Have you ever noticed that certain scents can take you back to a place and time? It might be catching a whiff of the perfume your grandmother wore when you were a child, or the scent of pumpkin pie, reminding you of family dinners and your mother’s kitchen.
Scent is a very powerful stimulator that we can use to bring feelings of wellness and harmony into our day-to-day lives and living spaces. Sense of smell is governed by our olfactory system, one of the most important parts of the brain.
Humans have over 1,000 sensors in our noses and it is estimated that we can distinguish over 10,000 different odours. Harvard Medical School scientist Linda Buck describes the sensors as a system, similar to the alphabet, whereby each sensor represents a certain component of a scent, much like a sequence of letters makes up a word. Consequently, our vocabulary of scents is much larger than the number of sensors in our brains.
When an odour hits our sensors, a signal is sent to the olfactory bulb, where nerve fibres carry messages to the higher brain involved in conscious thought, helping to discriminate between specific scents and triggering or establishing memories associated with them. More primitive areas of the brain distinguish scent-based emotions relating to fear, loathing, sex or pleasure.
Knowing that our sense of smell is powerful enough to trigger emotions, memories and behaviour, it’s beneficial to attend to your olfactory system and surround yourself with pleasing, calming aromas and natural scents that are soothing and nurturing. As we age, our sense of smell can start to diminish. Activities that emphasise breathing, such as yoga and meditation, can help stimulate the capillaries in the nose, which will protect and enhance the sensors that allow us to smell adequately.
Outside, there is an abundance of natural aromas that can add to our well-being. In Japan, it is believed that simply walking through a forest provides access to natural aromatherapy and wood essential oils called phytoncides that can help boost the immune system, specifically from the aroma of pine trees. Next time you walk in the forest, brush the needles of a pine tree or pick up a pine branch from a windfall and bring it home with you to scent your living space.
At home, you can surround yourself with scents that are both comforting and healing. Aromatherapy blended oils may be heated and released, sprinkled into your bath or used to scent organic potpourri. Garden herbs such as lavender (calming), hops (sedative) and rosemary (invigorating) may be gathered and displayed in bundles to slowly release their healing scented properties.
Food and drinks can be chosen for their rousing or comforting smells. Try baking fresh bread or an apple pie or making chai tea, spiced hot apple cider or mulled wine to fill your living space with old-fashioned comfy aromas.
