My Five Favourite Essential Oils for Sleep
Waking up exhausted due to a lack of sleep leaves you feeling hung over but without a great dinner party for the memories. What if though, you can improve the quality or quantity of your sleep using a few simple essential oils?
The National Sleep Foundation agrees that scent can affect our sleep positively. Their findings show that 41% of people polled do not get a good night's sleep on workdays and still 25% did not get a quality night of sleep on weekends. They noted a study that participants who sniffed lavender prior to bed slept deeper and woke feeling more vigorous in the morning(1). A second study noted that infants cried less and slept more deeply after a bath infused with lavender(2). If an aroma in your room can support healthy sleep habits, don't you think it would be worth seeing how it affects you?
Here are my five favourite essential oils for sleep.
Lavender
Lavender is an incredibly calming oil. Be it a skin irritation, a bug bite, or the general emotions or mood of an individual. It's my youngest daughter, Maggie's, favourite oil and I have watched her completely calm down in the midst of high emotions if she simply smells Lavender. For that last reason alone, it's one of my favourite oils I suggest to mamas for their little ones.
Lavender is very high in linalool, a naturally occurring terpene which aids in sleep and relaxation. It's quite common to hear about lavender and sleep but until I was introduced to doTERRA, I had not experienced a big difference in my family's sleep habits. I began to understand how the quality of an essential oil can impact the desired outcome you're expecting. Thankfully, using an exceptional quality essential oil changed how I saw the impact of essential oils. It no longer became just a pleasant scent to me but now I was experiencing the therapeutic benefits.
CEDARWOOD
Sweet Cedarwood! This woodsy oil will blow your mind. It's a perfect addition to any sleep blend and will bring you back to memories of pencil shavings from elementary school {along with Arborvitae, which also brings back similar memories}. It's primary chemical constituent are sesquiterpenes, which are known to delete the garbled code of your DNA. How it affects sleep? Cedarwood affects the pineal gland which in turn releases melatonin.
VETIVER
Vetiver is one of those oils that when you first uncap it, you are hit with a strong, earthy aroma that at first may turn you off. Fight the instinct to recap the bottle. Vetiver is a grass from Haiti and it's powerful aroma can help "turn your brain off" when you're needing a good night of rest. It is a powerful antioxidant too and thus can support your immunity while you sleep.
FRANKINCENSE
Hey there, Frank. {wink} How do I count the ways I love you? Not only do you make me feel centred and at peace, you're awesome at making my skin look fantastic, supporting my digestive health, and you have natural anti-inflammatory properties. I could go on but we're talking about sleep for now so let's focus on that. Frankincense is a natural calmative, and it's effects can cross over the blood brain barrier so the impact is profound. Frankincense is the base of all of my sleep diffuser blends and I don't go to sleep without a drop of it placed on the back of my neck. It's become part of my bedtime routine and I don't miss a night. To answer the question...if I were ever stranded on a desert island, my oil of choice would be Frankincense.
BALANCE
Last and certainly not least...Balance. A grounding blend of spruce needle, ho wood, frankincense, blue tansy and blue chamomile. It's woodsy aroma is incredibly calming...cuddle up next to a diffuser with a cup of tea or glass of wine and you're transported into a cabin in the woods, wearing a flannel shirt and slippers.
Are you ready for it? If you promise not to tell the other beautiful bottles....Balance is my all time favourite oil by doTERRA. It is my 15 second parenting vacation oil, my "go to" stress release, my oil I can always turn to when I need a break. It's the most lovely blend of oils that roots me to my purpose and offers me perspective. I was drawn to at first sniff and it remains, years later, my oily love
Lastly...my favourite blend of oils to diffuse for myself at night. While you can play with a variety of different essential oils at night {some others to use....Adaptiv, Bergamot, Serenity, Ylang Ylang, Sandalwood...}, these are the oils that I will use most often.