Deepen your home yoga and meditation practice with all-natural essential oils from sacred woods, ancient resins and historical botanicals
Yoga and meditation are powerfully transformative practices that can help you to shift your perspective, enable you to see things differently, and change your life forever. They can be pathways to joy, peace and harmony. And are particularly useful during these chaotic times.
The benefits are exponential, the more you practice, the more you will get: more joy, clarity, creativity, and balance in your life, more serenity and calm, better sleep, better resilience to face any obstacles and challenges that may cross your path.
And yet I know it can be really hard to stay motivated and steady with your home practice, to find the time, place and mind-set to practice daily.
I believe that by finding more ways to inspire our practice, creating a serenely beautiful home sanctuary and making our practice a delightful, sensorial experience, we can find the motivation to return to it day after day.
The most intense and memorable experiences in life involve all 5 of our senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Our senses are very powerful vibrational forces that connect you to the world and to everyone and everything in it. Tuning in to your 5 senses is a beautiful way to make your practice delightful, memorable and very personal. Sensorial practice is also a way to ground yourself in the present moment, to stay focused and calm. It’s an integral part of the HUM HOME practice.
The key is the awareness. Awareness of all 5 of your senses, connecting you, grounding you, elevating you. This is a sensorial practice.
Our olfactory sense, the sense of smell, is a very evocative sense that can help to regulate our emotions and even affect our responses and behaviours.
Our sense of smell….how does it work?
The molecules of any substance that create a smell stimulate receptor cells in our nasal passage which send a signal through the central nervous system directly into the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system includes the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, and the hippocampus which plays a role in memory creation. The limbic system is also responsible for our emotional and behavioural responses to life, so our emotional well-being can affect our behaviour.
So you can see that our sense of smell can not only trigger memories and deep emotions, it can directly impact our emotional well-being.
How can essential oils enhance your yoga and meditation practice?
The beautiful and varied scents of essential oils are a natural way to enhance your moods and emotional wellbeing. Essential oils are the result of distilling plants, flowers, woods, and resins in various ways to find the essence of the plant. It's the soul of the plant.
Used externally (in diffusers or topically), essential oils can subtly impact your mood in a positive and uplifting way, or can promote calm and relaxation.
You can use essential oils to stimulate and awaken your sense of smell so that you can access that source of emotional well-being deep inside your brain.
You can use specific scents in your practice to create the state of mind you want to embody.
Why an essential oil blend by HUM?
HUM is about the transformation from one level of experience to another, it’s about the journey towards a higher level experience, one of balance, harmoniousness and joy. It’s not about just one product, or just one practice. It’s about the integration of yoga+meditation into everyday. It’s about helping you to create a mindful lifestyle.
And it’s about providing essential tools and little luxuries to inspire and empower that journey. Everything we do has a purpose.
Including our pure, organic and wild harvested essential oil blends.
Like a mantra, an invocation, an offering…
The HUM essential oil blends are tools of transformation - to help you to achieve a higher level experience, one of balance, harmoniousness and joy.
The first proprietary blend is call so HUM. The beautiful essences of sacred woods balanced with sweet and spicy ancient resins in our signature blend create the perfect atmosphere for your meditation practice. Rich yet airy, powerful yet subtle, this is an addictive, mystical, sacred blend that will create a surprising and beautiful space for connecting with yourself and beyond.
This perfect blend of organic and wild-harvested essential oils for your meditation practice will transport you to heightened awareness, clarity and understanding, for going deeper, going beyond.
Discover sacred woods, ancient resins and historic botanicals
So HUM is made up of a unique blend of essential oils that were once considered priceless. Today they are treasures of nature that can support you in your yoga and meditation practice and promote your emotional well-being.
WILD HARVESTED PALO SANTO (HOLY WOOD)
This fresh, woody, slightly citrusy essential oil is sustainably harvested from the aged wood from fallen trees. It takes 4-10 years for the essential oils to be concentrated in the wood before being extracted. Palo Santo has been used for centuries by South American shamans for centuries as a way of purifying and cleansing negative energies and evil spirits and for inviting in positive vibrations.
Benefits: Uplifting, clearing, purifying, grounding, enhances creativity and concentration
ORGANIC, SUSTAINABLE SANDALWOOD
Sweet, rich and very sacred sandalwood has been used for millennia in Buddhist and Hindu religions, prized for it wood and essential oil, for purification rituals and for connection to the divine. Our essential oil comes from Australian sandalwood trees that are abundant and in no way are endangered like the East Indian sandalwood trees have become due to the extreme popularity of the wood.
Benefits: Creates clarity and tranquility of mind, enhances concentration and inspiration.
ORGANIC ATLAS CEDARWOOD
Sustainably harvested from the majestic cedar trees of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, this sweet wood has been sought for millennia for building ships and shrines, and its essential oil for use in medicines, cosmetics and perfumes. It is also know as one of the first forms of incense.
Benefits: Grounding and calming, encourages confidence.
WILD HARVESTED FRANKINCENSE
Warm, comforting, frankincense is one of the most ancient and revered of essences, extracted from the resin secreted by the boswellia tree, native to the Middle East and specific regions in Africa. In ancient times it was considered to be “pure incense” and was highly desired for use in sacred rituals, and also in ancient perfumes and cosmetics.
Benefits: Uplifting, clarifying, enhances memory and concentration, calms and reduces feelings of anxiety and stress. It is believed that, in spiritual practices, the scent of frankincense strengthens both intuition and a spiritual connection.
WILD HARVESTED MYRRH
Like frankincense, myrrh comes from the resin of a tree (the commiphora tree) and has been valued and traded since earliest historical times. It is said that the Babylonians burned it as incense as long as 5000 years ago. It was widely used by the ancient Egyptians as incense, perfume, and as a healing salve. Frankincense and myrrh have been used by all the ancient civilizations as holy incense, and is still used today. Myrrh essential oil is warm and rich, spicy and slightly smoky.
Benefits: Lifts negative moods, promotes the feeling of being grounded, and encourages a sense of spiritual awakening.
WILD HARVESTED BENZOIN
Soft and sweet with a hint of vanilla and honey, benzoin resin (dried sap tapped from the styrax tree) has been used for thousands of years in ceremonies to help induce a meditative state and drive away evil spirits. It has been recorded traded to China, Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome, mainly used as incense and also as a valuable component of perfumes.
Benefits: Calming, comforting, uplifting.
ORGANIC GALBANUM
The flowering galbanum plant may have been the 'green' incense used by the ancient Egyptians and by the Hebrews in the Temple. It was also used in ancient Greek and Roman times as incense and fragrance. It’s essential oil has a very distinct and unusual leafy green scent with a dry, bark-like back note.
Benefits: Relieves stress, anxiety, tension, trauma, shock. It’s known for its ability to rebalance emotions.
ORGANIC CLARY SAGE
Clary sage from the Mediterranean region was first mentioned for its therapeutic properties by ancient Greek philosophers as far back as 4th century BCE. It was used throughout the middle ages fas a form of medicine. The name “clary” is derived from the latin word meaning clear. Clary sage provides an essential oil that has an unusual, herbaceous and sweetly floral scent.
Benefits: Relieves stress, anxiety, mood swings. It also has been shown to improve mental alertness and clarity. Avoid using clary sage if you are pregnant.
Use Essential Oils Mindfully
Pure essential oils are powerful, and should be used with care. Certain pure essential oils may cause skin irritation in some individuals if applied directly to the skin. If you want to apply to your skin, test it first on a small patch of skin to see how it feels. It’s best to dilute the pure oil with a carrier oil such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, almond oil. We use organic camellia seed oil for our roll-on blend. It is recommended to avoid using essential oils if you are pregnant - consult your physician.
RESOURCES TO GO DEEPER:
Sacred Smoke: Incense Rituals from Ancient Times to Modern Practice
Empower Your Practice with Rituals
so HUM Essential Oil Collection
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