DIY Essential Oil Blend to Relieve Stress and Anxiety

Depending on the situation, it usually starts at the centre of my neck. Muscles tighten, my shoulders hunch up towards my ears… my jaw begins to clench and pop. Teeth grinding, stomach churning, palms sweating. Stress and anxiety present themselves differently in each and every one of us, but I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced these symptoms — or something like them — at some point yourself. We’re a society of chronic stress, an awful fact, and what makes it even worse is that many of us don’t even realize that we’re affected by it. We go about our lives, accepting that twisted jaw and knotted stomach as an inevitability, something to live with, but slowly, that secret — or not-so-secret — stress might just be killing us.

Your body is trained to react to stress in many of the same ways it reacts to a perceived threat. Theoretically, a mountain of bills (or hey, our taxes) may seem far less scary than running from a wild animal, but our bodies don’t see the difference. While we may not be constantly under attack by outside forces, dealing with your day to day life can be enough to make your body feel as though it’s fighting a battle. While vastly different, each stressful situation, whether life-threatening or simply inconvenient, triggers a fight or flight response, releasing adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. Adrenaline increases blood pressure and boosts your energy supplies, while cortisol releases a surge of glucose into the bloodstream, curbing certain functions that wouldn’t be productive in a dangerous situation and even altering your immune system. Yes, all that can happen from just looking at a packed calendar and feeling stressed out, or thinking about an upcoming test. If you’re chronically stressed, this means your body is reacting this way all the time, which can translate to some serious health risks, including:

• Insomnia
• High blood-pressure
• Weight gain
• Depression
• Increased anxiety
• Hormonal imbalances

Scary stuff indeed. Which is why we need to work towards eliminating — or at least decreasing — our stress, whether chronic or not. What is causing you anxiety? What’s stressing you out? How can you work towards eliminating those situations in your life, or at least work towards lessening their effects.

While chronic stress and anxiety should be assessed by a professional, something that always helps me decompress and de-stress is scent. Scent is an extremely powerful thing. It can conjure memories both good and bad, excite us, soothe us, even encourage us to sleep. Today I’m sharing an essential oil blend that should ease a troubled mind and put nerves to rest. 

Materials:

Dark glass roll-on vial or dropper bottle (dark glass protects against sunlight)

20 drops patchouli essential oil

30 drops cedar wood essential oil

25 drops lavender essential oil

30 drops ylang ylang essential oil

20 drops bergamot essential oil

Jojoba oil (optional)

Combine all the oils in the glass vial. Depending on the size of the bottle, the liquid won’t likely fill it. You can leave as-is or dilute with the jojoba oil to create a moisturising oil for hands and body.

Uses (undiluted):

Rub a few drops between your palms and breathe in the scent deeply for an instant calming effect in stressful or anxious situations.

Add a few drops to warm bath water for a soothing, stress-relieving bath.

Add a few drops to your body moisturiser and apply as you usually would (avoiding the face).

Mix with 1 part water, 1 part plain witch hazel and add to a spray bottle to create a relaxing room spray (avoid spraying on light fabrics).

Benefits:

Patchouli: A natural anti-depressant and sedative. Stimulates the release of serotonin, lifting the mood and easing fears and anxieties.

Cedarwood: Eases nervous tension and stress-related disorders and can be used as a sedative, promotion restful and restorative sleep.

Lavender: Relieves restlessness and exhaustion, promoting relaxation and calm.

Ylang Ylang: Lowers blood pressure and bolsters the nervous system, reducing stress on the nerves and repairs past damage.

Bergamot: Reduces pain and nervous tension, easing sleeplessness, high blood pressure and even helping symptoms of depression.

 I carry a bottle of this with me while travelling to ease stress and anxiety on long flights (love travel, hate flying) and keep it close by to calm my mind throughout a busy day.

How do you destress?

Dealing With Anxiety

We are in no way giving you any kind of medical advice, but at some point in our lives we all (unless lucky) suffer from anxiety. Now if you suffer it worse than others, we have researched some tips we think can help you deal with it. We hope they help!

Break the habit

For some people, anxiety is a pattern of behaviour – they become anxious about everything and anything. They’ve learnt it from their childhood, sometimes as a result of parenting. The first thing to do is realise that you are the sort of person who gets anxious and be open to make changes. Dealing with anxiety isn’t all about taking pills; it’s about dealing with your lifestyle.

Apply some logic

If you are a very anxious person it’s easy to take a single fact and build into a whole frightening scenario. As soon as you start feeling anxious about something, remember what the facts are and that you’ve probably worried about it a lot before, unnecessarily. If you’ve got a worried circuit set up in your brain, what you need to do is to try to set up another system, which is more rational. Eventually this does work because your brain is very clever and 'rewires’ itself every night .

Is your diet making you anxious?

When stress hormones build up they turn on the worry centres in the brain. Sometimes simple things can contribute, such as hunger or a particular diet. It’s very important for the human brain to have proper nutrients. Many people who suffer from anxiety are deficient in magnesium (a trace element found in green leafy plants). A daily supplement of magnesium citrate, which you can buy in health-food shops, can help enormously. Cutting out alcohol and caffeine from your diet will reduce anxiety, too.



Remember to breathe!

Exercise is very important. Try to sign up for yoga or t’ai chi classes, which are both very calming for the mind and will teach you proper breathing. Even if you don’t want to do yoga, do try diaphragm breathing – put one hand over the other just below the belly-button and breathe so that your hands go up and down; repeat 10 times. Also try systematically to relax, because your muscles will be tense if you’re anxious. Starting with your feet and gradually working your way up your body, think about each muscle, imagining all the stress going out of the top of your head.

 Live in the moment

Mindfulness is a technique that helps you to live in the now, rather than keep worrying about the past and the future. For example, you might concentrate on your 'in’ and 'out’ breaths, or try a walking meditation, whereby you concentrate simply on putting your feet down and lifting them up and their contact with the floor.

Do you have any tips for Anxiety?