Grassroots Health Care

Here is a brief overview of how to use essential oils effectively.
This article includes:

• The Seven Best Ways of Using Essential Oils Effectively
• How Essential Oils Work: Absorption and Effects
• Contamination: Ten Important Facts To Know Before Purchasing
• The Safe Use of Essential Oils

We recommend that you begin your journey into the world of our Aromatic Treasures by reading this overview first. Please visit the ‘Writings’ section of the website for more in depth and inspiring educational material where you will learn the stories, healing properties and various uses of these phenomenal medicines.
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By David Crow, L.Ac.

Introduction
We are entering a period in history when human health will be seriously challenged. If the destructive trends of rapid global warming, accelerating loss of biodiversity, widespread pollution and degradation of ecosystems, deepening poverty, malnutrition, and political instability are not reversed, all forms of medicine will become increasingly ineffective, unaffordable, and unavailable. For large populations in many parts of the world, this future has already arrived.
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By David Crow, L.Ac.

Introduction
The last century brought immense improvements in health and longevity to people in the US. Some of these benefits can be attributed to medical advances, but most were the result of better sanitation, nutrition, and overall quality of life. Now, many of the improvements that were gained are being lost, and new threats to individual and collective health are emerging. Instead of open sewers, we have ubiquitous environmental contamination; instead of malnutrition from inadequate intake of food, we have widespread nutrition-related illnesses caused by degradation of the food chain. While modern medicine has made great advances, iatrogenic illnesses are among the leading causes of morbidity and fatality, and preventable and treatable chronic degenerative diseases have reached epidemic levels.

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By David Crow, L.Ac.

Four hundred years ago in Japan, a Zen priest picked up his calligraphy pen and painted a scroll extolling the Ten Virtues of Incense. Although we do not know who this monk was, we know from his writing that he had a great appreciation for fragrance. As the popularity of aromatherapy, essential oils and incense increases, it is wise to consider his observations.

It brings communication with the transcendent.
Fragrant offerings to divinity have always been a major part of every devotional ceremony and ritual. A tear of frankincense melting in a censer; a stick of sandalwood on the altar; a sprinkling of white sage on rocks in a sweat lodge; a bowl of smoldering palo santo chips in an Andean curing ritual: these are the universal expressions of humanitys desire to communicate with spiritual realms.

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By David Crow, L.Ac.

The Strange and Wonderful Alchemy of Agarwood

There are some fragrances that are so old, that have been used with so many prayers in so many rituals and are so deeply entwined with the human psyche that people claim they have smelled them before, even though they have not. The woody cinnamon-sweet aroma of agarwood (Aquillaria agallocha) is one of those mysterious fragrances.

One of agarwoods first mysteries is how it appears. Not every agarwood tree growing in Assam, Burma, or other mountainous countries of Southeast Asia produces the treasured black resin that delights the minds and intoxicates the senses. (more…)