Essential oils are all the rage these days - and for good reason. People are starting to realize the numerous benefits that essential oils can provide for our health. Essential oils are the essence of plants, harvested from the leaves, flowers, bark or roots of plants. These oils are then concentrated from these raw materials leaving us with nothing but the fragrant, and reactive oils.
Essential oils are known to reduce nausea, anxiety, and also have antimicrobial and antifungal effects. They can help with sleep, energy, breathing, and more, you just have to select the right one. But, you’re here to learn about applying essential oils to your feet.
How to Apply Essential Oils to Feet
There are two main ways that we recommend applying essential oils to feet: through an oil rub, and through a soak.
Oil Rub
Essential oils should always be diluted before applying to the skin. Diluting involves putting a few drops of the essential oil into a larger amount of an inert oil like olive, grapeseed, coconut, or really any household oil. It just depends on your personal taste on what oil you’d like to use.
How much essential oil and carrier oil depends on how much you are making, but you can use an easy to follow dilution chart to find the right concentration. General rule of thumb is to use a 1% dilution.
Making a 1% dilution
It’s really easy to dilute your oils to 1%. First, decide how much carrier oil you will use. For this example, we’ll use 10ml. 1% of 10ml is 0.1ml (10 x .01). So, put 0.1ml of essential oil into the mix. This is roughly 3 drops from most essential oil bottles. Always better to stay on the more diluted side to be safe.
Foot Soak
The other great way to apply essential oils to your feet is to soak them in water, with either an essential oil dilution in the water, or in an epsom salt mix. You can fill a bin with water and put in the goodies, or just have a full bath and get the benefits on your feet but also the rest of your body.
Why Apply Essential Oils to Your Feet, And Which Ones to Use When
Well, there’s actually a few reasons why you would want to apply oils to your feet. If you’re into reflexology, then you probably already know all about how important our feet are. Our feet are major absorption points of our bodies, and dictate a lot of our physical and emotional well being.
Antifungal Properties
Many essential oils possess antifungal properties that can help to prevent, and eliminate foot and toe fungus. Some oils to try include pine, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, eucalyptus, citronella and mint.
Energizing Effects
If you buy into the absorptive properties of feet, then you’ll like to know about a few oils that help invigorate and energize you and keep you going through those long days. Try lemon, eucalyptus, lemongrass, pine, bergamot, basil, ginger, or a mix of any of those to give your feet - and body - a little boost to get through the rest of the day.
Soothing & Relaxing Pain or Fatigue
Most folks work long days on their feet and can build up a lot of tension and aches and pains as a result. Many essential oils have soothing and relaxing properties that are great to apply to the feet to help them, and the mind and body to relax and promote calm. Lavender, cedarwood, rosemary, eucalyptus and sandalwood are all known to reduce inflammation, pain and also promote calm.
