The scent of lavender blossoms, a beautiful essence of spring. The scent just seems to relax and soothe.  Touted for its ability to have a calming effect, its scent is found in many perfumes, hand lotions and massage oils. It has been scientifically proven that the essential oil of the lavender blossom actually helps to reduce a person’s stress level. 

When a subject is exposed to the scent of lavender in a laboratory setting, and their heart rate variability is measured, this is the measure of the variations between heart beats, indicators of the body’s stress levels, the subject’s heart rate variability actually drops, showing lessening of stress. 

With this knowledge, a few tests have been tried on exposing horses to the scent of lavender to see if the results would be similar. This could be especially useful in stressful situations such as trailering, veterinary work, shoeing and training instead of using tranquilizing drugs.  The results of the lavender tests with the horses have been very promising. Read more here!