How it Works: Starting the Aroma 911 Aromatherapy Course
How you work your way through an online course – or any course for that matter – will depend largely upon your learning style. I generally learn best when I’m by myself and have the time and space to engage with the course materials at my own speed. For this reason, I’m a fan of online learning – particularly when it caters to diverse learning styles (e.g. verbal, visual, active, reflective).
In addition to offering a variety of modes for absorbing the course materials, the Aroma 911 course with Glynnis Osher is well organized. The course is divided into bite-sized modules and lessons which encourage reflection and active experimentation as you learn.
You can see an overview of the Aroma 911 course curriculum here, so I won’t break it down in this blog post. What I will do, however, is tell you about how I prepared for the course and how I worked my way through it.
Scheduling for success
A drawback of online learning is that there’s no class to regularly attend and often no one to keep you accountable. It helps if the course materials are engaging (which thankfully, in Aroma 911, they are), but also if you set yourself a schedule. I set aside a few hours per week to ensure that I’d consistently work through the Aroma 911 course materials and not risk forgetting anything by leaving too long a space between modules. I paced myself rather than rushing through it, because there’s so much to do and learn, and I felt that I absorbed the materials better in small portions and at a few recipes per week.
Familiarizing yourself with the materials
Before starting the course I downloaded all of the Aroma 911 materials and had a skim through them to see what types of things I might need to purchase ahead of time. Included in the course materials is a shopping list to which you can add everything you need, and there’s a useful “Prepare Your Kit” PDF that details accessories and gives tips for which essential oils to buy depending on how much you want to spend: a “Top 5 Kit”, a “Top 8 Kit”, a “Basic Kit” (fifteen oils), and a “Full Kit” (thirty-eight oils). There’s also detailed information about which carrier oils to buy, and in what quantities.
How to choose your essential oils
I already had some essential oils before starting the course, but I ended up purchasing about fifteen 10 ml bottles. Rather than choosing my oils based on the recommended kits, I went through the thirty-eight oils (covered in Module 1, Lesson 2) and then the recipe PDFs (there are recipes for ailments, beauty, and emotional health), and chose several recipes that I felt would benefit me in my day-to-day life. If you have more patience than I do, I think it would be beneficial to complete Module 1, Lesson 2 before deciding which oils to purchase, because Glynnis goes over all of them in detail and it’ll likely help you figure out which oils you feel most drawn to for your specific recipes. I chose recipes for headaches, stress, anxiety, meditation, insomnia, fatigue, and muscle pain (oh what an exciting life I lead!).
What to buy
Once I’d decided on my recipes, I purchased five empty 10 ml bottles with orifice reducers, one empty 50 ml bottle, and a wooden box with thirty-two compartments for storing my essential oils and keeping them out of the light to ensure their longevity. I also bought a few sheets of 10 mm round white stickers to label the tops of the bottles so that I could quickly find the right oils when looking down at them from above. In hindsight, I could have gone larger with the stickers – I’d recommend at least 12 mm!
Because I’m on a budget, I chose to purchase only one carrier oil (though I anticipate buying a second one in the future). Almond oil seemed to be a safe choice as a standard oil, but the course materials provide a wonderfully detailed list of carrier oils to choose from depending on your desired aromatherapy recipes and outcomes. In addition to a carrier oil, I purchased beeswax pellets because I knew that I’d want to make some creams and salves. I’ve read that soy wax can be used as a substitute for beeswax and is very similar in consistency, but I haven’t yet tried it myself. If neither of those are to your liking, you could always ask Glynnis and the rest of the Aroma 911 community on Facebook. It’s a fantastic resource included with the course, and I always received quick and helpful answers when I posted to that group (more on that in posts 3 and 4 in this blog series!).
There are also many accessories I didn’t buy, but which I could see being useful: pipettes for controlling drops when blending oils; glass beakers for mixing; and glass stir rods, to name a few. Of all the accessories I would say spare 10-15 ml bottles and a storage container are the most valuable. If you don’t already have empty jars (for salves and creams) and a small funnel at home, you’ll want to get those, too.
Summing it up
Over all I’d say you could easily set up a small aromatherapy kit for between $50 and $100, depending on which oils your purchase and what types of bottles and box you decide on. One last thing to consider with supplies is the box you buy: I chose a wooden one because I’ll keep most of my oils in my home, and I like the natural wood aesthetic. If you’re planning on taking your oils with you on trips though, a padded zip-up case may be more useful.
That about covers it for preparation! In the next blog post I’ll be detailing my experience of the course as a whole before moving on to my final blog post, in which I’ll share some final thoughts on the Aroma 911 course and discuss how it’s affected my day-to-day life.
Essential oils used while writing this post: Lemon and Cypress combined for relaxation.
About the Author
Dana Jeanne Keller is a Canadian freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant who lives between Scotland, Canada, and Germany.
Her specialties are book publishing, film, folklore, the occult, and spirituality. Among other things, she enjoys yoga, meditation, and disappearing into nature.
