Once in a long while one comes across a book that excites the intellect as it fools one's expectations. Such a book is this book. In How Aromatherapy Works: Principal Mechanisms in Olfaction, you are invited to journey into the larger study of the efficacy of aromatherapy. You are led with great care and skill to understand the workings of the human mind and body, in order to better understand the effects of essential oils on this fabulous machine.

This book is the shot in the arm that the industry and practice of aromatherapy needs. Here we find explanations of how the tools we use work. If we begin to understand their fundamental dynamics to the best of our knowledge, then we can begin to understand how the essential oils may affect human physiology in all facets of treatment: internal, external, environmentally.

In my own research over the course of many years, I have taken courses of physiological study to understand the broader application of essential oils. None of these were in relation to essential oils, however. As an educator, I see how this book will become an invaluable tool in the practice of aromatherapy and I am incorporating it into my curriculum at the Atlantic Institute. The text is factual and extremely well-referenced. Many educators and book authors don't have the foggiest idea of how some of our body systems work, so how can they possibly begin to teach to students how aromatherapy works? This is the place to learn because it is in the context of aromatherapy.

As clinical therapists, we hopefully are all involved in never-ending studies. We are concerned with the prevention and treatment of disease and it is crucial to know properties and safety of the oils we use in order to make rational therapeutic decisions. By using this we can set the foundation to a deeper understanding by learning the functions and dynamics of our mind and body systems, and the biochemistry of the molecular interactions being to make more sense.

In this factual and well-documented book, Michael Alexander has succeeded brilliantly in developing a series of strategies to further our understanding so we can begin to unravel the mystery. He gives us access to a universe larger than our aspirations and more complex than we may have imagined. How can we say how it works until we have the basic concepts and understanding of the principal mechanisms' functions? That is why this work will prove to be one of your most valuable tools for preparing to understand, teach, or treat using essential oils. For the first time in aromatherapy's short history, we can relate the dynamic, functional aspects of essential oils to human physiology in a therapeutic context using facts and research currently available. With this book you are participating in the beginning of a whole new era for aromatherapy. The time is now, this is it, use this book!

Sylla Sheppard-Hanger
Author, Educator, Therapist

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