Natural Body Guru

I am not a fan of convenience store air fresheners. They smell like cheap perfume and hang heavily in the air. Instead, I like to freshen up the smell of my home with natural fragrance oils dispersed with oil burners.

Using my favorite scents, I’ve added a bit of this and a little of that to come up with a signature scent for my home. It smells clean, light, and subtly tantalizing. All I do is add the mixture to a few oil burners I have strategically placed around my home. I light the candle underneath the oil burners and let the fragrances get to work.

Are you familiar with natural, oil based air fresheners? I see many air fresheners advertised but most of them have chemicals that may be harmful to the body or the environment. I even read that some of the plug in types can cause house fires. These natural oil based air fresheners have been formulated to be used as a burning oil or  as a spray air freshener. You can use these natural products as a spray in your car, your bathroom or any room in the house. You can also use this same product as a burning oil in a diffuser.

These oils are concentrated and their fragrance lasts a long time. If you are using a diffuser and you find the fragrance too strong, you can add water to the oil burner to dilute the scent. There are several delicious aromas to choose from and you can even mix fragrances to make your own blend. You can choose from cherry-orange, cherry-pineapple, vanilla-pineapple, canteloupe, mango, jasmine, or banana-strawberry.

Many people who hear the word or smell the pungent fragrance of patchouli think of the drug smoking hippies who indulged in free love during the sixties and seventies. Pathchouli is so much more than that! It was used in the East hundreds of years ago to scent clothes and bed linens. In the 1800s the English imported fabric scented with patchouli from India and began to associate the scent with fabrics.

Patchouli is an earthy, musky scent and while it is associated with fabrics, it can be useful in many other situations and it has therapeutic properties as well. It is anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and anti-fungal. It can be used as an aphrodisiac or an insect repellent. It provides balance and harmony to the body and spirit and can even fight off body odor by acting as a deodorant and an anti-perspirant. Patchouli acts as an appetite suppressant making it beneficial to dieters all over the world. Patchouli also has the distinction of actually getting better with age; the older the oil, the fuller the scent.

Perfume wearers are often faced with the same dilemma. They want to be enveloped in a soft fragrance all day, but if they put just a little bit of perfume on it will wear off by the middle of the day. If they put on enough to last through the day, then in the morning they will be overwhelming the senses of everyone around them.

The best technique for striking the perfect balance is layering. Begin the day by showering with a scented body wash that compliments the body oil fragrance you favor. Follow up the shower with a matching scented moisturizer. Finally, before you head out the door, spray perfume on the inside of your wrists and behind each ear. This should leave you smelling sweet all day long.