IAHA’S 6TH ANNUAL AROMAHERB CONFERENCE AND TRADE SHOW

The International Aromatherapy and Herb Association (IAHA) held its 6th annual Conference and Trade Show in Tempe, Arizona over the weekend of February 22-24, 2002 at the Fiesta Inn Resort.

This was my third year attending the conference, and Graham’s second. Graham and I actually met in the real world at last year’s show. Well, to be honest, we met at the airport, but that is another story.

The Fiesta Inn Resort is a great venue for the show, and this is the second year running that it has been at this location. Not only is it convenient to the airport for those flying in for the show, but it is also extremely easy to reach from the main interstate if you are coming in by car. The grounds are very beautifully planted with seasonal flowers, giving those of you from colder climes an idea of the Spring to come and a welcome respite from Winter, and the weather at the end of February in the Phoenix area is almost unfailingly gorgeous. We find the Fiesta Inn small enough to be comfortable, but large enough to be convenient. The in-house restaurant serves (quite slowly) food that is rated by attendees as being anywhere from “five-star” fare to “not fancy, but a decent meal at a reasonable price.”

The conference offers ongoing classes and panel discussions throughout the weekend, and a trade show floor for exhibiting vendors to display and sell their wares. Some of the classes that were offered this year are holdovers from the previous two years that I have attended the show, such as ‘Herbal Soapmaking Basics,’ taught by Jerry Willis of Heaven Soaps, and Harvey Farber’s ‘Essential Oils and Adulteration’ and ‘Essential Oils and the Law’. Having attended all three of these classes in previous years, I can vouch for their useful information. Mr. Farber is the Senior Vice President of Technology Flavors and Fragrances and has a lot of information to offer on his subjects, some of which might be beyond the scope or needs of the average Aromatherapy fanatic, but is undoubtedly helpful to the larger Aromatherapy business owner. Jerry Willis' class is a friendly and enthusiastic presentation of basic soapmaking techniques, which made me think maybe I would rather have someone else do the work for me, but at least now I know how the process works and what to look for when researching herbal soapmakers, and left Graham raring to try his hand at soapmaking.

However, for the most part, my experiences with the classes and speakers in the two previous years made me reluctant to spend my time or money on enrolling in many classes this year. Including: Nadine Artemis from Artemis Essentials. I attended one of her classes three years ago and found the information she offered to be at great variant with the safety information I was taught to follow in using Essential oils and formulating Aromatherapy products. Dr. Tsu-Tsair Chi teaches a class on ‘Dr. Chi’s Fingernail and Tongue Diagnosis,’ a method of diagnosing potential or present ailments by observing certain conditions of these parts of the body, and also offers free personal analysis at his booth on the trade show floor. I thought the information interesting when I took the class previous to this year, and this time Graham and I both stopped by for a free analysis. Interestingly enough, I was diagnosed as having a great tendency for breast cancer, which is unknown in either side of my family, while what turned out to be a case of shingles for Graham was diagnosed as a gallbladder condition. Dr. Chi recommended great lashings of his rather dear products for us, including ten of his baths each at fifteen dollars a pop.

Carol Schiller, whose brother Jeffrey Schiller is the founder and president of the IAHA, taught again three classes I had taken in previous, naive years: ‘Buying Oils Smartly,’ where she has claimed to be able to tell at one sniff an organic Lavender from a conventionally farmed Lavender. ‘Great Skin Care Oils,’ which left me feeling that she was not adequately informed on Skin care, and ‘New and Uncommon Essential Oils,’ during which Carol and an assistant go about the room dripping approximately a dozen neat, untested Essential Oils on the hands and forearms of the attendees so that they might experience them. That was one class that I left a bit wobbly on my feet after having been exposed to all these oils on my skin for an hour, much like a misplaced RDT.

I have, in the past, attended a class on Aromatherapy product making where the presenter used her time to talk about the products she sells in an obnoxious infomercial that you couldn’t switch off or get away from, while in a tearful interlude she blamed the hair color industry for her brain cancer, and demonstrated a lack of knowledge on how hair coloring processes work. It is my personal observation that any woman who dyes her hair black is sure to bring Divine Retribution down on her head.

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