So Many Reasons To Love Ylang Ylang

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Ylang Ylang so good they named it twice!

Born from a glorious tree in Madagascar, the locals use it in leis to welcome travelers and strew the flowers on marital beds.

The oil is sweet, narcotic and heady. Be warned though, use too much, or for too long, you will give yourself a headache. An hour is usually enough.

You don’t often see pictures of the flowers and being Madagascar of course there are lemurs! I thought you might enjoy this video that Christian Dior made of Ylang Ylang.

Then this one from fragrance house Givuadan, who are doing their bit to ensure the ingredients that go into their scents are sustainable. This is not an unusual endeavor and it is just one of the ways that the essential oil industry can play their part in supporting less affluent communities.

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil Blends Well With

Lovely rosey floral fragrances like Rose, Geranium, and although its a grass, Palma Rosa. Lemony fragrances work beautifully with Ylang Ylang Essential Oil, so Lemongrass, Melissa, all those delicious fresh smells. Herbs like Lavender and Chamomile are gorgeous. Patchouli is stunning. My favorite though is are woods like Cedarwood and Sandalwood and resins like deep Myrrh and rich Galbanum.

How to Use Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

It’s a balancing tool in a bottle. Settling seesaw hormones and emotional mood swings, it’s the oil that everyone needs. The pleasure boosting “Flower of Flowers is erotic, calming and soothing.

You know I think Ylang Ylang may have been my first love. I can remember reading that it was hormonally balancing and aphrodisiac when I was about thirteen and dowsing myself in it. I thought I was the bee's knees and it helped my anxiety no end. As a ballet dancer, I had a figure to show off and Ylang Ylang taught me how to work it. It gave me a Sophia Loren strutt and a Mae West turn of phrase.

You know, as you get older, you get a bit of a romantic sense of who the young you used to be, don’t you? So I thought I had probably imagined that. But when I met up with some old school friends last month, one guy I hadn’t seen for thirty five years said; “You know I can’t really explain it. It wasn’t that you were overtly sexy, but somehow we just all thought you had sass.”

Ylang Ylang, baby!

Hormonal Balance

It’s such a great leveler. I’ve used it successfully for PMT, menopause, male sexual dysfunction and actually teenage spots too. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

High Blood Pressure

One of my best successes was on myself using Ylang Ylang Essential Oil for blood pressure.

I’d been to the opticians and they had used that horrid camera to take a picture of the back of my eye. The blood vessels were compacted and she instructed me to make an appointment with my GP. I did that, the doctor looked in horror and picked up his prescription pad.

I wasn’t having any of that, so I asked if I could come back and have it checked in a fortnight. If it was still high after that two weeks, then I would consider taking his drugs.

I used an aromapendant and put just one drop of Ylang Ylang on.

After three days, I’d realized there might be a slightly better protocol, because lovely as Ylang Ylang is, it can be nauseating and it does give you a headache after a while.

So, I changed to one drop of Ylang Ylang for an hour in the morning, then took the aromapendant off. Then in the afternoon, one drop of Clary Sage, which is also excellent for blood pressure.

I slept well, felt calmer and after two weeks guess what? No need for blood pressure meds.

There are two things I would like you to take away from that story. First, I used essential oils as a first step, but then, second, I did it with the doctor’s say so. I was prepared to try his meds as plan B. If you are taking blood pressure medications, please know that they have other functions to protect your kidneys from other drugs. By all means try the oils - in fact I would encourage you to do so - but please also let your doctor know. Do not come off your meds, without explicit agreement from them.

Slows heartbeat, Palpitations and Overly Rapid Breathing

I use Ylang Ylang specifically for fright. It directly affects all the outward symptoms you would see. It slows heartbeat and breathing and stops the violent thud of palpitations.

I find that people who live with anxiety often find they feel outwardly better in just a few hours using Ylang Ylang Essential Oil. It’s not necessarily that the anxiety has gone, just that it doesn’t seem to be banging on the door any more.

Inhalation is a great tool here, if someone is hyperventilating or struggling to catch their breath.

Aphrodisiac

Writing this makes it feel like it might cancel out everything I have written above which seems like signals of great sex to me! Elevated heart rate, breathlessness.

But Ylang Ylang is more magical than that. It’s romantic, narcotic and euphoric. It likes you to take things slow! It’s deep, harmonious and delicious. I love candles made with Ylang Ylang for exclusively-for-two dinners.

Balances the Skin

This is a really underused way of utilizing Ylang Ylang Essential Oil.

If your skin is combination, or has a greasy T-Zone, then using oils for dry skin will only make it worse. So using a balancing oil - and let’s be clear about this - Ylang Ylang is the best you can get - helps to bring the different signaling molecules into line with each other.

It is one of the greatest kept secrets in natural skin care, and I have no idea why.

Calming and Relaxing

High levels of linalool are probably responsible for this. Rodent trials suggest that linalool also has pain killing (Phuong, 2021) and anti depressant actions. (Dos Santos, 2018)