How do essential oils help us?

So once essential oils are absorbed into the system via skin application or through the thin mucus membrane of the respiratoy system and/or inhaled to the limbic system of the brain, how exactly do they help us?

Cachora Guitemea, a healer and respected Native American elder, says that plant life must be respected for it is part of the universe, part of ourselves and part of our heritage. We are all part of the same consciousness pool.  - The Fragrant Heavens by Valerie Ann Worwood

I believe he is referring to what Kurt Schnaubelt, author of Medical Aromatherapy, refers to as the “biosynthetic blueprint that existed long before there were humans.  It is an archaic chemical pathway that has, like the other biochemical pathways of life, existed since the dawn of life on planet earth.”  Schnaubelt goes on to explain that monoterpenes, the dominant group of chemical components found in the majority of essential oils, are the basis for more advanced molecules.  Squalen (found in plants), steroids and heart glucosides (both found in humans and animals) are all triterpenes that are products of the same biosynthetic pathway that produces monoterpenes.   Simply put, plants, insects and mammals are connected chemically.  We are all one.  Using essential oils is the same as using substances which are already the building blocks of our make-up to help balance, and therefore help heal, the body.

It makes sense then that physically, essential oils can aid us the same way they aid the plant that produced it.  Just as resin seeps out to heal the wound of a plant, essential oils that are extracted from resin are wonderful for our skin and wounds.  Myrrh is a wonderful example.  Leaves help a plant to breathe and the best essential oils to help with our respiratory disorders are in fact extracted from the leaves… such as Eucalyptus.  Need to attract  a certain someone?  Look to the plants that produce essential oils in their flower petals in order to help attract insects like Jasmine or Rose.

Like everything around us, essential oils also vibrate and work on a subtle level by effecting our biomagnetic energy field.  It is believed that disease and imbalance effects this energy field before effecting the physical body.  This is, of course, controversial within the medical community since it hasn’t been scientifically proven.  I happen to believe that our science has not caught up with the innate and complicated intelligence of nature – and it may not ever.  I have had powerful results using essential oils on a subtle level with both myself and my clients and that is more than enough evidence for me!