Lately I’ve been having this mad love affair with neroli oil. It’s kind of crazy and impractical because the stuff is obscenely expensive….but oh, so worth it!
Because of my recent big move – away from all that was familiar and comfortable – these last few months have brought up some emotional challenges. I was looking for an oil to use in the bath that would soothe the turmoil and lift my spirits. I pulled out the neroli, took a whiff and felt like I’d arrived in heaven. (But instead of some sort of bearded saint guarding the pearly gates I was embraced in the open arms of a troupe of sisterly goddess types!)
Carefully I added a couple of drops of the precious substance to my bath water. Aaaaah! The soaking experience can only be called sublime. Something about neroli just felt right.
Since then I’ve reached for that little bottle more often than not when I run the bath.
What the heck is neroli oil, you ask?
It’s an essential oil, extracted from the flower petals of the bitter orange tree. Neroli (Citrus aurantium) is one of the more precious of the essential oils because it takes a veritable boatload of these petals to make just a tiny vial of the essence. (Literally 100 pounds of blossoms to generate just one pound of the oil!)
Have you ever had the pleasure of smelling the flower of a bitter orange tree? Me neither, but I have smelled ‘mock orange’ which also transports me into olfactory ecstasy.
But back to neroli. A while back when going through one of my aromatherapy crazes, I splurged and stocked up on a variety of essential oils that I’d been researching. And I do mean splurge – real essential oils are not cheap. (Well, that’s not exactly true, some of them are surprisingly inexpensive, such as eucalyptus, cedarwood and sweet orange.)
Essential oils made from delicate flower petals tend to be in the costlier range – which his why you must be wary of fakes when shopping for such oils. Many of the ‘essential oils’ you might find in conventional markets are actually synthesized perfume oils. More later about how to tell the difference, and what you can do to save money and still get the ‘real’ essence of the flower.
Anyway, once again I digress. I added neroli to my collection but didn’t find occasion to use it much. Then when I got on my bath-taking binge a couple of months ago, I started playing around with my essential oils, making a few blends and adding them to my bath. My old standbys had always been lavender and/or clary sage (both awesome oils to add to a bath by the way.) But I wanted to branch out a little, get out of my essential oil box so to speak.
Carefully I added a couple of drops of the precious substance to my bath water. Aaaaah! The soaking experience can only be called sublime. Something about neroli just felt right.
Since then I’ve reached for that little bottle more often than not when I run the bath.
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