Why do we put essential oils on our FEET?

Good question! Well, first of all, did your grandma ever put Vick’s Vaporub ON YOUR FEET? And then it worked? She had good reason! (By the way, we have replaced Vaporub in our home with a natural rub made with coconut oil and EOs.)

One reason applying oils to the feet is effective is because the largest pores on your body are on the feet. So the oils get quickly absorbed into the body. By the way, essential oils get absorbed into your bloodstream within a short 26 seconds. So no real need to slip socks on after application, although I do anyway. 😉

This also means anything else we apply to our body also enters as quickly. So products filled with harmful chemicals are entering just as fast. That is why I quickly started replacing our personal care products and cleaners with natural ones soon after starting my oil journey. I am planning for a chemical free home online class in the next couple months on this specifically, so stay tuned!

Back to the FEET! Why does this work? Largely because of reflexology and acupressure which you are probably already aware of. Different points on the feet correlate to different points on our body. You put that together combined with powerful essential oils and you get results! I am including our infamous Vitaflex foot map in this post.

Please notice the oils mentioned in cursive font in the graphic. They are oils excellent for boosting your family’s immune systems. They are also the same oil blends recommended by YL’s own Dr. Jim Bob for immune system support. He recommends rotating them so the body does not become desensitized to them. So like if you use Thieves night after night after night, over time, Thieves won’t be as effective for you. I alternate with Immupower and have Exodus II on this month’s ER order!

I personally put any oils on my feet that I may not particularly care for the smell of, and also oils that are “hotter” oils like peppermint or thieves, especially for the girls. Like I put the seasonal roller on Anna Claire’s second and third toe so I never have to worry about her getting peppermint on her hands and then possibly in her eyes. 😭 (if you ever get peppermint in YOUR eye, don’t rinse with water! Grab your jar of coconut oil instead! This will dilute and rinse out the EO and soothe your eye.)

I hope this post has helped you understand why we oily gals put oils on our feet. Post any questions you have in the comments!

As a middle school teacher I see so many students who look just like this young lady during our testing week. Struggling to concentrate, tense, can’t focus, frustrated, overwhelmed.

Well, through my journey as a parent, we have found success for all of these using our oils and I wanted to share.

Concentration:  Peppermint and/or lemon! A drop in a diffuser necklace or on a diffuser bracelet will help promote concentration for your student. There is also research to back this.

Test anxiety:  Lavender! Lavender is an oil known for calming, and it is the oil Anna Claire wears in her necklace to school. This also helps with the emotions of frustration and feeling overwhelmed.

Focus:  There is actually a combination of oils proven to help with focus, and unlike with medications, have no side effects. They are lavender, vetiver and cedarwood. Anna Claire has had so much school success since using this roller, I cannot tell you. We have since added a focus blend for kids by Young Living called Geneyus, and it is her “smarty pants” roller. She applies in the morning and keeps one in her lunchbox to apply at lunch as well.

These are my top picks for essential oils to use for kids during testing. I hope that this is able to help others!

I had no intentions of this being a 2 part post, but since writing the first one I’ve thought of several other things I’d do different with oils in retrospect.

1. I would watch my bottle levels more carefully. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve failed to do this, run out of an oil, then had to wait for days for it to come in. I believe the new labels YL is making will prevent this. There is a little opening on some labels that let you see the bottle level. The way labels are now, you have to remember periodically to peel the label back and check to see if you’re almost out.

2. Not getting YL bottle fitments sooner. I tried 3 types of roller bottles before realizing the fitments work the best. Either the ball wouldn’t roll, too much oil would come out, or the ball was plastic and couldn’t be used with citrus blends. The fitments are metal, roll smoothly and are just perfect.

3. Writing off an oil because I didn’t like the smell. Joy, Vetiver, and Peace and Calming are three I remember hating when I first tried them, so they sat on the shelf for about a month. Then at the Thrive Conference I did a zyto-scan which lets you know which oils your body needs, and vetiver was the second listed, and a couple ingredients in Joy and P & C were listed as well. I also have since learned that it’s common to dislike oils initially and that dislike is often an indicator that your body needs that oil.

Another option for using oils that have scents you don’t like is to apply to your feet. Use a vita-flex foot map like the one below. It will show you where to apply!

4. Not signing up for Essential Rewards sooner. Once you have a premium starter kit and are a member, you are literally throwing money away by not signing up for ER. Young Living gives you back 10% of all you purchase to use toward free oils. No brainer!

I hope my mistakes can help save you time, money, oil, or perhaps help you give an oil a second chance if it didn’t work out the first try.

Memory. This is what got me into essential oils in the first place. I was on a quest to get my mom back, so that she could remember my little girl’s name, remember the conversation we had five minutes ago, and be there for us for years to come…I needed her…how could I do this life without her? I was so determined to help her. It became my life’s mission.

My mom unfortunately lost her battle before I learned what I now know about memory support. But I can take what I’ve learned and absolutely apply to support my own memory, which I don’t know why I’m embarrassed to share with you, but I am a classic textbook description of beginning stages of memory issues though no formal diagnosis.

I know we all have had moments where we accidentally put the cereal box in the fridge or look for our glasses, and lo and behold, they are on our face, but I was having so many of these moments that my sixth graders were regularly asking if I was ok.

I would work problem number one in front of my math students, but accidentally write a number from problem two. I would carry all my pencils back to my desk during the day and by block four have no pencils and no recollection of carrying any of them back there. A colleague even recently helped me download files to my desktop on a day I forgot to take my product I’m about to share with you, and when I asked her again if she could help me load the files because I didn’t have them yet, the worried look on her face even scared me.

It was a year ago this week that I sat in the Young Living conference, captivated, learning about a life-changing product called Mindwise. I started taking a child-size dose daily and within a week I immediately saw a difference. My confidence was way up because I could attend to conversations and catch 100% of what was being said instead of half. The Mindwise, along with my focus and brain fog rollers, plus Rosemary in my necklace seems to be the magic combination for me and I cannot say enough about what they have done for all facets of my life. I’m clear headed, a better teacher, a better friend and a more with-it mom.

I think the price tag scares some folks but my ER points cover it, and a bottle lasts me two months. If you have any need to support your memory whatsoever, please post your questions for me in the comments because I do consider myself quite knowledgable on the topic!
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MindWise™ combines exotic sacha inchi nut oil with a proprietary MindWise oil blend for a unique supplement that supports normal brain and heart function.* Harvested from the Peruvian Amazon, sacha inchi nuts are cold pressed to create a vegetarian oil with a high proportion of unsaturated fatty acids and an unmatched percentage of desirable omega-3 fatty acids (α-Linolenic acid). Medium chain triglycerides (MCT) and pure essential oils are added to complete the MindWise oil blend. The proprietary Memory blend features ALCAR, GPC, and bio-identical CoQ10, ingredients that have been studied for their beneficial health properties. Generous amounts of vitamin D3 and a unique delivery method create a premium supplement that supports normal memory function and overall cognitive and cardiovascular health.*

When I began using essential oils and actually began trying out some oils for myself and the girls, I did some really silly things just out of ignorance. Looking back, when I think of how much I wasted, careless mistakes I made, and safety issues I failed to address, it leaves me feeling responsible to share them with others.

I thought it could be helpful to write a post on mistakes I made as a rookie oil user to help prevent others from going through a bit of the learning curve that I trekked through.

Mistake 1: Wash your hands everytime you handle an oil. This prevents you from accidentally rubbing your eyes and getting EO in them (ouch! It really burns!) When you apply oils topically you can’t help but get them on your fingers and it’s easy to forget when you’re just going through your morning or evening routine…but don’t forget! I have done this more times than I care to tell you. If and when you do get an oil in your eyes, use coconut oil vs. water. Coconut oil works like a charm and gives immediate cooling relief.

Mistake #2: Too many drops of oil in the diffuser/trusting Pinterest for my EO education. Be careful when looking for recipes on Pinterest. They often times call for way more drops of oil in your diffuser than needed (3-6 drops is plenty!) or more drops than necessary in a cream or roller. More oils isn’t always better. I want to get my recipes from one of the other Joydroppers that I trust in our groups or from a reliable source like The Gentle Babies book.

Mistake #3: Not trying one oil at a time. I made the mistake of making a face roller that worked for a bunch of other girls, but made me break out. There were 4 oils in the blend and I had no way of knowing which one was making me break out. If I had tried one at a time, I could have saved precious oil and money. Costly mistake. Introducing one oil to your body at time is always good advice.

Mistake #4: Not using caution with citrus oils. I can think of 3 incidents where this happened for me.

One, I added lemon to my face roller to brighten my skin. I didn’t understand why the lemon wasn’t helping brighten my skin, but making it worse instead. It was because I was using citrus by day! I was using the roller by day, and lemon is photosensitive oil that can CAUSE sunspots and shouldn’t be used when exposed to the sun. Oops.

I would either apply citrus EOs at night, add carrot EO to my roller in the spring and summer months, or layer with sunscreen.

Two, I used thieves to make a hand sanitizer in a cheap plastic bottle and didn’t realize thieves contains lemon which will break down a cheap plastic. Within a couple months of use, my bottle started looking warped and the lid looked as if it was melting. Yikes!

Three, at a make and take workshop, my oily partner and I decided to add a drop of Orange EO to our orange juice that we were drinking from disposable plastic cups. The oil immediately started breaking down the cup before our eyes! Never will we put citrus in plastic again!

As I’ve learned more about citrus and the amazing things these oils can do for the body, that kind of makes sense. Citrus oils detoxify and help our body break down and digest our food and those same constituents were going to work on that plastic.

So absolutely be sure do use glass with citrus or blends containing citrus. I even make sure the roller balls in my roller bottles are metal or glass.

These aren’t easy mistakes to admit, but they all could have been avoided if I had been informed.

If you haven’t noticed by now…essential oils are everywhere. If you aren’t using them yet to improve your health or the health of your family…WHY NOT?!?

Let YL’s own Dr. Jim Bob show you 9 of his top reasons why EVERYONE should be using essential oils every single day.

Reason 1: Essential oils can bypass digestion. This means that regardless of our gut health, we can all benefit from using essential oils. They go directly to the part of your body that needs it!

Reason 2: Fat soluble. This means that oils are quickly and easily absorbed and able to penetrate the fatty protective layer of the skin. From the time you apply an oil to the skin, within 20 minutes it has traveled to every cell in the body!

Reason 3: Cross blood/brain barrier. The most fascinating one to me!  Essential oils are like little ninjas and are able to penetrate the blood brain barrier! Watch the video and learn all about how this makes EOs unique!

Reason 4: Frequency. Because essential oils are the life blood of the plant, they are alive and carry a frequency and a vibration. This allows them to actually enter our cells and do what our body needs.

Reason 5: Adaptogenic. Oils adapt in a couple ways. One person can apply lavender and feel relaxed, someone else can apply it and get respiratory support. Oils also adapt in that they balance. If something in the body is two high or low, the oil will bring the body back to normal or balance.

Reason 6: Therapy localization. This is so cool! When you rub an oil on your wrist you immediately send a message to the brain saying something is wrong with the wrist. So the brain stops what it’s doing and goes to work at the wrist using the oils that were applied there!

Reason 7: They are EASY TO USE and SAFE! Like he says in the video, people want to complicate oils or tell themselves they are not safe for kids which is crazy. As long as you are using a carrier oil and diluting like it says on the back of the bottle, they are incredibly safe and easy. Just pick one and rub it on. Just pick one and put a few drops in the diffuser!

Purity matters! Young Living guarantees the quality of their oils! They have their own farms and have such stringent standards for quality that only 30% of what they produce makes it into the bottle. The rest gets repurposed as fertilizer or sold to that other oil company.

Reason 8: Multiple applications. There are three different ways to use EOs! Topically, aromatic use or dietary! If you don’t like one way, try another! They work the same either way.

Reason 9: Clean receptor sites!  Many oils contain monoterpenes or sesquiterpenes (please google!) which means they are actually capable of cleaning receptor sites of our nerves. This means our oils are able to work even more effectively and explains why I just added Cedarwood to the girls and to my body wash! Every square inch of your body that you can apply EOs to, you are cleaning those receptor sites so  that oils can get in there and do what your body needs. This is why I prefer to use a carrier with my EOs vs using neat, or products like OrthoEase Orthosport and Lavender Lotion. You can cover a large area of skin, cleaning more receptor sites!

Support systems! Stop treating symptoms!

Plants have been linked to the wellness of man since the beginning of time. Ancient people utilized plants in a variety of ways. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, and Asian cultures have used them for centuries for health, beauty, fragrance, and spiritual practices. Essential oils are also specifically mentioned throughout the Bible. And we believe the Lord has provided everything we need in nature for our bodies to survive and thrive. For our families, this includes using essential oils to support our bodies in a multitude of ways.

● Essential oils are plant concentrates. When a plant is dried for tea or to make supplements, around 97% of the essential oil is lost, as well as much of the plant’s capability of helping us be healthy. By using the EO we are getting the plant’s complete chemical profile in each drop.

● Most essential oils are extracted from plant sources using steam distillation and are highly concentrated, making them far more potent than dried herbs or botanicals.

● Essential oils are volatile liquids, which means that the scent of the oil rises quickly into the air.

● They are also versatile with a wide variety of uses. Some people use EOs to enliven an environment, support different body systems, or for creating chemical free alternatives to many household items.

(Source: Feelings Kit Online Workshop )

Are you at the point where you are ready to buy a kit? I remember being confused about member vs wholesale and which kit. This is directly from the doc that helped me when I got started (only I replaced my mentors number with mine):

How to Get Started

If you want oils you can always purchase from a distributor but you also have the option to become a Wholesale Member.

To keep your Wholesale Member status, you aren’t required to sell. You simply are now able to purchase your oils at a discounted price. And you get a kit of oils and a diffuser.

Sometimes you may hear the “Wholesale Membership” referred to as a “Distributor” – that never means that you HAVE to build a business. (Of course, if you want to, you can. In fact, to Distribute YL you don’t have to buy some fancy additional kit, you don’t have to purchase $1000 of product and we will NEVER suggest you carry a stockpile of Oils to sell to friends. Distributors get the same starter kits regular Wholesale Members do, they’ve just made some money by telling friends/family about the amazing Oils.)

Okay, back to the Kit. The kit I recommend EVERYONE get is the Premium Starter Kit for $160. It is truly the best kit you can imagine. There are other options, but I PROMISE this $160 kit is THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK. It comes with the Everyday Oils ($163 retail)… 5ml bottles of Lavender, Peppermint, Thieves, Purification, Copaiba, RC, Frankincense, Lemon, Panaway and Digize. And Stress Away.

You also get some samples of oils and another awesome YL product, Ningxia Red. And a free diffuser. These diffusers retail for $98.

11 oils, 10 sample packets, AND the diffuser for $160.

The other two kits they offer at $40 and $75 don’t make sense to me at all.
The $40 kit comes with the samples but NO diffuser and NO oil bottles.
The $75 kit comes with the diffuser and samples and Stress-Away, but NO kit of 10 oils. My issue with the $75 kit is that you have a diffuser, but practically nothing to diffuse and you’ll have to buy more oils right away just to get started… so why not get the 10 oils for $75 more? The only time I recommend the $40 kit is if someone is anxious to get started and budget just doesn’t allow for the $160 kit. I will tell you, EVERY SINGLE person who has ordered the $40 kit ends up getting the $160 kit that month or the following, without fail. So again, if budget allows, the larger kit is THE best value.

There is also a Thieves Products/Thieves Cleaner Kit and Ningxia Red Kit if either of those products are what drew you to Young Living.

The other advantage you have is that the JoyDroppers have a crazy amount of resources for you to benefit from! One of the best resources is our Members-Only Facebook page called Essential Exchange. This is NOT put out by Young Living, this is simply a place where our readers who have become members can communicate with one another, share what is working for them, ask questions, and build relationships with others who are on this journey to a more healthy and natural lifestyle. This group will help cut your searching time down and get your questions answered quickly. I would love for you to be part of our group.

So… how do you sign up for your own Wholesale Membership?! Just follow the directions below.

Step 1: Click https://www.youngliving.com/vo/#/signup/start to Get Started.
Step 2: Keep “Member” checked (you can’t order the starter kit as a customer). This signs you as a “member” to Young Living and it’s the only way to get access to the kit and the 24% discount you get afterwards. It’s really important!
Step 3: Make sure to enter the member number of whoever introduced you to YL in both the sponsor & enroller blanks. My member number is 2183425.
Step 4: Complete the Info Requested. Your social will be filed away, and never used unless you get a paycheck.
Step 5: On the next page, choose premium starter kit, then compete payment info. Let me know if you have any trouble!

YAY!! You are a member!! Wooooohoooo!!! I remember how excited I was to receive my starter kit. Your membership will stay active as long as you spend at least $50 in a calendar year. You do not have to continue to renew your membership each year… that kit was a one-time thing and you will remain a member as long as you spend that $50 a year. Which, trust me… that won’t be a problem.

1.  Plan ahead. Procrastinating and waiting til the last minute puts us in a frenzy and causes us to rush. That’s stressful! Prevent the holiday rush by being intentional and planful.
2. Establish boundaries. Learn to say “no!” Taking on too much at the holidays can overwhelm. Know your limits and learn what you can do comfortably and calmly.
3. Support your body. Emotional support oils can be extremely helpful during the holidays to help keep us cool, calm and collected. The body stores negative emotions which can help explain why 90% of all illness and disease can be traced back to emotional illness. Essential oils for emotional support have the ability to clean receptor sites and reset our bodies back to an emotionally stable state.
4. Make time for fun. Try to find the joy in everything. Or maybe for every undesirable task that you “have” to do, you set aside time and treat yourself to something you enjoy this time of year.

Bonus: One additional tip: The best cure for the holiday blues and hustle is to go do something for someone else. Adopt and angel, ring the bell, visit a nursing home with your kids. It will give you a lift, not to mention those you are helping.