Sometimes I forget that I’m not in my 20’s anymore.
When I find myself faced with a physical challenge, like a hike that is far more intense and steep than I realized, I lean in. I have run enough marathons that I know how to muscle through challenging physical tasks, which can seem like a good thing.
Until the next day. When I am so sore that I can barely move.
It is in these moments that I genuinely appreciate the need for recovery days.
What are Recovery Days?
Rest and recovery are an essential part of the healing process. It helps you:
- Repair of muscles, tissues, joints, and tendons
- Replenish energy stores
- Reduce inflammation and soreness
- Boost recovery
- Prevent overtraining and injuries
- Build Strength and Support Muscle Growth
- Give the body time to rebuild and strengthen
Exercise can stress the body. If you’re exercising and operating in this stressful, high-cortisol state all of the time, you aren’t getting back to the rest and digest state, and your body isn’t able to heal.
When you challenge yourself physically, you are essentially breaking down and causing trauma to your body. Every time you push yourself beyond your current level of fitness, you are creating tiny micro-tears in your muscles. During rest, cells called fibroblasts repair it. This helps the tissue heal and grow, resulting in stronger muscles.
It’s important to remember that this process occurs during rest and recovery, not during physical activity. Without proper rest and recovery, there is not enough time for the muscles to grow back stronger. In addition, Lactic acid builds up in your muscles during hard exercise sessions. Resting gives your body a chance to flush out that excess lactic acid, so muscles feel less tired and sore.
What’s more, your muscles store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. During exercise, your body breaks down glycogen to fuel your workout. If these stores aren’t replaced, you’ll experience muscle fatigue and soreness.
Rest gives your body time to replenish these energy stores and prevent fatigue, strengthening the immune system and reducing the risk of mental burnout, injuries, and decreased performance.
Signs You Need a Rest Day
If you notice any of the following signs, it might be time to take a break:
- Fatigue: Feeling excessively tired, even after a whole night’s sleep, can be a sign of overtraining and the need for rest.
- Emotional changes: When you’re physically burnt out, hormones like serotonin and cortisol become imbalanced. You might notice you feel moody, irritable, cranky, unmotivated, or even depressed
- Sleeping issues: High levels of stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) from overtraining can interfere with sleep patterns, making it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep.
- Reduced performance: If your routine feels difficult or if you stop seeing progress, take a rest day.
- Sore muscles: It’s normal to be sore after a challenging workout. But if it feels like that soreness is more intense or doesn’t fade after a couple of days, you may be pushing too hard.
- Increased Resting Heart Rate: A higher-than-normal resting heart rate can indicate that your body is under stress and needs time to recover.
- Frequent Illnesses: Overworked muscles and imbalanced hormone levels can weaken the immune system, making you more susceptible to illness.
- Joint Pain or Inflammation: Persistent joint pain or swelling may indicate overuse injuries that require rest and recovery.
- Cravings for Comfort Foods: If you find yourself craving unhealthy foods or overeating, it could be a sign of overtraining and a need for rest.
- Lack of Motivation: A general lack of motivation to exercise, even when you’re not physically tired, could be a sign that you need a break.
- Difficulty Focusing: Overtraining can affect cognitive function, leading to difficulty concentrating or feeling mentally foggy.
Essential Oils for Exercise Recovery
Essential oils are known to help alleviate muscle soreness, pain, and inflammation, promoting muscle repair while enhancing mood and sleep quality.
Topically applied essential oils have been found to help put the body into balance, to help speed up the healing process, and reduce pain and discomfort. For example, essential oils can:
- Help improve blood flow and lymph flow to the affected area. Increased circulation helps carry nutrients to re-mineralize the bone so it can heal, along with carrying away debris.
- Help repair the tissue that may be fatigued or in need of rest and recovery.
- Relieve the local swelling and inflammation.
- Ease muscle soreness and relieve pain.
- Warm up the injured area. Heat is known to help improve circulation and reduce inflammation to speed up the healing process, as well as relieve the pain and swelling.
Essential oils are valued for their relaxing, stress-relieving, anti-inflammatory, and pain-relieving properties.
Research on “The Effectiveness of Aromatherapy in Reducing Pain” found that essential oils helped to “improve range of motion, reduce pain, reduce stiffness, and reduce stress.
1. Fascia Release™
Releasing your fascia is key to helping your body recover, unwind, and bounce back.
Fascia surrounds and attaches to your soft tissue and your bones and can play an essential role in your structural alignment and healing. For example, fascial adhesions can pull on bones or joints, stop blood from flowing, compress nerves, and contribute to pain and alignment issues that may benefit from rest and recovery.
More specifically, research shows that fascia is richly innervated, with the primary cell of the fascia—the fibroblast—secreting pro-inflammatory cytokines in response to strain in the connective tissue surrounding the bones and muscle cells. Calming fascia inflammation and supporting healthy fluid flow through the fascia may support healing.
The Fascia Release™ blend helps improve flexibility and mobility by helping to unravel deeply held tensions, constrictions, and release adhesions, fascial restrictions that impede movement, and energetic blockages in your tissues. Fascia Release™ also helps to increase circulation and lymph flow, which helps to move fluid out of the tissues of the organs, muscles, tendons, bones, and joints and consequently, decrease swelling and improve mobility and flexibility.
As you know, fascia lies just below the skin, so topically applying essential oils onto the skin allows for easy and immediate access to the fascia. The skin is your largest organ and is relatively permeable to fat-soluble substances like essential oils.
Topical supplements play an important role in supporting fascia health and recovery from inflammation. For example, essential oils easily penetrate layers of restricted fascia, creating warmth to break up congestion, increasing circulation, lymphatic drainage, and mobilizing adhered tissue.
Essential oils soften the myofascial tissue, allowing the deep and constrained tissue to stretch and move as it is designed to function. They also have an analgesic effect, relaxing the muscles and reducing pain.
Essential oils can be used to revitalize and de-stress the fascia and muscles, working quickly to break down inflamed, fibrous tissue, removing toxins from the painful area.
Topically applying Fascia Release™ liberally around the site of any discomfort may help break down inflamed, fibrous tissue, removing toxins while unraveling deeply held tensions, constrictions, and energetic blockages in your tissues to reduce pain, improve blood and lymphatic circulation to support health.
Fascia Release™ is uniquely formulated with penetrating essential oils, like Lavender™, which may help support key physical and mental symptoms of broken bones, including reducing pain, improving mood, and aiding with relaxation and sleep. Lavender™ possesses analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsant, and antispasmodic properties, making it an excellent choice for healing a broken bone. It is known to increase blood circulation, reduce inflammation, and calm nervous tension and nerve pain.
2. Lymph™
Your lymphatic system plays a crucial role in the body’s healing and recovery process. Acting as both a detox and immune support network, the lymphatic system helps clear waste, reduce inflammation, and deliver immune cells where they’re needed most.
Supporting the movement of lymphatic fluid helps to stimulate healing in injured areas. The lymphatic system is critical for moving metabolic waste, toxins, and infections out of the cells via the lymphatic fluid. It serves a dual role as a detoxification pathway and an essential part of the immune system to help heal injuries. Interstitial lymph fluid permeates every part of the body and flows through the lymph nodes, where toxins are filtered out, acting as a pre-filter for the liver to prevent clogging and liver overload. The lymphatic system also helps carry nutrients, oxygen, hormones, and other healing substances into every cell.
Unfortunately, the lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump, and lymphatic fluid can accumulate and stagnate. The more you can help the lymph fluid flow, the more quickly you can heal from injuries and remove toxins that contribute to pain, swelling, and inflammation in the body. Increasing blood flow and lymphatic drainage can help improve the range of motion and speed up recovery time.
To support lymphatic drainage and movement, generously apply Lymph™ around the sides of the neck, under the left clavicle, in the armpits, and in the groin.
3. Circulation™
Healthy circulation delivers the oxygen, nutrients, and immune cells your tissues need to regenerate. It removes waste products from soft tissue broken down by intense exercise and inflammatory byproducts that slow healing.
Circulation™ blend helps support the delivery of oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the site of injury. Formulated to support healthy circulation to deliver oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the body and the brain, while simultaneously carrying toxins and waste away from the cells to be eliminated, Circulation™ blend may help open the vasculature to allow for optimal blood flow to both carry healing oxygen and nutrients to cells that help repair and rebuild muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
Circulation™ contains powerful oils known to support bone repair, including Cypress oil, which is an anti-spasmodic known to improve circulation and reduce fatigue and stress. Similarly, Nutmeg oil soothes pain, and research proves that the anti-inflammatory properties reduce pain and swelling. Ginger oil also significantly reduces inflammation, blocks pain, and increases antioxidant activity. Black pepper is known as one of the best oils for muscular aches and pains due to its ability to warm muscles and improve circulation. Apply 2-3 drops of Circulation™ on the sides or back of the neck, over the left clavicle, or on the wrists or ankles to help increase blood flow.
4. Anti Inflammatory™
Inflammation is a natural and necessary part of healing. It’s your body’s first response to injury, infection, or stress—sending immune cells, blood flow, and repair molecules to the site of damage. But when inflammation lingers too long or becomes chronic, it can stall healing, cause pain, and lead to further tissue damage.
Anti-Inflammatory blend is designed to reduce inflammation and encourage regeneration of damaged or stressed connective tissues. Anti-Inflammatory™ is especially helpful for calming inflammation in protective tissues around nerves, reducing the inflammatory compression that contributes to nerve inflammation. Anti-Inflammatory™ contains Ylang-ylang, which has healing properties that repair nerve damage. It also includes Frankincense™, which is known for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties and has been shown to improve accurate transmission and communication of messages between the nerves and the brain. Incorrect messages to the brain’s limbic system can result in nerve pain, so improving the accuracy of signals can eliminate pain.
Anti Inflammatory™ also contains ginger, an excellent antioxidant which can help reduce muscle pain, joint stiffness, and swelling due to its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties. Research from the University of Georgia shows that ginger helps fight inflammation and reduce exercise-induced muscle pain. Ginger oil is ideal for fractures, internal bleeding, and tissue damaged by pieces of broken bones. It also helps to improve circulation and fight the joint and muscle pains related to broken bones. Apply 2-3 drops of Anti Inflammatory™ to any inflamed area of the body, or the bottom of the feet, 3x daily.
5. Parasympathetic®
Physical movement is a form of healthy stress—it challenges your body so it can adapt, get stronger, and build resilience. But the real magic of recovery happens after the workout, when your body shifts into the parasympathetic nervous system state, often called “rest and digest”. All healing, repair, and rebuilding require activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.
Topical application of Parasympathetic® blend on the mastoid bone helps stimulate the vagus nerve and activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
The Clove oil contained in the Parasympathetic® blend has been used throughout history to relieve pain. For example, dentists long used clove oil to help treat and relieve pain. Clove oil makes an ideal natural painkiller due to its anti-inflammation, antispasmodic, and analgesic properties. It is thought to work by blocking nerve signals from sending the message of pain from the body to the brain, thus giving the user a break from pain. Research supports the pain-relieving properties of clove essential oil, correlating the high concentration of eugenol, found in clove oil in levels upward of 88.58 percent, with clove’s pain reduction properties, as Eugenol is commonly used as a local antiseptic and anesthetic.
An additional study conducted by the Journal of Planta Medica discovered that a chemical compound present in clove essential oil was successful at recovering nerve functions of rats with diabetic neuropathy.
Parasympathetic® oil can also be used to reduce the body’s inflammatory response. Similarly, the warming characteristic of clove oil is thought to provide numbing relief from pain, and the antioxidants found in this oil assist in the protection of body cells.
6. Nerve Repair™
Nerve Repair™ supports healing for the bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments and helps repair damaged nerves, relieve pain, stimulate circulation, ease inflammation, and help regenerate new cells. It is a great pain reliever and helps in the healing, regeneration, and repair of nerve cells and connective tissue. It is formulated from organic and/or wild-crafted essential oils known to assist in repairing damaged nerves, including Basil, which is one of the best nerve tonics. Deemed a divine plant by Hindus in India, basil is a significant ingredient in the treatments used to combat nerve pain and nerve damage. In a research study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, basil oil was concluded to be particularly helpful in reducing nerve damage symptoms and increasing nerve receptivity. Characterized by its analgesic, antidepressant, antispasmodic, and balancing properties, basil essential oil is simultaneously beneficial in calming nerve pain and offering stimulation to nerves, even helping to repair connective tissue. Basil oil was also found to produce painkilling effects on mice with chronic muscle pain, leading researchers to suggest basil oil as a potential method of pain relief for those with fibromyalgia.
Nerve Repair™ also contains Helichrysum italicum and Marjoram, which act as a natural pain reliever, an arterial vasodilator (helping to dilate blood vessels), and a tonic and stimulant for the entire nervous system. Research has shown that Marjoram helps to strengthen the nervous system and speed up the healing process of the injured nerves by improving the damaged area. Marjoram provides soothing and warming effects, offering pain relief to tired muscles. Marjoram also supports the treatment of swelling and inflammation, contributing to its effectiveness in treating nerve pain. In addition, majoram has a mild sedative effect which provides relief from chronic pain. Massage 2-3 drops around the injury or on the bottom of the feet as needed.
Peppermint™ possesses analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-spasmodic properties that relieve aches, pain, and inflammation, as well as calming the spasms that cause muscle cramps, making it ideal for recovery. The menthol contained in Peppermint™ oil naturally warms the skin and muscles to improve circulation in the area of injury. This enhanced blood circulation stimulates the nerves and helps to heal damaged and injured nerves. Peppermint™ also helps to reduce inflammation and ease pain and discomfort. It can also help reduce fluid retention, allowing you to recover a full range of motion.
Helichrysum italicum is renowned for its pain-relieving properties and ability to aid in improved circulation, accelerated healing, and decreased muscle pain. Helichrysum™ helps to strengthen the nervous system, relieving nerve pain while regenerating and healing damaged nerves around broken bones. Known for its antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, and mild sedative properties, Helichrysum™ has been used historically as a treatment for muscle spasms, decreasing nerve pain, helping repair connective tissue, and reducing swelling and inflammation both inside and outside the body. As it helps rebuild cells, it may be beneficial in healing ligaments and tendons around the injured bone, helping to reduce associated pain. We sell Helichrysum™ as both a single oil and as part of our Nerve Repair™ blend. As we only work with the highest quality oil from Corsica, our single oil is costly. Apply topically (over broken bone or bottom of the foot) 3x daily. To release pain and stress, you can also apply 1-2 drops on the base of your neck.
7. Circadian Rhythm®
Sleep and rest are essential for recovery. During sleep, your body is actively working to repair and grow muscles. Sleep is also helpful for regulating hormones, boosting the immune system, and strengthening overall mood. When you sleep, your body releases hormones that help repair muscle tissue and boost the immune system. Circadian Rhythm® blend is designed to help you fall asleep, triggering the pineal gland in your brain to release the sleep hormone melatonin naturally to help you fall asleep.
Topically applied essential oils can play a massive role in supporting the pineal gland in releasing melatonin naturally. They can be especially powerful in helping the brain, as the brain is comprised primarily of fat, and essential oils are fat-soluble, so they easily penetrate and assimilate into the system.
Your nose is a direct gateway to the brain and the pineal gland. To stimulate the olfactory passage to activate the pineal gland, inhale Circadian Rhythm® oil or apply topically on specific spots around the head—on the very top of the head, the back of the head, or the skin above the ears.
The pineal gland is located in the center of the brain, so topically applying oils directly around the brain allows transdermal access. Circadian Rhythm® blend can also help detoxify the pineal gland to enhance melatonin release with its numerous healing properties.
Featured Oils:
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