Following the Old Track - Part2

 As I mentioned in part1, I also took some classes for cosmetics. I learned to make perfume and some make-up items. I made my sister some cream that had medical effect on her skin trouble. It was a lot of fun to learn. Many people might think herbs are boring and making things with herbs is quite difficult, but it’s not difficult at all. Even making soaps and candles are pretty easy, which I enjoyed the most. I used to make soaps for the different types of skin with dried herbs as lavender, chamomile and rosemary. Maybe making candles sounds a bit different from aromatherapy, but I really liked it. My favorite part was making cake candles that look just like real cakes. We actually used real baking tools for making them, and I whipped melted paraffin wax to make it look like whipped cream. Doesn’t it sound interesting? Some people couldn’t really notice that they were actually candles when they saw them for the first time. Those were good special gifts. Also it’s a great chance that you can bring your creativity and improve your hand-making skills.

These two cake candles were made with paraffin wax and jelly wax(type of candle) only except the wicks.

To make the chocolate syrup of the top one, I mixed up the 2 types of waxs. 

This is the progress of making soaps.

There are rose, lavender, chamomile and rosemary soaps.

Sometimes I gave the things I made to my friends and family as gifts.

The best thing of homemade soaps is that you can change the oils

for a specific type of skin when you make them.

 As the last experience of my ex-college life, I’d like to talk about volunteering. As I mentioned at first, those classes were based on the therapy through medical care with aroma oils. Massaging, even smelling the fragrance essential oils help people with its medical power. I was interested in volunteering, so I used to go to a hospice ward to take care of the patients. It wasn’t easy to take care of the people who were facing their death. Basically I gave them relaxing massage since they had trouble sleeping all the time. Most of the patients had a common symptom like swollen hands and legs (as edema), so I tried to make them calm with lavender oil massage. Many patients talked to me during the therapy sessions, some of my patients told me they could sleep better and relax. It was very hard for me that I couldn’t see them few weeks later, but I felt like I learned more than aromatherapy. I can tell it was a good experience.

 I’m still not sure if many people think aromatherapy is an interesting topic to talk about, but I hope more people will become more interested in aromatherapy and enjoy those activities. As my experience, this is about therapy, herbs, massaging, making cosmetics and soaps, even candles. You might find at least one of them sounds pretty fun to learn for you.

Following the Old Track - Part1

 Today, I’d like to write about one of my past experiences to take a break. A few of the bloggers here might know that I’m from Korea. When I was in Korea before I came to Japan, I had just finished my two-year-course college. I specialized in Aromatherapy, and it’s the topic that I like to talk about. It might be too long and you’d get sick of reading it, so I’m going to separate this posting into 2 parts. Part 1 is basically about the background of my major and herb growing class, and the part 2 is about making cosmetics/soaps/candles classes and volunteering.

First of all, now I can tell you that I’m really interested in aromatherapy, but at first I didn’t want to choose the major because I was not interested in herbs or aromatherapy at all. For a specific reason, I couldn’t enter an art university where I wanted to go and I needed to make a choice that time. After I started learning it at school, my mind had changed. Anyway, the thing that made me interested in was the classes for making things with aroma oils and herbs. I found the mystery of plants, for example, the healing power of herbs and the beauty of nature during the course.

Lavender is the most useful herb in Aromatherapy especially for relaxing.

Since its essential oil is safer than other oils to use, children can have treatment with lavender oil.

Only about over 100 students were in my major. I think it was because not many people in Korea know about aromatherapy, and it might be hard to find that kind of study especially at University. The popularity for students was pretty low, but I found a lot of interesting classes. They were basically about chemistry that can be separated into essential oils and medical science. I didn’t really like the course of medical science for some reason except the massage class, but the herb classes were very interesting.

 In the campus of my ex-college, there was a small herb farm, and I took the herb growing class there. I had a very good time, and I found out that I’m a talented farmer. It was a joy that taking some of my lavenders and make dried herbs for my place, but my favorite herb was rosemary. I loved the smell and taking care of it, so I made a small rosemary garden which was the most beautiful part of the farm (in my opinion). I also used the rosemary that I grew for cooking, especially with meat dishes. If you want to remove the smell of fish or pork, you should add some fresh rosemary in it. Well, but it’s not only rosemary that makes a big difference in your cooking life. There are various herbs that you can use for food. Herbs are useful to add flavor too.

The upper left corner of the herb farm in my ex-college.

There were 3 parts of 'Rosemary Garden' (it's still growing).

 In the part 2, you’ll see different activities as making soaps and candles in class.