This Holiday season we celebrate compassion!  Even though the holidays are a traditional time for giving thanks and donating to wonderful organizations, I find I always can use another reminder of the wonder of compassion.

The definition of compassion is 'to suffer with, a deep feeling of sharing the suffering of another, an inclination to give aid and support, to show mercy.'    Sometimes, compassion can be confused with pity which is a shame since true compassion is always respectful of the highest expression within each of us.  It bridges the ocean of differences between people.  Compassion unites heart and mind. 

So, we have developed a blend, The Compassionate Heart, to help remind us of our innate nature of mercy.  The blend may be diffused, worn as a perfume, used in a bath or as part of a healing session or meditation.  This blend will make a wonderful and heartfelt gift this holiday season.

As part of our practice of compassion, we will donate 10% of the price of each bottle sold from now to the end of the year to charity!

Many wise men and women have said great things about compassion.  Here are just a few that came to mind:


'It is compassion, then, that is the best protection;  it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing.'       - Sogyal Rinpoche

'Our task must be to free ourselves....by widening the circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.'     - Albert Einstein

'A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.'    - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bone.  It is the support of all living beings.  LIke the love of a parent for an only child, the tenderness of the compassionate one is all-pervasive."           - Nagarjuna

'Compassion remains centered, yet open, and it quietly holds the space for change to ocurr, providing both the stability of a container and the freedom of release.'   -  Anodea Judith

'There is no such thing as a simple act of compassion or an inconsequential act of service.  Everything we do for another person has infinite consequences.'       - Carolyn Myss

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Albert Schweitzer

As we begin the 2006 Holiday Season, I invite us all to contemplate compassion and how we can practice it on a daily basis.

Blessings,

Karen L. Reilly
OmnEssence Aromatherapy

I often am asked about the quality of OmnEssence Essential Oils and whether they are 'pure' enough to be used internally.  Here's how I respond:

I don't differentiate between essential oil quality and how the oils will be used.  Essential oils should be the highest quality you can find regardless of how you plan to use them.     

There is a bias in our society that medicine should be taken orally in order to be 'effective'.  This comes from years of allopathic medicine where the majority of prescription medicines are taken by mouth.  Much pharmaceutical research is spent buffering (protecting) the 'active ingredient' so that it survives the stomach and can be absorbed into the blood stream in the small intestine.  We are seeing more and more pharmaceuticals coming to market as skin preparations, patches, etc.  as the industry discovers how wonderful our skin is!  In fact,  when using oils topically, I would say that oils we use on our skin should be even 'purer' than those we might take internally!  This is because oils we apply topically are absorbed directly into our blood stream, bypassing the digestive system and, most importantly, the liver!

The bottom line is that regardless of how you plan to use essential oils, they should be the best quality you can buy.  Since there are no regulations or standards in the United States for how to label essential oils, it is up to you, the consumer, to determine the quality of the oils you purchase.

In the classes and workshops I teach, I advise my students to talk to their essential oil supplier.  Ask questions about where they get their oils.  Do they know the distillers?  Do they buy brokered oils?  What is their definition of 'organic', 'wild-crafted', 'ethically-farmed', etc.? If you don't get satisfactory answers, then I recommend you keep searching until you find someone in whom you have confidence.

Along these lines, I'm also asked about the GC for oils.  I get gas chromatography results from my distillers, but I rarely place a lot of trust in them.  Here's why:  given the sophistication of our modern-day laboratories, essential oils can be modified to 'fit' whatever would be considered a wonderful GC profile for that oil.  I prefer to work with small distillers who are not producing for the commercial or industrial scent markets.  Again, the bottom line is that there is no test or technology that will prove the quality of an essential oil!

PS.  The internal use of essential oils is considered controversial by some aromatherapists.  They argue that there is little scientific evidence about how much of the oil survives its trip through the gut and reaches the blood stream.  As a massage therapist, I appreciate how wonderful an organ our skin is and love to use oils topically whenever appropriate.

So, to summarize:  know your supplier!