Oils Can Calm or Stimulate the Emotions
When Benjamin Franklin was sailing
across the Atlantic on one of his many diplomatic voyages to Europe, he noticed
a very interesting phenomenon. After dinner the scullery hand would throw the
cooking oil overboard and as the oil settled on the water, the waves would
calm. Some essential oils can have a similar calming effect on our emotions.
On the other hand, there are also essential oils that stimulate the emotions working as a
catalyst for action. As Clement notes, “Some men it benefits, and some it
summons to the fight.” In general, we can say that essential oils tend to balance the emotions, one way or the
other. The fact that oils have been known time out of mind to enhance our mood is confirmed by Clement listing depression as an ailment benefiting from them.
“How does it work?” you might ask. Some scientists, today, claim the
emotions are connected to the hormone centers and other systems of the body by
nano-pathways and that essential oils stimulate our feelings both chemically
and electrically. Since I am not a scientist, I prefer to think of it in
holistic terms: Oils can balance the emotions like a nourishing, hot meal and
a glass of good wine balance the emotions. It’s just the way God designed us.
The effect of oils on our feelings is
significant because our emotional health has much to do with our physical
health. For an example of how our emotions are effected by the nutritive benefits
of God’s creation, we can take a look at the ancient system of Humorism.
The
Four Humors
I would not completely disregard
the observations of the ancients just because they used different methods and less
sophisticated tools than we have today. It is one thing to pull everything
apart and strip it down to its smallest part – atom, proton, neutron, or
whatever. It is entirely different to understand how God puts a living thing
together and what makes it tick synergistically. It is extremely difficult
to quantify health because of our interconnectedness – body, mind, emotions, and
spirit.
The
ancients understood the human person as a whole – not a machine, but a
body-soul composite. Clement, Hildegard, and all the ancient Western medical
practitioners after Hippocrates (c.400 B.C.) understood that humans could be
divided into roughly four temperaments: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and
sanguine. We might understand these today as chemical or hormone imbalances in
the body. Nobody is perfect, everyone is slightly off balance. If one is generally a
little too happy he is sanguine, if a little too sad, melancholic. . .
The ancients divided up all of creation into
categories that would especially benefit each of the temperaments. This is what
Hildegard of Bingen was doing in her book, Physica.
She was categorizing plants, animals, rocks, and the other elements as ‘hot,
cold, wet, or dry.’ These were not literal temperature observations or humidity
readings; it was a way of categorizing food and the elements according to
Hippocrates understanding of medicine. ‘Hot-wet’ food, for example, was
believed to affect choleric people in a different way then it affected sanguine
people, and so forth.
The following quote illustrates – one of Clement’s oil
blend descriptions: “The Susinian ointment is made from various kinds of
lilies; and it is warming, laxative,
drawing, moistening, cleansing,
subtle, anti-nauseating, and soothing.” Do I believe we should return to this
ancient system of classifying food and medicine, Humorism? No; but I do think it
is foolish to believe there was nothing to it. Many of the observations and
classifications may have been correct even if the explanations for why they
worked were wrong because they were based on a faulty understanding of human
anatomy.
Modern medicine confirms that everyone’s
body-chemistry is slightly different and that different medicines and foods are
compatible with some and incompatible with others. The
practice of medicine is not like auto mechanics. With the human body there are
millions of moving parts and we are constantly changing, so it is more like
working on a vehicle as it's traveling down the highway, only more complicated
than that, because our humanity is not simply physical but spiritual, mental,
and emotional.
PRINCIPLE: ESSENTIAL OILS CAN
SUPPORT OUR EMOTIONAL HEALTH
Is eating certain foods and using the right essential
oil blends the only way to support our emotional health and wellbeing? No; the
emotions have their seat in the body, but they are powers of our soul. Feelings
give us information but they do not control us. The most important part of our
overall health is our spiritual health. In order to be healthy we must also be
virtuous.
Chemically supporting
hormones is different but complementary to growing in virtue through
self-discipline. Balanced, right ordered emotions are truly beneficial when
they contribute to good action. The highest faculties of the human soul are not
memory and feelings, but reason and will, yet we use these four faculties
together for good.
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