Love is an essential part of our overall wellness.
Yes, we all need regular sleep, stress, and good nutrition—but we also need to love and be loved! We all need to connect socially, to share our emotions with others, and feel acceptance! And so, we thrive when we have the right amount of family-love, friend-love, and self-love in our lives.
Can essential oils help us express and receive the love we need? Yes!
There are 5 primary “love languages”—5 core ways in which we humans prefer to give and receive love. Let’s go through each of them and see how essential oils can enhance them!
Love Language #1: Quality Time
Quality time is consistently rated as the #1 most popular love language! And with good reason!
Time is precious because, let’s face it, we’re all busy! We all have a hundred different things we need to do and another thousand that we’d like to do—and so giving up some of our precious, limited time to spend with another person is a sure sign of love!
It’s worth mentioning, though, that quality time is an art—just because you carve an hour or two to spend with someone, doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to make that time “quality”! We all have different personalities, preferences, opinions, and sometimes this makes it hard to connect. We spend our carefully set aside “quality time” sitting awkwardly together, “passing time” rather than really connecting.
Essential oils can enhance our quality time by 1) creating a pleasant atmosphere in which to share our time. Don’t underestimate this! Smells have a way of grounding us to the present moment and, by extension, to the people we are presently with.
So, if your “quality time” is feeling a little empty, try curating a shared sensory/emotional experience with your essential oils.
Here are some ideas to try:
- Diffuse energetic citrus oils as you engage in a creative project together.
- Diffuse relaxing oils as you meditate or have a spa/self-care night together.
- Diffuse invigorating oils as you tackle a difficult task together.
- Diffuse warm or sweet herbal oils as you go about a get-to-know you activity, like a list of questions that encourages you both to share some of your personal life stories with each other.
Love Language #2: Physical Touch
Physical touch is a powerful love language—but also a tricky one.
It’s powerful because we humans are made to crave physical contact—hand-holding, hugging, rocking a baby to sleep, and more—because these activities help release oxytocin, a hormone that helps us feel good, safe, and connected to other human beings!
But everyone has a different level of comfort when it comes to physical touch! Plus, how comfortable you are being touched often depends on what your relationship is with the other person—with some people, you may be comfortable giving or receiving a hug, with others a pat on the back or high five is fine, and for others (though you may like them well enough as a person) you just don’t feel comfortable with any physical contact.
In order to successfully give love to others with this love language, you have to be able to gauge their willingness to be touched and not overstep. And in order for you to accept and effectively receive physical touch as a love language, you have to be willing to a) allow yourself to accept a gesture of physical affection from those you do feel comfortable with and b) allow yourself to draw boundaries, or even reject the advances, of those you don’t feel comfortable with.
Do you get now why we said that physical touch is a tricky love language?
Luckily, essential oils can help! For you, you can use essential oils to enhance mind- and body-grounding practices, like yoga, meditation, journaling, and self-reflection. These exercises will help you be more in touch with yourself and your emotions, so you can accept or reject gestures of physical touch according to your own true comfort level.
And for others, after you have gauged a person’s willingness to be touched and asked permission, you enhance your love-through-physical touch with an essential-oil massage! When done right, this will give them the combined benefits of feeling loved and the musculoskeletal, immune, and other emotional benefits of getting a massage!
You can start simple, with a hand or foot massage or a gentle scalp massage, and perhaps later work your way up to the larger muscle groups. Just remember to dilute your oils with a carrier oil, so they don’t make up more than 2% of the solution!
Our top recommended oils for massage are wintergreen, frankincense, lavender, geranium, peppermint, and basil.
Love Language #3: Gifts
This is an easy one!
Gifts are a great love language because they continue to express your love to a person even when you’re not there!
We all know that it’s not just the gift itself, but the thought and meaning behind it that really touches our hearts. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons DIY, homemade gifts mean so much to us! It means they didn’t just pick it up at a store! A DIY, homemade gift means they put thought, time, and work into it! Just thinking of it, we already feel loved!
Fortunately, there is no end to the list of gifts you can make with essential oils. But to get you started, here is a list of the most popular ones:
- Personalized self-care products (bath bombs, sugar scrubs, skincare solutions, perfume, you name it!)
- Candles and Homemade Diffusers
- Home remedies (foot cream, muscle rub, homemade heating pad, etc)
- Household items (scented cleaning solutions, dryer balls, foaming hand soap)
- Playdough or a Scented Blowing Bubbles Solution for kids
- Diffuser ornaments and necklaces
- Anything else you can think of! (just make sure you are using your oils safely!)
Love Language #4: Acts of Service
Acts of service is another powerful love language. And what impresses us about this love language is its flexibility!
The core of this love language is the idea that 1) you recognize some task that another person needs to get done/would be nice to have done and 2) you take care of it so they don’t have to!
Whether it’s washing the dishes for someone, running an errand, or throwing together their lunch—it shows a great amount of attunement to a person to know what they need done and then taking that task off their plate.
And by doing that act, you haven’t just shortened their to-do list, you’ve also relieved a bit of their stress, smoothed out their day, and made them feel both seen and loved!
There are a hundred little everyday and not-so-everyday tasks (i.e. getting a tire replaced or organizing the cutlery drawer) that can be completed as an act of service. And because “acts of service” is such a flexible love language, there are a lot of different ways essential oils can get involved!
You might try:
- Cleaning objects and surfaces with essential oil solutions
- Optimizing rooms in your home for their intended purpose by diffusing appropriate oils!
- Helping someone optimize their wellness routine/come to the rescue with an oil remedy for a small wellness issue (i.e. lavender for a restless night or tea tree ointment on an ouchie)
- Whipping up an oil-infused tea, coffee, or other snack for a loved one (make sure you know exactly how to use essential oils safely in this!)
- And anything else you can think of!
Love Language #5: Words of Affirmation
Some of us are “word” people. For us, it’s not enough for love to go implied or unspoken. We need to hear or perhaps read positive, loving, validating words from the people we love in order to really feel that love. (P.S. We’re pretty sure that this is why “love poems” and “love songs” are a thing.)
But to master this love language, it’s not enough just to throw out a compliment every once in a while! For “words of affirmation” to work, the person receiving them has to believe that those words are sincere. And sometimes a quick “I love you” going out the door won’t cut it.
What we’re saying is delivery is key. And while there is a LOT to be said for tone, expression, and the context with which such words are delivered (make eye contact people!), there are other ways to help words sink into the heart.
Try combining your words of affirmation with another powerful sensory cue. This can make the words more memorable and easier to recall later on! And, wouldn’t you know it, essential oils make for a great sensory cue you can use to uplift your words!
Ideas to try:
- Write nice notes on nice paper and scent them with a drop or two of a pleasant smelling oil. (Bonus tip: Use the same oil repeatedly on your notes so that the person you are trying to communicate love to comes to associate that smell with the warm and fuzzy feelings they get while reading your messages. Double points if you leave the note in an unexpected, but easily-seen place as a surprise!)
- If you do affirmations, diffuse an uplifting blend while you do them. This will help the affirmations stick in your mind.
- Use oils to create a great environment for them to receive your words! What’s more romantic—words of love exchanged hurriedly on the phone or spoken in a beautiful, memorable place?
Important Tip: Love Is In the Eye of the Receiver
When we think of showing love to others, we often immediately think “What would I want someone to do for me?” and then we do that for someone else.
And this is a generous way of thinking. But it can also be flawed.
You may feel most loved through a massage or a nice gift. But your partner, child, or friend may connect much more strongly with some words of affirmation or an hour of quality time. If we only stick to a narrow range of love expressions, we run the risk of loving others in a way that, while well-intentioned on our part, is not actually making others feel loved in the way they need.
We love others best when we understand them—when we make the effort to speak their preferred love languages to them.
It may take some trial-and-error, exploring, and practicing to learn how someone else best receives love but, for the health of our relationships, it is well worth the effort!
Final Tip: Don’t be Afraid to Mix Love Languages!
Yes, we all have our favorite love languages. But you can keep your expressions of love from feeling stale by mixing it up a bit!
Try a nice gift with a note! Perform an act of service topped off with a hug! Include some well-chosen words in your quality time together! There are all sorts of ways that you can combine love languages (just like you can combine oils into blends) to create an enhanced effect!
We’re all out here looking to love and be loved—so don’t wait! Choose a way to love someone today and make sure you bring your oils along!
| How Essential Oils Work with all 5 Love Languages
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