Sandalwood - Aromatherapy for the Mind, Body, and Spirit

Sandalwood is one of the world’s most widely used essential oils, prized for its scent in perfumery, for its therapeutic effects in Chinese, Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine systems, and for its ability to focus the mind in meditative yogic traditions.

Sandalwood essential oil is most often extracted via steam distillation from the wood of the sandalwood tree, with the heartwood of the roots producing the highest-quality oil. Sandalwood is an evergreen tree, growing to a height of 9 m, with leathery leaves and small purple flowers. Native to southern tropical Asia, the tree is parasitic, gaining its nutrients from one of several other tree species. Because it can only be grown this way, and as a result of its seemingly strict set of environmental conditions, sandalwood is difficult to propagate. To add to the challenge of successful cultivation, sandalwood takes nearly 30 years to mature before yielding oil of any worth.

Sandalwood oil has a woody, balsamic, sweet and slightly musky aroma; it is a pale yellow, greenish or brownish liquid with excellent tenacity (the aroma tends to last a long time) and superior fixative properties. There are several varieties available, with Sandalum album considered the most important therapeutically. The Mysore region of eastern India is thought to produce the highest quality of this oil type, although its harvesting is creating a strain on the area’s natural environment. Recently, an oil of the Austrocaledonia species has been produced on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu from successfully cultivated sandalwood trees. This oil has a fantastic aroma, with a woody, smoky scent that is an excellent base note in perfume and cosmetic blends.

In the West, sandalwood oil is perhaps best known as a natural, woody, sweet body perfume used “as is”, or as a familiar aroma in many cosmetics, aftershaves and the like. In the East, however, sandalwood’s importance in cultural and spiritual traditions cannot be overstated. The wood is carved into furniture and religious icons, used to build temples and burned as incense in a great variety of ceremonies. The oil is used to anoint the dead. In Myanmar, women sprinkle it on passers-by on the last day of the year. In Hindu marriages, sandalwood is burned in a tent so that the smoke surrounds the bridal couple. For the meditative yogi, the oil and incense encourage a serene state of mind.

Sandalwood is valued in the traditional Indian medicine system of Ayurveda. It is indicated for inflammatory, intestinal and genito-urinary conditions that require cooling. Modern aromatherapy considers the oil an effective skin care agent for dry skin, general irritation and acne; it can help in cases of bronchitis, catarrh, dry persistent coughs, laryngitis and sore throats; it may relieve diarrhoea and nausea, and can be supportive in cases of cystitis. Sandalwood essential oil is also a great tonic for the hyperactive mind.

Finally, sandalwood is one of the few essential oils that improve with age. Because of increasing demand, the price of the oil is climbing significantly every year.

Source: Market-Day.net

8 Reasons for Burning Incense: Chandra Prakash

It’s generous. It connects you to the elements. It sparks appreciation. It is healthy. It brings you back. It joins heaven and earth. It offers a lesson. It makes you prepare.

Those who never or rarely use incense often think of it as merely an air freshener or an odor eater and are unaware of the many benefits of incense to the mind and body. Even many incense fans who use it regularly may not fully appreciate all its physical and psychological benefits.

The list below will make it clear why just about every religion since the beginning of time has used incense for its spiritual powers, why tribal healers and physicians throughout history have used incense for its healing powers, why monks have used incense for thousands of years for its concentration powers, and why artists use incense to inspire creativity.

1. It’s generous. Ritual is an important part of living, even small rituals that may seem inconsequential. The insignificance of offering a stick of incense is key. It doesn’t move you any closer to stated goals. It doesn’t seem to address your current concerns, whether they are about personal relationships or world hunger. Yet, offering — without expectation of something in return for your gesture — is training in generosity, the act of letting go.

2. It connects you to the elements. Incense has to be lit. It requires fire to ignite and oxygen to burn. We need oxygen to breath and fire to live. It is a truism to say that to survive, we need a relationship to our world, our elemental world, the world of our senses. By striking a match, lighting and sensing a stick of incense, you have reignited a relationship with the world that sustains you.

3. It sparks appreciation. It takes time to find incense that appeals to you. Japanese varieties can be delicate and floral. Tibetan incense evokes a warm, earthy quality. There are many subtle differences and endless varieties. But you will offer incense that pleases you. What do you like? Do you know? Another way of putting this is: what makes you happy? By enjoying incense in the context of practice, you set a positive tone for your session. Practice is about appealing to the part of you that is able to relax, slow down and appreciate. Cultivating appreciation is the ground of discipline.

4. It is healthy. Incense enhances concentration & focus, prevents infections, relieves headaches, fights depression, reduces anxiety & tension, aids insomnia.

5. It brings you back. When you sit down to practice, the smoke from your incense joins you. Some even select the length of their incense stick to time their practice session. You may be lost in thought when, suddenly, you are brought back to the moment by the scent from a plume of incense wafting by. At this moment, you can recall the intention to practice that prompted you at the time you offered the incense and gently return to your discipline.

6. It joins heaven and earth. Smoke moves in space. Space extends everywhere. When you light incense you can invoke space. You can do this by letting the smoke go where it wants. Who would try to tell smoke where to go? At the same time, space is a reminder of earth. Eventually, after enjoying the space of heaven, smoke will settle into dust and land on earth. We can’t forget to enjoy the space of heaven in our practice. Practice takes effort –fire—but it can be lighthearted. It doesn’t have to be so serious. It is natural to enjoy space. It is natural to settle on the earth.

7. It offers a lesson. The incense stick begins at a full length and then grows shorter as it burns. There is no way to repair or retrieve a stick that has burnt. At first the scent is strong, soon the stick is gone and the scent will be faint. Sometimes the ash sits on top of the stick, like a memory of past glories, before toppling off into the incense bowl. The smoke may rise slowly like white ink from the stroke of an invisible brush or may disperse, fanned by hidden currents of air. All experience is fleeting — like the smoke from a stick of incense. This is a true lesson.

8. It makes you prepare. To offer incense, you need incense, matches, a bowl. You need to think about this before your practice session. To practice, you need time, a place, and intention. You have to work to gather what you need for practice. You have to plan and organize your life so you can sustain a practice. Your time and your space have value. They are the very commodities of existence and essential resources for practice. Always in short supply, they can be squandered or not. Prepare well and your practice will go well.

Chandra Prakash, Boulder, CA

Zulu Cold Treatment Geranium Kaloba Legalized

A Zulu herbal medicine which has been used by tribes for centuries has been passed for sale in Britain. By Chris Irvine, Telegraph.co.uk Zulus have taken extracts from the geranium plant for hundreds of years to stop coughs and sneezes. They say the extracts are particularly good at reducing the amount of phlegm. Now Kaloba, a key ingredient from the flower, has been given the green light for sale in Britain as a medicine. And because it is a herbal remedy, the manufacturers do not have to prove it is effective, but just that it is safe.

Kaloba is derived from a species of geranium called Pelargonium sidoides and comes in drop and tablet form. It will cost around £7.50 for 20 millilitres. The medicine has been available in Germany since 1983 but has only just been licensed by Britain’s Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency. One on four people in England and Wales visit their GP every year for coughs and colds. Doctors hope an effective herbal remedy can be found over concerns too many antibiotics are prescribed. Recent finds by NICE - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - found that almost £200 million a year was spent on prescription antibiotics for cold and flue. Research by the Cochrane Review showed it to be "effective in resolving all symptoms including headaches and nasal discharge in adults when taken for an extended time period." Another recent study however found Kaloba had "limited effectiveness" when treating coughs and colds.

Ylang Ylang

Ylang Ylang is produced from Cananga odorata trees grown in plantations, in Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, where they rarely reach heights above 2.5 metres. Plantation trees are cropped so they spread rather than grow tall, as the branches are brittle, and climbing them can cause damage to the tree, flowers and the picker!

Plantation trees are grown from seeds of highly productive trees, and are planted during the rainy season. They have a long tap-root, which can be easily damaged through transplanting, so great care is taken to the plant the trees when they are about 80 cm tall, in the place where they are intended to grow. Ylang Ylang trees do not reach maturity until they are 4-5 years, and are pruned every 2 months for the rest of their life cycle, which can be up to 70 years of age.

The first flowers appear after 2 years. The flowers are initially white, and change to yellow as they mature. A fully mature flower has two red spots on the inside of the flower, an indication that the flower is ready to be picked.

The flowers have six long slender petals, which droop from a stem protecting their red centers. They extend along the branches in equal strands of 2 to 20 buds. The large leaves hang suspended from the branch below them. A fully mature tree produces from 5-100 kg of flowers every year depending on conditions, but the amount of oil extracted decreases as the tree gets older.

The flowers have to be hand picked, as they damage easily and only mature flowers produce oil. The flowers are hand picked early in the morning and brought directly to the still before 10am.

Flower picking occurs all year round, however higher yields are usually obtained from May to July and November to December. The annual rainfall needs to be a minimum of 3000 mm, otherwise the amount of oil produced by each flower drops significantly.

According to Ayurveda, Ylang Ylang is relaxing to the nervous system, resulting in the feeling of joy, it could well ease the feeling of anger and anxiety.

In aromatherapy, Ylang Ylang is believed to relieve high blood pressure, normalize sebum secretion for skin problems, and is considered to be an aphrodisiac.

The History Of Aromatherapy

The ancient history of aromatherapy is very interesting. Contrary to popular conception, aromatherapy is not a modern concept; rather, it is just that the term has only recently been formed in the 20th century, though the history of aromatherapy in fact, goes way back in time.

According to ancient history of aromatherapy, it was the Chinese who first began using aromatic plants because of the ability of essential oils to heal the body. In fact, the Chinese also believed that this could be achieved by burning incense which in turn would create a more harmonious atmosphere and which would also create a relaxation in the body. Later, the history of aromatherapy shows that the Egyptians pioneered the invention of techniques that allowed for the distillation of essential oils which could now be extracted even though the methods of distillation being used were still rather crude.

Some of the ancient Egyptian tombs which have been opened in modern times even have given off faint scents of herbs and revealed faint traces of herbs which go to show that the Egyptians indeed were among the first to make use of aromatherapy, and although it was rather crudely done, this has nevertheless been recorded in the continuing history of aromatherapy. In fact, the Egyptians combined essential oils with infused oils and used such combinations for cosmetics as well as for medicinal purposes. What’s more, the history of aromatherapy as ascribed to the Egyptians dates back as many as five thousand years back and even the term perfume can be attributed to the Egyptians.

Even the Greeks were not unaffected by aromatherapy and in fact, the history of aromatherapy also records them as being users of essential oils which they used for preserving foods, and also for medicinal purposes and it even was part of their religion as well as was used for cooking. Actually, ideas derived from aromatherapy were used by Greeks in designing as well as laying out their towns and this was evident from the fact that they left open spaces especially to allow for burning herbs which would ensure that the air remained free from all manner of germs.

In fact, the Greeks also learnt much about aromatherapy from the Egyptians, especially around the period 500 B.C. when they set up medical schools on what was known as the Island of Cos, which school gave us Hippocrates, and this too is an important period in the history of aromatherapy.

Much later, the history of aromatherapy recorded how distillation techniques came to be improved by Persians and more particularly the Persian physician called Avicenna. Later, aromatic herbs came to be used during the infamous Bubonic Plague to disinfect the polluted air. Actually, the history of aromatherapy took another important turn in which aromatherapy now began to be linked to the health benefits of using essential oils, and this link has not been disproved even in our modern times.

Today, the modern history of aromatherapy shows that aromatherapy is mostly being used in the beauty industry and health industry. A lot of aromatherapy products are provided by marketer in these huge potential market, such as aromatherapy skin care and aromatherapy body lotion. Now, everyone can enjoy the more benefits of aromatherapy.

Source: aromatherapyworldsite.com

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The History and Use of Frankincense

Very interesting article about Frankincense at the site of Abibitumi Kasa Afrikan Language and Liberation Institutes.

Here are the excerpts:

The Clash of Names

One of the most difficult areas of research had to do with what plant deserves the title “frankincense.” It is accepted that frankincense is a member of the family Burseraceae, and the genus Boswellia. What has remained is a muddy mix-up over which species is the “Real” frankincense. From all of the sources accessed, a few front runners emerged: Boswellia sacra, Boswellia carteri, Boswellia serrata, and Boswellia thurifera…

Acquisition and Processing

The collecting of frankincense requires that a deep, longitudinal incision is made in the trunk of the tree and below it a narrow strip of bark 5 inches in length is peeled off. As a result of the incision, a milk-like substance, oleo resin, is produced which hardens due to exposure to the air. The incision is then deepened. After about three months the resin hardens into yellowish “tears” which are harvested by scraping them off the tree. The inferior resin which has run down the base of the tree is collected separately. Collecting lasts from May until the middle of September, when the onset of rain prevents further collecting for the year…

Of Historic Importance

Although much has been made of the differences between the different species of Boswellia, it is universally agreed that historically, frankincense was an economically important plant. Most Westerners will recognize frankincense as one of the gifts of the three wise men at the birth of Jesus. What most people don’t recognize, however, is that the frankincense and myrrh were more valuable than the gift of gold…
It was the use of the camel and improved land routes around 11th century BCE when frankincense and other trade items where carried from Qana to Gaza (in Egypt). By sea these goods went straight from Qana to India. By 1000 BCE, myrrh and frankincense had already made its impact on the ancient world. Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Rome, Greece, and China all had use for this rare resin. Its natural oil content and pleasant smell made it desirable to be used in temples as incense and as well as for its medicinal properties.
It was on the basis of the rich spice trade, and more specifically, the frankincense trade, that led the first century Greek writer, Pliny the Elder, claim “that control of the frankincense trade had made the south Arabians the richest people on earth.”… Read more »