In July I begin the Foundations of Aromatherapy certification with The School of Aromatic Studies, run by Jade Shutes. This is the second formal qualification I have signed myself up for this year. The first, which I wrote about last month, is the CALLANETICS Foundation Instructor Training. The third, probably in 2027, will be herbalism. There will be more after that. The point of all of this is that between now and the launch of Botanicals & Company in 2030, I want every claim I make about a plant or an oil to sit on real training, not on twenty years of enthusiastic reading.

This post explains why aromatherapy, why now, why this particular school, and what the course actually covers. As with everything else in this four year project, I am writing it up openly so that anyone interested in following the build can follow along.

Why I should have done this years ago

The honest answer is that this training is long overdue. I have used essential oils since my twenties, blended my own facial oils since my thirties, and read more on the subject than is decent for a non specialist. I can identify most common oils by smell. I know what I would reach for to ease a tension headache, what to put in a blend for menstrual cramps, and what to offer a friend who has cried for a week and would like to come out of it.

What I cannot do, with full confidence, are the things that actually matter when you are building a brand. I cannot quote you, off the top of my head, the precise dilution percentage at which a given oil shifts from safe to sensitising for different skin types and use contexts. I cannot read a gas chromatography report at the level a clinical aromatherapist can. I have a working understanding of chemistry through my own science training, but I do not have the specific chemistry of essential oils properly mapped. I have a rough sense of contraindications, but rough is not good enough when you are recommending an ingredient to other women, particularly women in perimenopause or on medications that interact with herbs and oils in non obvious ways.

The Foundations course addresses all of that. So I am going to do it, alongside everything else, because no one else is going to do it for me.

Why this school

There are several reputable aromatherapy schools, both online and in person, and I considered the main ones before settling. The School of Aromatic Studies came out on top for a small number of specific reasons.

The accreditation set is unusually comprehensive. The school is recognised by both the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA) in the United States and the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists (IFPA) in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is also approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB), is an academic member of the American Botanical Council, and is an organisational member of United Plant Savers. The combination of clinical accreditation and plant ethics is what tipped the decision. There are schools with one or the other. There are not many with all of them.

Jade Shutes herself is the second reason. She founded the school and remains the lead teacher across the certification programmes. She has been teaching aromatherapy professionally for more than thirty years, has served on the board of NAHA, and writes about plants with both scientific precision and proper respect. I have spent some time reading her work, including the long form posts she puts out on her own channels, and her voice on a subject is what I would want to learn from. That matters more than the curriculum on its own.

The pathway is the third reason. The school offers a clean three level structure: Foundations at Level 1 (150 hours), Aromatic Scholars at Level 2 (350 hours, with a substantial module on aromatic skincare), and Aromatic Medicine at Level 3 (256 hours including the anatomy and physiology hours). I prefer a structured route through difficult material, with a defined endpoint and clear standards at each stage.

United Plant Savers membership is the fourth, and is the one most schools skip. Essential oils are concentrated plant material. The volumes used commercially place real pressure on wild populations and on the communities that harvest them. A school that has put itself on the record about that is a school I am more comfortable paying for.

Format is the fifth. Online, self paced within generous timeframes, supported by live mentorship sessions and a serious assessment. Given that I am writing a weekly blog, training as a Callanetics instructor, building a brand, and trying to be a reasonable human being for the rest of my life, format flexibility is not negotiable.

I looked carefully at three other schools whose names will probably come up if you do your own research. I am not going to list them here, partly because a proper comparison would take more space than this post will carry, and partly because the right school for any given person depends on temperament and learning style as much as on objective quality. There are excellent teachers in every corner of this field, and I would not want to put anyone off a school I have not studied with.

What the Foundations course actually covers

The Foundations of Aromatherapy certificate is the entry level qualification in the school’s certification pathway. It is 150 hours of study, qualifies you to use the title Certified Aromatherapist Level 1, and meets the curriculum requirements for NAHA Level 1 membership. Twenty four essential oils are studied in clinical detail. From the school’s published description and from conversations with graduates, the main modules cover:

  • The history and traditional uses of aromatherapy across cultures
  • The botany of aromatic plants and the families they belong to
  • The chemistry of essential oils, including the major compound families and how they map onto therapeutic effects
  • Methods of extraction, including steam distillation, solvent extraction, cold pressing and CO2 extraction
  • Carrier oils, their fatty acid profiles, and how to choose between them
  • Therapeutic applications across the body systems
  • Safety, dilution percentages, contraindications and known adverse reactions
  • Blending principles and the Aromatic Studies blending method
  • Practical formulation work and assessed case study submissions

The school suggests three to six months for completion. I plan to take five, working roughly two hours per evening on weekdays, with weekends mostly off because nobody studies aromatherapy well on a Sunday morning. The course also earns 40 NCBTMB continuing education units, which is useful if you are a working massage therapist and irrelevant to me, but a useful indicator of the curriculum’s external recognition.

Where it sits in the wider pathway

I am starting with Foundations rather than skipping into a higher level because I want the formal grounding before I take on the more advanced material. The full pathway:

  • Level 1: Foundations of Aromatherapy. 150 hours, three to six months, twenty four oils, Certified Aromatherapist L1.
  • Level 2: Aromatic Scholars Clinical Aromatherapy. 350 hours, ten to twelve months, eighty one oils, Certified Professional / Clinical / Holistic Aromatherapist. Substantial modules on chemistry, aromas and the mind, and aromatic skincare.
  • Level 3: Aromatic Medicine. 256 hours total, eight to ten months, twenty seven oils studied in clinical depth. Includes internal use protocols and 100 hours of anatomy and physiology.

If everything stays roughly on schedule, I expect to finish Level 1 by late 2026, start Aromatic Scholars in early 2027, and have completed Level 2 before the first Botanicals & Company formulations enter final development in 2028 and 2029. Whether I go on to Level 3 will depend on what the brand actually needs by then, and on whether I still have the appetite for it. Ask me in three years.

What I am bringing to the course, and what I expect to find difficult

Worth being honest about both. I am bringing thirty years of casual practice with essential oils, a working knowledge of organic chemistry, a comfort with reading academic papers, a small home apothecary I have already built, and a daily rhythm of writing about plants that will help me consolidate what I learn as I go.

What I expect to find difficult is the discipline of memorising the specific chemistry of twenty four oils in proper detail. I have a working sense of which compounds dominate which oils, but a working sense is not what a certification asks for. I expect to find the case study work demanding in a useful way, because it forces you to combine theory with the particularities of an actual person. And I expect to find the safety section, particularly the contraindications and drug interactions, more sobering than I am ready for. That is sort of the point.

Beyond aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is one strand of the formal training I want behind Botanicals & Company. The others, in roughly the order I expect to take them on:

  • Western herbalism. I have been reading Anne McIntyre, Rosemary Gladstar and Maud Grieve for years. I want a structured course, probably with a UK based school, that takes me from informal knowledge to clinical competence. Probably 2027.
  • An introduction to Ayurveda. I want the framework, the dosha understanding, and the practical material around herbs and oils. I am not training as an Ayurvedic practitioner. I am training to use the framework intelligently when I write and formulate.
  • A proper cosmetic formulation qualification. This is non negotiable. By the time a face oil or balm carries the Botanicals & Company name, it will have been made under formal formulation training and not just kitchen experiment.

That puts me on roughly five formal qualifications across four years, alongside writing weekly and building a brand. The schedule is tight. It is also the price of doing this properly.

What I will share, and what I will not

I will write about the course as I go. Modules I have found revelatory. Modules I have found dull. Specific oils that have changed my mind. Specific recipes the course recommends and how I have adapted them in my own kitchen. The assessment process. The mistakes.

I will not be passing on copyrighted course material, naming individual classmates, or pretending to know things I do not yet know. If I get something wrong in a post, I will correct it the following week. That, I think, is a fair contract with anyone reading along.

One article a week between now and the launch in 2030. Around two hundred posts. Some ingredient deep dives, some recipes, some Callanetics teaching diary entries, some aromatherapy module summaries, some honest admissions of what I have failed at recently. The arc, from sitting at a kitchen table with a manual in June 2026 to opening the first product line in 2030, will be visible in public the whole way.

For now, the textbook is ordered, the kettle is on, and I have a small ritual of inhaling rose otto from cupped hands when I start anything I am nervous about. I am going to need quite a lot of rose otto.