Aromatherapy is a natural, non-invasive aid to health and happiness and has proven highly effective in the relief of many physical and behavioral problems.
Essential oils have been used for the promotion of health for many centuries and nowadays more and more vets are recognizing their usefulness in animal welfare.
Essential oils are potent extracts of aromatic plants. For the most part they are steam distilled from leaves, flowers, seeds, even roots.... wherever each plant has chosen to store its essential oil.
The plant uses essential oils to protect itself from disease and predators, to heal wounds and as phyto-hormones. These are the natural chemicals utilized by the aromatherapist.
The oils contain ingredients that horses, adept “self medicators” would pick and choose freely to maintain health if they were living in a natural state.They are not medicines as we know them, but work gently and holistically to balance the entire system and fight disease.
An equine aromatherapist selects and offers the oils to the horse inhale and then will assess the horse’s reactions. Application can be topical to areas of pain or injury, encouraging chemically the body to trigger its own healing systems at site. Or via further inhalation, as essential oils are highly volatile the chemical constituents are easily absorbed through the blood/brain barrier via the olfactory system, the direct transfer in to the blood stream carries the oils constituents throughout the whole bodies systems.
The sense of smell is linked directly to the limbic system, which acts as a message relay to many of the body's vital systems, the chemical messengers act to trigger switch on or off responses in the brain and as a result the information is passed on, processed and acted upon various parts of the body that are out of balance.
The behavioural and emotional phycology of the horse can be triggered by essential oils. The right side of the brain is directly linked to more emotional responses while the left side of the brain deals with "rational thought" and all things "cerebral". Essential oils can stimulate or suppress these hemispheres.
It is important that when using essential oils with horses that it is supported by a qualified aromatherapist. You must always get a veterinary diagnosis of a condition first and then permission to use oils if you feel your horse has a physical problem or that a behavioural one has a physical cause.
Essential oils are nature’s chemicals and as such should be treated with respect correct use can be extremely effective and positive to your horse’s health, incorrect use can be extremely negative and dangerous to your horses health and wellbeing.
Dawn Clow is qualified and experienced aromatherapist who has developed her own range of equine products that complement holistically her Equine Body Work.
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