Supermarkets use the smell of freshly baked bread to make us feel hungry and buy more food, the smell of frankincense incense in a church can help us to feel more relaxed and in touch with our spiritual side.Īromatherapy uses essential oils in a controlled way to promote personal wellbeing. Essential oils are concentrated, naturally occurring, chemicals extracted from flowers, trees and other plants. These oils are harvested very carefully from specific plant parts, like the flower, at specific times of the growing cycle. Potentially vast quantities of plant material is required to produce small quantities of essential oil.Īpproximately 150 kilograms of lavender is required to make one litre of lavender essential oil.įor this reason essential oils can be expensive but usually only small quantities are required for therapeutic benefits. Certain aromas affect us psychologically, the smell of lemon is said to increase our perception of personal wellbeing. Many people suddenly and vividly recall distant memories when exposed to certain scents - the perfume worn by their mother, for example, can remind them of childhood. There exists a close relationship between scents, emotion and memories. There are lots of examples of when smell can affect our thoughts and emotions in everyday life. Wine producers use the word, ‘bouquet’, to describe the subtleties in the aroma and taste of a wine. Smells are important in many industries, perfumery, wine-making, coffee roasting, food-production, cosmetics and tobacco to list some of the more obvious ones. Perfumers and wine-tasters, for example, have developed language and systems to try to accurately describe smells – perfumers use the term ‘notes’ to describe the lifespan of a perfume and how the scent changes as the perfume evaporates. It is claimed that our personal scent can be more important in dating or choosing a partner than what we look like. Our personal smell can make us ‘look’ more appealing to potential partners. Personal scent has nothing to do with the perfume, aftershave, deodorant, soap, laundry detergent or other cosmetics we use, despite what advertisements for such products may claim. Personal scent is unique – our base or ‘naked’ smell, we cannot change it although we may sometimes be able to temporarily mask it. Our personal smell transmits information about ourselves, information that is subconsciously interpreted by others.įor more see ‘ The Smell of Love’ at Psychology Today. We all have our own unique scent, most of the time we are unaware of it but research has shown that our perceptions of each other are in part based on our personal aroma, not just our physical appearance or our behaviour or ability to communicate. Everything around us has some kind of a scent including, importantly, us. Compared to many animals, notably dogs, our sense of smell is underdeveloped - we have evolved to rely more heavily on our other senses, especially vision. It has long been known that smells and aromas affect us but relatively little is known about what the sense of smell actually is and why we find some scents pleasant and some unpleasant. This page examines how our sense of smell can help us relax and affect our perceptions of personal wellbeing. If you are worried about your stress levels or those of somebody you know then you should seek professional help from a doctor or counsellor. Stress left untreated can be dangerous to your health and wellbeing. This page is part of a series of articles covering relaxation techniques especially suited to managing and reducing stress.
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