Our Commitments

 

What We Believe

Everything we do traces back to a single core tenet that is carried forward by our sangha in their traditional craft, since time immemorial. It was realized by lifetimes spent living in the mountains among the forests and every sentient being within them — to dedicate ourselves entirely to the welfare of all living beings.

This tenet does not live in spirit alone. It runs quietly through everything we sow, cultivate, nurture, and harvest — before a single drop of essential oil is drawn, or the pure essence of nature is delivered into our carrier oils through stone-pressed extraction.

 

What Goes Into Every Drop

It takes anywhere between three to six months — from the time the fields are enriched with organic compost made from the raw distilled biomass, ploughed by native-bred cattle, sown with carefully selected seeds, and nurtured day and night with utmost care — before we are finally able to harvest the first crop of the season. From that harvest, 500 to 650 kilograms of fresh plant material enters our traditional distillation stills and what emerges is two to three liters of pure essential oil.

 

To put that into perspective, just 15–20 ml of essential oil comes from nearly 2 kilograms of plant material after a slow, patient, and time-consuming vigil — which in most cases, for rare and exquisite crops such as vetiver, can often take the better part of an entire year.

 

Likewise, during seasonal harvests of coconuts, sesame, mamra almonds, jojoba and castor — after gathering and deshelling them to obtain the inner plant matter — they are placed to dry naturally in the solar shed of our farms for a week or more.

 

The moisture leaves the plant matter, purely in the essence of இயற்கை — Iyarkai, a natural way of making in harmony with nature, rather than relying on accelerated commercial processing, designed to shorten the time between the harvest and extraction.

 

After following this natural process, our sangha members carefully take them to the 25kg traditional stone mill, where the vaigai wood, powered by our humanely raised bulls, churn the dry raw materials for 2–4 slow, unhurried hours.

 

The stone mill moves at just 2 RPM — barely twice the circumference of the stone mill — compared to the 50-70 RPM of commercial mills.

 

After long, patient hours, we receive the nutrient-rich, stone-pressed, bull-driven oil, retaining the naturally occurring vitamins and nutrients of the raw material through our traditional method, without the extensive refining and processing associated with the commercial oils.

For us, such an outcome feels far greater than a reward for our wholehearted effort. It feels more like fulfilling our true purpose — from planting the very first seed into the soil of our sangha farms with our own hands, to witnessing the final drops of essential and carrier oils, slowly gathered from the traditional process.

 

Our Transparency

And because we carry that purpose into everything, honesty is not something we take lightly or for granted.

Every batch of our traditionally distilled essential oils is sent to CSIR-CIMAP, Hyderabad, for Gas Chromatography testing — a process that reads the contents of the essential oil completely. Similarly, our carrier oils undergo adulteration screening test at CSIR-CFTRI, Mysuru.

Using advanced scientific instrumentation, the analysis identifies the complete composition of the oil — every naturally occurring plant compound, its constituents, and whether the profile remains true to the botanical source, while also detecting any foreign compounds, synthetic additives, or adulteration. Everything is made visible through an unbiased GC report and screening test issued by a government research institution that answers to no commercial interests — a plain, factual, scientific record.

 

And true to our commitments towards the traditional craft, you will find no unusual compounds in our essential oil GC reports, and no mineral oil traces in our carrier oil reports.

 

We publish every report alongside our oils in full disclosure and transparency — because the community who cultivated the crops, the hands that harvested them, and the care they poured into nurturing these plants for months, all deserve to be seen and valued properly.

 

What You Receive

 

What you receive is what the forest, the alpine valleys, and the resources that nature has gifted us have to offer — preserved with as little alteration as the traditional process allows — and offered to you by our Sangha through their hands, the craft, and the traditions we have chosen, above all else, to keep alive and self-sustaining.

We will continue to serve you in the same spirit — with love, honesty, and commitment above all else.