Spice Up Your Life With These Suggestions!
Spices can be very helpful for their calming and comforting properties.
For example...
Frankincense
This is good for balancing emotions while producing a wonderful sense of calm. This essential oil smells sweetly balsamic, known for its rejuvenating and anti-aging benefits. It can even help to regenerate dry complexions and smooth scars and blemishes.
Frankincense can also help you to breathe more deeply, helping to calm nervous tension and release emotional blockages.
It will also boost your immune system, helping in the fight against colds and flu as well as conditions such as asthma and bronchitis.
Nutmeg
This is an uplifting and comforting spice, particularly good in massage blends where it helps to deal with aches and pains.
It also aids poor digestion and can give you a lift when you are tired.
Nutmeg has light, fresh, spicy top notes and deep, warm, undertones, blending well with other spices.
Other spices can be used for their invigorating and revitalising properties...
Cinnamon
This is warming, invigorating and uplifting, being good news for your mind and body.
Its spicy top notes and sweet oriental undertones blend well with other spices as well as citruses, helping to attack colds and flu as well as being a great winter warmer.
Clove
This is warming, comforting and revitalising.
Used in many fragrances, clove adds an oriental note. When blended into massage oils, it can help relieve stiff, aching muscles.
If you are feeling chilled, a couple of drops of clove essential oil when added to a bath oil blend or just direct to the bath water will help to restore and warm you.
Clove oil is a well known remedy for toothache and its antiseptic properties help to prevent colds and flu.
And then there are a couple to help with warming and healing...
Ginger
This pale amber colored oil with a spicy scent is both warm and sharp. With its warming, toning and stimulating properties, it can be used to relieve the symptoms at the onset of a cold or flu.
Ginger will also calm and settle the stomach while being a well known aid for digestive problems.
Its almost magical properties will help to ease fatigue and muscular pain.
Myrrh
This is a great healer with warm, rich and spicy balsamic scent. In addition, with its restorative properties, myrrh is useful for hand care helping to soothe chapped, cracked skin and may even help to combat wrinkles too.
With its warming qualities, myrrh can be helpful for the discomfort of rheumatoid arthritis and can give the immune system a boost when fighting the symptoms of head colds.
Spicy aromatherapy recipes to try at home
For a relaxing face massage, blend one teaspoon of a vegetable carrier oil with one drop of rose otto and one drop of frankincense.
- Massage the face gently in an upward stroking movement from the jawline to the cheek.
- Place pads of the thumbs together at the bridge of your nose between the eyebrows and stroke firmly outwards.
- Circle your eyes over the top of the brows and under the eyes inwards.
- Fingertip pressure points can also be used - under cheek bones and below the center of the eyebrows.
For a winter warmer bath, add two drops of cardamon essential oil, three drops of mandarin essential oil and one drop of palmarosa essential oil to two tablespoons of full fat milk or almond oil.
Add the blend to a warm bath - and relax.
SOURCES:
Use of ethnic spices by adults in the United States: An exploratory study - PMC (nih.gov)
Herbal spices and nanotechnology for the benefit of human health - ScienceDirect
Written by Jane Chitty
Jane writes for Healing Natural Oils, a producer and retailer of high-quality, all-natural treatments for a variety of conditions as well as a range of beauty products. Apart from writing about those various conditions, she also covers general health, environmental and other subjects of interest. She has lived in Kenya as well as Cape Town, South Africa and spent time in San Diego, USA. She now lives in Somerset, England with regular visits from her far-flung children and grandchildren. She is a keen gardener and enjoys growing fresh fruit and vegetables with her husband on their joint allotment. As a result, there is something available to use in the kitchen virtually all year round. Her regular posts can be found on our blog.