Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art [An Essential Oils Book]

by Kathi Keville, Mindy Green

A comprehensive guide to using essential oils in health, beauty, and well-being.

Aromatherapy offers countless uses for balancing body, mind, and spirit. Drawing on 75 combined years of experience in botanical therapies, Keville and Green provide a complete resource for students and practitioners. This encyclopedic guide, with more than 90 formulas, details cosmetics, perfumes, and botanical therapies that will help you harness the healing power of plants to enhance your beauty, health, and overall well-being.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Health, Self Help

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

About the author

Kathi Keville is an internationally known herbalist and aromatherapist and avid organic gardener. She has been highly recognized herb in the herbal and aromatherapy field since 1970 when she began teaching. She has been the Director of the American Herb Association since it’s creation in 1981 and was a founding member of the American Herbalist Guild in 1989. Kathi was granted honorary membership to the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy in and the American Aromatherapy Association for her pioneering work. She is also the editor of the AHA Quarterly Newsletter. See Kathi’s history in the herb field (link coming soon).

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gave suggestions for using both herbs and essential oils in health and beauty applications. It covered the use of herbs and essential oils in massage, in cooking, and in making perfume and beauty products like lip balm, lotions, daily skin care, shampoos, and so on. They gave enough scientific and detailed information that a person could safely and competently make their own mixes to achieve a desired effect. In the back, they also included quick-reference charts covering what essential oil was good for what. Overall, it covered a wide variety of information in good depth.

The authors kept to a fairly scientific approach to essential oils. Some books view essential oils in a mystical way, like they are a magical source of healing or courage/love/etc. potions. In my view, essential oils are simply naturally-derived medicines, and very effective ones at that, so I appreciated how they approached essential oils.

My one "complaint" is that the section detailing what each essential oil could do listed so many things for each oil that I couldn't believe they all did practically everything (at least, that's what it looked like on first reading). I wanted to know what each oil really did do, not all the uses people have ever used it for. So I bought "Advanced Aromatherapy" Kurt Schnaubelt, which clearly explains a number of scientific studies on what various essential oils do. That's the book I primarily refer to now, and it's always been correct.

So, if you're interested in learning more about essential oils, this is a great starter book. I'd also recommend "Advanced Aromatherapy" Kurt Schnaubelt.

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, solid book on the what, why, and how of using essential oils for cosmetic, healing and culinary uses. What it is NOT is a compendium of recipes or collection of one-size-fits-all cheat sheets/lists. While there are plenty of formulas for products (and good ones), the focus of the book is to provide an overview of the history of scent, the biology of smell, and the basics of handling, storing, using and blending EOs. This book is written for the person who wants to know more about EOs and aroma than just how many drops of X and Y to add to a base to achieve a specific purpose; it's for the EO user who wants a good comprehension of the materials and processes involved.

This is supposed to be an updated edition (e-book), but I did see some references to information and events that made me think the update isn't as thorough as it could be. I didn't see anything that raised a red flag, but with more and more research being done on therapeutic use of EO's, there's probably more recent information available for specific applications.

[Franzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book on Aromatherapy / Essential Oils. It's not my favorite aromatherapy book in terms of recipes and to look through again and again, but I enjoyed the part about the history of scent and essential oils a whole lot. How they influence our brain and feelings and the science behind it and how people in the past used to heal themselves with herbs & oils. I knew the basics about a lot of it, but it was nice to see it all written down in a way that was very informational and easy to digest and still had lots of (new to me) research behind it. Definitely recommended.

[Lashette · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my go to aromatherapy reference books.

[Bode Cauthon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated and as such hard to use as a guide.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This an easy-to-read guide to aromatherapy. The authors, who have a combined 75 years of experience, present complex topics in a way that anyone can understand. This book is set up in four parts: theory, therapy, alchemy and materia medica. An important component of this book is the incorporation of herbal information - the more I learn about aromatherapy, the more I'm interested in herbs - that is not often included in a book about aromatherapy.

In the theory section, you will find information on the history and science behind aromatherapy, as well as the effects on the body and mind. In therapy, they cover guidelines for safely using essential oils - the safety information is good, but as always, I recommend getting a second opinion. Each system in the body is given its own section, alongside the essential oil therapies, herbal adjuncts are included. Section three, alchemy, teaches us about blending, extraction and the chemistry of essential oils. The final section, materia medica, includes the typical guide as well as one for Ayurvedic aromatherapy and a section on chakras. Throughout the chapters you will find recipes, but if that's all you're after this book isn't for you, as the bulk of the text is informational.

Overall, I would recommend this book to readers who are past the beginning level but not quite ready for advance study, in between the beginner and intermediate. Many of the concepts were repeats of what I've previously learned.

[Letitia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Information dense, so takes some effort, but I really appreciate all the recipes in this one! Detailed, specific to skin type and health condition. There are also suggestions for home cleansers.

[Amylynn Mcdevitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative a great book to go back to.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of great information and recipes. It is great for beginners. I am getting ready to try some of the suggestions in the book.

[Stacy Bernhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my all time favorite aromatherapy books!

[Amy Kreydin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keville and Green have a lovely volume here with an emphasis on incorporating aromatherapy into skin care routines and an approach to holistic perfumery.