Essential Oils are the concentrated essences extracted from flowers, trees, leaves, roots, seeds and fruit rinds and contain hundreds of chemical components that have therapeutic properties, based on scientific research. Essential oil use and aromatherapy can be traced back to ancient Egypt over 8,000 years ago! Read about the history here. Essential Oils are approximately 75-100 times more concentrated than dried herbs. It takes 1 pound of raw peppermint material to make one 15 ml bottle of essential oil, or 600 pounds of rose petals to make just 1 oz of oil!

Essential oils can also have an effect on an emotional level. The inhalation of essential oils stimulates the part of the brain connected to smell - the olfactory system; a signal is sent to the limbic system of the brain that controls emotions and retrieves learned memories. This causes chemicals to be released which make the person feel relaxed, calm, or even stimulated.

It is important to use essential oils safely and wisely. Please refer to the Essential Oil Safety sheet.

At Sage Aromatique we use essential oils from reputable suppliers who use plant material that is either certified organic, wild harvested or ethically grown and tested for quality via GC/MS testing. We do NOT use essential oils where the plant material has been sprayed by chemicals or pesticides.

Hydrosols are the distillate water produced from distilling plants. The term hydrosol is used in the U.S. and was coined in 1990 by Jeanne Rose as the word is a combination of hydro (water) and sol (solution). In Europe and other parts of the world, the Latin term hydrolat is used (hydro for "water" and lait for "milk"). It is important to know that hydrosols are not a by-product of the essential oil distillation. Both essential oils and hydrosols are steam-distilled, but their chemical makeup and uses are very different. Hydrosols contain all of the water-soluble checmical constitutents of distilled plant matter, as opposed to essential oils contain all of the oil-soluble constituents. Hydrosols have therapeutic properties, but at a much lower percentage than essential oils. Generally, they contain very small amounts of the essential oil (approximately .02%-5%) which makes hydrosols safe and suitable to use on kids, pets, elderly, externally for skin care, tonic or as food mists.

Please see the Resource page for a list of suppliers we use and recommend!