TRANQUILITY
What does the word tranquility mean to you? For me, it’s peace, quiet, calm, water… I wanted to make a Tranquility bath soak blend for a fragrant, relaxing bath experience. A space to take a breath, to relax and unwind. Out of all my blends, it was straight up the most difficult one of all for me to formulate. It took months and months…and months… of research and bath trials. Tough job… but someone’s gotta do it! How many baths a week can someone stand? You don’t want to know. My trials yielded few satisfying results. What I thought looked great in theory didn’t work in practice. For example, I found that oil fragrances rapidly disappeared. Or, they simply got lost among stronger scented oils. It was a long process.
When I create a blend, I want to create more than a nice smell. For instance, I also want a long-lasting fragrance that above all matches its aim. With Tranquility, that aim was to create a relaxing and peaceful blend. I used base, mid and top note oils, which resulted in the long lasting blend I was looking for . This way, the fragrance won’t just ‘disappear’ a few minutes after you hop in the bath. In other words, the fragrance needs to actually hang around. It needs to be a true aromatherapy experience. Below is a quick guide to what each note means and does.
Blending Notes at a Glance:
- Top Note: It’s the fragrance you notice first, and it’s usually the first to evaporate too. Top notes tend to be sharp, light and strong, like peppermint, petitgrain and bergamot.
- Mid Note: Also known as “heart” notes, these usually form the bulk of the blend, round it out and balance it. Mid note essential oils include chamomile, honeysuckle and geranium.
- Base Note: These oils tend to be rich and full bodied – like a good wine! Vetiver, patchouli and sandalwood are all base notes and are slower acting than the other notes. They take a few minutes to show up however, they last the longest and give real depth to the blend.
So to get back to the story, it was a long process, but I kept moving forward on my blending trials. Persistence beats resistance so I set about researching and hunting down lesser known oils to try out, mixing and matching, mixing and matching, bath trial after bath trial. I settled on two old favourites for Tranquility’s base and mid notes. The top note came as complete surprise and it was my own ‘eureka!!’ moment in my bath. Tranquility was born! It proved to be a real favourite with people I’d engaged to trial my blends for me.
The resultant Tranquility blend is a gorgeous combination of of woody and floral tones and the tiniest hint of citrus. Tranquility features Australian Sandalwood, European Honeysuckle and Petitgrain pure essential oils. I would never have imagined that these oils would work so well together, but they do!
Want to know more about the oils we’ve used in Tranquility? Delve in deeper to below to find out the unique qualities each one brings to the fragrant, relaxing Tranquility bath blend.
Australian Sandalwood – A Beautiful Fragrant Base Note
Traditional Uses: aphrodisiac to increase libido, especially for men, medicine, furniture, mindfulness and food.
I don’t know what surprises me more; Sandalwood was used as an aphrodisiac or that sandalwood nuts are edible! They taste a bit like hazelnut by all accounts!
The Australian Sandalwood tree grows in the southwest and western regions of Australia. Sandalwood oil is extracted by the steam distillation process with its oil used extensively in aromatherapy. It lays claim to be beneficial as an astringent, an antiviral, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic agent. Sandalwood has also been used by indigenous Australians for thousands of years to calm the mind and elevate focus. Today we know and practice this as “mindfulness”. That’s a versatile list and it is my absolute favourite essential oil fragrance.
Australian Sandalwood grows up to 20 meters (around 66 feet) in height. The densest part of the tree – the ‘heartwood’, produces the bulk of the essential oil.
We’ve used this incredible oil as the base note fragrance for BathCalm’s Tranquility blend. Familiar, grounding, comforting and long lasting, there really is a lot to love about Australian Sandalwood… except its price! It’s an expensive oil because demand is higher than supply, so I guess there’s a lot of us out there that count it as our favourite!
European Honeysuckle – A Lovely Relaxing Mid Note
Traditional Uses: used to relieve mental and physical stress
The common honeysuckle produces pretty flowers and is a robust vine that grows in hedgerows or scrub land throughout Europe, North Africa and The Caucasus. It smells absolutely divine in my humble opinion. It’s easily one of my favourite fragrances of all time; it reminds me of happy childhood summers where I grew up. Everything about the honeysuckle says abundance too; its growth, fragrance and flowers are plentiful, and such a gift to us!
The honeysuckle produces delicate flowers in a variety of bright colours that include white, red, pink and yellow. It can grow pretty big too, reaching heights of up to 7 meters (around 23 feet). The honeysuckle essential oil is extracted from its flowers through the steam distillation process. Honeysuckle has been used in aromatherapy for stress relief and eliminating headaches, and as a mood booster. I know it boosts mine, because every time I smell honeysuckle I feel incredibly happy and peaceful. It’s those happy childhood memories playing in the sunshine…
Petitgrain – The Top Note
Traditional Uses: used to relieve nervous exhaustion and stress related symptoms.
Like honeysuckle, petitgrain, (or petitgrain bigarade), can also act as a mood booster. Petitgrain is a tree native to Southeast Asia which has been cultivated worldwide for hundreds of years too. It has been used in aromatherapy for nervous exhaustion, stress related symptoms and insomnia, and is an important addition to our Tranquility blend!
The Petitgrain essential oil was once extracted from the small, unripened fruit of the plant. It’s actually how its name came about; petit grain – French for ‘little grain’. These days, the leaves and twigs produce the petitgrain essential oil, through the steam distillation process. The result is a fresh-fragrance oil which features slightly woody, citrusy notes. The Petitgrain essential oil creates a lovely perfume, and it’s the subsequent star as the top note in Bath Calm’s Tranquility blend. It is the perfect, final accompaniment to the Sandalwood base note and Honeysuckle mid note. All three make for a great combination that helps you to inhale… exhale… and relax.
The Meditations that Enhance Your Bath Relaxation Experience
The BathCalm Tranquility guided meditations help you switch off, let go and re-connect with your the inner-peace. This inner-peace is often buried under the stress of daily living, so it’s important you try and switch off, especially while we’re in the middle of a pandemic.
Sondrine, the composer for Tranquility’s meditations used a specific beat count per minute in her music. She used these beats for you to follow, to help slow and regulate your breath. This then calms you, moving you towards that beautiful feeling of inner-peace. If you’re new to meditation, Adam and Julia’s thoughtful and gentle guided meditations will allow you to relax naturally. You subsequently won’t feel frustrated trying to ‘clear your mind’.
Are you the parent of young children? If so, ask yourself how long you can last in the bathroom, before you hear desperate banging on the door. Yep, I think many of us have been there! So it’s pretty vital that you therefore distract your little one(s) before you embark on your inner peace journey. If you don’t, you’ll end up stressed when you were aiming for the exact opposite of enjoying that fragrant, relaxing bath!!
With any BathCalm product, you can choose which meditation you would like to listen to; Adam or Julia’s guided meditation or Sondrine’s music only. Try all three to find what works best for you and your mood.
And there you have it; that’s Tranquility in a nutshell. Each oil complements the other’s fragrance and aromatherapy qualities to give you a fragrant, relaxing bath. Combine that with the beautiful guided meditations and music we’ve created to match each specific blend and you have the next level in bath relaxation! Just remember to sort the kids out first, or you’ll end up worse than when you started!
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