ACKNOWLEDGE AND TRANSFORM with Juniper Berry, Cypress and Saro
This article explores three powerful essential oils: juniper berry, cypress, and saro. These oils can be amazing allies during metal season (Fall in Chinese Medicine) to help you transform old beliefs and emotions that are keeping you stuck. Combined with certain acupressure points, they help you move through grief, gain clarity, and open to expansive love.
Juniper Berry
Juniper berry is derived from the berry of a tree from the cypress family. Its fragrance is pungent and woody and has a heart note of medium intensity. The best known historical use of juniper berry is its distilled and fermented form in the liquor gin.
On a spiritual level juniper berry has an amazing capacity to help us see the truth. But rather than in a harsh or confronting way, it brings awareness in a way that is light hearted, playful and fun.
Just like Gin is sort of a social lubricant, it allows us to relax our heart and socially become warm and at ease. In the face of facing ourselves it brings a playful effervescence.
It’s obviously hard at times to face a reality of ourself that we don’t really want to see, or have a hard time grasping, Juniper opens us to acknowledge what is hard and brings it to us in a playful way then it can be received in a way that is more open. This is the first level of healing feelings of grief, loss and lack of value or self-worth.
On the emotional level, Juniper berry is a wonderful ally for strengthening weak conditions such as lack of will power, strength or indecision. It helps the brain by increasing prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia functioning and has been indicated to help with ADD, depression, and psychotic conditions.
It is especially helpful for promoting will power, decision making, enhancing encouragement, and uplifting for mental and emotional burnout and depression.
It is powerful oil for detoxing our toxic emotional residue so we can be present to the appropriate emotional energy for the situation.
It can liberate us from our habituated relationship to the past and dislodge those old stories. As we emotionally lift out of that we can begin to visualize what we would like to come next, to have a fresh start and optimism for greater possibilities for a happy future.
Spiral Spinal Treatment
This treatment can be done with Juniper berry, Silver Fir and other conifer tree oils. The Conifers provide a strong stable and grounding energy that supports us.
It stimulates and uplifts Qi, strengthens and supports the physical and emotional body and reunites the small self with the Higher Self to help us to fully embody Spirit.
Cypress
Another powerful ally for the metal season is Cypress essential oil.
It is valued because of its ability to fight infections, aid the respiratory system, remove toxins from the body, and can help relieve nervousness and anxiety. It also assists in the healing of wounds and Infections and is also used to relieve muscle pain and spasms.
Especially useful for the metal season is its ability to help clear up congestion and eliminate phlegm that builds up in the respiratory tract and lungs. The oil calms the respiratory system and its antispasmodic properties can help with even more severe respiratory conditions like asthma and bronchitis.
On the emotional and spirit level, Metal season is about death. Although it isn’t something that many are comfortable discussing, that is what is happening when the leaves fall, when the pumpkin and squash are harvested and the vines decompose to make nutrients for the next year. The emotion of grief is about the feelings that arise during the death process and after.
A big part of the grieving is also the letting go of that feeling and allowing it to move through vs holding on to it. So much of our society is about holding on so as not to feel loss and the resulting feelings of lack.
However, in order to have capacity for more, we have to let go of what no longer serves and we have to be willing to actually release it at its appropriate time in its cycle. We have a life cycle of emotions and we have a life cycle of thoughts. If we have forgotten how to let things die in our experience and move on, then we become hoarders not only of things but of emotions. There comes a time when there needs to be a full release and a proper burial so that you can be free.
Cypress essential oil helps us to remember how complete the cycle of emotions of grief and put it to rest. So often we want to hold on to those feelings for fear of losing the joy of the life that experience once had. But like anything, it gets old and loses the depth of meaning if we hold too tight. It doesn’t get the opportunity to add to the expansion of your life experience.
With Cypress you can allow that which needs to die and thus be free to Live and Love again.
Also think of Cypress if you feel that you're holding or clinging on to things, or you want to let it go, you thought you let it go, but it keeps coming up.
Try Cypress On These Acupoints
KD6: Shining sea of Illumination: this potent point helps us reach the profound depths of the sea and draw on the wisdom and skills
stored there. Cypress helps us let go and this point fills us with our own inspiring illuminations from the mature inner depths of our hearts. Place the oil on the points and breathe until you feel a shift (usually 2-3 minutes).
KD24: Spirit Burial ground: here is a profound source of spiritual depth that returns our spirit to life, wonder, and its own inner wisdom. When the struggle has been long and hard, this point can restore our spirits with hope and wonder and be can be brought back to life in its fullest. Cypress is the perfect assistant to help in that process. Place the oil on the points and breathe until you feel a shift (usually 2-3 minutes).
Saro
Saro (Sa-row) essential oil is a perfect ally for the fall season because of its usefulness as a gentle decongestant and expectorant for respiratory problems such as coughs, colds, flu, bronchitis and asthma
Native to Madagascar, Saro is commonly used to support the immune system and prevent illness due to its antiviral properties. Saro has an uplifting aroma and can stimulate the mind and boost creativity. Diffuse Saro in your living areas and watch as tension releases from the room.
What I love Saro for most though, is its relationship to grief. This simple oil has an extraordinary ability to “part the clouds” as my mentor puts it. It has such a unique ability to help to move heavy clouds of grief, and it helps to move that energy through the chest area from around the heart and the lungs.
When I work with it It feels as though I am connecting to my Star family and the higher aspect of who I AM and to the universe. It’s like being transported above it all, free from the conflict and resistances that come up when we are moving through uncomfortable feelings on this plane. It can help transcend the old psychology and give us a glimpse into all that IS. Thus freeing us from the heaviness of grief knowing that it is simply part of this human experience. Diffusing it is wonderful as well as using it on these Acupoints.
Try Saro On These acuPoints
Lung 1: Central Treasury: The first point on the Lung (Metal element), meridian. Brings us the capacity to connect to that which is the most valuable to us for Life, and that is our breath, and the Inspiration of Heaven. Place the oil on the points and breathe until you feel a shift (usually 2-3 minutes).
Du23-“Our Unique Heavenly Star”: This Point aligns us with the stars and helps us open to the direction of our destiny. It’s located 1 inch directly above the midpoint of the anterior hairline. Place the oil on the point and breathe until you feel a shift (usually 2-3 minutes).