Harmonise your home, emotions and body with flowers, spices and citrus.

Dry flowers can be what you need to bring harmony into your home over the winter. Our Nordic ancestors used to decorate tree branches with dry fruits and flowers to celebrate Mother Nature's abundance. It was also a way to stay in tune with life cycles and remember that life would sprout again in spring even if the winter snow hid the ground. However, they were not the only ones using dry flowers and fruits; that tradition has existed for centuries all around the globe to harmonise homes, emotions, and bodies.

 

There is more to ancient traditions than meets the eye.

While some remember the celebrations and folkloric festivities, few realise that the fragrances of flowers and spices were plant medicine. Drying fruits and herbs was also a way to preserve their virtue and keep them edible during the winter.

Folklore was a way to transmit knowledge. What better way than creating flower decorations to teach about plants?

When the witch hunt period arose, plant and herbal science knowledge became silent and unspoken for a while because people feared being accused of witchcraft and tortured or killed. Luckily, pharmacists, druggists, herbalists, discreet family transmission, and some priests helped maintain some knowledge.

 

The early days of pharmacopoeia were made of plants, herbs and spices.

When we speak about ancestors' remedies, some tend to think about all the grandma's recipes debunked by modern medicine in the last century. Many marketing techniques shattered the reputation of plants and herbal medicine to promote synthetic medicine, making us forget that aspirin and morphine were, first and foremost, plant-based before Bayer introduced the first entirely chemical version of aspirin in 1899.

Actually, modern pharmacopoeia is only about 200 years old!

That makes it a relatively young science compared to herbal and plant medicine, which has been experimented on and studied generation after generation for millennia. Maybe the new kid on the block was slightly pretentious for a moment, thinking they knew better than the elders, as many teenagers do.

Fortunately, many institutes around the globe are rediscovering the values of plant and herbal medicine science and aromatherapy. Today, numerous studies are rediscovering the values of our natural pharmacopoeia, slowly understanding that our ancestors were not ignorant pagans.

Science acknowledges today that Cinnamon has an antifungal property and prevents egg-laying, reducing the risk of moths in flour or seed bags and the risk of moisture. Aniseed forces pests away, and Star anise repels insects. Clove is a potent pesticide, antiseptic, antibacterial, analgesic and more.

Having these incredible natural resources in your homemade makes so much sense—actually, it still does!

 

How do you harmonise your home, emotions and body with flowers, spices and citrus?

Fragrances can support your emotional, mental and even physical health. Any doubts about that? Well, have you ever smelled a perfume that made you instantly feel calmer, one that made you feel uncomfortable? Then you know that your olfactive sense influences you if it can relax or stress you out.

Aromatherapy allows us to discover that there is more than stress release. Some plants will boost your confidence, help you grieve, be an ally to develop your intuition, help with headaches, allergies, stomach issues and much more. While you can consume some plants or apply them on your skin, others will work with your olfactive sense. The Johns Hopkins Medicine website describes what happens when inhaling essential oil: "When inhaled, the scent molecules in essential oils travel from the olfactory nerves directly to the brain and especially impact the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain."

Therefore, you want to be cautious when using essential oils to harmonise your home, emotions, and body with dry flowers, spices, and citrus and understand what essential oil to choose and for what.

 

Choosing essential oils to complement your potpourri or oil diffuser.

You should select the plants that support your physical, mental, and emotional health, not only what smells good. If you know little about essential oils, grab a book about aromatherapy for beginners; it will help you determine the right essential oil for you and how to use it.

Not all oils are suitable for use in candles, diffusers, or potpourri, and not all essential oils are safe for consumption or topical application. It's important to be aware of this to avoid unpleasant reactions.

The quality of the essential oil is also critical. You want to choose organic essential oils grown without pesticides to ensure you are ingesting or exposing your body to the authentic energy of the plant and spare yourself from the potential toxicity of chemical products.

 

 

Use fragrances in your home in a healthy way.

The French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME) also reminds us that fragrances should not be used 24/7. Some perfumes can irritate the respiratory system or cause allergies. Artificial perfumes can contain and diffuse toxic particles, which might impact your health if exposed daily. You should prefer organic perfumes, such as essential oils, to chemical perfumes.

While essential oils won't propel artificial chemicals into your home, they will bring the plant medicine fragrance and their natural traits. So again, you want to read about the essential oils you select rather than using them only for their delicious smell. Some oils can have different effects on people depending on their age. For instance, young babies and toddlers exposed to peppermint could experience discomfort or overstimulation, while it could help older infants and adults with digestion or headaches. Somehow, it is just like you would not give a particular food to a baby before a certain age. Again, read about the essential oils, and if you are unsure what to pick, ask a naturopath.

 

Can you really harmonise your home, emotions, and body with flowers, spices, and citrus?

Bringing peace and harmony to your home or environment starts with relaxing your nervous system and cleansing the energies of the rooms you live or work in.

First and foremost, you want to ventilate your home at least 15 minutes per day to allow outdated energies to leave. For instance, if you argued, watched something stressful or sad, or had visitors, you want to renew the room's energy and bring it back to neutral. Opening the windows for a quarter will help you do that.

Then, you want to bring some fragrance into your home or workplace. However, you want to be mindful of not creating discomfort for others. If you are in a shared workplace, avoid using incense or essential oil diffusers. Again, one fragrance can be relaxing to you but stressful to someone else. But you can find comforting and stimulating ideas, such as decorating an orange with clove, which will bring a feeling of freshness to your desk without perfuming the entire floor.

In your home, you can use an essential oils diffuser or a lovely potpourri to change a room's vibration. When it comes to oil diffusers, you prefer using cold diffusion to an oil burner so that you don't accidentally pervert the goodness of the plant.

Essential oils are not the only options for harmonising home, emotions, and body with flowers, spices, and citrus. Drying your plants, herbs, and fruits and using spices is also potent to bring Mother Nature in. A pine tree branch, lavender, thyme, and other herbs and trees will diffuse their scents naturally. Spices like Star Anise, Cinnamon, and Clove will also offer lasting fragrances.

 

 

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You might be interested in creating your own unique potpourri to harmonise your home, emotions, and body with flowers, spices, and citrus. If so, jump on the following tutorial: