VANILLA ABSOLUTE
Botanical name: Vanilla planifolia

Therapeutic Benefit - Mind:  Vanilla is warming, stimulating, and hypnotic. It helps increase creativity and dispel anger. Vanilla is an aphrodisiac.

Therapeutic Benefit - Body:  Vanilla is a sedative. It is also a very good emollient and remedy for fever.

Therapeutic Benefit - Spirit:  Vanilla opens the throat chakra. It also increases spiritual and physical energy, intuition, vitality, and love.

Application Method:  Dilute 10 drops in 1 oz carrier oil, massage oil, or lotion and apply to skin or bath. Use 4 drops in 2 cups of hot water for a steam.

Action Word:  Soothing

Color Energy:  Red - Stimulating

Fragrance:  Balsamic, sweet, medicinal, woodsy

Note:  Base Note

Color of Oil:  Deep brown

Major Chemical Constituents:  acetic acid, eugenol, furfurol, hydroxl benzaldehyde, isobutric acid, vanillin

Common Adulterants:  Rarely adulterated

Blends well with:  Bergamot, Frankincense, Grapefruit, Lemon, Mandarin, Orange, Sandalwood, Tangerine, Vetiver, Ylang Ylang

Botany:  A perennial climbing vine of the Orchid family that is grown up to 75 feet with green pods. These immature pods are picked and then dried or cured to produce the vanilla bean we see in the marketplace. While the pods are green they are odorless, the drying/curing process is what allows the Vanilla scent to form.

History:  The Totonac people of Mexico were the first to ever cultivate vanilla. The Aztecs in the fifteenth century conquered the Tononacs and acquired their taste for vanilla. Columbus and the Spanish/Portuguese sailors and explorers who arrived on the Gulf Coast of Mexico then brought vanilla back to Europe in the sixteenth century.