On APA's bookshelf: Aromatherapy with Chinese Medicine by Dennis Willmont

One of many fascinating subjects our students encounter in the Diploma Course for Holistic Aromatherapy is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). A good study companion is the following book written by Dennis Willmont.

Aromatherapy with Chinese Medicine explores the world of Aromatherapy from the Chinese herbal and acupuncture perspective. This point of view lends great insight into understanding how to create natural healing with essential oils on the levels of the Body, Mind, and Spirit.

Book Description:

The book has 3 parts and is designed to read either from cover to cover for a greater depth of insight into natural healing issues, or simply as a reference manual. It is four hundred seventy-one pages long in a hardbound format and contains one hundred eighty-six charts, graphs, and figures that make it easy to understand and use the concepts that are presented in the text as well as dozens of great illustrations of the plants used in the art of aromatherapy.

Contents:

Part I covers basic application techniques as well as various categories for organizing essential oil knowledge including Essential Oil Chemistry, the Functional Categories of Disease, and "The Five Phases". It also includes a thorough explanation of the seven Chakras as well as "The Twelve Spirit Points of Acupuncture" with methods of application.

Part II features ninety essential oils in depth with their Chinese names and includes sections on essential oil contents, properties, functions, uses, blends, contraindications, and discussions of character types and signatures. It also covers important Carrier Oils and forty-four Synergies analyzed by function. 

Part III covers how to use essential oil for health and disease and includes extensive chapters on psycho-emotional disorders, heart and circulatory disease, healing the Body, Mind, and Spirit, children's disorders, respiratory disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, as well as a full spectrum of other disease categories from addictions to urinary disorders. Readers can also find cooking recipes with essential oils and references for further study.

About the Author:

Dennis Willmont has been practicing acupuncture, Taijiquan and Daoist meditation for thirty years. In the early 1980s he directed the Training Program in Shiatsu and Acupressure at "The Acupuncture and Shiatsu Therapy Center in Boston" where his program in Acupressure became the standard of acupressure tested in national examinations by the American Oriental Bodywork Therapy Association today.

Dennis' choice to pursue shiatsu, acupuncture, and Chinese herbs was based upon their ideological similarity to the Daodejing where the body, mind, and spirit were thought of as different aspects of the same whole. Treating one level would, therefore, have a significant aspect on the other and the person could be treated as one whole unity instead of the fragmented self fostered by the drug and surgery-related symptomatic medicine of the West.

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