It is no secret that beauty and skin care has been formulated around the healing and restorative properties of plants – essential oils in particular. Here we share 10 of our favourite essential oils for the skin and some of their amazing properties.
Chamomile: Soothes dermal inflammation, relieves allergies, excellent for eczema, dermatitis and burns. The most anti-inflammatory of all the oils. Gently sedating, calming and soothing.
Frankincense: Regenerating and rejuvenating on prematurely aged or mature skin, it is healing and repairing. Comforting and fortifying, deeply relaxing with a drying up effect.
Geranium: Geranium normalises skin imbalances and promotes healing to skin disruptions. It’s great for dry eczema and dermatitis, and helps balance sebum production. A great regulating oil, it brings balance to hormonal change and helps balance mood swings.
Lavender: Lavender is the most nurturing and soothing oil. It is gently sedating, relaxing and calming. An excellent firstaid remedy, it is great for bites and stings, relieves itchiness and irritation, and helps activate the immune system.
It heals scalds, burns and scars, is soothing and healing to dermatitis, and acts as a cell regenerator.
Orange: Orange is cleansing to oily skin, excellent for softening smoker’s skin and hardened skin affected by sun damage. It helps relieve mild headaches and mild insomnia. It is helpful for nervous conditions and is refreshing and uplifting.
Tea Tree: Tea Tree is a highly antibacterial oil, excellent for body and skin infections, acne and sensitive skin. It is both healing and soothing and helps stabilize skin conditions. It is one of the most anti-fungal oils.
Rosewood: Soothing and healing, rosewood promotes elasticity deep in the skin and is good for all skin types, especially tired skins in need of a boost. It is also excellent for scars, wounds and wrinkles.
Sandalwood: Sandalwood is soothing to dry and cracked skin and promotes elasticity. It helps strengthen the adrenals and soothes a sore throat. We find it a very strengthening and calming oil.
Palmarosa: Palmarosa is antiseptic, hydrating and regenerating, excellent for dry and mature skins. It helps in treating stress-related disorders and is calming and relaxing.
Rose : Rose oil is excellent for dry and mature skin as it rehydrates and rejuvenates and promotes health and vitality in the skin. The great healer of the heart, it is balancing, nurturing and comforting and brings with it physical and emotional stability.
Essential oils can have any of the following qualities:
Sedative: – induces sedation, calms nervousness, helps relax.
Stimulant: – produces temporary increase in functional activity, provides stimulus, quickening or excitement.
Anaesthetic: – reduces sensitivity to pain and has numbing effect.
Antiseptic : – reduces and prevents infection and inhibits the growth of bacteria.
Cytophylactic : – enhances cell renewal and regeneration.
Diuretic: – causes increased flow of urine.
Expectorant: – encourages secretion of mucus in the airways.
All skincare preparations should encourage harmony and balance in order to address the primary needs of the skin and to support its natural functions. The skin reflects our expression of ourselves. How we look after the skin, what we subject it to, what we feed it, how we treat it and what we feel and think will all be reflected in the skin’s appearance and function.
If you want to use the many facets of aromatherapy for good health and on your skin, it is imperative that you use high quality pure essential oils and cold pressed base oils. These are more likely to give the therapeutic response you are seeking.
Antioxidant oils:
Rose
Peppermint
Rosemary
Lavender
Thyme
Cytophylactic or Cell Stimulating Oils:
Rose
Neroli
Lavender
Bergamot
Hydrating oils:
Frankincense
Sandalwood
Rejuvenating oils
Sandalwood
Rose
Geranium
Jasmine
Oils for skin stress:
Neroli
Geranium
Lavender
Rosemary
Clary Sage
Orange
Here at Twenty8 we sell almost all of these oils to find out more click here.
Stresas and relaxation are almost complete opposites. The exhilaration of a challenge or the excitement of an adventure are positive stresses which gives us the ‘high’ of living, but when these become heavy demands, stress can work against us instead of for us. Your face is one of the first places you – and your friends – will see the tell-tale signs of demanding stress in your life.
Essential oils can be a fantastic tool in helping to maintain a more balanced lifestyle, enabling you to move between the two stresses good and bad, and to work with your intrinsic natural rhythms, enabling you to constantly restore the energy you give out.
Take care!