Since Covid, and the increase in working from home, the lines have become a little bit blurry around work-life and home-life, leaving many people living lives where there’s not much separation between the two - and leading to exhaustion, burnout, burden, and living grey, dull lives where people feel like they are constantly working and overloaded.  

The temptation is to think that from here we should very much create an obvious separation between the two, because work can often feel like hustle, push, force, and home life can feel a little more relaxed (sometimes!) that way.  Culturally, we have traditionally tried to separate the two - rushing to work and creating time in the day for hustle, push and force, and then finishing that and returning home to relax.  Yet, during Covid, the obvious divide of going into the office meant that this hustle was brought home, leaving many people creating their whole lives as one big hustle.

It’s become even more important these days, therefore - in this new work-life culture (given our work is part of our home life now) - that rather than trying to separate work and life we learn to create all of life from a softer, more relaxed way of being.  And, of course, essential oils are the perfect way to do this, so today we explore how we can create a new post-covid home-working life balance, using aromatherapy.

Rather than the temptation of continuing to live as two versions of ourselves; the work version and the home version, we need to cultivate our lives in a way where we can create a balance between the two - one where we are relaxed, and joyful in all of it.  So, I explore firstly how we can come to align ourselves better with work that doesn’t feel like work, exploring how we can cultivate a self-loving working environment from home, and also how we can ensure we are creating a sacred space for ourselves to work, away from our regular home-living areas.

Aligning with our deeper soul work 

Firstly, we need to begin to see that we don’t have to actually feel separate from our work; this belief may keep us forcing ourselves to be in a job that isn’t fulfilling, and this is helpful to illuminate because it offers us the capacity for change.  I remember the days when I used to work as a Brand Manager, and this hustle culture was very present for me; eventually I burned out.  Whilst that looked traumatic at the time, it led me to where I am today, in a career that was deeply aligned for my soul - retraining in holistic medicine and helping women to create their lives magically.  So, if you’re feeling the hustle and burn-out of our new WFH culture, know that it could actually be pointing you to a deeper part of you that’s ready to create life entirely differently, where work itself doesn’t feel like a burden anymore.

If this feels like you, we can use essential oils, in this instance, to help us tune into whether there’s a career that is more aligned with our lives.  Rather than pushing, forcing and hustling, we could choose to align with work that is allowing us to relax more fully during the day. 

Alignment Meditation 

If this is you, I’d recommend that for a little while, each evening, you begin to create a meditation practice for yourself. It’s likely if you’re in an unaligned career that you’ll feel a little fried after each day, so diffusing some essential oils before bed and meditating can begin to help you wind down and create some ease.  I’ll also come, next, to how you can cultivate a more loving daytime routine for work, but for now, the focus is on meditating in the evening to help you get more clarity on what work could be more deeply aligned.

Essential oils to support: Rose, Myrrh, Patchouli, Cypress. 

The above essential oils will help you relax, calm, and begin to fully express what’s been hiding as you begin to discover what your gifts are.

Diffusion blend: Mix 3 drops Rose, 2 drops Patchouli, 1 drop Myrrh and 1 drop Cypress in water in an electrical aromatherapy diffuser or candle burner and begin to meditate on your heart’s deeper longings for work.

I invite you into the following practice of reflection:

• Firstly, consciously bring your focus to your heart and intentionally open it by visualising your heart opening out.
• What are you appreciative of? What have you created that feels deeply aligned?
• What lights you up?  What do you love doing?
• What are your gifts?  What are you good at?
• What job might you desire to do that wouldn’t feel separate from your life - if you were prepared to take the risk of following your heart? 

These contemplations may reveal more, if you allow them to, around what your desire for a new Post-Covid work life might look like.

Bringing love to work

If, on the other hand, you’re already in a career that you love - or you’re happy to continue in the job that doesn’t light you up because you’ve chosen it that way - then it may be that you need to invest more energy in creating an environment that is softer and more self-loving as you work.  Sometimes, we can get so engrossed in our work at times that we forget that we are humans, needing some nurture.

So, my next step, if you’re struggling with Post-Covid work-life balance, is to begin to cultivate a more self-loving working environment.  There are lots of ways you can do this.

Firstly, you could begin by consciously choosing to be more loving to yourself in the day.  Each morning, I invite you to spritz a blend of loving essential oils to create your work in a loving way, rather than from a pattern of hustle culture.  Hustle culture was out at work - in an office you had to rush to.  From home, you can create this differently - there’s no rushing out the door, instead you can use the commuting time to put on some essential oils and choose to go into your day more softly:

Intuitive Oils Ritual

Choose your own blends each morning - our noses are clever, and we can trust them to select oils with the properties that our bodies need.  So, each morning, you could create a ritual of selecting your favourite oils for the day, and diffuse those for 30 minutes before you begin work. Some energising essential oils could be perfect for this - things like Peppermint, Rosemary, Lemon, Sweet Orange - and all the other citrus oils.  Mix 3 oils, up to 7 total drops, in water in an electrical diffuser or candle burner and set up your day with love.

Work Love Spritz

You may also like to create a Work Love Spritz - often we can view work, if we are burdened by it, as something that we don’t love, but we can consciously choose to love it, if it is aligned for us to do it, even as we work towards our other visions.  Consciously create your work desk each morning with the intention of creating more love for yourself during the day.

Mix 10 drops Geranium, 15 drops Sweet Orange and 5 drops Lavender in 100ml of Orange Flower Hydrolat, and spritz your work area each morning with the intention of bringing love to yourself and your work.  You could spritz this whenever you are feeling that you need that loving intention, or whenever you leave your desk and return - as a way of cleansing.

Self-Love Massage

We can often get so focused on work during the day that we forget to love ourselves and our bodies.  So, I invite you with this ritual to create a massage blend and then, periodically, throughout the day (you may even set an alarm), pause to offer yourself a little self-massage, wherever feels it needs some love - whether that’s shoulders, hips, arms, hands, face; tune in and see where you are feeling tense. 

Mix 3 drops Frankincense, 2 drops Sandalwood and 1 drop Ylang Ylang in 15ml Grapeseed carrier oil and use this blend to massage any area of tension throughout the day, massaging in the direction towards your heart.

Creating sacred working space

And that leaves us with our final tip; creating a sacred working space.  Often, again, working from home can have us working all over the house, creating very little distinction between our work and our leisure.  And we don’t need to see this as a separation between work and who we are, but it is important for us to have a sacred working space that is obviously for work, so that we know the difference between when we are working and playing.

For this, we are best to have a set space to work in and create it as a beautiful expression of ourselves.  So, that might look like having a sacred desk space, that you can set up with your essential oils (diffuser, massage blends, spritz, etc), and making this space intentionally about work.  You could even create a vision board of your dreams, that you can see throughout the day, put your favourite books on your desk; really bring yourself into your work space, rather than just seeing it as this linear work and play distinction.  

Again, I invite you to create this space and then have a ceremony to claim this as your sacred work space.  Light a candle, use your Work Love Spritz to celebrate it with love, and intentionally create this as a space where you work, to create the distinction.  As part of this ceremony, you may like to honour your work by writing out some intentions for what you’d like to create in your career - whilst covering yourself in the Self-Love Massage Oil and diffusing the oils mentioned above in the Alignment Meditation.  The invitation is to sink into these oils and allow them to infuse you with a sacred work energy - claiming your new space for work.

I’d also advise to do a reclamation of the rest of your home space as part of this ceremony.  Create a Home Spritz - 15 drops Bergamot, 10 drops Chamomile and 5 drops Lemongrass in 100ml Orange Flower Hydrolat - and embody your space to play, perhaps by dancing to some music - as part of a ritual to reclaim the rest of your home as your home and play space.

Overall, the invitation isn’t just to create a separation between hustle and rest, but to create all of your working from home in a loving way that is more relaxed.  These blends will help you to do that, whilst also creating a sacred space for you to work from.  Essential oils are the perfect way to create all of life from relaxation and calm - enjoy.

Nicole Barton
Consultant Aromatherapist

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