It was early in the morning, and I’d just woken up. Still half asleep, I wandered into my bathroom and was washing my hands when I caught a whiff of something so exquisitely beautiful that it took my breath away.

As my nose sought for the source of the aroma, I discovered it was on a small patch of my towel. That’s odd. What caused that smell?

It smelt soooo familiar, it was like I should have known it, but I couldn’t place it. Was it an oil blend? Was it a scented moisturizer? My mind ticked over the previous 12 to 24 hours. What had I been using?

I was at a loss.

So the sleuth in me came out. What did the aroma make me feel? Well, that was easy! It made me feel like I was floating in Heaven. It felt warm and ever-so-comforting, like being wrapped in an eternal Angel’s hug.

In fact, it was so incredibly delightful to the senses that I wanted to keep smelling it, and smelling it, and smelling it.

And then I remembered!!!!

The previous evening I had decided to do something different in my facial regime, just to mix things up a bit. I’d reached for a facial scrub that I’d made for a special Oily Team event that I’d held in February 2020. I’d gently scrubbed my face with it, rinsed my face off, and then rubbed the excess oil and salt over the back of my hands…and then rinsed my hands and wiped them on my towel.

And it was that amazing combination of Blue Tansy, Lemon Myrtle, Orange and other oils that was the scent that I associated with heaven.

This was such a great reminder of the power of aroma.

Did you know that our sense of smell is the only one of our 5 senses that completely bypasses the conscious brain, and goes straight to the limbic region of our brain? That’s the part of our brain responsible for spiritual experiences, and it’s also where we store our memories and associated emotions.

That’s why I was able to so clearly identify the aroma with a feeling.

And whilst this was a powerfully positive association, our power of smell doesn’t only attach to the positive emotions and memories. It also attaches to the upsetting and fearful ones.

And that’s why essential oils, because of their aroma, are such a potent key to help us unlock those deepest, darkest corners of our mind…the hidden thoughts and feelings that can sabotage our joy, and cause chaos in our emotional journey.

I was running a one day Oily Event in 2012, and we had about 120 people in the audience. One beautiful lady came up to me in the morning tea break, complaining of a headache. I did some VitaFlex work on specific pressure points of her hands, but I didn’t put any oils on her. Why? Because she complained of how overwhelming all the aromas were.

We’d been passing around bottles of oil for participants to smell, and while there hadn’t been a huge number passed around, there probably was 5 or 6 different blends that we’d used throughout the morning. I wouldn’t have thought that was enough to cause any type of physical detox, and fortunately her headache quickly diminished.

But by lunchtime it had flared up again. She reached out for help again, and I just had this feeling that there was an emotional component or trigger behind her headache.

As I shared this with her, tears began welling up in her eyes. Bingo!

Both of us knew that some truth was behind my statement. And that’s when she joined the dots, and shared with me a most distressing story.

Several months earlier she had been out with friends in a Pub, and someone had slipped a roofie into her drink. She had a vague memory of someone helping her out of the Pub and along a corridor, and then came the memory of the rape.

She was so torn apart from the experience that she’d not told anyone…until now.

But why had it surfaced on this day? It was because of the association with smells. In the pub, there would have been a cacophony of smells – women’s perfume, the aromas of the various alcoholic beverages, the smell of sweaty armpits and room deodorizers. You get the picture.

And what had triggered her in our class was the variety of smells present. That was the bridge that carried her subconscious mind back to the evening of the rape, and her unresolved emotional trauma had begun to surface, and triggered the headache.

There is a happy ending to this story. This beautiful Being continued to use essential oils and other healing processes, including the Egyptian Emotional Clearing Technique. Through that journey more memories emerged for her. This gave her the clarity she needed around the event, filling in the missing pieces….and it gave her the courage and self-confidence to eventually forgive and move on in her life.

I fell in love with essential oils in 1998, and they have been my daily companion ever since – helping to heighten my spiritual gifts, as well as supporting me through all manner of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual transformations. They have been a gift not only to me, but to the many clients (both human and animal) that I’ve had the privilege to work on.

And if you’d love to make the heavenly scrub for yourself, you’ll find the recipe in next week’s blog. Enjoy!

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