Smell Your Way To A Happier Life

Smell Your Way To Happiness - www.AnnetteColby.com Anxiety, stress, and depression drive thousands of people to take powerful medications that all too often come with serious unwanted health risks. Now many people are looking to alternative natural remedies to avoid adverse side effects. But can something as gentle as your sense of smell match the potency of modern medicine?

Is it possible to sniff yourself into a happier life? Can particular scents comfort and calm you? Are certain aromas capable of decreasing depression, reducing emotional pain, or easing away stress?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Smell plays an important role in mental and physical health, emotion, and relationships.

In general we don’t think to much about our sense of smell. It’s something that is taken for granted. In fact, when people are asked which of their five senses they would be prepared to do without if necessary, smell most often comes out at the top of that list.

While we may not pay much attention to our sense of smell, it is the sense most closely tied to mental health and happiness. Smell brings richness and depth to life, increasing the quality every moment.

Your sense of smell serves and uplifts by:

Warning you of danger
Triggering memories
Providing comfort and relaxation
Providing about 75 percent of your ability to taste
Bringing feelings of security and well-being
Reducing stress and promoting relaxation
Altering and influencing moods and behavior

Helen Keller stated, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

How to Use Smell to Improve the Quality of Life

Smells really can help reduce your stress and melt tension away. To start enjoying the benefits of smell therapy, try one of these easy tips.

Frankincense Incense

For thousands of years, burning incense has been used in religious ceremonies across the world to bring harmony and peace to the mind, body, and soul. Now, researchers (ScienceDaily May, 2008) suggest that burning frankincense can act on the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. Frankincense comes from the sap of the Boswellia tree and is available in incense form at many whole food stores and online shops.

Stop And Smell The Roses

When you’re feeling anxious or stressed, a bunch of flowers can provide a quick mood lift. Not only do pretty flowers make you feel better, but inhaling their scent allows you breathe deeply through your nose. Deep, conscious nasal in-breathing provides adequate oxygen to enter the body and the correct amount of waste gasses to exit the body. This proper ratio of flow prevents the release of high levels of adrenaline and the resulting stress. Breathing through your nose relaxes the body by unravelling tension and stress, and keeps the body invigorated. Breathing deeply can help lift that black stress cloud off your shoulders and give you room to see things from a new perspective.

Soothe Your Senses With Lavender

The fragrant oil in lavender’s small, blue-violet flowers is often used in baths to help purify the body and spirit. It is also considered a natural remedy for insomnia, anxiety, depression, and stress. Aromatherapy with lavender produces calming, soothing, and sedative effects. When you’re needing to relax and slow down the activity of your nervous system, lavender aromatherapy baths, lavender infused lotions, or massage with lavender oils may result in reduced anxiety and improved relaxation.

Invigorating Rosemary

Need an invigorating boost to uplift your mood? Try smelling the fresh scent of rosemary. Rosemary is derived from an evergreen shrub and emits a fresh, camphor-like scent that can stimulate the brain, improve mental clarity and alertness, and lift mood. In aromatherapy, rosemary oil can be used in burners, potpouri, or in sachets. For a natural Green Earth, hands on approach, grow rosemary in your garden and pluck a fresh twig whenever you need a boost.

Plain Vanilla

Vanilla has also found widespread use in aromatherapy, for being soothing to the nervous system and mind In a study conducted at Manhattan’s Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the scent of heliotropin, a sweet vanilla-like scent, was shown to help reduce stress due to claustrophobia 63% during MRI scans.

Scents, fragrances, and aromatherapy alone will not cure your sickness, conquer depression, or make your insomnia miraculously vanish. However, there is a wealth of research published in scientific journals to show that when you’re depressed, feeling stressed, anxious, of fighting the blues, increasing your olfactory pleasure can strongly and quickly lift your mood, you’re your pain, and help reduce stress levels. Take action on any or all of these tips and help lift your mood today.

Let us know about your favorite aromatherapy suggestions. We’d love to hear from you!

About the Author: Want to learn more about how to live consciously, love deeply, and laugh often? Come along with Dr. Annette Colby and learn the secrets to creating the life you’ve always wanted to live! Subscribe to her blog Divine Self! today.