But straight up, when it comes to evidence and science, aromatherapy is guilty of cherry-picking.

I’m speaking generally, as not everyone is guilty of this. There are people who know better and call for others to do better. As well, we must acknowledge there is a difference between good-faith debate over evidence and then what is skepticism masquerading as concern for evidence (not in good faith). But if you take the time to look, you can find examples of how aromatherapy cherry-picks what it absorbs as needed knowledge—at a professional level.

This ultimately affects how aromatherapy professionals learn, teach others, and create the products wellness clients, patients, and consumers rely on. When this happens, aromatherapy as a profession fails to recognize the contradictions within the larger picture of how aromatherapy is practiced and sets itself up to be criticized by professionals in other scientific disciplines who will spot those errors a mile away.

If we’re lucky, they want to help. If we’re not lucky, our own failures become evidence for why aromatherapy should be questioned as safe or a valid practice.

Some Examples

1. Aromatherapists regularly inform the public about the need for diluting essential oils, citing scientific studies on skin-safety and research discussing available evidence on the subject matter. Evidence-based research is used to fortify the argument that undiluted essential oils can cause negative reactions.
   
   But call for the same standard in the formulation of aromatherapy products? The plethora of evidence out there on why you can’t leave something like a preservative out of products containing water or why hurdle technology and water activity restriction in the home setting is unsafe is suddenly not good enough. Scientific evidence is valuable when it serves a point we want to make.
   
   When it means we may have to make a change to how we conduct business or instruct our students, suddenly the value of scientific evidence has decreased.
   

2. We will at times find aromatherapists speaking the language of science. They will discuss the need for better studies and a better understanding of essential oils. They will avidly point out when an MLM representative or layman misrepresents a study they’ve pulled or uses a bad one to formulate their argument.
   
   But then we find instances where a poor study or an absolute annihilation of scientific process is published by a colleague on “their side.” Then suddenly, we find the previous dedication to critical analysis fly straight out the window. Aromatherapists are found supporting the poor caliber of work they had been standing against.
   

3. As aromatherapists, we love to discuss and teach about the various antimicrobial properties of essential oils. We know, especially in this age of antibiotic resistance, that their varied chemical profiles may allow them to contribute to solutions in this area. But then these same aromatherapists will sit there and tell their followers that it’s perfectly acceptable and safe to make their own hand sanitizer at home with nothing but a bit of aloe gel and a low concentration of skin-safe aromatics.
   
   They completely fail to recognize why it’s not a safe formula, why the supposed antimicrobial protection is not what they think it is, and how things like this can contribute to the spread of potentially dangerous microbes.

The disconnect is very, very real, and this disconnect does not get fixed until we sit down together and have some honest and probably uncomfortable conversations with our colleagues about how we go about addressing the matter.

It’s neither an easy nor a short fix. It would take five minutes—and that’s being generous—to find ten examples of these kinds of issues on our professionals’ information and business websites through an internet search alone.

It is that prevalent.

The question at the end of the day, however, is going to be whether aromatherapy is willing to do something about it. And doing something about it doesn’t mean every mistake out there has to be put on blast.

But it does mean addressing how we self-regulate and manage professional standards.

As it stands now, aromatherapy as a profession is standing in a cafeteria line where evidence is being served for lunch. But instead of taking the full meal, it’s picking and choosing which bits it wants to take and which bits it’s not hungry for at the moment.

Thanks for reading.

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I want to do what I can to help those who need personal and business resources update their own knowledge base and start to learn more about important formulation and natural product business matters we haven’t always openly talked about in professional circles.

The Blending Library here is one way of providing a resource for just that.

Why I Made Certain Decisions

Why am I focusing on IFRA? What’s the big deal with not adhering to it?

At the end of the day, my biggest concern is one thing: helping aromatherapists practice safely and responsibly without putting themselves at the risk of trouble.

IFRA’s recommendations are no stranger to debate. Multiple professionals take issues with them and for good reason.

But here’s the thing: we’ve talked about how aromatherapists in the United States lack a defined scope. At some point somewhere, I know I’ve commented on how our immediate industry doesn’t always use certain words the way others who work in healthcare do.

One of my biggest concerns here is how we use “clinical.”

Aromatherapists have to be very careful not to give the impression of practicing medicine without a license. To not be handing out what would, based on intent, be qualified as drugs. So, for that, approaching products within the confines of what is acceptable for cosmetic or household use is what I believe best protects our non-clinical professionals.

Hence IFRA. Whether people like it or not, when it comes to cosmetic and household products, IFRA is still considered the gold standard in these industries.

The Blending Library thus uses this as a conservative approach to prioritize what is discussed above here.

How to Use This Library

The Library consists of essential oils or other aromatics that have dermal restrictions under the IFRA Standards. It covers the aromatics within the context of IFRA Product Category 5A at specific, common product concentrations. The figures established under each noted product concentration represent the maximum usage level for that aromatic in a master blend formula.

It is my hope that aromatherapists and essential oil users alike can use this library to help assist in the safe development of essential oil master blends.

Want to make a blend with clove bud but you’re not sure how much you can safely add to your master blend? Just look it up in the Library. It will show you, based on specific parameters, the maximum amount you can add to your formula.

The Blending Library covers the maximum usage level of the noted aromatics for finished products containing 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, or 5% total fragrance.

Please note that values are truncated, to err on the side of not exceeding calculated maximums.

The aromatic profiles will also include the upper reported concentration (URC) of the constituent that has led to the IFRA restriction. As long as the GC/MS for the aromatic you are formulating with reports a figure below the URC, the aromatic falls within the constituent concentration assumed by the Library's calculation. However, the charts do not account for cumulative contributions from multiple aromatics. You can learn more about how to handle that here.

Why IFRA Product Category 5A?

My intent is to make the Blending Library a safe, relatable reference for professional aromatherapists and essential oil users. Because of this, I have intentionally approached it with respect to Essential Oil Safety (EOS2) by Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young. Tisserand and Young offer far more nuance to dermal restrictions than IFRA often does. What has stuck out to me most, though, is how they approach not only sensitization risks but systemic toxicity.

So, 5A to account for large body applications.

As I recently discussed on Facebook, the IFRA Standards have undergone significant changes since the reference was published, and this includes changes to the product categories.

IFRA Product Category 5A includes leave-on body products like body lotion, body butter, body creams, massage oils, etc.

Note:

• 5A does not cover facial products

• 5A does not cover baby products

• 5A does not cover intimate products

• 5A does not cover pillow sprays

Unsure if the product you intend to apply your master blend to falls under IFRA Product Category 5A? Double check the IFRA Standards before using this reference to be sure.

If you are developing retail products, more information than this Blending Library provides may be needed.

How Often Does the Blending Library Update?

The Blending Library is a bit different than my normal publishing schedule as it is meant to essentially be a reference database. As such, I will add to it as time allows to build it up.

The Blending Library is also meant to be a living database of restricted aromatic profiles. When IFRA publishes new standards? I will review and update the old profiles where applicable. I will note updated dates and which IFRA Amendment each aromatic profile falls under directly on the profiles.

The initial profiles at the time of writing this will adhere to the IFRA 51st Amendment.

Added profiles will not be sent by email to prevent your inbox from being randomly flooded. I will note in each month’s Dispatch which profiles are new to the library. You can also check the Blending Library at your leisure to see if there are new additions.

Need Personalized Help?

If the Blending Library doesn’t provide your specific need, I do offer consulting and business services that may provide better assistance. You can contact me about your needs by clicking the button below.

For the time being, enjoy the Blending Library. If this is just hitting your inbox, you’ll see the first few profiles pop up in the next couple of days. I do hope it is useful to you in your aromatherapy and natural product ventures.

I Need Extra Help

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For a field that can talk all day about how energizing essential oils can be, there is one common, recurring theme that keeps popping up as I talk with colleagues: aromatherapists are exhausted.

I am not talking about physical fatigue, though that is of course something most struggle with from time to time. There is a deeply felt, bone-weary exhaustion that goes beyond the physical and has settled uncomfortably into professional relationships, interactions, and responsibilities that at times appear to be sucking the life out of the very people the field needs most.

Many have noted how these things have come with personal financial costs due to the fact that the field relies so heavily on volunteer work.

Why bring this up? I am bringing it up because the line of discussion is common enough now among enough aromatherapists to say publicly it needs to be taken seriously. And I am going to consciously but carefully walk the line of drama for a moment because I think it is necessary to open some hard conversations at this point. Specific details are not going to be revealed because people who have experienced bad things have a right to protect their peace and privacy. But we do need to start discussing the presence of some less than savory realities through general lenses because, like any field, aromatherapy is not perfect.

Sometimes those imperfections are honest mistakes—this is to be expected and fixable. Sometimes, however, those imperfections are darker.

In my time as a consultant, I have watched businesses and individual professionals make the conscious choice to avoid regulatory responsibilities for the sake of profit.

In recent years, I have both directly witnessed and been made aware of more malicious, abusive behaviors.

The latter? Those become a deeper concern when those behaviors come from people who have long-standing public reputations tied to expertise or those who sit in positions of power.

The latter plus the concern tied to it exist. It has happened and is happening, and while all is bad, some of it is really not good.

I am not going to say more than that because those are not my stories to tell. But we have a lot of good, honest people in aromatherapy who are exhausted because they are fighting an uphill battle against those who are more concerned with their own personal benefit than upholding and advancing the profession. And in a field already prone to other professional fields’ demarcation, bad actors in influential places wreak more havoc.

I am not currently sure how to further expound on this in a way that best protects the vulnerable, and I am not willing to risk them or their peace.

So, I am going to leave it at this: If you see something, say something. If you cannot out of a need to protect yourself? There is often someone else who can or at the very least someone who can help find potential solutions that allow you to prioritize what you must. At the end of the day, those operating in bad faith only have the power we give them. And remember that the regulatory structures and responsibilities we often see people fighting to resist often hold solid answers for dealing with concerning problems.

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Autumn—finally. Although parts of the South are still having a temper tantrum and resisting the change. I hope it has cooled down wherever you are and that you have been able to enjoy the advent of pumpkin spice season. Here in NC, we are getting a late start on our fall/winter garden, but the stubborn warmth is giving us a little leeway there. We have some cabbage starts ready to go into the soil along with beets, turnips, carrots, mustard greens, and radishes.

Should be fun. Frost cloth and greenhouse covers for the win.

September Recap

September was a busy month. The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy’s election took place on the 1^st and 2^nd of the month, and on the 3^rd they announced their newly elected board members. Congratulations to Raghda Abdel Maksoud, Sharon Chapman, Dr. DorothyBelle Poli, Eric Davis, Rose Chard, and Jennifer Pressimone! Special thanks to Annette Davis who has served as NAHA’s president for the last 11 years. NAHA has grown immensely in that time under her leadership, and the new board takes office January 1, 2027. Also, NAHA announced their 2027 conference, Aromatic Horizons, which will take place October 14-16 in New Jersey next year.

On the matter of conferences, the Alliance of International Aromatherapists brought community members together in North Carolina toward the end of last month at the Aromatics in Action conference in Hendersonville. Be sure to check out their Facebook page for pictures and recaps. It seems that a wonderful time was had with aromatherapists returning home refreshed and invigorated by time together as well as positive conversations about the future of aromatherapy. I would encourage you to check it out.

There was some significant news regarding the FDA that Meredith Murdock of Faeve brought to my attention. The FDA is starting to take action on advancing the development of botanical drug products, and that is a conversation that aromatherapists should participate in. You can read more about that here, but please do check that out—esp. if you are involved in clinical practice or have an interest in this specific area of product development.

On my end, we saw Substack postings and some brief conversations on Facebook. I’ll link those below so you can catch up if you missed them.

Facebook Posts

• The Problem With the Petri Dish

• Anti-Intellectualism Contributes to Misinformation

• How Well Do You Understand Essential Oil Dilution?

• A Gripe About Biblical Essential Oil Claims

• Aromatherapy is Insular

• Botanical Drug Products

• Scientific Illiteracy is a Problem in Aromatherapy

Substack Notes

• Anti-Intellectualism in Aromatherapy

• Peer Review & Critique in Aromatherapy

Substack Essay

• Essential Oils in the Bible: A Coffee Chat

Field Notes: Thinking Out Loud

Two things have been frequently on my mind this month: scientific literacy and looking for areas there seems to be a need for deeper professional support. While the observations that brought these two matters on my radar are separate, they go together at the same time. Professional support is a much broader topic that encompasses scientific literacy. I’m not going to say much on the literacy matter at this moment. I may have more to say next month on it, depending on some things I have going on in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you do not already subscribe to the International Journal of Professional Holistic Aromatherapy (IJPHA), I would highly recommend that you do. The journal is peer-reviewed, and it recently posted a blog article regarding this subject matter that is worth reading. I’ll include it in the suggested reading below.

One of the things the IJPHA’s blog brings up is safeguarding professional credibility. I firmly agree that this needs to be a priority in aromatherapy. Anyone following this Substack knows that I write about professional credibility often, and there are arguably some protections in place. The question is whether they are sufficient, and this brings me back to discussions we have had about the need for a more robust self-regulatory system. What the IJPHA touches on is one of the exact reasons I bring this up so frequently—that and the fact that I am seeing frequent examples of where our professional infrastructure is the source of misinformation. No system is perfect, and there will always be things that slip through the cracks. But we need an accountable, structured way to deal with these things when they do occur to preserve both professional and educational integrity. Having a more robust structure should also help to reduce the frequency of such events.

What concerns me right now is that some of these things slipping through potentially reflect larger systemic issues. These issues could be stretched resources—things like not enough volunteers—that leave matters like informational integrity at the mercy of external pressures. When people are already overworked, oversights naturally occur. But there is also the possibility that what we are facing may reflect a deficit in aromatherapy’s own understanding of research and evidence. What I am most interested in is finding out which it is. Or are multiple factors affecting things currently?

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Cultural Corner

In my essay “Epistemic Plurality in Aromatherapy,” I introduced the idea that aromatherapy really operates between three different paradigms: physical aromatherapy, humanistic aromatherapy, and metaphysical aromatherapy. If you are not yet a member of A Discourse on Aromatherapy, you can read a very brief introduction to the concept here. But at the end of the day, one of the reasons I stress these paradigms and the need for each to have their own established scope and epistemologies is that aromatherapy tends to collapse different forms of evidence and then muddy how that evidence is applied in interpretation.

This is one of the exact reasons we discussed what we just did above about professional sources of misinformation.

So, what I would encourage this month, if you have the time, is to take the suggested reading list I have below and read through these works with the three-paradigm structure in mind. See if you can identify where claims found in these works fit.

October’s Suggested Reading

The IJPHA blog article I mentioned above is included in this reading list, but the rest of the selected works are intended as resources to look at through the lens of the three-paradigm structure we have discussed. Keep in mind that it is entirely possible to find works that span all three paradigms. Eventually, I will write more on this, but that is something we should expect to see, especially in the case of clinical aromatherapy.

• “Impostors vs. Impostor Syndrome in Aromatherapy” (IJPHA)

• Clinical Aromatherapy: Essential Oils in Healthcare (Jane Buckle PhD RN)

• The Complete Aromatherapy and Essential Oils Handbook for Everyday Wellness (Nerys Purchon, Lora Cantele)

• The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, Revised and Expanded: Over 800 Natural, Nontoxic, and Fragrant Recipes to Create Health, Beauty, and Safe Home and Work Environments (Valerie Ann Worwood)

• The Alchemy of Menopause: The Journey of Stepping Into Our Power and Becoming Who We Truly Are (Cathy Skipper)

October’s Publications

Two Notes (I really need to rename these because I am unnecessarily confusing what I produce with Substack’s own note system) and a Practicum piece will be coming to A Discourse on Aromatherapy this month.

If you are not a member of this publication yet or for personal reasons prefer to not utilize the Substack platform, I do make what I publish here available for digital download over on Gumroad. Complete transparency—Substack is the better value since it supports the ongoing development of my work. It also provides the fastest access to what I publish. But the writings are available to the public who prefer not to use Substack or prefer to be able to add works directly to their own home library. Essays published to Gumroad also include Key Takeaways for more focused reading or teaching guidance should aromatherapists want to teach on the subject.

Coming Projects

As I mentioned earlier in this newsletter, one matter that has been on my mind is professional support. As time and health allow, I am going to start working on resources to directly contribute to this, particularly regarding educational resources for teaching aromatherapists, literature and references for professional use (though home users may also find some of this helpful), and more accessible consulting guidance on matters of significance to aromatherapy businesses. I will probably start talking a bit more about this over on Facebook first, so be sure you are following over there if these are matters that are important to you.

Onward

Thank you, everyone. I hope the new month is treating you well. For anyone else dealing with chronic illness, remember the October Slide and take the time you need for extra care if you see it starting to slip into your life. While seasonal changes bring a lot of joy and holiday fun, they can also be a bit of a bugger when you are dealing with health conditions.

See you this week,
Lauren

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While mistakes happen, such mistakes occurring in our professional publications carries significant weight. Aromatherapists look to these publications to inform them about and teach them about research and ideas that can have applications in real-world practice. So, when research is presented, especially if it is presented as having clinical applications, the ideas put forth need to represent a solid understanding of cited materials, clinical practice, scope, and ethics.

I have serious concerns about these matters in what I recently read.

There can be any number of reasons that something like this slips through the cracks, but something we can do is advocate for strict peer review guidelines for published professional materials. Peer review and critique are intrinsic to healthcare and science publications, and we should expect no less within our own profession given our involvement in these areas. But I do find that while professionals in other fields largely accept critique and the tension that may bring as a part of the process, aromatherapy seems more averse to such things.

It’s understandable. We’re a close community, and it puts us in a position to have to at times confront friends. That’s not something that’s comfortable for most. And not everyone working in aromatherapy comes from a scientific background, so such confrontation may very well be a new experience to navigate.

But we need to be able to separate personal relationships from the purpose and substance such critique brings. Informational accountability cannot exist without it, and a lack of careful peer review and critique does run the risk of allowing exploitation. I would encourage you to take a moment to read the International Journal of Professional Holistic Aromatherapy’s recent blog post for a deeper discussion on exactly this.

Is peer review perfect? No. Mistakes happen, and as I said, sometimes things slip through the cracks. But that’s okay. That’s what retractions are for, and retractions are a normal risk in publishing and research.

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As I mentioned not long ago on Facebook, I came across a resource from a NAHA-approved school promoting the claims we typically think of as MLM claims regarding essential oils in the Bible. Now, I want to be clear that this isn’t blaming NAHA. The book is sold through the school’s site and appears to have the owner listed as the author. But as far as I can tell from what is publicly available online, this book isn’t attached to their curriculum.

Still problematic? I’d argue yes.

While a popular notion in essential oil circles, the idea that essential oils themselves were a part of ancient or pre-modern Hebraic culture isn’t archaeologically substantiated. In fact, the parts of the archaeological record and archaeometric data often used to point at these claims as evidence are misinterpreted and overextrapolated. We’ve known for years that MLM companies have perpetuated these false claims; many of you have stood with me in online spaces debating this very subject with enthusiastic purveyors of the myth. So, when I came across the information from within our own circles, let alone an educational institution, it was rather jarring.

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According to Hofstadter (1963), anti-intellectualism is “a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.” Life of the mind, if we acknowledge for the sake of brevity that this lacks nuance, refers essentially to critical thinking. As such, occupations and intellectual pursuits that readily engage critical thinking as a way of understanding the world and developing solutions to its problems are the subsequent victims of anti-intellectualism.

Very simply, rather than engaging the evidence surrounding a matter, anti-intellectualism defaults to making a category judgement, rejecting the expert or expertise due to its association.

Daniel Rigney (1991) expanded on Hofstadter’s work regarding anti-intellectualism, narrowing the types of anti-intellectualism we see into three categories:

1. Anti-rationalism

2. Populist anti-elitism

3. Unreflective Instrumentalism

While an argument could be made for all three being present within aromatherapy, what I am going to focus on right now is populist anti-elitism. A populist anti-elitist perspective turns expertise into a credibility war; experts are rejected based on their institutional association rather than their substance.

You’ve likely seen it occur in online aromatherapy discussions. When used to refute a point, phrases like “doctors don’t know anything,” “scientists aren’t perfect,” “Big Pharma is corrupt,” “they work for the government,” etc. are frequently deployed. These are all anti-intellectual claims. They dismiss expertise automatically on the basis of their association. And this dismissal is not where things stop. Such disregard tends to further expand into motive-attributions that are also assumptions: “Scientists and doctors don’t want you to know what they found because you’d be able to heal yourself, and there’s no money in that,” “Big pharma doesn’t want you to know about essential oils because it can’t profit from them,” etc.

Let me be clear: It is perfectly fine to be skeptical. Science itself is skeptical. The problem with the above is that they are based on categorical assumptions rather than a logical rebuttal of something found to be concerning. As a result, arguments tend to devolve into rhetoric rather than an actual dissection of claims. My personal favorite is the outright dismissal of higher education as valuable because “people have done just fine without it since the beginning of time.”

We also drank pond water at some point until that was discovered to be a bad idea.

Where claims are concerned, an expert’s biggest enemy is another expert in their field. They have equivalent knowledge and understand the processes used to draw a particular conclusion. So, if something seems off, they know how to systematically approach demonstrating what that problem is and offer substantiated peer critique without the need for baseless claims.

They approach it through evidence and an understanding of processes and are exactly the people that fields need to identify and help arbitrate dangerous and false claims that can further compromise a field’s authority.

When discussing aromatherapy and essential oils and trying to defend it, the field does itself no favors by defaulting to anti-intellectualism. At the end of the day, these claims are simply rhetoric being used to replace a substantive defense. It might resonate among some witnessing the discussion, but it hasn’t accomplished anything but a temporary sense of an alliance among peers. While that may be personally satisfying, it does not support aromatherapy as a profession.

In fact, it can arguably lead to harm. I’ve discussed demarcation in the past. These are the kind of tactics that can lead to it.

Rhetoric appeals to people; it doesn’t establish what is known. If there is a problem with a claim, it is necessary to approach why it’s a problem in a way that validates the concern. If aromatherapy and its professionals do not do this, the risk is undermining the field itself.

10 points to your Hogwarts house of choice if you can label the rhetoric used in this Note—and why its use is not anti-intellectual.

References

Hofstadter, R. (1963). Anti-intellectualism in American life. Knopf.

Rigney, D. (1991). Three kinds of anti-intellectualism: Rethinking Hofstadter. Sociological Inquiry, 61(4), 434–451.

Author’s Note: Some works on anti-intellectualism—including Hofstadter—have been rightfully criticized for their elitist tone. This Note is not categorically endorsing the personal reflections of these individuals. Rather, it uses the definitions such research has contributed, without automatically adopting the authors’ individual values or judgments, for the sake of defining the observed phenomenon in aromatherapy.

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Some changes this month, so bear with me while I catch everyone up. Long story short, my health is not bouncing back the way I had hoped, so I need to adjust things here to account for that so I can make time for the rest my body is currently demanding of me. But that is okay. My need to cut my work in half means I can also make the Substack a bit more affordable, and I will explain what that looks like moving forward in this Dispatch now that I have caught up on the membership offerings.

New Subscription Price and Offerings

I have updated this Substack’s “Start Here” post with the details and posting schedule as well. But moving forward, I will be reducing the monthly Notes to twice a month, and the monthly membership is being reduced to $5 and the yearly membership to $50. For monthly subscribers, the next billing cycle will simply reflect the change. Yearly subscribers, I will be issuing you a refund that reflects the new yearly subscription price.

Reflections will continue to be posted sporadically. Along with access to the free content and the existing full archive, the paid membership will include the following moving forward:

• 1 long-form essay or Formulation Practicum installment

• Companion summaries

• Subscriber chat

What are Companion Summaries?
Companion Summaries are condensed, quick-reference accounts of the longer essays on this platform. They hit the key points to give you a rapid overview of the subject. These will post sometime after the initial essay has been published when there is one (remember it will be either an essay or Practicum piece once monthly now), so they will pop up as available. You will find them in a new section of the menu bar on the Substack homepage. I will email them out as they publish moving forward, but the initial three pieces you will find available today will not be emailed so as not to overload your inboxes. But there will be links to them available below.

New Subscriber Chat for Members
The essays shared here can be quite dense, as can the Practicum pieces, so I wanted to make a space available for any questions or discussions that members may find beneficial. If you click on the available Subscriber Chat, you will notice a thread for each work. Simply click on the one for the work you have questions or comments on to reply to the thread. If there’s a certain topic a member would like to discuss, feel free to reach out to me. If it is in the scope of the publication, I am glad to add it. I will check in at least once a day to look for and answer questions there.

New Publishing Schedule
My goal is to continue releasing the Dispatch on the 1^st, with the essay or Practicum installment publishing on the 15^th. The goal for the public access Notes is to publish them on the 7^th and 25^th. That being said, my health is obviously at times unpredictable, so we are going to look at these dates as what I said: goals. If there is a delay, I will post a notice on this Substack’s profile page.

August Recap

The list of August’s published works is below and includes the new Companion Summaries.

Essay
Epistemic Plurality in Aromatherapy: How Paradigms Collide to Shape Authority

Practicum Installments
A Guide to Natural Cleaning With Essential Oils: Clarification, Limitations, and Options

A Critical Look at a Natural Hand Gel: Formula Analysis

Revisiting Blending Methodology: A Purpose-First Approach to Master Blend Formulation

Companion Summaries

What does reasonable alcohol use in aromatherapy formulation look like?

Can eucalyptus oil be used with children under age 10?

Can aromatherapy decide what it knows for the sake of the profession?

Field Notes: Thinking Out Loud

It has been an interesting couple of months for aromatherapy. The NAHA election has weighed heavily on the minds of many. On that note, today starts the two-day election period, so if you are a member, be sure to go and vote.

I am deeply curious to see how the election turns out. One thing I have said for years to colleagues is that aromatherapy is very neo-tribal. Neo-tribe is a term that was coined by French sociologist Michel Maffesoli and refers to a group of people that is dynamic rather than rigid—temporary. They form according to current needs or values, people can be a part of more than one, and they reflect less staunch individualism. Put very simplistically, neo-tribes meet you where you are currently at.

How often have you seen friend groups and even professional alliances fluctuate in aromatherapy? I have watched it fluctuate repeatedly throughout my years in the field. There have been times where people who otherwise do not particularly get along joined together over agreement on what is misinformation to fight that together. I have seen friend groups break apart, rearrange, and split off into multiple ones regarding outside influences that impact aromatherapy. COVID was a big one here. Even political matters have influenced social group arrangement.

Neo-tribes.

But this election has exposed more within that, showing that despite a strong tendency toward neo-tribalism, at least some aromatherapists are bound by more than what defines those.

We will not pretend that there has been zero public drama or strife throughout the election season. But what interests me is how the public conversations and candidate allegiance have unfolded around the matter. For lack of a better term, the social division that has resulted. One side of the matter appears to have been largely a bloc while the other appears to be more neo-tribal. And interestingly, the bloc consists of people I would also categorize as belonging to different neo-tribes where some matters are concerned.

The two sides have opposing opinions on which candidates would best serve the organization. In public expression regarding the election, in establishing why they align where they do, the bloc has focused largely on prior histories and shared accounts of experience—records—that others can corroborate and validate. The neo-tribal side has largely seemed to gather around future goals with a reliance on informational sharing and what I think can objectively be categorized as rhetoric in advancing those.

I would be remiss to not admit that I have inherent bias that I must work to keep in check due to some of the circumstances regarding my own involvement in public discourse over this election. But speaking as objectively as possible regarding what has been publicly presented by both groups, I think fair observation does require acknowledging that the public strategies between the two have been different. At the end of the day, what I am left wondering is whether aromatherapy will ultimately demonstrate that its values are more rigid or fluid?

The result of that has a significant impact on how the field moves forward as a profession.

Cultural Corner

In the interest of neo-tribal observations about aromatherapy regarding this election, I would recommend you set out on a personal internet browsing adventure when you have a moment for it. And I am intentionally specifying digital exploration here rather than written works strictly because so much of the communication around the NAHA election occurred in digital spaces. Look up the candidates and their public offerings from their blogs, educational resources, and businesses. The election is over tomorrow night, but what people present to the world that is easily accessible still has an impact on how the field is seen by outsiders, what guides our interactions with each other, and how we also influence each other directly. How do people communicate? What do they communicate? Why do they seem to be communicating what they are? And ultimately, how might these things affect aromatherapy as a field?

September’s Suggested Reading

Here is a quick reading list based on what I mentioned above plus something fun, and one that I think remains pertinent to aromatherapy as a whole, especially right now:

• The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society (Michel Maffesoli)

• The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act

• Aromanga (This is another Substack and honestly one of the cutest things I have ever seen. It makes me smile, and I wanted to share. Worth checking out if you just want to grin while enjoying aromatherapy.)

September’s Publication Schedule

I’m leaning toward this month being an essay rather than a Practicum piece, but we shall see. If I can appropriately gather my thoughts on what I have in mind in time for the 15^th, I will publish an essay. Notes will also be coming again, and I have a Reflection sitting around that needs to see the light of day.

Onward

Thank you all for being here as I navigate this new project in the face of an ever-fluctuating health status. I am enjoying connecting with you all and doing what I can to provide resources. If you’re a member of the Substack, don’t forget that the Subscriber Chat is now active if you have any questions. Enjoy September as it brings in the “Ber months,” hopefully some cooler weather, and the pumpkin goodies it seems a good chunk of us anticipate year round.

Talk soon,
Lauren

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As a practice, aromatherapy claims professional authority over the therapeutic understanding and application of essential oils. Whether it successfully defends that claim is debatable given aromatherapy’s vulnerability to publicly being labeled a pseudoscience. But this public perspective is largely complicated by an internal problem: the field does not operate from a single, clearly defined way of knowing what it claims to know (its epistemology).

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“Eucalyptus essential oil cannot be used with children under ten” is a persistent false claim in aromatherapy. This claim originated within a legitimate safety concern: cineole-rich oils can potentially cause serious respiratory and neurological effects in young children. However, these negative side effects are documented to be a risk under particular exposure conditions.

Unfortunately, route-specific cautions and contraindications were turned into a blanket age prohibition that began in online discourse. The issue at hand, however, is not whether eucalyptus carries risk. It is whether the evidence supports the restrictive age and use recommendations expressed in the claim.

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Alcohol is commonly recommended for home and practice-based aromatherapy formulations to both incorporate essential oils into water and to help preserve water-based products. The accessibility of alcohol makes it an appealing option for practitioners and home users due to its ease of access compared to specialized cosmetic supplies and the time and costs required for product testing.

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Given these factors, blending is understandably a foundational skill for aromatherapists. But it is not always approached in a way that fully or easily accounts for blend safety. Blending approaches include but are not limited to drop-by-drop methods that allow you to focus on the aroma, balancing blends according to perfumery note strength, blending according to chemical profiles, and at times using energetic principles or intuition to guide essential oil selection. While each of these approaches offers a unique perspective, they can leave the practitioner working backwards later when they must determine application safety parameters.

This is particularly important when using essential oils with dermal restrictions in a blend that will be used topically. The master blend must inherently account for those individual dermal limitations. Aromatherapists need to be sure that once the blend is applied, all the oils in it still meet their individual dermal requirements. We can effectively accomplish this by planning blends according to their purpose and establishing boundaries before we begin mixing essential oils.

A purpose-first approach gives aromatherapists a systematic framework to establish these parameters from the beginning instead of retroactively figuring out how their master blend can be used.

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Our first formula analysis covers a natural hand gel recommendation from the Aromahead Institute and is from their blog post “Natural Hand Gel Immune Support Recipe with Essential Oils.”

Purpose

The blog post explicitly ascribes specific health factors, including immune support and germ neutralization, to the purpose of the hand gel while also expressing that “A good hand gel should be multi-functional, and shouldn’t dry your hands out with multiple uses” (Williams, 2025, “Pure & Protected” section, para. 3).

It goes on to describe the perceived benefits of the ingredients chosen for the formula that include pharmacological, cleansing, and disinfectant claims. As well, it presents the recommended formula as a solution to the harsher skin side effects of hand sanitizer (Williams, 2025).

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Identified by Andrew Abbott (1988), two specific concepts in social theory that clarify how successful a field is in applying its epistemology are jurisdiction and abstraction. Jurisdiction refers to how a profession applies knowledge and claims expertise to resolve specific tasks or problems. Whether this is done successfully is dependent on the profession’s ability to apply or abstract its knowledge as stated while also defending it against others who would step in to claim jurisdiction over the problems being addressed (Abbott, 1988).

Read the Companion Summary Here

Where aromatherapy is concerned, jurisdiction is particularly worth highlighting as it forces the field to question as to whether the practice itself has been able to successfully abstract its knowledge to establish itself as an authority and why or why not.

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