diffusing essential oils
Diffusers disperse essential oils directly into the air of whatever room they’ve been placed in. This means that you can inhale them more efficiently and absorb them into your body, where they can get to work doing what they’re intended to. This is one of the best ways to use essential oils for anxiety.
Dry evaporation
Add a few drops of essential oil to a piece of dry material, like a cotton ball or a swatch of fabric. Then you can inhale the scent directly from the material or allow the aroma to disperse naturally by adding the oil-soaked item to your pillow, the vents in your car, or even your shirt collar. However, this method will result in your essential oil evaporating more quickly, shortening the duration of its effect and causing you to go through it faster. But in a pinch, it might be worth it!
Inhaling essential oils
This is one of the easiest ways to gain the benefits of essential oils. All you need to do is open a bottle and inhale a few times, ensuring that the concentrated oil doesn’t come into contact with your skin. Using essential oils for calming anxiety in this manner will yield immediate results.
In the bathroom
Although it’s not recommended that you store your essential oils in the bathroom because of how hot and humid it gets, you can use them here in many ways:
- Add a few drops to your body wash, shampoo, or conditioner.
- Add a few drops of oil to the bottom of your tub or a less wet corner of your shower and breathe them in while you’re washing away the day’s stresses.
- Add some of your diluted essential oil mix to a washcloth. This will serve double-duty as a way to absorb them through your skin and as a method of inhalation.
- You could also create an essential mix with a peace and calming essential oil, carrier oil, and a bubble bath product and soak in your DIY spa.
The long-term benefits of using essential oils for calming anxiety
The soothing scent of essential oils enters your body through your nose and travels to the limbic system in the brain, the part where emotions are processed. When you’re regularly exposed to essential oils for anxiety, you’ll start enjoying extended periods of time when you’re feeling more hopeful, optimistic, and peaceful.
Aromatherapy is famously beneficial in treating a range of mood disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and stress. Using essential oils will reduce how often you feel these negative emotions while calming your thinking and bestowing physical benefits like ensuring you’re getting quality sleep.
You can increase your energy levels, improve your ability to focus, and may even end up feeling more motivated when you start using calming essential oil blends or individual oils on their own.
The best essential oil for calming nerves
While each of the essential oils outlined here offers a multitude of benefits, they’re particularly good for bringing more calm and peace into your home.
Bergamot
The wonderful scent of bergamot essential oil will balance your hormone levels, calm you down emotionally, and support the organic release of anxiety, stress, and tension. Bergamot supports our central nervous systems and may encourage a more positive outlook as it helps stop rumination in its tracks.
Lavender
One of the most popular oils around for many purposes but especially to help you relax, lavender essential oil can be used in many different ways. It’s one of the basic building blocks for many peace and calming essential oil blend recipes and is safe to use even if there are children in your household.
Lemon
An excellent choice to diffuse in the morning because of its ability to calm as much as it energises, preparing us for our day ahead, lemon essential oil is a must-have for your household. Lemon oil is invigorating, stimulating, and may foster a deep sense of well-being - not to mention refreshing your space so that it feels clean and fresh!
Neroli
Neroli is on this list because it’s actually one of the oils that the Ancient Egyptians relied on to support the natural healing processes of the body, mind, and spirit. The American Botanical Council acknowledges its common use to soothe anxiety. Use it as part of a calming essential oil blend recipe to centre your emotions and promote awareness, confidence, focus, and peace.
Patchouli
Centering and grounding, patchouli oil has a high sesquiterpene content. This is why it is so powerful when it comes to relaxing the emotional centres of your brain, supporting your emotional equilibrium and rejuvenating your mind.
Spearmint
The stimulating scent of spearmint essential oil belies its ability to calm our nervous and respiratory systems down. It’s an excellent option if you feel like you’re always running on empty as it slows your breathing, a potent way to force your body to relax.
You may also find that it helps open up and release emotional blocks while making you feel more balanced overall, making it an excellent choice as one of the top essential oils for anxiety.
Ylang Ylang
This oil covers all the bases: it will calm you down, relax your nerves, relieve feelings of stress, reduce anxiety levels, and support creating healthy sleep patterns. Ylang ylang essential oil balances female and male energies as it supports relaxation, and you may even find that it restores your equilibrium and boosts your sense of confidence.
We can learn a lot from the research
The effects of aromatherapy on the sexual gratification of menopausal women
Essential oils are not new, but the scientific world’s interest in them is. Clinical studies are not only revealing that our ancestors were correct in what they believed these oils could do for us but also that there’s much more good news regarding their potential.
Along with proving that using essential oils for anxiety is not such a wild idea, these studies have shown that they can do a lot for animals too.
Lavender’s proven stress-reducing benefits
A meta-analysis designed to have the final say on lavender’s effects on stress involved at least 90 studies and over 9,000 participants. The results are as we might expect: lavender helps reduce stress and anxiety.
Bergamot’s benefits for stress and mood
The effects of diffusing bergamot essential oil was compared with the effects of inhaling just water vapour or just resting on stress markers in 41 women. Bergamot oil was found to lower cortisol (the main stress hormone), increase parasympathetic nervous system activity (an indicator of rest and repair processes), reduce fatigue, and improve mood. No wonder bergamot is one of our favourite mood-boosting essential oils!
Amazing lemon and test stress
If you have to cram for an exam, lemon might be just what the doctor ordered! Nursing students who smelled lemon essential oil for 15 minutes before a test not only had better cognitive and physiological scores, but their test anxiety was reduced by almost half that of the controls!
The anxiolytic and sedative effects of sweet basil oil
Research on mice revealed that sweet basil oil relieved their levels of anxiety and additionally had a mild sedative effect on them, making it a lighter option than the prescription medication diazepam.
Jasmine’s effect on anxiety
A closer look at rats’ response to jasmine extract found that low doses had a significant impact on anxiety in the animals, lowering it considerably.
Chamomile’s effect on individuals with generalised anxiety disorder
The effect of chamomile supplements on people with GAD was investigated in a randomised clinical trial. It was found that this plant mitigated symptoms of mild to moderate GAD.
Aromatherapy self-massage and its effect on menstruating women
Women who suffer anxiety and pain before, during, and after their menstrual cycles were found to be positively impacted by massaging themselves with certain essential oils.
Calming essential oil blends
As efficient as using essential oils on their own can be, you may find that you like the way blends work too. Not only do blends allow you to bring the benefits of several different oils together and experience better results, but creating or experiencing brand-new scents is also a very pleasant process.
Volant Aroma’s Unwind Blend
A wonderful mix of bergamot, clary sage, and roman chamomile, our Organic Unwind Blend is designed to help you relax after the stress of the day or during your self-care time. It will revitalise you and leave you feeling refreshed and renewed.
Forgive-everyone-including-yourself blend
Mix together 3 drops of patchouli with 2 drops each of bergamot and cypress. Although the citrus scent of bergamot is usually associated with stimulation, it has an array of calming capabilities that make it a wonderful option when you’re angry, frustrated, or stressed.
Bring-joy-to-your-world blend
Create a combination of 3 drops each of frankincense and lavender with a drop of lime essential oil for calming and you may feel your heart soar! As incredible as it sounds, lavender may indeed help bring happiness and joy into your life as it offers a dose of serenity, while frankincense grounds you spiritually and lime gives you a boost.
Perfect peace and calming essential oil blend
Mix 3 drops each of bergamot, lavender, and tangerine oils together and settle those butterflies in your stomach. Tangerine oil will relax you and help you let go of whatever troubles are currently taking up space in your mind with its happy scent while lavender and bergamot offer you their tranquil, floral aromas.
Relax Blend by Volant
Bring the outdoors inside when you use Volant Aroma’s Organic Relax Blend. This expert combination of essential oils for calming nerves like eucalyptus, grapefruit, palmarosa, and ylang ylang will turn whatever room you’re using it in into a beautiful garden in full bloom.
FAQs
What are the benefits of using essential oils?
You can use calming essential oil blends to create peace in your home. The right oils also have a myriad of emotional, mental, and even physical assistance to offer.
What are carrier oils?
Sometimes referred to as base or vegetable oils, carrier oils dilute essential oils before they come into contact with your skin to make this process safe as well as making their aromas and effects last longer.
What precautions should I take when using essential oils?
Always dilute essential oils properly if they’ll be coming into contact with your skin, and make sure they’re safe for children and pets if you have either in your household.
How should I use essential oils?
Whether you’re using essential oils for calming or anything else, you have multiple options. Diffuse them, bathe with them, apply them topically, inhale them, or create a room spray, to name a few of the most common methods.
What is the shelf life of essential oils?
This will vary from oil to oil. It’s advised to replace them at least every three years or so to be safe, however. You’ll know whether an oil has gone rancid if you notice a change in its usual smell.
Embark on a calming journey
It’s common knowledge that stress is extremely bad for your health and can increase and/or worsen debilitating conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
The good news is that there’s a lot you can do about it, and using calming essential oil blend recipes is an amazing way to begin.
The power of high-quality plant extracts like those in the 100% organic and all-natural essential oils available at Volant allows them to do their magic using a multitude of methods. Whether you diffuse or inhale them, blend them or use them singly, your emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health may improve if you do it right.
Start your journey towards a more tranquil life and allow Volant to guide you on your path.
