When asked to contribute to a Professional Compendium on the ‘Future of Aromatherapy’ I jumped at the chance. The assortment of contributions you'll discover in the compendium are tremendously varied and cover a broad range of aromatherapy topics that I’m sure will interest you. The ‘Future of Aromatherapy’ Professional Compendium Topics: Brief History of Aromatics History of Clinical Aromatherapy Clinical Uses Education Essential Oil Safety Integrative Medicine Research Protecting Threatened Plant Species As the compendium includes contributions from aromatherapy experts from around the world, please keep in mind that several contributions advocate pharmacological usage, including ingestion. The practitioners making these contributions live in countries with completely different standards for regulatory guidelines regarding usage of aromatherapy for its practitioners. In the United...

Aroma therapy has been used since the earliest days of man on planet earth. The earliest aromatherapists were probably the tribal shamans who used plant aromatics to heal the sick of their tribe. Evidence of this can be seen in the drawings found on the walls of caves depicting plant aromatics being used to heal the sick. From the drawings it looks as though plant aromatics were used in many, if not all, of man’s most important ritual celebrations like birth, puberty, marriage and death. I believe that this early subconscious memory of 'healing with plants' is one of the primary reasons that aromatherapy is gaining global popularity at such a rapid pace today. It is because of the powerful...