The art of blending
While we make our blending, we always have our own unique way to decide what should be put into this blending to achieve our goal. Most people make their decision upon the combination of intuition and rationality while others need a more precise instruction to guide them through.
One of my dearest aromatherapist friends always asked me how I came out with all my recipes. In our training, we did a lot of interactive consultation with people. We had the luck to work and play at the same time surrounded by the great energy of essential oils. As an aromatherapist, we are not in any positions of healing or making health practices for people. We are just highly rely on the power of natural remedies could ease and sooth the burden of pain. And sorrow, sometimes.
There are usually two arena of blending techniques that we use. You can go with either one of them, or choose to go between, like I do. One is based on your intuition of the therapeutic properties of the essential oils; the other is analyze according to different criteria and grouping of the essential oils, such as their chemical families, specific chemical constituents, botanic families, plant parts, even using alternative technique, such as Chakras.
I came across of a Chinese article from a blog (the blogger might also copied this from somewhere else) talked about how to blend. Yes, how to blend. This is really a big issue to discuss, isn’t it?
Yet this article features more on blending according to the aroma which can be a great resource for those who like to be more analytical with some guidelines to follow:
Step 1: Make sure you know the problem in this case and the therapeutic properties/ emotional properties of the essential oils you would like to blend with.
Step 2: Test. When you blend, you have to understand the notes of each oil, whether they are top-noted, middle-noted, or base-noted. The note is determined according to the evaporation rate/time of each oil. Sandalwood being famous for evaporating slow, it’s a base note oil; Lavender evaporates fast, it’s a top note. (Lavender usually is categories as middle-to-top note. Not necessarily a top note. It’s quite subjective. However, almost everyone will agree all the citrus oils are top-noted.)
Step 3: Top-noted oil evaporates fast, so it’s the first aroma coming out in a blend. The aroma only flows about 30 minutes or even less. Therefore, add 5-20% top noted oil in a blending is appropriate. (Well, again, what does flow 30 minutes or less suggest? Still a subjective perception and it’ll differ from one to the other)
Step 4: Middle- noted oils determined the aroma of the synergy in your blend. They are used to balance each other and can last about 3 hours. 50-80% usage is appropriate.
Step 5: Base noted oils are usually quite aromatic and grounding. Adding the base noted oils can help to slow down the evaporation of this blend and make the aroma last longer. 5-20% is suggested.I hope this can be helpful for those of you who struggle to decide the percentage and types of oils to blend from the aromatic perspective. In my opinion, whenever the intentions are pure and great, the oils just smell wonderful and “right”.
One of my dearest aromatherapist friends always asked me how I came out with all my recipes. In our training, we did a lot of interactive consultation with people. We had the luck to work and play at the same time surrounded by the great energy of essential oils. As an aromatherapist, we are not in any positions of healing or making health practices for people. We are just highly rely on the power of natural remedies could ease and sooth the burden of pain. And sorrow, sometimes.
There are usually two arena of blending techniques that we use. You can go with either one of them, or choose to go between, like I do. One is based on your intuition of the therapeutic properties of the essential oils; the other is analyze according to different criteria and grouping of the essential oils, such as their chemical families, specific chemical constituents, botanic families, plant parts, even using alternative technique, such as Chakras.
I came across of a Chinese article from a blog (the blogger might also copied this from somewhere else) talked about how to blend. Yes, how to blend. This is really a big issue to discuss, isn’t it?
Yet this article features more on blending according to the aroma which can be a great resource for those who like to be more analytical with some guidelines to follow:
Step 1: Make sure you know the problem in this case and the therapeutic properties/ emotional properties of the essential oils you would like to blend with.
Step 2: Test. When you blend, you have to understand the notes of each oil, whether they are top-noted, middle-noted, or base-noted. The note is determined according to the evaporation rate/time of each oil. Sandalwood being famous for evaporating slow, it’s a base note oil; Lavender evaporates fast, it’s a top note. (Lavender usually is categories as middle-to-top note. Not necessarily a top note. It’s quite subjective. However, almost everyone will agree all the citrus oils are top-noted.)
Step 3: Top-noted oil evaporates fast, so it’s the first aroma coming out in a blend. The aroma only flows about 30 minutes or even less. Therefore, add 5-20% top noted oil in a blending is appropriate. (Well, again, what does flow 30 minutes or less suggest? Still a subjective perception and it’ll differ from one to the other)
Step 4: Middle- noted oils determined the aroma of the synergy in your blend. They are used to balance each other and can last about 3 hours. 50-80% usage is appropriate.
Step 5: Base noted oils are usually quite aromatic and grounding. Adding the base noted oils can help to slow down the evaporation of this blend and make the aroma last longer. 5-20% is suggested.I hope this can be helpful for those of you who struggle to decide the percentage and types of oils to blend from the aromatic perspective. In my opinion, whenever the intentions are pure and great, the oils just smell wonderful and “right”.
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