The Uncensored Guide to Lavender Essential Oil: Uncensored Essential Oil Guides, #1

By Leslie Hedrick

Everything you need to know about using lavender essential oil! With natural, beginner-friendly recipes.

 

You want to care for your family as naturally as possible. But you don't want to make a bunch of natural recipes that don't work… or worse, are unsafe.

One of most versatile and effective tools for making homemade recipes for kids, first aid, pain relief, and more is lavender essential oil. It's a multi-purpose oil with a long list of researched benefits. Learning to use it gives you the know-how to take care of a number of issues that pop up—from bee stings to bruises to dust mites (ew). In this guide, certified aromatherapist Leslie Hedrick walks you through making lavender essential oil recipes to:

 

• Care for children
• Calm anxiety
• Finally get some sleep
• Soothe pain and minor first-aid issues
• Blast the heck out of dust mites
• Make high-quality organic skin care
• Start a home apothecary
• And more!

This guide is your roadmap to starting your own collection of healing essential oil products that don't suck, understanding why they work, and knowing what NOT to do. Beginners will find it the perfect intro to using essential oils at home. And those with a little experience with oils will appreciate the explanations of lavender's science, and popular myths that should be ignored.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LMH Publishing, LLC.
• Release date: Oct 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005877514

Book preview

Introduction

Lavender: The Universal Soother

I dubbed lavender essential oil the universal soother.

Because it’s so multi-purpose. You can seriously use this stuff for all kinds of shit in your regular everyday life.

(I actually searched the phrase universal soother online before using it here. It’s so apt, I can imagine someone else coming up with it. And I wouldn’t want to take anyone else’s super awesome lavender nickname. But all I found was adorable pictures of purple baby pacifiers, so I think I’m in the clear…)

If you’re just getting into aromatherapy and you aren’t sure which oils you should buy, put lavender at the top of your list.

I know some people who don’t have any oils except for lavender. And for some, that’s all they need.

Having a bottle around comes in handy for so many things—from making your own bleach-free cleaning recipes to dealing with first-aid issues (like bee stings and bruises). Take a bottle on vacation to deal with sunburns, jet lag, and blisters on your feet after a long day of walking to monuments and museums and other must-see sights that all start to look like one another. Or use it to finally make your own natural skin care. Lavender is safe for children, and is usually well-tolerated even by people with sensitivities.

There are something like 40 different varieties of lavender, but I’m only focusing on one here: true lavender, Lavandula angustifolia.

Using the Latin name makes you feel like an expert and sound like a pretentious asshole, but it really does make a difference.

Why? Well, you might be aware that lavender is famous for its relaxing effects. But some types of lavender are actually energizing.

Knowing the Latin name, Lavandula angustifolia, can help you avoid diffusing the wrong type of lavender at bedtime… and then lying awake, wondering why your lavender oil isn’t helping you get to sleep (and starting to believe the skeptics who say essential oils are a scam.)

Lavender was originally native to the Mediterranean, but now it grows in regions all over the world. The most therapeutic lavender essential oil comes from plants grown at high altitudes. The high elevation causes the plant to produce impressive amounts of its most healing molecules: linalool and linalyl acetate. (We’ll talk more about those in Chapter 3.) Some high-altitude lavenders are grown between 3000 and 5000 feet above sea level. If you find a company that grows lavender this high, you’ve found good shit.

But that doesn’t mean lavender grown at lower elevations is crap.

The quality of the oil depends on its purity and how it was grown. Is it certified organic or organically grown (if certification isn’t available in the region)? Has the oil been tested with GC/MS laboratory technology that proves it isn’t adulterated with synthetics, isn’t cut with a cheaper oil by capitalist assholes, and doesn’t contain traces of pesticides or other chemicals used by people who don’t care about the planet? (Adulteration is, sadly, a pretty common practice.)

If your lavender oil is pure and organic, it’s likely a good quality product. And you can feel perfectly comfortable using it for yourself and your family. This collection of recipes & info will give you a path forward for that.

You’ll find an extensive list of research references at the end of the book, with footnotes linked throughout the text. There’s also an index, although page numbers aren’t listed. Everyone’s e-readers and font size are different, so page numbers become irrelevant in an ebook like this. However, a lot of e-readers and applications do include a search function. I included the index to give you a list of popular terms to search, to make this guide easier to use.

Chapter 1

Lavender’s Researched Properties & Benefits

Aroma

You’re probably already familiar with lavender’s aroma, but let’s set a standard for describing scents here. Because someday I’m going to write about more obscure oils that will make you suspect I’m just making shit up, (like xanthoxylum and lavender tea tree) and not everyone knows what those smell like.

Describing scent is always a little hit or miss anyway, because everyone’s nose is different. What I smell in lavender might not be the same thing that you smell.

Even so, most people experience lavender as sweet, fresh, and floral.

Some floral essential oils have a super heavy presence. Just one or two drops can overwhelm an entire blend. Too many more drops can give you a headache.

Neroli (Citrus aurantium var amara) and ylang ylang (Cananga odorata) are great examples of this.

Lavender has a softer presence, but still makes itself known.

Its aroma blends well with just about every other essential oil: lavender is at home with other florals, citruses, woods, herbs, conifers, and earthy oils like patchouli. It’s beautiful to use all