Essential Well Being: Vitruvi founder talks the power of self-care rituals
Credit to Author: Aleesha Harris| Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2019 19:06:33 +0000
Essential Well Being: A Modern Guide to Using Essential Oils in Beauty, Body, and Home Rituals
By Sara Panton
$29.95 | Penguin Random House
Sara Panton is a big proponent of rituals. 
Performed in a prescribed order, a simple series of actions can be calming, soothing and restorative, she says. Especially given the fast pace of most people’s lives.
“Something that I’m really passionate about is people slowing down and thinking about, ‘OK, how do I want to live my life?’ And, ‘What does living an impactful thing really mean, to me?’ Really tuning in to why they want to invest in themselves,” Panton, the co-founder of the Vancouver-based wellness company Vitruvi, says.
And, according to Panton, adopting a simple self-care ritual centred around scent is a perfect place to start.
“The olfactory nerve is the first of the 12 cranial nerves and it’s so cool. We’re thinking about smoothies and juices, but let’s think about scent. Scent has such a profound influence on our brain and on memory. And the brain is lazy. It likes anything familiar. So, I thought, what can we do to create ritual around aroma?” she says.
Incorporating simple practices of scent therapy helped Panton survive the stresses of university — and led her to start her now-booming business, Vitruvi, which offers essential oils, diffusers and more, to help people unwind, at least to some degree, during their day.
“It started, really, as a blog,” Panton explains of the beginnings of her brand some four years ago. “Some of my courses were in medical anthropology, and I’m super curious about different cultures and their rituals, their health and wellness practices, and their use of botanicals. I started writing a Tumblr account from my bathtub late at night after studying … and I started blending oils.”
But her blending soon went from simple interest to personal essential when studying global health, with an emphasis on preventive medicine, she recalls how she became desperate for an outlet to ease her increasing anxiety.
“I was experiencing a bunch of test anxiety because we were being tested every day. And I read this article in the British Medical Journey on the use of rosemary with Alzheimer’s patients helping with memory retention. I had done several courses on neuropsychology and loved the idea of scent association,” Panton says. “So, I created this study blend with rosemary and lemon grass — we still sell it today, it’s called our Focus Blend — and started using it when I was studying in the evening, and then taking it in when I went to do the test.”
The essential oil blends helped Panton feel better. And, evidently, they helped her blog followers too. Because, about two years into blogging, Panton found herself staying up late during the evening and weekends, creating essential oil blends for her readers-turned-customers and filming content for her site. With the help of her brother and then-roommate, Sean, Panton’s passion went from self-published side hustle, to full-fledged startup company.
“It was the classic story of a passion project from my living room,” she says with a smile of Vitruvi, which now offers a full range of products on its dedicated ecommerce platform, as well as content streams, recipes and more. “But, some of our scents actually make me anxious now because we used to blend so many of them, by hand, in our apartment. So, there are a few of them that when I smell them, I’m like, ‘Oh, that smells like some late nights’.”
So, seeing as so much of Panton’s life seems to revolve around these rituals and scents, just how much of Panton’s day is dedicated to them?
“At this point, probably most of it,” she says with a laugh. After all, it is her business to do them, and develop them for her customers. “But it’s a few simple things throughout the day. I always put a diffuser on before I leave for work, I put it on a seven-and-a-half hour setting, if I’m not at the office too late. So that, when I come home, it smells welcoming. And I’m reminded of the intention that I set at the beginning of the day. I travel a tonne, so having those consistencies around scent are helpful. I use lavender and eucalyptus under my nose on the plan, that’s a ritual. And I use our sleep mists and our Still Roll-On in hotel rooms, because it smells like home.
“So, a lot of those little rituals.”
Panton recently took her interest in essential oils and rituals to another level with the release of her first book, titled Essential Well Being: A Modern Guide to Using Essential Oils in Beauty, Body, and Home Rituals (Penguin Random House; $29.95). The hardcover book features more than 100 recipes for skin salves, hair masques, home sprays and more, each one using a blend of essential oils — and other ingredients that are likely already in your kitchen at home.
For Panton’s recipes, it was important to incorporate only ingredients that people would, in most cases, be able to find in their own home kitchens.
“My pet peeve is having a cookbook and it saying you need to have a teaspoon of this wild saffron. So, it’s baking soda, it’s vinegar, it’s green tea — and then just with our oils,” she explains of the simple recipes. “In the wellness industry, it’s really easy to make it overcomplicated.
“But, the basis of this company started from my love of global health and seeing the resourcefulness of people around the world. And how simple the practices of self care can be and that they’re really ceremonial — whether it was black soap and scrubs in Morocco, or when I was in the Maasai Mara with women around the process of making chai together and eating together.”
While the finished book feels fitting now, Panton admits that when she was first approached with the project two years ago, she had her doubts.
“I thought, I would love to write a book someday, but maybe in 10 years,” she recalls. “But when I thought about it, I realized that’s really what Vitruvi is about. We’re not about trying to wait to be an expert. We are here to present information. And our customer is super smart and super discerning. And we’re here discovering with them.”
So, Panton set to work on the project. (Yes, again during her evenings and weekends.)
“I put together a mood board and a draft of what I wanted to talk about … and then I wrote it in less than three months,” she says. “There’s a lot of embarrassing selfies on my phone of face masks at one in the morning and steeping tea in my windowsill making toners. And then we shot it in Palm Springs in 72 hours. It was just a whirlwind.”
Among the recipes included in the book, Panton points to a therapeutic foot soak as her absolute favourite.
“It came from a trip to Spain,” she explains. “I love baths, and not everywhere you can travel you can take a bath. So, I started making these foot baths. I had this leftover olive oil from olives that were left in the room, and I put citrus oil in with it, and soaked my feet.”
The ritual, she says, came from her mom, a grade-two teacher who spends her days on her feet.
“She’ll come home from work and fill the bathtub up with an inch of water and put some oils in soak her feet,” she says with a smile. “It’s about taking the day off. Patting your feet dry and going on with the rest of your evening.”
2 tbsp (30 mL) organic solid virgin coconut oil
2 tsp (10 mL) organic liquid honey
6 drops sweet orange essential oil
4 tbsp (60 mL) organic coffee grounds
Method
Add the coconut oil, honey and sweet orange essential oil to a small bowl or glass jar.
Mix the coffee grounds into the oil and honey mixture until combined.
Application
Moisten the face with warm shower water to help open the pores and soften the skin.
Put two to three tablespoons of the face mask mixture on your fingertips and massage it onto your face in small circular upward motions, avoiding the eyes.
Leave the mask on your face while you finish your morning shower routine — shampooing, conditioning, washing your body. Allow the mask to sit for at least five minutes before rinsing it off with warm shower water.
Makes 100 mL of face mask.
10 drops lemon essential oil
2 tbsp (30 mL) olive oil
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
Method
Fill a bathtub with two to three inches of warm water or until your feet are fully submerged. If you don’t want to use a bathtub, use a water basin filled with warm water and a comfortable chair to sit in.
Add the lemon essential oil, olive oil and salt to the warm water.
Application
Soak your feet in the warm water. If using a basin, try adding five to 10 smooth rocks that you can use to massage your feet. Keep your feet submerged for as long as you need.
Breathe deeply, try some calf stretches and take a few moments for yourself. When you’ve finished, make sure to wipe the bathtub clean, as the olive oil will have left it slippery.
Excerpted from Essential Well Being: A Modern Guide to Using Essential Oils in Beauty, Body, and Home Rituals by Sara Panton. Copyright © 2019 by Sara Panton. Photography copyright © 2019 by Britney Gill. Published by Penguin Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.