Blend Your Calm – An Aromatherapy workshop

Why Don't You... Try Aromatherapy

Learn about aromatherapy and then blend your own unique calming scent

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I like science. Science helps us to explain the world we live in and it makes us smarter.

But I’m also very curious about those things that seem to be beyond science, that we can’t quite explain and don’t fully understand.

And so, when I went to my first ever aromatherapy workshop I was rather pleased to discover that it had a bit of both. A heavy grounding in science - this is the why and the how - along with a little bit of magic which is unexplainable, call it taste (well smell I suppose). It’s like music, what is great and what is not is very personal.

So what is an aromatherapy workshop?

This workshop, “Blend Your Calm”, was put on by the Fragrant Dispensary, AKA Jean Woolcock, and has two distinct parts. First is an introduction to olfaction (smelling science!) and the chance to smell a huge variety of scents; following that you get the opportunity to create your own blend to take away.

The Science:

“Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.”

Patrick Suskind – Perfume

The essentials are, you can close your eyes and block out sight; you can cover your ears and block out sound; but unless you stop breathing, you can’t block out smell. And then, as Jean explains, your sense of smell has a very direct connection to the parts of the brain that control emotion (the amygdala) and memory (the hippocampus), which is why smells can be so evocative of memory (good and bad) and can be used to elicit emotional responses.

The Ingredients:

On the table in front of us is a huge array of essential oils, some familiar like lavender, rosemary and sweet orange or grapefruit and some more mysterious like frankincense, vetiver, patchouli and geranium. All the time we are smelling different scents while Jean is explaining the emotional reactions they provoke (and yes, the science behind it) are the scents calming, energising, uplifting, will they help you to focus? Meanwhile, you are just noting which ones are to your taste, I mean smell, you like!

The Blend:

And now comes the time to create your own personal blend. 

Step 1: Decide what you’d like your blend to achieve – will it be calming and relaxing, more invigorating, or in my case I was after “calm focus”. 

Step 2: Choose the ingredients. A good blend requires some top notes (for example citrussy scents) some middle notes (like lavender or rosemary) and some base notes (like patchouli or frankincense). With my written guide in front of me I picked out the scents I liked, with the properties I was after and its onto Step 3…

Step 3: Appropriate quantities. Base notes are likely to be added in smaller amounts or they will overpower the blend, citrus notes might need a little bit extra.  So with some guidance and with a bit of tweaking with Jean’s help, I created my own personal blend! 

Step 4: Capture the scent. All that remained was to bottle our blends in either a scent stick, or a rollerball defuser (bit more science), compare scents with a few of the others in the workshop and head for home with our blends and a couple of other goodies courtesy of The Fragrant Dispensary, feeling very calm and focused!

I opted for the scent stick, and I’m really pleased with the results - I’m smelling it as I type these words, and I can report feeling calm and focused and slightly smug!  And in case you’re interested, my blend is Frankincense, Rosemary, Bergamot and Sweet Orange.

The Important Details:

• Blend Your Calm lasted just over an hour and cost £20

• No preparation needed, just turn up ready to learn and get stuck in

• Jean is running another workshop workshop on 17^th May in collaboration with Balanced with Becs called The Scented Reset. This is a womens-only experience, where you will make your own essential oil rollerball which you can use as Becca (registered nurse) guides you in breathwork and vagus nerve techniques.

• For more click on her page

Good To Know:

• Jean is a trained pharmacist, a mother of 3 and is a great teacher!

Do this workshop if:

• You could do with a bit of calm in your life

• You’re interested in aromatherapy

• You like the idea of being able to blend your own scent

Don’t do this if:

• If you have a cold and have no sense of smell