Essential Oils for Mindfulness and Meditation

Relax, Replenish, and Rejuvenate

Heather Dawn Godfrey

• Publisher: Healing Arts Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781620557631
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

A hands-on guide showing how essential oils can support and enhance meditative and mindful practices • Details safe and effective methods to incorporate essential oils into your mindfulness or meditation practice • Explains the many ways essential oils benefit the mind, such as how odors can immediately draw your attention to the present moment, trigger a specific state of consciousness, or provide a way to regain composure quickly • Provides the latest scientific research on the emotional, psychological, physiological, and neurological effects of essential oils on the mind, body, and nervous system • Includes an easy-to-follow chart to help you choose the right essential oil for you For millennia, the spiritual power of odor--such as from incense or frankincense--has been used to symbolize intention, stimulate awareness of our spiritual self, and accentuate rite and ritual. Drawing on this power, as well as their healing qualities, essential oils can provide the perfect complement to meditation or mindfulness practice. Outlining the practice and benefits of meditation and mindfulness in combination with the use of essential oils, Heather Dawn Godfrey explains how these practices hone and sustain a conscious awareness of "being" in the present moment, focusing attention on what you are sensually experiencing and leaving no space for regrets, traumas, fears, anxiety, or anticipation. Providing the latest scientific research on the restorative, rehabilitative, and psycho-emotional healing effects of essential oils, she explains how the sensory experience of odors can immediately draw your attention to the present moment, trigger a specific state of consciousness, such as a deeper meditative state, or offer a way to regain composure quickly when dealing with life's ups and downs. She shows how many essential oils naturally reduce stress and anxiety, promote a peaceful attitude, support concentration, regulate breathing, and stimulate serotonin and GABA pathways in the brain, making them ideal aids to mindfulness and meditation. Explaining methods to incorporate essential oils into your practice, Godfrey introduces readers to the "Gem" essential oils--a group of oils specifically selected for attaining and maintaining a state of mindfulness, as well as a broad spectrum of therapeutic properties--and she provides an easy-to-follow chart to help you select the oil that is right for you. Offering a hands-on practical guide to integrating essential oils into mindful and meditative practice, the author shows how each of us has the ability to self-generate a calm, tranquil, and worry-free state of mind.

1

What Is Mindfulness?

Why and How to Make It Part of Your Life

Mindfulness is a state of consciously being aware, of paying attention to and maintaining concentration on and consciousness of the here and now. It is being in the present moment, noticing what is happening internally and externally without pre-judgment, condition, or expectation, but with gentle acceptance, unconditional intentionality, and equanimity (calmness of temper, composure). In Mindfulness and Mental Health, a cogent summary of the field, author and psychotherapist Chris Mace clarifies:

Mindfulness is a way of being aware—mindful awareness is receptive not exclusive. Sensations, thoughts or feelings are simply experienced for what they are. To be mindfully aware means, strangely, there can be no “mind.” Even if thoughts are chattering away, they receive no more attention than anything else that has arisen. As people's ordinary, reactive ways of restricting their awareness diminishes, a sense of the suchness of things emerges.¹

An aspect of insight meditation, mindfulness evolved from Buddhism and was introduced to the West during the 1970s. Although steeped in Buddhist philosophy, the simplicity of its processes and practice enables its presentation in nonreligious, independent contexts as an aid to focus attention on the here and now: conscious, present-centered awareness amidst the rhythm of daily life. In hospitals and in clinical practice, mindfulness has demonstrated some success in alleviating the experience of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, and stress-related conditions, so it is often recommended as a supportive self-help technique. It has also been included in management of chronic pain.

In his extensive writings about mindfulness, Buddhist monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana explains that it is not necessary to be a Buddhist to benefit:

So, how much faith do you need? Do you need to convert to Buddhism? Do you need to abandon the tradition in which you were raised or the ideals to which you have deep commitment? Do you need to set aside anything that your intellect or understanding of the world tells you? Absolutely not. You can retain your current frame of reference and accept only what you are prepared to accept, a piece at a time, and only what you in fact find helpful. Yet you do need some faith. You need the same kind of faith that you need to read a good novel or conduct a scientific experiment. You need “a willing suspension of disbelief” . . . faith, which at heart is nothing more than the willingness to accept provisionally something without yet having proved or verified it for oneself.²

Meditation per se is an experiential process that apparently provides a bridge between the finite and infinite (or the deepest sense of inner being). In this sense the meditator may evolve through various phases, or layers, of consciousness, from physical finite awareness to states of deep, wordless inner awareness, enlightening realization, and deep understanding. In Holistic Consciousness, author, mystic, and theological scholar Phiroz Mehta details wordless in this way: “not conveyed or perceived as idea or thought in our ordinary meaning of those words but as immediate, direct, shapeless and formless realization in and by holistic consciousness . . . later [given] shape and form as inspired idea and word.”³

In a 2004 article, “Coming to Our Senses,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the foremost exponents of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), observes the “miracle of the five senses” as tools that ground and anchor and enable access to full awareness and appreciation of the moment experience, “seeing that which is here to be seen, hearing that which is here to be heard, etc.—the five senses plus what the Buddha included as the sixth and most important and unifying sense, which is the capacity of the mind itself for non-conceptual knowing.”⁴

The techniques of mindful attention take the perceiver to the well but the techniques are not the water. The water (experience) drawn from the well and contained within the cup (mindful attention) offers a taste, an insight, of the ocean. The techniques of meditation, or concentrated focus, can be seen as the cup that enables the perceiver to draw from the inner depths of the well awareness of innate and infinite spirit within (not outside, above, or beyond, but inside and available).

Mindful (or intentional) awareness practice and deep concentration meditation are two modes of mindfulness practice.

MINDFUL AWARENESS PRACTICE

The practice of mindful or intentional awareness (vipassana) focuses on being awake to what is happening in the immediacy of here and now, noticing what is being felt, observed, or experienced in any given moment, internally and externally. As Gunaratana explains, this is achieved by employing the mind to check focused attention:

Clear comprehension means remaining fully awake and conscious in the midst of any activity, everything your body is doing and everything you are perceiving. It is a turned-within monitoring of everything going on in the mind and body. Clear comprehension requires “bare attention” (“bare” in the sense of stripped down or nothing added over the top) to assure that you are mindful of the right things and mindful in the right way. It is a quality control factor that monitors what is being noticed and how the noticing is taking place.⁵

Being aware in the moment and holding that awareness by anchoring to the immediacy of what is felt, sensed, and observed, internally and externally, brings the perceiver to the gateway of conscious awareness, of simply being. Practicing mindful awareness enables a focusing of attention on the here and now. Simply being within the moment experience potentially instills a sense of peace, completeness, and acceptance (among other qualities)—a wordless sense of the fullness of existence.

So, to elaborate, here and now I am sitting at my table with my hands poised on the keyboard of my laptop. I feel the breeze entering the barge through the open window brushing against my face as I concentrate on typing these words. I hear a distant duck quacking, the sound of the wind blowing against the half-open window shutter, rustling the leaves in the trees outside, and the cars in the distance humming. I notice the fading light around me as the sun sets outside, and the birds twittering; I notice that my neck and shoulders are aching from holding the same position for too long. I notice the bitter, pungent taste in my mouth of the coffee I drank a moment ago, its flavor still on my breath. I feel the pressure of the chair against my bottom and my feet on the soft rug lying across the solid wooden floor. As I focus on these immediate sensations (albeit in scattered observation), I am aware that I feel peaceful. I notice I am conscious of my breathing and feel the softness and warmth of the air as it passes through my nose into my throat, warmly filling my lungs, then rising and exiting down my nose. In this moment my sense of peace is comforting and filling. Using the immediacy of this sensual check, I am brought to the gate of conscious awareness, and in this state of conscious awareness I find myself in peace.

I can do this as an exercise, following a less scattered, prescribed routine of noticing, perhaps as a body scan. Or I can find a starting point and then allow my experience to emerge as I focus attention on a selected object or point within my vision, holding the object in steady view while allowing my consciousness, my vision, to remain open to the whole peripheral territory, noticing at the same time what I feel inside, in my body, my rambling thoughts, my physical sensations; there is no resistance but observation, acknowledgment, and acceptance.

I can practice this focused attention at times during the day, to anchor myself to the moment, to hone my awareness to the present, as I find myself distracted and drawn into events around me, noticing as I eat my food, wash the dishes, walk to the car, and sit in discourse with my students. I can give “bare attention,” unconditional and nonjudgmental.

Mindful or intentional awareness practice is a way of being, a moment-to-moment experience best appreciated through regular, daily attention, compassionate self-discipline, and tenacity. The impact is more fully appreciated when practice is frequent and regular—little and often rather than once a week or every so often. Intentional awareness precedes deeper meditative states; thus the consequence of mindfulness may extend beyond merely providing a coping strategy or relaxation technique to apply during stressful periods of life. Crisis often acts as a catalyst for change, however. The experiential process of adopting mindful awareness and meditation as a coping tool may consequently lead to enlightened discovery of an awareness of presence and being not previously considered, or overlooked, as professor of psychology Shauna L. Shapiro and associates acknowledge: “Formal meditation seeps into daily life, bringing greater nonjudgmental consciousness to everything that one does, feels and experiences.” ⁶

Focus on present awareness, on being in the moment, is also applied as a tool in gestalt therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and counseling. Psychologist and humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm, for example, in his book The Art of Listening, pertinently observes: “It is important to see the patient [client] as the hero of a drama and not to see him [or her] as a summation of complexes. And, actually, every human being is the hero of a drama.”⁷ Seeing, feeling, sensing, becoming aware enables clarity, which in turn facilitates mobilization of energy to do something, to become consciously proactive; energy becomes focused, deliberately directed, and thus more effective.

This perspective holds true for and encapsulates the essence of most helping professions, particularly integrative therapies such as acupuncture, essential oil therapy, Bowen, yoga, the cognitive therapies mentioned above, and mindful awareness and practice. Significantly, Fromm acknowledges, “Mindfulness means awareness. I am fully aware at every moment of my body, including my posture, anything that goes on in my body, and I am fully aware of my thoughts, of what I think; I am fully concentrated.”⁸

Thus, mindful awareness practice is incorporated intentionally to anchor a client (or individual) into their present moment experience, which can be especially pertinent when working with conditions such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where a grounded sense of the present, a point to start at and return to in cyclical exploratory journeying and closure, is significant. Carl Rogers, father of client-centered therapy, reiterates this, relating the significance of the counselor being present and aware in a conscious state of acceptance that is underpinned by the condition of being in congruence, positive regard, and empathy. Counselors seek to maintain awareness and attention while they “walk alongside their client” in the present moment: “When we provide a psychological climate that permits a person to be . . . we are tapping into a tendency which permeates all organic life.”⁹

DEEP CONCENTRATION MEDITATION

Deep concentration meditation (shamatha) is the second mode of mindfulness (although some prefer to refer to it as “gentle awareness” rather than “deep concentration” to accentuate the sense of choice underpinning this practice). Mindfulness awareness practice helps lay the groundwork for deeper meditation, which focuses concentration more specifically. Gentle self-discipline is applied to hone focus and concentration. This deeper concentration meditation has four specific foundations:

1. Mindfulness of the body

2. Mindfulness of feelings

3. Mindfulness of consciousness

4. Mindfulness of mental objects

These four foundational pillars provide the cornerstones of the Noble Eightfold Path. Just as in the proverbial “elephant and the blind men” (each feeling a different part of the elephant—the trunk, the foot, the ear, the tail—and proclaiming the elephant to be a snake or a drum and so on), there is some variance in the language selected by different authors to depict these qualities, demonstrated in the following table, which first compares the Noble Eightfold Path as described by Bhante Gunaratana¹⁰ and by Mace.¹¹ Second, it compares the qualities of mindfulness as listed by positive psychologists Snyder and Lopez¹² with those listed by Shapiro et al.¹³

In spite of variance in the descriptive language, the overarching core themes emanating from the above appear to provide a general formula for correct behavior and attitude (moral conduct), right concentration, and right mindfulness (right wisdom). The outcome of this, as Gunaratana expresses, is “bright wakefulness,”¹⁴ or, as Shapiro et al. suggest, the intention behind meditation is to wake up from this suboptimal state (or “normality” or “developmental arrest”) of consciousness, to wake up to our true nature.¹⁵ The reward of mindfu...

Table of contents

• Cover Image
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Coming into the Now with Mindfulness, Meditation, and Essential Oils
• Chapter 1. What Is Mindfulness?: Why and How to Make It Part of Your Life
• Chapter 2. Essential Oils as Meditation Companions: The Science of Their Use
• Chapter 3. Applying Essential Oils: Safety Guidelines and Indications for Eight Therapeutic Application Methods
• Chapter 4. Complementary Wellness Techniques: Relaxation, Exercise, and Nutrition
• Conclusion
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
• Books of Related Interest
• Copyright & Permissions
• Index