8 Essential Oils to Stress Less

In our fast-paced world, stress is as common as morning coffee and commutes—but just because it's common doesn't mean it's healthy. When not managed mindfully, stress can cause serious harm, from our mental to our physical health.

It can cause us to burnout, get sick, or suffer from anxiety and depression. And if we “manage” it with Netflix and a bottle of Bordeaux, it’s only going to make it worse.

If you know us, you know we’re all about rewiring our response to stress. We like to think of stress as our call to calm: When we feel the telltale symptoms of stress—trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, digestive upsets, tension, irritability, lack of focus, you name it—that’s our cue for self-care.

Rather than ignoring our stress or avoiding our symptoms in the name of productivity, we pause, grab our aromatherapy must-haves for destressing, and inhale deeply.

What you need to know about stress

Stress triggers our body's original alarm system: The fight-or-flight response. Managed by the sympathetic nervous system, this response prepares us to fight (or flee from) perceived threats. It's a survival mechanism, flooding our bodies with adrenaline and cortisol, so we’re ready to do or die—literally.

The problem is: Our modern-day stressors (like an email from your boss) are not do or die. So, when your alarm system keeps sounding, without relief from fight-or-flight, we experience chronic stress, which wears down our physiological defenses and primes us for long-term health issues—mental and physical.

The science behind clinical aromatherapy

While popular tools like mindfulness, exercise and nutrition are musts for stress management, clinical aromatherapy should be too: Aromatherapy harnesses the intrinsic properties of essential oils to activate the parasympathetic nervous system—your rest-and-digest response—calming body, mind and soul.

All too often dismissed as a new-age trend, the age-old practice of aromatherapy is now validated by science, from laboratory studies and clinical trials to phytochemical analysis—the study of active compounds found in plants and their therapeutic benefits.

The science shows us that pure essential oils (like chamomile, lavender and peppermint) engage directly with our nervous system through inhalation: Scent molecules travel directly through the nerves in the nose to the brain, triggering neurotransmitters that target the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—to regulate our nervous system.

How to use aromatherapy for stress

Embracing aromatherapy as part of your self-care ritual can be as simple as adding a handful of drops of pure essential oil to a diffuser or a warm Epsom salt bath.

Of course, our favorite aromatherapy treatment is lighting our Evening Aromatherapy Candle or lathering on our Evening Body Serum after a hot shower or warm bath.

Formulated by an award-winning Clinical Aromatherapist, our signature scent was literally made for stress with eight pure essential oils known to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

With hundreds of five-star reviews, it’s easy to understand why these eight essential oils were must-haves in our signature blend:

BERGAMOT For anxiety and stress	JASMINE For nervous system regulation
CARDAMOM For anxiety	PALO SANTO For relaxation
CEDARWOOD For sleeplessness	YLANG YLANG For anxiety and self-esteem
HO WOOD For a busy mind	YUZU For negative emotions

Embrace your call to calm

In the pursuit of wellbeing, let stress be your call to calm, guiding you to self-care practices that rest and restore body, mind and soul.

If you’d like to learn more about the science, history and scent notes of our signature essential oils, visit our Ingredient Library—or try our Evening Aromatherapy Candle for yourself.

ABOUT L’BEAUXTIQUE

If you haven’t met us yet, we’re L’Beauxtique. Founded by a Certified Professional Aromatherapist, and formulated by a Clinical Aromatherapist, our science-backed functional scents calm body, mind and soul—because twenty-first-century life doesn’t.