I was taking a walk with my dog Lyla the other day when I came across the soothing smell of leaves burning.  This brought me back to Cusco Peru spending time with my twin sister Amy taking hikes with the smell of burning eucalyptus leaves surrounding us.  This made me feel, all at once, joy, nostalgia, and longing.

Smell, our oldest most visceral (or innate) sense, is processed by the olfactory bulb at the center of our limbic system.  One of the things this system is responsible for is our emotions and memories connected to them.  The limbic system can evoke many kinds of memories that were created from smell.  These range from many experiences both wonderful, ordinary, and not so pleasant.  Two, from my own life, are from my childhood.  I lived across the street from a Hungarian bakery that wafted the most amazing smells making my mouth water for the delicious morning pastries – chocolate Danish in particular. In contrast, on the ground level of my building was a fish monger making vats of gefilte fish – a Jewish delicacy, that nauseated me.  I remember covering my nose and running past it as quickly as possible.  I still can’t pass a fish store without this sensation!

There are so many times that I will catch a smell of something such as the sea on a breezy rainy day taking me back to many great times in Fire Island – as a child, and then with my children.  Or a waft of a particular cologne will remind me of a terrible date from years ago, leaving me feeling very turned off.

These scented memories, stimulate our emotions bringing up the feelings and state of being experienced at the time of having the smell.  Emotions from joy to sadness to fear to anger, for example, surface along with the smell.  Many animals use their sense of smell for survival, sniffing the air to ensure safety, to hunt detected prey, or retreat.  Bacteria even have a sense of smell used to distinguish between harmful chemicals or not.  In our civilized world, while of course we use this sense, we don’t necessarily appreciate what it does for us.

Aromatherapy’s foundation is built on leveraging the limbic system using our sense of smell combined with essential oils, made from real plants, to bring about a state of being relaxed, energized, or some other mode of well-being.  The application of these essential oils can be from inhaling them directly, from massage using essential oils, diffusers, burning candles, and rubbing the oils in your hands and then holding them over your face, for a few ideas.

Aromatherapy, as we know about it was invented in 1935 by the French chemist Rene-Maurice Gattefosse in 1935. However, using aroma therapeutically has been around for thousands of years in many cultures.   While essential oils are what are commonly linked to aromatherapy, this isn’t the only way to achieve the good feelings and sense of well-being that an aromatherapy session can promote.  You can seek out environments that you know will contain smells that will bring out a desired state:

Keeping things simple you can enjoy smelling flowers you see in a park or along the street.  You may take a trip to the seaside.  Or you might cook a meal that brings good memories filling your house with the aroma.  These are just a few examples.

There are scents used ceremonially like burning sage, incense, and Palo Santo.  In our home, every Saturday night we say Havdalah – a Jewish set of prayers to end Shabbat (the Sabbath).  One of the prayers – besamim – is to smell and savor a spice mix which can include cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, and cloves as a way of extending the sweetness of the Sabbath into our week.  So, aromatherapy can be as simple as opening up a container filled with your favorite spices and taking a deep slow whiff or as luxurious as going to a spa for a complete aromatherapy session and massage, with many choices in between.

For a little more on my thoughts on connecting scents to memories check out this post.

Please note if you have animals and you use essential oils at home – not all are safe for them such as lavender etc. If you burn something like sage – also do this away from them or outside as this can be hard on their respiratory system.