Nila Singapore Aromatherapy Bar | Having Trouble Sleeping? DIscover the 7 Best Essential Oils for Sleep and Relaxation

Having Trouble Sleeping? Try These 7 Expert Approved Essential Oils for Sleep and Relaxation

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Finding the perfect way to unwind after a long day can feel like an elusive search, especially when stress and busy schedules leave you wide awake at night with a racing mind. This is where essential oils come in—nature’s way of providing calm and comfort. The soothing effects of certain essential oils can lead to improved sleep, better focus and a greater sense of overall wellbeing, helping you feel more balanced and energised.

In this blog post, we will explore the 7 best essential oils for sleep and relaxation. Whether you are a seasoned aromatherapy lover or just starting to dip your toes into the world of aromatherapy, we promise that there is something for you. These essential oils are carefully selected not just for their ability to genuinely help you relax and unwind, but also for the ease of use and how well they blend together.

Ready to finally say goodbye to tossing and turning, and hello to restful, rejuvenating nights filled with peaceful sleep? Let’s dive in and find the perfect essential oils for you!

Table of Contents

Why Aromatherapy Works

Aromatherapy has gained a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. It taps into the powerful connection between our senses and emotions, offering a natural way to support both our mental and physical wellbeing.

One of the most amazing things about the healing properties essential oils is that they contain compounds that not only smell good, but also interact with your brain's chemistry. By using the science of essential oils, aromatherapy can influence your mood, reduce stress and even enhance your overall health. This is why using essential oils for sleep and relaxation is so effective.

But why and how exactly does aromatherapy work so well? Let’s break it down into a few key points.

  • Mind-Body Connection: One of the main ways in which how aromatherapy works is by engaging our sense of smell, which is directly linked to our brain's emotional center, the limbic system. This connection allows certain scents to trigger emotional and physiological responses. For example, when we smell the fresh zingy scent of lemons, most of us would think of the household brand "Mama Lemon" and this may evoke feelings of cleanliness.
  • Skin Absorption and Therapeutic Benefits: When essential oils (diluted appropriately) are applied to our skin, they are absorbed into our body through our largest organ. This allows the therapeutic compounds in the essential oils to enter our bloodstream, where they can exert their effects on various systems in our body. This method of absorption is particularly effective for targeting localised issues, such as pain, muscle tension or certain skin conditions like eczema.
  • Holistic Approach: Aromatherapy supports a holistic approach to health by addressing our mind, body and spirit. It is a complementary therapy that can be used together with conventional medicine, making aromatherapy a versatile tool for enhancing your wellness routine.
  • Natural and Accessible: One of the greatest benefits of aromatherapy is that it offers a natural, non-invasive way to support our health and wellbeing, making it an accessible option for everyone who wants to improve their quality of life.

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Expert Approved Essential Oils for Sleep and Relaxation

When used before bedtime, certain essential oils can help to ease stress and anxiety, creating the perfect environment for a restful night’s sleep.

Here is a list of 7 of the best essential oils for sleep and relaxation as recommended by Founder of Nila Singapore, Clinical Aromatherapist and Aromatherapy Educator Adeline Lim.

1. Lavender Essential Oil

  • Scientically Proven to Improve Sleep Quality: Lavender is a popular natural sleep aid, and well known for helping to quiet the mind and promote a restful sleep. It has been scientifically proven that inhaling Lavender essential oil at night can help to improve your sleep quality, reduce sleep disturbance and lead to more energy in the daytime.
  • Reduces Stress and Anxiety: Lavender is a calming, relaxing and uplifting essential oil that is one of the best go-to essential oils for sleep and relaxation. It has a soothing, gentle floral scent that reduces stress and anxiety by lowering the levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) in your body.
  • Versatile and Easy to Use: Lavender is one of the most gentle and safe essential oils. It can be easily incorporated into various aspects of your daily routine, whether through diffusing, topical application (after diluting with a carrier oil) or adding a few drops to your nighttime skincare products. Lavender essential oil is safe to use for both adults and children, and has a very low reported incidence of skin reactions.

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2. Bergamot Essential Oil

  • Promotes Emotional Balance and Uplifts Spirits: Bergamot essential oil is known for its ability to help balance emotions, smooth out mood swings and restore a sense of inner calm and stability. Its warm and citrusy aroma is naturally uplifting, giving you a subtle mood boost and relieving feelings of stress and anxiety.
  • Encourages Restful Sleep: With its calming properties, Bergamot is an excellent essential oil for sleep as it encourages a deep relaxation. Inhalation of Bergamot essential oil can help to release mental and physical tension, while also putting your body in a state of rest.
  • Reduces Feelings of Stress: Bergamot is often used to ease tension in your mind and body, and is useful when you are facing stressful situations. It helps alleviate anxious thoughts, providing a grounding effect that can help you feel less overwhelmed during challenging times.

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3. Roman Chamomile Essential Oil

  • Natural Sleep Aid for Insomnia: Roman Chamomile is a powerful essential oil when used to combat insomnia. Its deeply sweet and warm aroma is extremely calming, helping to quiet a restless mind and making it easier to drift into a deep, restorative sleep.
  • Comforting for Emotional Wellbeing: Roman Chamomile offers emotional comfort, helping to alleviate feelings of sadness or irritability and fostering a sense of warmth and wellbeing.
  • Encourages Gentle Rejuvenation: Roman Chamomile is excellent for relieving mental and physical tension, helping you to relax and releases the stresses of the day. It also supports a gentle sense of rejuvenation, helping you to sleep easily with a clear and calm mind.

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4. Linaloe Berry Essential Oil

  • Strong Sedative Properties: Linaloe Berry essential oil, also known as Tree of Fragrance or Lavender of India, is highly valued for its strong and powerful sedative effects, making it an excellent choice for promoting deep relaxation. It can help you unwind, release the stresses of the day, and fall asleep quickly and easily.
  • Eases Respiratory Discomfort: Linaloe Berry essential oil is particularly soothing for respiratory issues, making it easier to breathe comfortably, especially useful for those who sleep with air conditioning all night or those who struggle with allergies such as dustmites or hayfever.
  • Emotional Support During Stressful Times: Linaloe Berry provides strong emotional support especially when you are feeling stressed or wrung out. With its floral and citrus scent, this essential oil works to stabilise your emotions and anxieties during challenging times and offering comfort when you need it most.

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5. Frankincense Serrata Essential Oil

  • Promotes Emotional Grounding: Frankincense Serrata, with its rich, earthy and deep aroma, has a long history of use in meditation and mindfulness practices. It is known for its ability to help ground your emotions, which makes it beneficial for helping to calm your mind and prepare you for a night of uninterrupted rest.
  • Encourages Stability and Inner Peace: Frankincense is helpful in quietening our minds and providing a sense of stability and inner peace, especially during moments of emotional upheaval. For those of us with overactive and racing minds, this esential oil is excellent for helping your mind to be still and relax.
  • Reduces Stress: The calming scent of Frankincense Serrata helps to ease mental stress and anxiety, encouraging a more relaxed and centered state of mind.

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6. Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

  • Soothes Emotional Distress: Ylang Ylang essential oil is known for its ability to soothe emotional distress. It has a deep, sweet and exotic floral aroma and has traditionally been used to help to calm feelings of fear, depression, panic and anxiety.
  • Encourages Relaxation and Deep Sleep: Ylang Ylang can be used to promote a deep sense of relaxation due to its sedative properties and ability to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. This can make it easier to for you unwind after a stressful day and release any emotional burdens, which can contribute to a restless night or broken sleep.
  • Supports a Balanced Mood: By uplifting our mood and easing tension, Ylang Ylang helps to gently lift away feelings of heaviness and encouraging a more positive and stable outlook. For this reason, it ranks highly in the list of top essential oils for sleep and relaxation.

A note of caution, Ylang Ylang essential oil has a very strong scent that can be overpowering if overused. When using this essential oil for sleep, it is better to use lesser rather than more.

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7. Cedarwood Essential Oil

  • Grounding and Calming: Cedarwood essential oil has a soft, foresty scent, reminding us of the powerful grounding energy of trees. It helps to center your thoughts and provide a sense of stability, making it easier to fall asleep and also supporting a deeper, more restful sleep throughout the night.
  • Boosts Emotional Resilience: Cedarwood essential oil helps to fortify emotional resilience, providing support in managing everyday stresses and promoting a balanced and composed state of mind.
  • Reduces Nervous Tension: Cedarwood essential oil’s soothing properties work to alleviate nervous tension and stress, offering a calming influence that helps to ease mental and physical strain.

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How to Incorporate Aromatherapy Into Your Nightly Routine

There are several ways to include aromatherapy into your bedtime ritual.

  • One of the easiest methods to benefit from essential oils at night is to diffuse your favourite essential oils before bedtime, filling your bedroom with a calming aroma that helps you to drift off to sleep quickly and naturally.
  • Another option is to place 1 or 2 drops of essential oil on your pillow, or on a piece of tissue and leave this on your bedside table. This way, you will be able to enjoy a subtle aroma all night long without it being too overpowering.
  • You can also dilute the essential oils in a carrier oil and apply them to your pulse points just before going to bed. This will help you not just to enjoy their aroma but also to benefit therapeutically from the essential oils.

When using essential oils for sleep and relaxation, the best thing is to experiment with different methods of using essential oils and find out what works the best for you. Every individual is different—Some people may enjoy the ritual of setting up a diffuser as part of establishing a bedtime routine, while others might prefer a quicker and more convenient approach of simply having some drops of essential oils on their pillow.

You can also try out different combinations of essential oils to find out what best aligns with your needs. For instance, a mix of Lavender and Roman Chamomile in your diffuser can create a serene atmosphere in your bedroom and is excellent in helping with anxiety, while a blend of Linaloe Berry and Cedarwood can help prepare you for a good night’s sleep if you struggle with allergies affecting your sleep. The best thing about aromatherapy is how you can constantly change and use different combinations of essential oils, depending on what your needs are at the time.

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Trusted Sources for Aromatherapy Products

Choosing high quality essential oils is key to enjoying the full benefits of aromatherapy. Nila Singapore Aromatherapy Bar was recently featured in TheGirl.co's list of 8 Best Aromatherapy for Girls’ Sleep and Relaxation, which highlights some of the top aromatherapy products available for promoting sleep and relaxation. This is a great resource for discovering the best options to support your wellness journey.

TheGirl.Co is a Singaporean resource for beauty, health and lifestyle advice, dedicated to empowering women. They celebrate self-growth and informed choices, offering curated recommendations and insights for every aspect of a woman’s life.

What makes Nila Singapore different?

Founded in 2013 by certified clinical aromatherapist Adeline Lim, Nila Singapore is a local, homegrown and female-led small business with an all-aromatherapist team that specialises in the best essential oils and aromatherapy products in Singapore. At Nila, we are driven by our passion for nature and the healing power of plants. Our mission is to share our knowledge of the therapeutic properties of essential oils and advocating the safe usage of aromatherapy to harness the power of nature’s essences.

We take pride in offering premium essential oils that go through strict quality controls to ensure you receive the best that nature has to offer. Our wide range of essential oils are sourced directly from local farms all around the world, and have undergone rigorous testing with independent third party laboratories to ensure that they are pure, high quality and free from contaminants or adulterants. These GC/MS test reports are available on request, highlighting our transparency and commitment to you.

Our essential oil blends, roll-ons and other aromatherapy products are also personally handcrafted in small batches by our founder Adeline, a certified clinical aromatherapist who brings decades of experience and expertise to formulating each blend and product. Our commitment to quality and authenticity guarantees that every purchase supports your wellbeing with products that are both ethically sourced and professionally formulated, and that you get only the very best and most effective essential oils for your wellness journey.

When you choose to shop with Nila Singapore, you can trust that each product is crafted with the utmost care and expertise. With us, you are not just buying essential oils, you are investing in your health and embracing the true essence of natural healing.

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Conclusion

Incorporating essential oils into your bedtime routine can transform your approach to achieving restful sleep and deep relaxation.

Each of the essential oils that we have explored in this blog post offers unique benefits that can help you to relax, lower your stress levels and help you to fall asleep quicker and more deeply. The list of essential oils for sleep and relaxation is not exhaustive; but it gives a good starting point for those looking to try out aromatherapy as a natural remedy for sleep.

As you explore these essential oils, remember that finding the right essential oils and blends for your needs can be a personal journey. Embrace the process, and let the soothing power of essential oils guide you to more peaceful and restorative nights. Don't be afraid to explore different essential oils and combinations to find out what truly works for you.

If you wish to learn more about holistic natural remedies to managing stress and improving your quality of life, join us for our Aromatherapy Certification Course. Launched by Nila Institute of Aromatherapy, this internationally certified and accredited course is designed to give you a solid foundation in aromatherapy, master essential oil blending techniques and connect you to a warm and welcoming community of aromatherapists.

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