Jacquelyn A Close, RA

Young Living’s Wintergreen Essential Oil

By D. Gary Young, President and Founder of Young Living

One thing I have prided myself and Young Living on is the total quality of the essential oils we provide. From the soil used, how the plants are harvested, the distillation process, to frequent intensive testing for impurities; Young Living’s legacy is built on the trust and quality of our products. That’s why Young Living is, and has remained, the world leader in essential oils for all these years!

One amazing essential oil we have is wintergreen. We found the perfect nutrient-rich area to grow this oil in southern China. Our wintergreen supplier (and all other suppliers we use) must meet what we call the Young Living Therapeutic Grade (YLTG) standard. This standard means every essential oil Young Living distills or sources contain only the purest ingredients grown from the optimal soil. This ensures that the oil does what nature has intended it to do – heal and give comfort. It is a standard that exceeds what our competitors can only hope to reach.

We regularly go and meet with our suppliers so I asked two of our sourcing experts, Mary Lou Jacobsen and Sue Chao to personally visit our supplier’s wintergreen fields. Their report was just as I expected; the fields, harvesting techniques, and distillation processes continued to meet and exceed our stringent requirements.

But folks, our quality guidelines don’t end there. Once we receive a shipment of wintergreen essential oil, EACH batch undergoes testing in our labs to ensure nothing was diluted or changed synthetically. If any testing results come back below our guidelines, the batch is sent back to the supplier. Unfortunately for many unknowing consumers, these Young Living rejected batches are resold to other producers, that then turn around and sell these counterfeit “essential oils.” It’s unfortunate, but that’s how many of our producers do business.

I want to reiterate a statement recently released about Young Living’s wintergreen testing:

“As part of the lab tests, wintergreen is also subjected to isotopic ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) analysis. Based on the carbon 13 and carbon 12 isotopic ratio, the IRMS can determine whether a particular lot of wintergreen is naturally sourced or synthetic (created in a lab). From 2001­­­ to 2009, every batch of wintergreen essential oil offered by Young Living has undergone this test. The results from this 8-year period show that our wintergreen essential oil ranges from -33.1 to -34.26, or well within the isotopic range for this essential oil. By contrast, the isotopic range for synthetic wintergreen is -26 to -28. Our personalized sourcing approach, combined with our state-of-the-art testing, ensures that each and every essential oil—from balsam fir to wintergreen—is of the highest, most potent therapeutic quality, just as nature intended.”

It is vital to understand that wintergreen from Young Living and wintergreen from another producer is the same in name alone.

There are other producers in addition to Young Living and always will be. Some will be successful; some will come and go just as fast as they started. But one thing will remain – Young Living’s total commitment to providing you with unprecedented quality in each and every essential oil we produce.

Essentialy Yours,

Gary Young

To learn more about the Young Living  Therapeutic GradeTM Standard, please drop me an email. Jacquelyn Close

by David Stewart, PhD, DNM

Applying essential oils is an ancient and effective modality for (1) First Aid, (2) Stress Management, (3) Pain Management, (4) Improving Your Quality of Life, and (5) Living up to Your Peak Performance. Aromatic science is a new field of research that is rediscovering the many health benefits of aromatherapy once lost in antiquity but are now being verified and refined by modern studies. “Improving Your Quality of Life” includes finding effective ways via oils for such things as diabetes, sinusitis, fibromyalgia, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, depression, cancer and a host of other chronic or terminal diseases.

Throughout the world, many cultures of the historic past anointed and healed with essential oils with great success on an intuitive and spiritual basis, but they were not able to understand nor explain their remarkable powers from an intellectual or scientific viewpoint. The tools of today’s technology are teaching us that essential oils are unique among all substances and hold many solutions to the unanswered and unmet challenges of medicine and health care as they exist today.

TREATING SYMPTOMS VS. PERMANENT HEALING

Nurses (RNs) and medical doctors (MDs) practice within a philosophical paradigm referred to as “allopathy.” The theory of allopathy is that if you remove or correct the symptoms of a condition, you have removed or corrected the condition itself.

Suppose you have a fever, mucous in the nose, a cough in your chest, an upset stomach, a headache, and can’t sleep. An allopath would prescribe something to reduce the fever, stop the runny nose, shut off your coughing reflex, neutralize the acid in your stomach, deaden the pain in your head, and put you to sleep. You might feel better, but you weren’t healed of anything.

All of the symptoms listed would be warning indicators of a deeper problem, not the problem, itself. They are like the red light on your dashboard indicating that you need motor oil. All the doctor does is to shut off the warning signals instead of diagnosing and correcting the root of the problem. This would be like unscrewing the warning light bulb under your dash to turn it off instead of recognizing that you just need to stop your car and add some oil before the engine burns up.

Allopathic medicine can relieve symptoms and make you feel better, but it does not address the problem that produced the symptoms. Hence, you can be made to feel fine and still be sick. The consequence is that your body can then come down with a different and, perhaps, worse malady with another set of symptoms.

Taken to allopathic extremes, medical doctors, unable to solve a problem in a particular member or organ in your body, will resort to surgery and simply remove that member or organ. That would certainly remove the symptoms, but you would then be maimed for life and resigned to live with one or more missing body parts. Such an approach usually leads to more complications and more unpleasant symptoms later on, if not immediately, following the surgery. But to the mind of an allopath, they would have solved the problem you had presented to them. The fact that the post-surgery patient now has additional and different problems is not relevant in allopathic thinking because the patient’s original problem has been removed. In the words of an allopathic surgeon, “The operation was a success, but as for the patient . . .”

The best of modern medicine is emergency medicine. If I am in a bad accident with major head trauma, an open bleeding wound, serious internal injuries, or a broken limb, take me to the closest emergency room. Let them apply their skills with pharmaceuticals, surgery, x-ray machines, and sophisticated technology, etc., so I can live through the crisis. But leave the healing to me by other means.

Allopathy is virtually helpless in effecting true healing following a crisis or in curing chronic diseases. They can manage your disease or condition for the rest of your life, but if you want true and permanent healing you must look elsewhere.

LIFE IS MORE THAN CHEMISTRY: THE QUANTUM CONNECTION

While allopathic medicine can save a life in an emergency, actual healing is outside the scope of allopathy. While nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle are key factors in maintaining health, the roots of most sicknesses and conditions are emotional and spiritual. The fallacy of allopathic medicine is the belief that everything that happens in our bodies is a matter of chemistry and physics. From this fallacy they conclude that there must always be a chemical or physical prescription to solve every bodily condition, even when the condition is a psychological disorder. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The chemistry and physics of our physiologic processes are but reflections of our thoughts and feelings. In fact, the classical laws of chemistry and physics do not apply to living processes, but few health care practitioners and biologists know this. The scientific laws more appropriate to describe living processes are found in quantum physics.

Classical physics deals with processes bigger than an atom or molecule. Quantum physics deals with processes smaller than an atom, i.e. individual electrons, neutrons, and protons. Quantum physics teaches us that human thought influences electron behavior. Every physiological function in the human body involves electrons. Electrons are the mind-body connection.

In classical physics, given specific conditions there are specific outcomes and definite answers. One can predict with certainty what will result from any given set of physical or chemical conditions. Questions in classical physics tend to have one right answer independent of the thoughts and intent of the experimenter.

In quantum physics, given specific conditions there are no specific outcomes and definite answers, but only a set of possibilities. One cannot predict with certainty which possibility will manifest from a given set of conditions. Questions in quantum physics will have a spectrum of probably answers, the final answer influenced by such things as the thoughts and intent of the experimenter.

THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION

Classical physics can take us to the moon and back and into the far reaches of outer space, but classical physics cannot penetrate the inner universe of the atom. Quantum physics does that and leads us directly into the realms of mind and spirit. Essential oils are bridges between all of these realms – material, mental, energetic, and spiritual.

Essential oils are composed of chemical compounds, but also have electrical properties at the level of electrons and protons. This places them partially in the realm of quantum physics. Essential oils respond to human thought. They amplify intent. This is why they work so well in combination with prayer.

When asked what a particular oil will do, one can give a chemical answer by describing the compounds of the oil and their actions in the human body, pointing out that different people will respond differently according to their own unique chemistry. One can also give a quantum physics answer when asked what an oil will do by saying, “What do you want it to do? The oil is only a carrier of possibilities. Which possibility do you want it to manifest?”

But even quantum physics and classical science combined are not sufficient to account for how our bodies work and how essential oils work in our bodies. Human function transcends the laws of the material world, as does the behavior of essential oils.

OILS AND EMOTIONAL ROOTS OF DISEASE

One of the unique aspects of essential oils is the fact that, when inhaled, they go directly to our emotional and spiritual centers in the brain. These are organs that respond only to aroma. They do not respond to spoken words or to substances that cannot pass the blood-brain barrier. The molecules of essential oils are of the right composition and size to pass through the blood-brain barrier, something most prescription drugs and most other substances cannot do.

Even water does not pass through the blood-brain barrier, which is a good thing, or else our heads would all swell up like watermelons if caught in a rain storm. But essential oils do pass through, which is one of the secrets to their amazing therapeutic abilities. They can reach into our emotional brains and unlock forgotten feelings that are the roots of our physical problems.

Essential oils also address the roots of our problems at cellular levels, right down to the DNA inside the cells. They cleanse the cells, protect them from hostile microbes, delete incorrect information in cellular memory, and reprogram proper information so that the cells have a correct job description and can function as God intended.

This is possible because essential oils are more than a mixture of chemicals. They have ultrasonic vibrational properties that go beyond the physical laws of this universe and extend into the subtle energetic template that underlies the material world, which is the source and model for all material manifestations.

NATURAL VS. SYNTHETIC

The formulas for many compounds found in essential oils can be duplicated in a laboratory and, to a chemist, they would be identical to their natural counterparts; but the chemical formula of a substance is not a complete description of that substance. Its origin and history are also relevant.

The compounds comprising plant oils were spoken into existence when God created plants. These compounds are imbued with God’s Word and God’s intelligence, which is not measurable in a laboratory nor by any physical instrument. Humans, however, can apply their intuitive abilities and discern certain properties of a substance, even its history and origin, whether produced from a living plant or from a chemical plant.

Synthetic compounds may be copies of the chemical formulas of compounds found in essential oils, but they are lacking the subtle energies contained in natural substances. Those who apply essential oils for healing soon learn that only pure, natural, complete, and unadulterated oils bring about healing, while synthetic oils, or oils adulterated by synthetic compounds, do not.

For example, in the case of oil of wintergreen, the natural oil is harmless, with many healing properties, while the synthetic version does not heal and is, in fact, toxic. Both smell and taste like wintergreen, but they are not the same therapeutically. Furthermore, research has shown that the homeopathic properties of a substance, though chemically identical, are not the same energetically for synthetic compounds as they are for natural ones.

BE SURE YOU USE THERAPEUTIC GRADE OILS

Therefore, one must be sure they are applying therapeutic grade oils and not perfume grade oils, which are cheaply produced and lacking in the therapeutic properties necessary to heal and enhance ones state of wellness. Most aromatherapy companies selling oils claim that their products are “Pure, 100% Grade A, Therapeutic, etc.” But you cannot trust labels, since their verbiage is not currently regulated nor legally defined. Oils with warnings on them about potential toxicity are probably not therapeutic and safe to use, except in massage, where they are diluted down to a 2-5% concentration in a neutral carrier oil.

To insure that you are getting therapeutic grade oils, find a company that submits their oils for routine testing by independent laboratories, whose oils are from organic sources, distilled without chemical solvents at minimum temperatures and pressures, and are bottled straight from the still with no alterations or adulterations. Talk to others who are experiencing good results from their oils, and find out where they get them. As for me, I get all of my oils from Young Living.

The proof of an oil’s quality is in its manifested benefits, which you can verify yourself by using it. Testing in a laboratory for its chemical properties is not sufficient to ascertain its levels of subtle energy necessary to provide healing benefits. At this time, I am aware of only one company in North America with a large variety of therapeutic grade oils, blends, and oil-based products of verifiable efficacy and consistent quality.

THE INTELLIGENCE OF ESSENTIAL OILS

We have said that essential oils contain intelligence, while synthetic oils do not. The intelligence in therapeutic grade essential oils is placed there by God during their creation within the plant. This intelligence is homeostatic. Homeostasis is a state of perfect balance within the human body where everything functions as it should.

There is an intelligence within essential oils that knows about homeostasis. For example, the same oil, like lavender, can energize you when you need energy or relax you when you need to relax. Cypress oil can stimulate blood flow when you need to increase circulation or can slow it down if that is what you need. Meanwhile, both lavender and cypress oils can be working in your body in a myriad other ways to restore and maintain physiological, emotional, and mental balance.

All essential oils are antimicrobial to an extent, some more than others. This means that they provide a hostile environment to bacteria, viruses, mold, fungi, and parasites. However, being intelligent, they know the difference between dangerous microbes and harmless or helpful ones. We need certain bacteria in our bodies to digest, assimilate, and metabolize our food and utilize our vitamins and minerals.

When you take antibiotics, which are prescriptions created by drug companies, they are indiscriminate, having no homeostatic intelligence. They kill all of the bacteria in your body thus leaving you with a depressed immune system and in a state of weakness.

By contrast, essential oils kill only the harmful microbes while nurturing the friendly flora of our bodies. Hence, when you overcome a cold, flu, pneumonia, or other malady with the help of essential oils, your immune system has been strengthened.

The points given above are not a complete discussion of the profound differences between allopathic medicine and natural medicine. Watch future issues of the Raindrop Messenger for more.

For more information on how and why essential oils work, see the book, “The Chemistry of Essential Oils Made Simple – (God’s Love Manifest in Molecules)” by David Stewart, available from many sources.

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“Reprinted from The Raindrop Messenger, a free e-line newsletter, with permission from Dr. David Stewart. To subscribe or download back issues, visit www.RaindropTraining.com.”

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It is February 5th, 2009, and outside there is snow and ice, and we have been home-bound for nearly a week. News reports about the economy are more bleak than the weather. Yet, in the great northwest of this country, it is the end of the Balsam Harvest and Gary Young and his hand-picked experienced crew, along with a crew of Corporate Executives and Young Living Member/Volunteers are up at the Young Living Farm in St Maries, Idaho, and at a Balsam Plantation on the US-Canadian border harvesting Idaho Balsam Fir trees in the middle of night, in sub-zero weather, just so that we can have our glorious Idaho Balsam Fir essential oil.

If you have never smelled this oil, you have to get a bottle. What a fantastic oil!

Idaho Balsam Fir is known to stimulate the mind and relax the body. I think it’s great for inflammation, sore muscles, and headaches. Sleep with it for a couple of nights and see what happens for you. And the aroma, oh, it is like breathing that fresh, brisk, clean air found only in the high mountains where the giant fir trees reach right up and touch the spotless, clear sky. There is nothing like it in the whole world.

But I want to share with you why this oil and what they are doing up there in the frigid night air is so important. You see this type of stuff that Young Living does, nobody else does. There are plant growers, farmers, harvesters, distillers, and oil brokers, bottlers, oil sales people, and even a few individuals who grow their own plants, and distill and bottle their own oils, and sell them in a little shop somewhere, but there is nothing like Young Living anywhere else in the world.

I met a woman at a CARE conference for instructors back in 2004 or 2005 (CARE is the Center for Aromatherapy Research and Education and can be found at www.raindroptraining.com on the web). Anyway, I met another instructor who was there, named Mindy Kirby, who told several of us about her introduction to Young Living. Mindy, a licensed massage therapist, had her own herb and spice garden. She raised everything organic. She sang to her plants and played soothing music for them, and prayed for them. She had her own table top distiller, and distilled her own oils to use in her massage practice. Mindy was absolutely meticulous in her distilling practices, using only the best spring waters and being careful of distillation times and temperatures. And one day, a woman visited Mindy and told her, “You have really great oils, you should meet this guy Gary Young. You’d love his Young Living oils.”

Mindy said she thanked the woman, and took the information offered, but she wasn’t at all interested because she knew no one on the planet would ever take all the time and care and love to do what she did for her garden, her plants, and her oils. So, nothing else could be anywhere near so good as hers. That woman was just misinformed and undereducated. She just didn’t know the difference between good oils and great oils.

Well, a few weeks later, another woman came in Mindy’s shop and said, “Wow, it smells wonderful in here. You have really great oils. They smell almost as good as that guy Gary Young’s oils.”

Mindy said that made her really quite angry. What did she mean almost as good. Mindy really had to work to hold her tongue, but she managed. But really, she thought no one would make better oils than she did herself. They wouldn’t take the time, or give the plants and the oils the love, and the care and nurturing. It was too costly, too time consuming.

Then a few weeks later, another person came into her shop and said, ”You have some really great oils, here. You must really love your plants like that guy Gary Young. Only, you know, he does it on a much bigger scale.”

Mindy decided right then that she was going to find out who this Gary Young person was. And she was going to do it in a way that would prove these people were spreading lies because some yahoo told them things that they believed without ever questioning what they were being told. So Mindy took a vacation. She drove out to Utah, to the Young Living Farm, all the way from North Carolina, unannounced. Nobody knew her. No one knew she was coming. No appointments were made, no phone calls. Because she was going to just stop by and see what was there, and then she’d tell those yahoos a thing or two if they ever came back to her shop.

Well, when Mindy drove up to the Young Living Farm in Utah, and got out of her car, the first thing she heard was soft music floating on the breeze, and the smell of Lavender was a sweet, heavenly blanket that just wrapped itself around her. And there, standing out in the middle of the fields of Lavender talking to his plants, and loving them, and praying over them was none other than Gary Young. Mindy said she was stunned. These people weren’t crazy. They weren’t yahoos. They were telling her the truth. Gary Young was doing exactly the same thing she did only he was doing it on a massive scale. She became a Young Living member that day and says she has never regretted it.

Now, things change, and you probably won’t find that exact same scenario if you drive out to the Young Living Farms in Utah today, but if you were in St Maries helping with this Balsam Harvest, then you would know and you would believe in Young Living and in Gary Young. You couldn’t help yourself. When you test the mettle of a man and see him in adverse situations, and see the caring heart of the man, and understand what drives him to do the things he does, you cannot help but admire him. You may not agree with him on everything he does, but you have to admire what he has accomplished, and the passion he has for oils.

I had the privilege of participating in 7 trainings taught by Gary Young and some of the most wonderful memories of my lifetime were at those trainings. If you have the opportunity to participate in the Lavender Harvest, do it. If you have the opportunity to go to Ecuador to study with Gary, do it. If you have the opportunity to spend any time with Gary Young, DO IT.

I am so grateful to David and Lee Stewart, and to my dear sweet husband, Ed, who got me to that first training with Gary. It was in Toronto, Canada, in October, 1999. That training changed my life for the better, in ways that I could not have begun to imagine. It cannot be expected or projected, it can only be experienced. And hearing many of the same comments, almost word for word, from the people who were up at that Balsam Harvest as I had made myself during those early trainings with Gary Young all those years ago, brought back so many heart-warming memories.

When you know Gary Young, when you work side by side with him, when you face adversity with him, you will know the truth and integrity and determination and vision of the man who founded Young Living Essential Oils.

I know many of you are struggling right now, and/or living in areas where all the people around you are struggling. What do you think all these people were doing up there harvesting Balsam at below zero temperatures and working 20 hour days or longer, many of the corporate executives and volunteers doing jobs they knew little or nothing about? They were struggling. Struggling to keep up. Struggling to keep going. Struggling to be safe. Struggling to help and do whatever had to be done. Struggling against the cold and the pain and the lack of sleep. Yet they entered into this struggle willingly. Why?

They were entering into struggle willingly in order to create something wonderful, magnificent, and healing.

They were pouring their hearts and souls, and love, into every tree and every twig and every action, so that all of us could enjoy the benefits of Idaho Balsam Fir oil.

Most of us seek to avoid struggle and adversity, pain and suffering. But here’s the truth…

Times of adversity are the birthplace of opportunity and prosperity.

Adversity creates hardship and that motivates us to do something. But you get to choose. You can either sit on the sidelines and cry and complain, or you can do something. What you do is going to determine how much opportunity and prosperity you experience.

Think about it…

Why do we have electric lights instead of oil lamps? Because of the years of struggle made by a few men like Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse. They knew they could do something to make life better for others, even though everyone said they were wasting their time on an insolvable problem – how to get electricity in every home.

Why do we have washing machines instead of wash boards? Why do we have electric dishwashers instead of continuing to wash dishes the old fashioned way? Why do we have computers instead of slide rules? Because of the hardships endured by many, many people and the desire to avoid hardship.

Why do we have a phone and email? Why do we have America’s Most Wanted, and Amber Alerts, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. These things and many, many more were all born out of adversity.

Every fiction writer is taught that without conflict there is no story. Without obstacles to overcome there is no hero who succeeds. God is the Master Story Writer, and I tell you now that the adversity this country and her people are facing is preparation for a brighter future, if we do not fall into sloth and negativity. And if you are facing adversity in your life today, then truly it is come to you as a blessing and not for your harm. But you must pick yourself up. You must reject the temptation of self pity and doubt. You must take positive action and keep your mind strongly anchored in positive thoughts.

Joel Osteen says:

We all have seasons when the challenges of life feel overwhelming. During those times it’s easy to be tempted to talk about how bad things are…But the more you talk about something, the bigger it becomes in your mind. Instead, you’ve got to dig your heels in and say, “No. I am not going to give life to that defeat. I am not going to speak sickness over myself. I’m not going to speak lack. I’m not going to speak fear. I’m choosing a different report. I believe the report of the Lord which says I am blessed. I am favored. I am prosperous. I am healthy. I am whole. I am a victor, not a victim.”

Remember, even if you don’t see how things could ever work out, God does. You’ve got to speak to those mountains in your life and declare God’s favor over those situations. Instead of talking to God about how big your problems are, talk to your problems about how big your God is. As you speak to your mountains, they will be moved, and you will move forward into the victory God has prepared for you.

Do you know why Gary Young and all those other folks are up there in frigid temperatures and harsh conditions doing this?

Because there is this tiny window of time when the temperature is cold enough and the days short enough, that the very best quality of oil comes up strong in those trees. And that means they can harvest the fewest trees and get a high production of oil, as well as the best quality of oil.

Now what company on the planet, what millionaire, would go to such trouble, go through so much adversity, just to collect a few gallons of oil from a small patch of timber?

Only Young Living. Only Gary Young. And when you hear the joy that tinges every word spoken by the people who are up there, you know what Young Living is all about.

Remember: Adversity is the Birthplace of Opportunity and Prosperity. Don’t run from it. Don’t hide from it. Embrace it and just see what Miracles Happen in Your Life.