Free Stress Relief 2: Aromas

September 7, 2011 · Posted in Health, Self Improvement 36 views

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Pleasant memories are a package of sensations: sights, sounds, smells, temperatures. Really anything your senses can detect can be stored and associated with a memory. You may have grown up with a yard but for the past many years lived in the city. The smell of fresh cut grass could suddenly take you back to warm summer days when you were a child, carefree with no stresses of adult life. Sometimes scents can bring back memories we hadn’t accessed in so long we’d forgotten we had them.

There are a lot of aroma therapy oils, candles, sprays and other methods of delivering scents. Some of them can be really relaxing. I especially like the smell of pumpkin spice in the early fall as it reminds me of Thanksgiving, going back to school, and the weather getting cooler after long, hot summers in the south. Concentrated oils can be found in many stores and are a long lasting and inexpensive way to take your mind off your current troubles. But if you can’t afford oils, you may be able to gather all natural scents. Some suggestions are: fir branches or sap, pine cones/needles/bark, cloves, sage, thyme, various flower petals to your taste such as jasmine or rose, mint leaves, sassafras leaves or sticks.

You can take these ingredients and use several methods to release their scents. Grind up fresh leaves or flower petals. Prepare a hot bath and sprinkle them in the water. Take an orange and stick cloves in it til it looks like a prickly ornament and set it on a shelf in the kitchen. Simmer water with bark or leaves in it that you’ve gathered to make your own all natural potpourri. The possibilities of what to use are varied and will best be defined by what scents are most associated with good times. Just remember that all natural items are not treated with preservatives and won’t last as long as oils or other store bought items. So don’t leave that orange on the shelf for weeks.

Filling your home with relaxing scents is best used occasionally. If you use them all the time, the effects will fade as your mind begins to associate your current surroundings with the smells. So use them when you especially need to recover from a hard week or series of stressful events.

Tags: Smell Your Stress Away