High in the Al-Hasik Mountains, Gary made many exciting discoveries.

Gary Young was a truth seeker, and he followed the path that would lead him there. He was not one to write about someone else’s adventures. He had to know and see for himself. He wrote about his own experiences, research, and findings. His determination took him to Shabwa, the ancient capital city of Queen Sheba, hidden from the world in the “Forbidden Zone” of Yemen; to the unknown tribal land of frereana frankincense in Somalia; to the tops of the Al-Hasik Mountains in Oman; deep into the jungles of the Amazon; to Sri Lanka to find the elusive blue lotus; and to many other previously unexplored places looking for the hidden secrets of God’s oils.

As Gary said, his mistakes were numerous, but they all taught him more about life and what works and doesn’t work. He was misled and deceived in his desire to help others, which taught him greater understanding and perhaps tolerance. He lived on the edge of life with pain and suffering, which taught him endurance and persistence. He ventured into unknown danger seeking truth, giving him courage and gratitude for God’s blessings in his life. His adventures were an open book, and he eagerly shared his discoveries with those who would listen and benefit from his knowledge and experience. We are grateful that his life’s story has been preserved in the photos of Mary Young’s book D. Gary Young, the World Leader in Essential Oils.

He grew up farming and living off Mother Nature’s bounties, which gave him a tremendous advantage in his life’s path. He invested 34 years in the research and discovery of essential oils and their benefits and 29 years learning how to blend oils for enhanced benefits and infusing them into food supplements.

Gary’s dream of distillation started with two pressure cookers welded together for his first distilling experiment in 1991.
The villagers of Timirshe had never seen a foreigner before, but they were very excited and receptive.
The Boswellia elongata tree that grows on Yemen’s Socotra Island.
The first distillation of helichrysum took place 19 days after the building was purchased.

In addition, he spent over 30 years farming aromatic plants, learning distillation and analytical evaluation, and traveling to the far corners of the earth in his study of essential oils. He designed and built eight large distillation facilities around the world, with others in the planning stages. No other company has the history of research and development of essential oils in the areas of production, usage, research, and education as D. Gary Young and his company, Young Living Essential Oils.

Gary Young was truly a pioneer in essential oil research, an inventor of equipment, a developer of the process, a scientist and formulator in the laboratory, an educator on the cutting edge of discovery, and a leader in usage and application, who taught millions of people in many countries.

He was a writer with deep human insight and understanding, a man with an inner knowing of God’s great gift of essential oils to mankind.

With the education and experience of 30 years in growing crops for essential oil production and designing, building, and operating distilleries around the world, D. Gary Young certainly earned the distinction of “The World Leader in Essential Oils.”