Relearning How to Hear Plants: Encouraging Intuitive Development in Aromatherapy
A journey through ancient wisdom, personal healing, and the forgotten feminine art of intuitive connection

I felt something stir during Michelle Roques O’Neil’s Vibrational Aromatherapy class this week. A yearning for intuitive development reclaimed its voice. Another woman doing the course echoed my thoughts: that “traditional” aromatherapy now feels very linear. That our strict methods—grouping oils into scientific families and confining our practice within rigid parameters—feel patriarchal in contrast to the receptive, feminine arts of gnosis. The ways of receiving directly from the plants, beyond doctrine or method.

I felt myself breathe out. It was as if I had been waiting for someone else to say it. Almost as if I were afraid to say it out loud. That in an industry full of women, it feels strange to me that people have turned their backs on feminine arts. That we seem set upon following the two gods of Safety and Quality but are afraid to hear our own voices—or the voices of the plants.

It felt marvellous to be in such company yesterday. Interestingly, none of the women were what you'd call “very woo.” All were incredibly grounded, skilled in their own fields of energy work and oils. It felt like I was participating in a masterclass in intuitive development. What was most fabulous was—it wasn’t I who was running it. It unfolded in front of me like a dream.

Then I went to bed and dreamed… and so many thoughts came flooding in.

Has Aromatherapy Become Too Linear?

Modern aromatherapy, like much of natural medicine, evolved with the times. And that’s marvellous—because we needed it.
We needed safety standards. We needed scientific validation.

But somehow, somewhere, the art of the practice—that intuitive dance between human and plant—was pushed quietly into the margins.

What was once lived as a conversation between a family of species—brother plants, sister bees, grandparent rocks—has been reduced to a rigid structure of protocols.

We blend with top, middle, and base notes. We think about symptoms first, and from that we recommend from a series of set oils with prescribed actions.

I mean, don’t get me wrong—structure serves, and safety matters.

But when the map becomes more important than:
a) the actual crisis a person is experiencing in that unique moment in time, and
b) the relationship with the plant that you’re asking to provide the medicine…
I dunno, it feels like something really important got lost.

Ancient Listening: How Our Ancestors Knew Without Knowing

These aren’t new thoughts for me. They’re not even new frustrations. But I’ve felt the itch get itchier.

I think it’s probably been brought together by three threads. The Morai—The Fates—seem to be contriving to get me to spin a new one. Such is the way of my guide, Lachesis.

The first thread is a book I’ve just started reading: Awake in the Wild by Mark Coleman. It feels like I found an oasis to drink from when parched. I was so thirsty for its beauty. I can’t get enough of it. In it, he describes the wonderful Jane Goodall talking about her time with the Mestizo Indians in the Peruvian rainforest:

“Knowing how close they live to the land, Jane asked the Mestizo Indians how they distinguish between healing and poisonous herbal plants. The Mestizo Indians looked somewhat perplexed and answered that they listen to the plants in order to sense which are healing and which are harmful. For them, that deep level of attunement to the natural world is so innate they don’t realize how unique it is.”

I mean… of course!

The Pitfalls of Not Having Undertaken Intuitive Development

(Always Makes Me Giggle)

It reminded me of how much I chuckled when I was writing my book about helichrysum, whose secondary metabolites are so adaptive and fickle. They diversify not just country to country, but almost field to field. I kept imagining these ethnobotanists—sent by the drug companies in the '90s—trying to learn from the medicine men:

“Well, you’d need to go and find one from the field across the road, on the east side of the log so the morning sun’s fallen on it…”

It must have been ridiculous trying to document and classify everything the medicine men said about a plant that shapeshifts so much. For the people who talked to the plants, it was probably easy:

“It’s just having a bad day today because there hasn’t been enough dew. Maybe come back tomorrow.”

Oh yes. I bet their bosses loved that monograph when they got back.

Yeah. Not easy, I’m sure.

But that’s the difference. Plant healers don’t have to experiment in the way we imagine it today—because they’re in communion with the plant.

About ten years ago, I posed a question on LinkedIn. I don’t think it was a standalone post—maybe in a thread—but I remember asking what I thought was a very obvious question:

How did the ancients decide which plants made good medicines?

I was puzzled by the answers people gave:
“They experimented.” “They observed.”

I was bewildered. Their answers completely missed the point.

Yes. Obviously, they did.
But where did the original spark come from that inspired them to look?

What first inspirited imaginings of the Doctrine of Signatures—or medical astrology?

What unseen impulse made someone wonder if violet could help you sleep?

The only explanation I can come up with is: someone, somewhere, somehow heard the plants speak.

Is that really so far-fetched? Is it so different from believing someone might understand Chinese or Swahili?

More People Now Seem to Be Prioritising Intuitive Development

And that fills me with joy.

Or perhaps people always did, and I just found my tribe. Either way, the shift feels radical.

Because thirty years ago, people used to look at me as if I’d gone mad when I suggested they rub our headache cream on their forehead for, well, their headache. People get it now. It makes way more sense than swallowing a pill.

This feels the same.

Like people are beginning to catch up. Like it’s dawning on them that if trees can talk to each other through the mycelium… if they can communicate their desires to insects…
Why wouldn’t they want to talk to us?

It seems highly unlikely they’re racist toward two-leggeds, don’t you think?

After all, we have rather a lot of influence upon their existence.

They can only gain by more of us trying to learn their language.

I dunno. Either way…

My Own Crossroads: When Criticism Became a Cage

There was a time, not so long ago, when I almost walked away from aromatherapy entirely.

It felt increasingly stinted. Cold. Adversarial. Hollowed out.

A series of simultaneous incidents collided to crystallize my thoughts.

The First Event

I shared a tip about working with wintergreen essential oil for sinus headaches. To use a homeopathic dose of the oil on the top of your head on the acupressure point DU-20, also enchantingly known as 'Hundred Meetings.'

To achieve this, you blend one drop of wintergreen essential oil with fourteen drops of carrier oil, then use just one drop of that, in a teaspoon of carrier oil.

It is very, very dilute, and while wintergreen used to be classed as a hazardous oil, it no longer is, and the post was accompanied with cautions about blood thinners and aspirin…

It was a good post. It was helpful, safe, and thorough.

Nevertheless, a longtime follower lashed out, accusing me of dangerous practices, because, she said, her teacher had told her, fifteen years before, that wintergreen should never be used.

Then in the most spectacular social media flounce, she blocked me before I even had a chance to state my case (or honestly, if I look to my motivations, to have the last word!)

Then, Again, Same Week, Different Attack…

Someone formally complained about a recipe I had written, vehemently criticizing my use of pure rosehip carrier oil without adhering to the '5% dilution rule.'

There is no such rule. Using rosehip carrier oil in smaller amounts is advice based on how strong it is, that its richness can exacerbate acne and be wasteful.

To blend it with other oils is considered good practice. It is not a rule. But even if it were, not all rules are explicitly just, or even make much sense sometimes. We know that.

The recipe was for a burn with helichrysum. To me, it seems like folly to dilute the best medicine to do the job if there are no dangers forcing you to do it. So, I didn’t. And neither would I again.

The thing is though, both people had a right to say what they did, and anyone will tell you I love a good conversation about what you might know that I don’t. But neither of these were that. They were closures.

I know better than you.

And oh my goodness, I was so exhausted by the rigidity of these rules imposed by other people.

The fear of being 'wrong' completely choked the joy out of teaching about essential oils.

The Bee’s Flight Opened A New Doorway For Intuitive Development

But then something happened when I began my Melissa training, and like the bee that I am, something shifted, and I took flight.

I learned a meditation called The Walk of Infinite Flight, which traces the figure-of-eight dance of the bee.

Part of what it teaches is that between two points of polarity, there are many other truths in between.

You can’t just walk from joy to sadness without seeing connections between them. Between black and white are myriad shades of grey.

But what really changed me was the reaction of my teacher when I had done it.

In aromatherapy we celebrate people absorbing enough knowledge to come to realisations of things we already know. It’s so lovely when someone witnesses the same kinds of healing that you have seen, and it feels great that their own experiences have initiated them to the next level.

But when I shared my experience of the Walk, it was very clear to me that I had moved into somewhere new.

My teacher’s face revealed her as being ravenous to hear revelations she would have no reason to be exposed to.

For the Walk is about discovery. About knowing where you can find gold that the hive does not yet know about, and the invitation to reveal the discovery.

It is the ultimate expression of intuitive development, to have the confidence to reveal what you have found.

In the beehive, wonder is welcomed and epopteia—the witnessing of the Mysteries—is considered sacred.

It was then I realised that surely the bees were the original aromatherapists. And that feeling has never quite gone away.

Remembering Netjer: Nature as the Ever-Present Divine

I find it interesting that the ancient Egyptians called their gods Netjer — not 'gods' in the way we think of them, but forces of nature.

The rivers, the winds, the stars — alive with consciousness, intelligence, power.

To them, there was no division between secular and sacred.

Nature was divinity, and every interaction was an act of worship.

The Greeks understood it too, albeit in a different way. But read Ovid, particularly to see how his most beautiful heroes and heroines often morphed into flowers and trees.

To him, the gap between human and plant seems to have been really tiny.

I think the ultimately impressive connection though, must come from the Oracle of Delphi.

I can never quite get over how stolid her (or their, since there were many) commitment to spirit was.

For almost 1500 years, the Oracle worked with laurel to instruct the god Apollo she was ready to speak, and then somehow managed not only to channel His decisions about founding cities and winning wars, but even managed to do that in rhyming hexameter verse.

It must have been really amazing.

Could you channel a god through leaves…? Their intuitive development must have been off the scale!

I know I couldn’t — but maybe we should set our hearts on trying.

Because, goodness knows, this world needs sensible guidance from somewhere right now.

If More Intuitive Development Was Built into Aromatherapy — What Might We Learn?

I’ve been talking about worlds that are thousands of years old (although these practices still exist in the East, of course). But today’s world looks different. Heck, it’s even different from just ten years ago.

Today we have relationships across continents. Communities are woven across unseen networks and wires.

Some days we experience more things than some of our ancestors might have in a month.

We think differently. We move faster. We evolve.

So, if the world is evolving, so must the plants be too, right?

And so must their medicines be, surely?

Because no matter how big they are—from a forget-me-not to a sequoia—they are not static relics.

They live in this changing world. Breathe with us. And just like us, they must be learning to live with these new challenges.

We know they’ve adapted to clean up heavy metal debris, and have evolved into the foundations of medicines we never even dreamed of.

Are we arrogant enough to think we were the only ones who knew about COVID?

Is it such a reach to think that Eucalyptus citriodora somehow had a heads-up? Because the medicine had evolved. In the plant.

It doesn’t seem that mad to me that it would be found in a country where the old ways were always to communicate with the earth.

A Dance Between Intuition & Science

I think I should take a pause here to stress that I do not suggest we abandon safety or chuck thousands of years of accumulated knowledge in the bin…

Absolutely not. What a waste that would be, and the perils upon someone’s health by doing so are scary.

The opposite, in fact, is true.

I propose intuitive development as a deepened form of safety.

Learning to feel that subtle 'yes' or 'no' when you align human and botanical is just as vital as knowing chemical constituents.

To work safely with plants is to respect their power.

To work intuitively with plants is to embrace it.

Science and spirit are not adversaries. They partner in the healing work we are called to do. They elevate and transform it.

Supportive Practices for Intuitive Development

If you do feel the pull to start listening to the plants, I’ve a few tips that might help you:

• Use essential oils intuitively. Choose one by scent or feeling before you read its properties.

• Meditate with one plant regularly. Sit near it. Breathe with it. Let it teach you its nature without words. Consider approaching the plant in different ways — perhaps with tea, its fruit, or by visiting it at different times of day (especially white flowers pollinated by moths—it’s fascinating to feel how that changes).

• Keep a “Plant Dreams” journal. Record images, feelings, or lessons you receive in sleep. Try to do it the second you wake. Even if you think you can’t remember, ask yourself how the dream felt. Were there colours? Try to feel into that.

• Practice silent observation. Watch a tree, a flower, an herb—not for what you can use it for, but for who it is. My favourite is to sit with my back to the tree and feel the sacred reciprocity: I exhale carbon dioxide for it, and it exhales oxygen for me.

• Trust what comes. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Trust it. Journal it. Return to it. Even if it feels strange. Discovery begins with listening without judgment.

Intuitive development is not a sprint. It’s a slow, reverent return.

Conclusion: Healing Collective Amnesia

If this were a sales letter, I’d regale the benefits of intuitive development in aromatherapy, in priestess work, or simply for working with oils.

Each time you engage with a plant spirit, you inevitably also learn more about yourself.

Whether that’s through its essential oil, its living parts, or the voice you hear in your dreams—you will always discover parts of you that you didn’t know existed.

Parts that can only be opened once you start trusting and exercising your intuitive development.

Honestly, you will be amazed how little you know about yourself until you start walking liminal paths.

But more than that, you’ll tend to a part of yourself that, I feel, cries universally to be honoured.

For reconnection to something bigger, and to relearn the art of moving in the hidden places and being in relationship with the world.

And maybe then, that is full circle… because we are back to plant medicine.

Not the kind we might immediately search for in bottles. But nevertheless, it is there, waiting.

Access to the unseen realms is not lost. It can be unlocked by deliberately programming our intuitive development.

Join the revolution of intutitive development in aromatherapy in a community at www.aromaticmysteryschool.com

.