Pacific Institute of Aromatherapy

The 4th Edition Course: Setting a New Academic Standard in Aromatherapy

Part 1 Essential Oils
Part 2 Chemistry
Part 3 Alternatives
Part 4 Medicine
Part 5 Formulas
Part 6 Future Trends

Part I: Essential Oils

The Course presents the true nature of essential oils, especially what it means that they derive from living organisms. It analyses the issues of purity and quality beyond the current, mostly marketing driven narratives.

What are Essential Oils?

Their chemical and biological nature is explained.

Production Methods

Steam distilling and cold pressing of aromatic plants produces classic essential oils. Other extraction methods such as CO2 or solvent extraction can produce oils of similar or sometimes substantially different chemical composition. The specific qualities of extracts produced by these different methods are discussed.

Course Content Part 1 »

Part II: Chemistry of essential oils

While the Course introduces concepts which go beyond chemistry to explain essential oil properties, it is still essential and necessary to understand how the chemical structures of essential oil components translate into energetics and basic properties.

Molecular Structure and Therapeutic Properties

Essential oil chemistry is not as daunting as it may first appear. There are only twelve major families of chemical components found in essential oils. These twelve chemical families are all you need to know to understand the principal healing properties of most essential oils based on a conventional pharmacological perspective.

The Graph on the Left represents the Structure Effect diagram of Helichrysum italicum essential oil. Calming esters combine with antiiflammatory sesquiterpene hydrocarbons and radical scavenging Diketones.

Course Content Part 2 »

Part III: BEYOND CHEMISTRY biology and TCM Narratives

Current Perspectives

The current perspective explaining the efficacy of essential oils is largely derived from conventional pharmacology. Accordingly healing properties of oils arise from the molecular structures of their chemical components.

Interestingly Chinese Medical Aromatherapy embraces exactly those essential oil phenomena, namely variability of composition and their sensory impact, which present problems for conventional pharmacology.

Chinese Medical Aromatherapy

In the perspective of Chinese Medical Aromatherapy essential oil efficacy arises from three phenomena.

Molecular Biology

Molecular Biology has discovered many cellular mechanisms by which the anti-inflammatiory and antitumor properties of essential oil components are mediated.

Course Content Part 3 »

Part IV: treatment of disease

Medical Aromatherapy

Part IV of the Course presents the more rigorous medical aspects of French Style aromatherapy. It surveys the classic research from the 1960s through the 1980s showing the pharmacological properties of EO components ranging from expectorant and mucolytic to sedative and spasmolytic, and many more.

The Antiviral Properties of Essential OIls

30 years ago conventional medicine did not offer effective antiviral drugs.

Medical Protocols

The second segment of Part IV discusses the underlying perspectives of phytomedical infection treatments

Course Content Part 4 »

Part V: CONTEMPORARY formulating

Goldenrod (Solidago virgaurea or canadiensis) is a most valuable oil for effective blends: it imparts many valuable properties while being entirely non irritant and even beneficial for the kidneys.

Contemporary Formulating

Modern aromatherapy blends always address the whole person, even when we create compositions to address specific issues.

Scope of Part V

The chapters of Part V introduce in some detail todays most effective ways to treat viral, bacterial and fungal infections. It offers proven suggestions for chronic inflammationa, metabolics diseases and liver detoxification. It discusses scar treatment, psoriasis and eczema. There are suggestions for improving immune response and to ameliorate allergies.

Course Content Part 5 »

Part VI: future dynamics

What is New?

There are many exciting developments in aromatherapy almost at any given time. Today, data from cellular and molecular biology fuel the inspiration of individuals in the community, who take it upon themselves to try out in real life what the laboratory data suggest.

Essential Oils and Cancer

It is uncertain whether or not the large number of laboratory data on the antitumor properties of essential oils will translate into stand alone cancer treaments. What has been established through convincing clinical research is the ability of essential oils to mitigate side effects of chemo and radiation therapy.

Oils of Asian Origin

Many Asian essential oils are derived from rhizomes or resins.

Course Content Part 6 »

Other Courses and Products

These products are our current recommendations for you.

Masters Series Volume 2: The Biology of Essential Oils

The fact that essential oils are produced by living organisms is too often lost in the shuffle of commerce. Indeed, commercial essential oils are more often than not only partially derived from a specific plant and partially constructed in the laboratory. While the primary reason for adulteration is to cut cost, the readiness with which the marketplace accepts those adulterated oils reflects a severe lack of understanding of how and why products from a living organism are different from those from a chemical factory. Efforts to establish quality standards through chemical analysis, while important and useful, have also helped to blur the distinction and somehow created an impression of equivalence between natural and synthetic substances.

Masters Series Volume 3: Aromatherapy Lifestyle

The therapeutic use of essential oils in the framework of aromatherapy has become a fact of life. As aromatherapy has grown and diversified it has become clear that the idea of generating scientific data to convince the medical mainstream has given way to an understanding that the most rewarding features of essential oil use cannot be adequately described with the language of reductionism, but rather with narratives from more wholistic disciplines. Nonetheless, this Part III of the PIA Masters series focuses on those aspects of essential oil therapy which do correspond to the western pharmacological paradigm.

About Us

Pacific Institute of Aromatherapy and Original Swiss Aromatics were founded by Dr. Kurt Schnaubelt in 1983, joined by Monika Haas in 1988 and Julien Juillerat in 2012. OSA was one of the very first Aromatherapy companies in the US and until this day has maintained the highest standard in its variety of over 200 different essential oils.

We not only work with essential oils, we live an aromatherapy lifestyle. We view essential oils as incomparable allies in healing ourselves, our family and friends. In our quest to find the best and most precious essential oils we travel to the countries of origin, work intimately with the producers and guarantee the highest quality of genuine and authentic essential oils one can possibly find. If we are unable to find an essential oil of truly authentic quality, we take it off our list. Our love and dedication to our work has allowed us to remain successful for more than 30 years.