Our sense of smell

We are all psychologically and biologically created to experience an intense and abundantly sensual world. But we find ourselves so consumed with everyday life, stuck inside our heads and our thoughts that we forget to be present, leaving us pretty much ‘sensorially’ depleted.

So what gets our senses tingling and a smile to our faces? The smell of freshly cut grass, percolated coffee or baked bread? Perfume or incense perhaps?

Smell is a very direct sense, and was no doubt one of the first senses to evolve in living creatures, telling them what was safe to eat, affecting their behaviour and communicating with one another.

I could go into the mechanics of smell, but without turning this into a biology lesson, it’s interesting to understand exactly how smell can affect your mood. Upon inhaling a particular fragrance, that odour goes directly to the limbic section of the brain that alters stress levels, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, pulse and mood.

It is only our sense of smell that is linked directly to the limbic lobe of the brain, our emotional control centre. So if we take essential oils or food, for example, we can understand how the fragrance/aroma of each of these can have some very profound physiological and psychological effect on our mood. A particular scent can arouse emotions and memories before we’re even consciously aware of them.

Next time you’re out in nature, try this exercise. Stand still, close your eyes and block your ears. All you’re left with is your primary sense of smell. By cutting off your other senses, your sense of smell becomes more acute, and less confused with all the other stimuli. Now suck it all in.