When you grow up under the earthy shadow of a Hippie mother who likes to eat raw tofu and give you sage tea instead of taking you to the doctor when you’re sick as a child it can seem like the benefits of such an upbringing are few. When I left home at the tender age of seventeen I didn’t remember the sage tea fondly, it always made me want to gag. I tended to focus on the pot growing in my parents window that the neighbors recognized and reported to the police. I remembered the plethora of unshaved armpits coming in and out of my house. I vowed to myself that I was an urban chick in boots and I would be damned if anyone would ever call me “earthy”
However, when I was nineteen I got my first apartment without room mates. I was working as the shipping manager at a clothing company in the mission district of San Francisco and my hours were long and hard. Not having room mates was great. I wasn’t interested in going to night clubs anymore or hanging out in hip bars. I preferred staying home and recovering from my long work days in the peace and quiet of my very first solo apartment, never mind the cockroaches and the sleazy lobby in which bums would congregate.
It was in this apartment of mine that I found out how impossible it is to sever ourselves from our parents, our past, and our roots. I found myself drawn to the bulk herb sections in the health food stores I sometimes shopped at. Those sections smelled good and seemed to overflow with possibilities. Without meaning to, I bought myself an herbal book with recipes for things like shampoos and lotions. Without meaning to I bought myself a little enameled pan in which to make decoctions. I told myself I wasn’t anything like my mother because I was wearing Doc Martens and 1940’s slips as dresses. I convinced myself that I wasn’t an “earth-mamma” because I listened to Kate Bush while making my potions.
The truth is, I secretly wanted to become my own apothecary. I wanted to have shelves filled with herbs and powders. I’ve never stopped believing that modern medicine has it’s place in my life. I haven’t ever felt that natural herbs can cure everything that ails us, as my mom did when I was growing up. I believe that we need both. Now that I am much older, my mom and I like to do a lot of things together that I never imagined would be so much fun.
My mom, some years ago, got a certificate in herbology and shares her knowledge with me. She can make salves, tinctures, decoctions, and knows which plants to include in a medicinal herb garden. So when I starting talking to her about being able to make my own bath products and using essential oils to scent them she was very excited. We made several trips to the bookstore and got ourselves some good books on aromatherapy and on making homemade cosmetics.
Mixing your own scent using pure essential oils is really satisfying. You can make scents that improve your mood, calm you down, help you relax, or just make you smell really damn good. Playing with little bottles of scent is like being your own perfumier. One of my favorite bath products is bath salts. I like them strongly scented and in pretty containers. Although I would like to be able to make my own lotions eventually, bath salts are a great place to get your apothecary feet wet; to explore essential oils and scent combinations. They are easy to scent and to present in pretty packaging. They aren’t very expensive either, which means that they make fantastic gifts for all the people you know who love some luxury bath items.
I would like to share my favorite bath salt recipe (it’s my own) and to give you a couple of ideas on how to present them. You need to start with salts which you can find in herbal shops (sometimes health food stores will stock bulk beauty items near their herb section) or you can find many sources for them online. I like to make a mixture of 50% Epsom salts to 50% Dead Sea salts. The Epsom salts are especially good for relaxing muscles and the sea salts are most noted for the trace minerals that help soften and nourish your skin. I have found coarse Epsom salts are great, though often it is offered in a super fine form. Either kind will work. You can use just one or the other if you prefer.
My favorite scent mixture (right now) is pink grapefruit and fresh ginger. The grapefruit is uplifting, cleansing, and stimulating. The ginger (you want the kind made from fresh ginger, not from already dried root which smells musty) is warming, comforting, and fortifying. Who doesn’t need all that? Together they make me feel like singing really loud (but I won’t because the only song I know by heart is “freight train” and most people don’t want to hear songs about being buried). I like to use more grapefruit in proportion to the ginger because as a sufferer of depression I particularly like the uplifting quality of the grapefruit, but the main point is: you can do whatever the hell you want.
If you want to try scenting salts but aren’t sure about the scent recipe I’m offering here, I suggest you find a store that stocks pure essential oils and spend some time sniffing them all. The salts are pretty cheap, but buying oils by the bottle can be costly so you want to make sure you buy scents that really do it for you.
(more…)
