Start the day with a shower, nothing more routine. But adding essential oils to turn it into an aroma shower gets the week off to a good start. Advice from Danièle Festy and Anne Dufour, authors of “My special beauty essential oils“for this new good mood morning ritual.
The morning shower is like a hot breakfast drink: an automatic gesture that marks the start of our day. However, a few details can transform this routine into a more exciting parenthesis, by embellishing it with meditation or even essential oils.
Why use aromatherapy in the shower? Danièle Festy and Anne Dufour, in their book My special beauty essential oils (Leduc. S Pratique), praise the benefits of this aroma shower: essential oils (EO) elevate the time of the shower, seen as a simple gesture of hygiene, in a real sensory bubble. They have more than one interest: they have active ingredients that penetrate the epidermis. Inhaling their scent under hot water embarks on an olfactory journey. Passing your hand over your skin covered with a shower gel with essential oils prepared by you is also conducive to massage and lymphatic drainage.
Which essential oils to choose?
As with breakfast, where you don’t want to eat the same thing every day, vary the pleasures of essential oils by choosing them according to your mood or your expectation. Short guide:
- For an energizing wake-up call: rosemary with cineole or peppermint
- For a general and circulatory tonic shower: mandarin and / or lemon
- For an anti-stress shower: officinal lavender or bergamot (also perfect as an evening shower to relieve the stress of the day)
- For an anti-cellulite effect: Atlas cedar + grapefruit
- And in summer, the special heat wave shower: peppermint
Shower gel with essential oils in 4 steps
- Choose your bottle of essential oils according to your state of mind. Pour your usual dose of shower gel (preferably neutral, fragrance-free) in your hand, or on a sponge or washcloth. Add two or three drops of essential oils. Mix well with your finger.
- Wash yourself, insisting a little on the thorax in the middle (solar plexus, super-anti-stress zone). Pass and iron on tense or painful areas such as the neck, lower back, stomach.
- Take the opportunity to press a little harder from the ankles to the knees for a little special circulatory stimulation for cellulite and light legs. Always pull your lower body up towards your heart.
- Rinse thoroughly. Finish your shower with a cool spray on the feet.
And to make the most of it in the shower
Let the water run (not too hot to avoid drying the skin) over your body imagining a tropical rain and pay attention to the pleasant sensations. Enjoy the aromatic vapors and breathe deeply.
Essential oils are not recommended for pregnant and breastfeeding women as a precaution.
More cosmetic advice and recipes with essential oils in “My special beauty essential oils” by Danièle Festy and Anne Dufour at Leduc. S Convenient.