Rosemary’s medicinal history spans centuries and was probably first used for respiratory issues. From Ancient Egypt and during the era of the Black Plague in Europe, Rosemary, with it’s antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, was burned, as sage is in North America, to clear the air of toxins, bacterial or spiritual. In successive years, rosemary was used to treat the Plague, melancholy, gout, epilepsy, arthritis, memory issues, and many other ills. Today, the herb is still used by many as a tea to treat sore throats, head colds; to freshen bad breath; to decrease dandruff and as an astringent in skin care products. 

“Where Rosemary flourishes, the goddess rules.”

Rosemary has played a role in our creative and cultural imagination for centuries. The genus name, Rosmarinus, comes from the Latin for “dew” (ros) and “of the sea” (marinus), reflecting the origin story of Venus, the Goddess of Love.  Legend has it that she was seeded from the stars when a phallic looking object (apparently from Uranus) fell into her mother’s womb, the Sea. Venus emerged fully formed from the waters, her neck draped with rosemary. It is a gorgeous image of feminine beauty, power and love, born of both the stars and  the earth.

The common name Rosemary is derived from the genus name with a twist. Legend has it that Mary, mother of Jesus, while fleeing from Egypt, sheltered one night next to a blossoming rosemary bush. When she threw her blue cape over the bush, its white flowers turned blue.

But Rosemary’s lore doesn’t end there. It is symbolic of enduring love. During the Middle Ages in Europe, a bride would wear rosemary in her headpiece and the groom and guests would wear a sprig as well. The newlyweds would plant rosemary on their wedding day to root their hopes for the future. It was said if a person tapped another with a sprig of rosemary with an open bloom, they would fall in love. Rosemary was also incorporated into love charms, placed under pillows to thwart evil spirits and between the sheets to repel moths. Ancient Greek students hung rosemary on their doors so that its scent wafted into the room, clarifying the mind and promoting better understanding. Legend has it that Rosemary oil was part of an immune system boosting blend that protected grave robbers from getting sick during the plague.

This legend and lore is not just a testimony to the Nature's wisdom and the power of the rosemary plant. Its also a testimony to human creative ingenuity. For this how we have passed on knowledge from generation to generation through myth and belief set in oral myth and beliefs. It's so much easier to remember a good story than dry facts. And really, that's pretty much how we  humans got these things done before the advent of the printing press!

Rosemary Essential Oil is derived from the aromatic herb Rosmarinus Officinalis, a plant belonging to the Mint family, which includes Basil, Lavender, Myrtle, and Sage. Its appearance, too, is similar to Lavender with flat pine needles that have a light trace of silver. Rosemary Rosemary Essential Oil is a heavy weight champ in the world of Aromatherapy, bringing physical benefits through topical application and to the body’s limbic system through inhalation.

Like many of its cousin plants named above, Rosemary Essential Oil helps reduce stress levels and nervous tension, boost mental activity, encourage clarity and insight, relieve fatigue, and support respiratory function. It is used to improve alertness, eliminate negative moods, and increase the retention of information by enhancing concentration. The scent of Rosemary Essential Oil is also known to reduce the level of harmful stress hormones released during tense experiences. Inhaling Rosemary Oil boosts the immune system by stimulating internal anti-oxidant activity, which in turn fights ailments caused by free radicals, and it relieves throat and nasal congestion by clearing the respiratory tract.

We’ve included Rosemary Essential oil in some of Body Therapy products because of the amazing job it does in relieving stress, inflammation and fatigue

This is why we’ve included Rosemary Essential Oil as one of the Rock Star Essential Oils in our Head Balm. Half the magic of our Head Balm comes from the essential oils in it. The other half comes from the massage you give yourself when you apply it. Rub a little balm between your fingers and warm it up. Then, in a symmetrical fashion, massage it  into both your temples and across the top of your forehead. Take some more Balm between your fingers and warm it up. Now massage this round onto the bone behind each of your ears, starting from the top of the ear to the bottom. This area holds acupressure points that connect to your brain Next, massage the balm into the back of the neck, from just below the hairline to the shoulders. You've just surrounded your head with relieving goodness.

Rosemary has been proven to stimulate blood flow, which makes it a fabulous ingredient in a revitalizing foot soak. It's also one of the reasons we include it in our Foot Salve. Rosemary delivers the added benefit of helping to relieve soreness in your feet, while tackling bacteria and odor.

Our Foot Salve is a beautifully nourishing blend of Shea Butter, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil;  Neem Oil, which is fabulous for repairing heel cracks; Peppermint Essential Oil to stimulate circulation; Lavender for its antibacterial and relaxation properties; Tea Tree and Rosemary Oils to tackle bacteria and fungus; and Calendula oil to help skin soothe and repair itself. Apply before bed time and wear cotton socks for maximum impact.

Rosemary oil may help to reduce tissue inflammation and is thought to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. In addition, Rosemary Essential Oil has proven antioxidant properties. Since oxidative stress can play a role in underarm odor, Rosemary may help. You can find it in our Natural Deodorant. It works with Lavender to kill odor causing bacteria and take down stress levels. Our Natural Deodorant is formulated for application with your fingers. That way you can deodorize and give yourself lymphatics a draining massage at the same time for better health.

What are your favourite ways to use Rosemary Essential Oil?

Sometimes you meet a oil that you just love, and loves you back, inside and out. Chia Seed Oil is one of those ingredient rock stars for which I just can't sing enough praises. On the inside, Chia Seeds are a super food that bring so many health benefits. On the skin, it's pure magic. It's moisturizing, soothing, softening, protective and anti-aging.

They ascribed their military prowess to the power of Chia in their diets. It was also used in their sacred and worldly ritual. Chia was given as sacrificial offering to the gods; extracted as tribute payments from conquered nations; and often used it as currency. Now, that's one valuable plant!

Chia is rich in essential fatty acids, specifically omega-3 and omega-6. They are 5 x richer in calcium than cow’s milk; extremely high in vitamin C, 7 x more than oranges; high in iron,  3 x higher than spinach.  Last but not least, chia seeds are also high in potassium, selenium, zinc, magnesium, vitamin A, E and B6. Not to mention fibre and protein. Added bonus: they are gluten-free. 

So with all that nutritional power, chia seeds promote the correct functioning of the heart, brain and immune system while helping blood circulation by exerting an anti-oxidant function. They benefit teeth and bones, help improve your mental acuity, keep blood sugar and pressure in check, and are quite filling, should you be on a diet. All that in a tiny little seed.

Once again, it's that Omega 3 and 6 fatty acid content that skin just soaks up. These fatty acids help maintain moisture levels in the skin which reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles as well as relieving dryness and flaking. Chia seed oil can also help with issues like rosacea or eczema on the face. It leaves your skin feeling soothed, smooth, soft and replenished. This is wonderful for dry and sensitive skin.

Chia seed oil is also a great source of vitamin B3 and zinc, which helps with oily skin and clogged pores. It also can help take down the inflammation and irritation that comes with break-outs. 

It's also full of amazing antioxidants, including chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid, as well as myricetin, quercetin, and kaempferol flavonoids, all of which protect your skin from environmental stressors. In fact, the antioxidants in chia seed oil have shown to be even stronger than vitamin C and vitamin E, two common and powerful antioxidants. This is exactly the kind of care normal skin needs to fight off signs of aging.

Put all of chia seed oils properties together—moisturizing, protection, and calming you have the perfect natural ingredient for maintaining your skin through all its changes. And that is why I chose to include it in all our Facial Oil blends.

Calendula has been revered as a magical medicinal plant for centuries. Ancient Egyptians used it to rejuvenate their skin. Bathing in water infused with calendula petals was thought to give give you a healthy, sunny glow, just like the flower itself. The Greeks and Romans used it as a culinary garnish. In India it was strung into garlands for weddings and religious rituals to call in powers of protection and good luck. Europeans and early American colonists used Calendula in soups and stews, relying on its gentle immune boosting properties to protect against the damp cold of winter.

What's not to love about this bright, yellow and orange, cheery member of the daisy family?

Calendula flowers are one of nature's most precious and useful gifts. The flower is loaded with powerful skin-healing, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, yet is gentle enough for most people and animals to use safely. Calendula can help get circulation moving and  stimulate the immune system. My gardener friends tell me the flower is really easy to grow and requires low maintenance. Flowers and leaves of the calendula may be dried and stored for later use in making Calendula Tea. I'm not there yet in being able to grow my own for the amount I need to make Free Lion products. So here is where I get my Calendula Petals

And now here's the "how to" on Calendula Tea.

One way of making a tea is basically pouring boiling water over plant materials and allowing it to steep. This is primarily the East Asian and European way. Then there's the way India does it--which is boil the water; add the plant materials and let it boil some more before you turn the heat off. That is how I do it. But I'll give you options. See which works for you.

1. The Steeping method
Place around 1 to 2 tablespoons of dried calendula flowers in a canning jar and pour around 1 cup (8 oz/240 ml) boiled distilled water over them. Cover and let steep for around 15 to 20 minutes. Strain petals out of tea before using.

2. The Sun tea method
Fill a canning jar 1/4 full with dried flowers and cover with cold distilled water. Cap and place in a bright sunny spot (like a windowsill or outside porch rail) for at least 5 or 6 hours. Strain out petals before use.

3. The Boiling Method
Bring 10oz/375ml of distilled water to a boil Place around 1 to 2 tablespoons of dried calendula petals into the water and let boil 3-5 minutes before you turn the heat off. Let the tea cool. Strain out petals before use.

Now that you've made your Calendula Tea, here are some things you can use it for:

1. Use as a gargle for sore throat. Or use as a mouth rinse to help relieve canker sores, inflamed gums or thrush. Calendula's soothing properties will calm that gravely throat while its anti-microbial properties will go after infection-causing bacteria.

2. Pour some into a small, clean spray bottle to make a disinfecting wound spray. Spray clean strips of cloth or gauze with the tea and apply to wounds or scraped, itchy, scratched or otherwise inflamed skin conditions.

3. Take heavy duty paper towels and fold them into a container, one on top of the next.  Pour Calendula tea over paper towels and let them soak up the tea. Voila! Now you have natural baby wipes to help ease diaper rash.

4. Strain through a coffee filter to remove all fine calendula flower particles. You can use this as an eye rinse to ease itchy eyes due to allergy, dryness and pink eye.

5. Wash your face with Calendula tea in the morning and at night if you're prone to acne and breakouts or have dry sensitive skin. If you don't want to make the tea, you can get our Face Chai Foaming Wash for Oily and Break-out Prone Skin or Face Chai Foaming wash for Dry and Sensitive Skin.

6. Pour some Calendula Tea into a foot bath for fungal conditions like athletes foot. Add some to your regular bath to help soothe and heal inflamed skin or rashes.

7. Use as a hair rinse, after shampooing to help ease an itchy scalp situation.

8. Calendula tea can be safely used on most non-pregnant animals as a soothing rinse for flea bites, scratches, scrapes, itchy coats or to help cleanse and heal minor wounds. You can also spritz it onto hot spots or chapped sun burnt noses, too.

So there you go, 8 ways you can use Calendula Tea. It's an amazing flower and it is no wonder that its popularity has not waned over centuries all over the world.

Before I go, let me leave you with this lovely flower bath surrounded by flower garlands.  Treat yourself tonight!

Sherazad Jamal
Free Lion Team

Flowers and Fragrance are an evolutionary thing—attractive smells attract bees and other pollinators, ensuring the survival of a species. Over centuries, these fragrances have attracted humans, too and over time we have made the connection between good smells and good health, and spiritual peace. In today’s deodorized world, where chemical sensitivities lead to bans on fragrance, we assume that to be without smell is to be clean, wholesome and pure. But are we losing something really important to the human experience in banishing scent?
 
In the realm of health, the desire to surround oneself with pungent fragrances traces directly to the rank odour of the unwashed human, a story that starts with sweat. Human sweat by itself barely smells at all. But the symbiotic bacteria that lives all over our bodies finds our sweat a yummy meal. Post feast, the bacteria releases molecules that we recognize as body odour. Yup. We’re smelling of bacteria poop.

​Throughout human history, we weren’t aware of the bacterial cause of body odor. But we sure could smell it. And so the art of extracting fragrance from plant materials began centuries ago in ancient times in different cultures all over the world. When early alchemists began extract the “essence” of a plant (or its fragrance) into oils, they believed that these concentrated extractions were a spiritual embodiment of nature, a plant’s soul, if you like.  
 
In Ancient China, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, fragrances were primarily processed in oil-based infusions. Oil was pressed first from ingredients like olives. Then plants and woods were added to the oil using meticulous scale measurements and left to steep. This process is still used today by many body care makers, ourselves included. Another process used was maceration, meaning plant material was pressed to remove oils and then ground into powders which could be used on their own or combined with other ingredients to create a paste. Or there was enfleurage, in which leaves or petals were placed in a thin layer of solid fat, usually animal, which absorbed the plant’s essential oils. This was the process probably used to produce the spikenard used in the Bible to anoint Jesus. 

​Early fragrance concoctions incorporated floral scents like jasmine, rose, lavender, violet, chamomile as well as spicy smells from materials like amber, cinnamon, camphor and cloves and musky smells from animals, thought to be aphrodisiacs. These were carried in ceramic jars, bottles or jewelry. Complex scents weren’t only intended for wear directly on the body. Besides direct application of fragrance on the skin, people burned fragrant materials as incense, believing the smoke carried prayers to the gods. Fragrant materials were also burned for medicinal purposes, to clear an infection or purify a room. Powders were also made, carried in fabric sachets; hardened pastes were made into beads and worn as jewelry and garments were sewn from fabrics soaked in perfume.
 
Europe became a huge market for fragrance products primarily because of the belief that bathing was bad and dangerous to the health. Yup. Not making that up. It was wildly held that water’s ability to soften skin and open pores actually weakened the flesh, making it more susceptible to sickness. One of the side effects of this belief system was the development of more complex methods of perfume production, ingredients and scent dissemination. Ornamental devices continued to be developed that would mask unseemly odours, like the pomander, a spherical pendent that acted as a scent diffuser worn to purify the air wherever one walked. 

​In Renaissance Venice a serious breakthrough in perfume production came when they discovered how to create a clear substance make of 95 percent alcohol imbued with a strong scent. The process can give thanks to the work of Islamic scholars who progressed such knowledge while Europe went through the Dark Ages. Many believe that the invention of the distillation process that led to the discover of base alcohol is due to Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the West), the Persian doctor, chemist and philosopher, who experimented extensively with distillation to try and make better scents and figure out the chemistry behind non-oil based perfumes. 

​Liquid perfume was brought to France by Catherine de Medici. Gradually, France came to dominate the perfume industry in Europe, supported by an increasingly extravagant Royal class who still did not believe in bathing. There are accounts of the fetid stench that proliferated the Versailles court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette where courtiers would relieve themselves wherever they felt like it. Which gave rise to more scent devices. Decorative filigreed scent smelling boxes, or “vinaigrettes” were designed to hold liquid perfumes in small sponges or fabric swatches. They were often attached to chains at the waist of a woman’s dress. Perfume was also worn in rings, lockets or in pendent vials worn as necklaces. 

​The swing towards deodorizing and disinfecting came once science began to show that filth was not good and baths were not bad. Studies of epidemics and germs in the following centuries showed the importance of clean water and sanitation to health. As better hygiene took over, strong perfumes were needed less and became more aligned with fashion and cosmetics. These ideas were exported to the Americas, where the tools of personal hygiene became integrated into living environments via indoor plumbing and garbage removal. Personal hygiene standards changed, and daily bathing was encouraged. Products were developed to disinfect and deodorise. Manufactured scents were no longer bound to the natural world of essential oils as chemists developed entirely new, man-made compounds. The side effects and dangers of many of these to human health were not adequately known or explained, or they were disregarded altogether, landing us where we are now in the place of increased allergies and sensitivities—and a move back towards Nature.
 
Aroma jewelry is back, too, in answer to the scent sensitivity problem. Paired with fragrance oils, the jewelry brings flexibility to fragrance wearing. You can keep your scent very personal, experiencing it when you want. You can control how much fragrance you want to wear. You can still wear fragrances you love without irritating your sensitive skin. Wearing your Aroma jewelry allows you to move freely from scent-allowed to scent-free environments—just put your locket in your pocket. And should you have an aromatherapy blend that helps you stay calm, or ease a headache, this is a great way to have it quickly on hand. 

Fragrance is still a significant part of the human experience. The nose is thought of as the gateway to consciousness through which the breath, the energy of life passes.  It is tied to memory, transporting us to moments in time where those smells made their first impressions. Aroma can release emotions and awaken joy. They can bewitch, soothe, inspire, relax, liberate and uplift. Feeling emotionally uplifted can, in turn, improve our physical wellbeing. To ban this potential from our experience now seems like a counterintuitive step backwards—like saying, “bathing is bad” again. Our world now is a complex mix of chemicals, natural and synthetic. The trick is trying to choose what’s most effective and safe for us from both these sources. We have the possibility to pick the best of both worlds and hopefully find our way to some form of balance that honours both the gifts of Nature and the ingenuity of Science.

Sherazad Jamal, Free Lion Team