Aromatherapy. Ohhhwwwooo, that smell....

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan

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My wife has been collecting essential oils for some time now. It's always been one of those "that's nice honey, bring me another beer..." type conversations we've had. But the other day she had some cedarwood essential oil that brought back a flood of childhood (Christmastime) memories. Now I'm hooked. Have any of you guys smelled frankensense? Yowza. These essential oils are mixed with almond oil and then rubbed around your neck. You lose the ability to smell it after while but it's supposed to lift your mood throughout the day, and I need all the help I can get with a lifted mood. Trust me. The jackasses I have to deal with... Well, that's another thread.

Anyhoo. Anybody know about this stuff? Sandalwood is quite possibly THE most expensive liquid substance on the planet. Yikes. Sixty bucks for a 1/2 fluid ounce! But the smell is... Complex. I don't know how to describe it. Next time you've been dragged kicking and screaming to the health food store. Check it out. They've got testers. Smell the Sandalwood and the frankensense. And the Cedarwood. And the clary sage. Mood altering? That might be stretching things a bit. But it smells way better than Aqua Velva. ;)
 
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Never gone into it, but I've had those girlfriends obsessed with tea, smelly candles, and the like. Though I've enjoyed it, I've always maintained the gruff guy, "it smells OK" but really enjoying it, and thus having an implicit understanding that I could enjoy, and all the credit for my lifted mood would go to them. Maybe when I have more disposable income, I will go in for that stuff on my own. Then again, I'll also be wearing "product" in my hair and tight pants... wait... maybe I'll continue to have a girlfriend/wife fill that role for me, on second thought.


My biggest uses are far more utilitarian: studying I will have certain odors or food constantly available, and come test time, I will reproduce such sensations to better spark the memory- believe it is called state dependent learning/recall.
Zero
 
I have a little burner that uses charcoal discs to burn small sandlewood chips, cedar chips, etc. It creates a little smoke but it doesn't set off my smoke detectors and makes the house smell great. Wood smoke is a masculine smell but I haven't had any females complain about anything other than the smoke possibly bothering their eyes if I burn too much of it.
 
BaliLover said:
I have a little burner that uses charcoal discs to burn small sandlewood chips, cedar chips, etc. It creates a little smoke but it doesn't set off my smoke detectors and makes the house smell great. Wood smoke is a masculine smell but I haven't had any females complain about anything other than the smoke possibly bothering their eyes if I burn too much of it.
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I use one of those too. I love various smells, with peppermint and cedar being my favorites. Scientists say that smells induce more memories than any other sense, and I love the memories that I get with the various wood smells... campfires in different parts of the country, i.e. mesquite, hickory, pine, etc. I don't know if I buy into the various 'healing' concepts of aroma therapy, but I don't reject them either. If they work for us, great. If not, well then we just have some nice smells!

While I prefer the wood smells, why not use Hoppes, or WD-40, or suntan lotion, bubblegum, vanilla, or even Lysol if those are the smells that either bring back the nice memories or let you feel a bit better!

Stitchawl
 
I had a lot of issues with vomiting in the mornings due to some stomach issue and I used peppermint extract to take away nausea. Works like a charm.
 
Scents are a powerful stimulants. I'm amazed sometimes, walking outdoors and getting a whiff of something in the air that snaps me back to pleasant childhood memories: might be flowers, pine needles, barnyard smells, dried leaves and burning leaves; Hoppes and gasoline remind me of watching my father tinker with guns and cars; marinas and railroad yards, coal smoke, the smell of rotting shellfish by the ocean ;)). Not necessarily good for me, just nostalgic.

A new-age friend introduced us to essential oils. We have a few but they are expensive. I like to open a bottle and take a whiff occasionally.
 
Sometimes in the afternoon I need a little aromatherapy...

I splash on a little Clubman After Shave!
 
Odors can evoke powerful memories. My Grandfather once bought a house down the Jersey shore. He got it cheap because it sat right next to the sewage treatment plant. After a few days you didn't even notice it. That was years ago but every now and then, when taking a dump I swear I can hear seagulls.
 
smegs said:
odors can evoke powerful memories. My grandfather once bought a house down the jersey shore. He got it cheap because it sat right next to the sewage treatment plant. After a few days you didn't even notice it. That was years ago but every now and then, when taking a dump i swear i can hear seagulls.
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lmfao :d
 
smegs said:
Odors can evoke powerful memories. My Grandfather once bought a house down the Jersey shore. He got it cheap because it sat right next to the sewage treatment plant. After a few days you didn't even notice it. That was years ago but every now and then, when taking a dump I swear I can hear seagulls.
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Hilarious! :D
 
Aromatherapy goes beyond just the ability of scent to trigger memory. That scent can be a powerful trigger of memory and memory-related emotion is well-accepted. But it's not very...well, if I can misuse the word a bit... very "scientific." A smell that triggers fond memories and pleasant emotions in one person may very well bring back bad memories and unpleasant emotions in another. If, for example, your father always wore Old Spice aftershave and you had a great, loving, close relationship with your father and looked forward to and enjoyed being with him, then the smell of Old Spice aftershave may be very pleasant for you. But, if your father abused you and you feared and disliked him, then that same smell may affect you entirely differently. So, there is no way to say that specific smells will always have -- or even usually have -- a certain effect on all people.

Aromatherapy also goes beyond generalities of smell. The vast majority of people, for example, find the smell of cinnamon to be pleasant. But that doesn't say much about how the effect of that smell might be used beyond selling sweet rolls at shopping malls.

Aromatherapy asserts that certain smells -- pleasant or otherwise -- have certain physiological effects on the vast majority of people.

"Modern" "western" medical doctors assert that the vast majority of people who eat asprin receive an analgesic effect from it. Asprin doesn't have a pleasant taste; you don't see Asprin-flavored deserts on many menus. But, according to western medicine, the taste doens't matter. For those who can manage to swallow it, asprin has a specific, repeatable, good and useful effect for the vast majority of people.

Likewise, according to Aromatherapy, things which don't necessarily smell good can have specific, repeatable, good and useful effects for the vast majority of people. Aromatherapy assert, for example, that while it's unpleasant (at least to most people), the smell of pine tar oil is good for the liver and even cure hepatitis.

Of course, much of Aromatherapy has no basis in science and is based purely on experiential observations.

But the point here is that for the serious practitioners of it, aromatheraphy is about more than just smelling good. The art of smelling good is perfumery and the two should not be confused.

Me? I believe in perfumery. I like a little bit of perfumery in my life. But most of aromatherapy is baseless. The majority of people who smell lavendar, for example, find it a pleasant, calming scent. Ok, that good and useful. But, if I have liver troubles, I'm going to my MD, not snorting a bottle of pine tar oil.
 
Gollnick said:
Ok, that good and useful. But, if I have liver troubles, I'm going to my MD, not snorting a bottle of pine tar oil.
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I love the smell of pine tar! It brings back memories of the days when I used to teach cross-country skiing. We only had wooden skis back then, so we had to treat the base of the skis with burned-in pine tar.... Brush it on, burn it in with a torch, and wipe off the excess. We had to treat our skis several times each winter as we were on them all day every day. I might just have the strongest liver in the world now. Too bad I'm not a heavy drinker and can take advantage of it! :rolleyes:


Stitchawl
 
Gollnick said:
Aromatherapy goes beyond just the ability of scent to trigger memory. That scent can be a powerful trigger of memory and memory-related emotion is well-accepted. But it's not very...well, if I can misuse the word a bit... very "scientific." A smell that triggers fond memories and pleasant emotions in one person may very well bring back bad memories and unpleasant emotions in another. If, for example, your father always wore Old Spice aftershave and you had a great, loving, close relationship with your father and looked forward to and enjoyed being with him, then the smell of Old Spice aftershave may be very pleasant for you. But, if your father abused you and you feared and disliked him, then that same smell may affect you entirely differently. So, there is no way to say that specific smells will always have -- or even usually have -- a certain effect on all people.

Aromatherapy also goes beyond generalities of smell. The vast majority of people, for example, find the smell of cinnamon to be pleasant. But that doesn't say much about how the effect of that smell might be used beyond selling sweet rolls at shopping malls.

Aromatherapy asserts that certain smells -- pleasant or otherwise -- have certain physiological effects on the vast majority of people.

"Modern" "western" medical doctors assert that the vast majority of people who eat asprin receive an analgesic effect from it. Asprin doesn't have a pleasant taste; you don't see Asprin-flavored deserts on many menus. But, according to western medicine, the taste doens't matter. For those who can manage to swallow it, asprin has a specific, repeatable, good and useful effect for the vast majority of people.

Likewise, according to Aromatherapy, things which don't necessarily smell good can have specific, repeatable, good and useful effects for the vast majority of people. Aromatherapy assert, for example, that while it's unpleasant (at least to most people), the smell of pine tar oil is good for the liver and even cure hepatitis.

Of course, much of Aromatherapy has no basis in science and is based purely on experiential observations.

But the point here is that for the serious practitioners of it, aromatheraphy is about more than just smelling good. The art of smelling good is perfumery and the two should not be confused.

Me? I believe in perfumery. I like a little bit of perfumery in my life. But most of aromatherapy is baseless. The majority of people who smell lavendar, for example, find it a pleasant, calming scent. Ok, that good and useful. But, if I have liver troubles, I'm going to my MD, not snorting a bottle of pine tar oil.
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A very thoughtful response until you got to the last paragraph and then you blew it. Aromatherapy is not about curing your burned-out liver...of course you want to consult your internist about that, also your bartender, wife, lawyer and insurance company.

Aromatherapy puts your mind in a certain aspect, just like music. Classical music will soothe me, jazz will get me intellectually intrigued, country will make me cry about my dead dog, rock-a-billy will remind me of a girl in the eighth grade (apologies here to anybody under the age of 60 :D )

IMHO, aromas should put us into a pleasant sense of harmony; and I think any medical doctor will agree that's a good thing.
 
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