I light a candle not because I think it’s magic, but because scent gives shape to my mind. The first curl of vapor carries me somewhere my eyes can’t go: my grandmother’s kitchen, rain on warm soil, the cedar closet where I hid and read.
Smell has a fast lane into feeling. Unlike sight and sound, olfactory signals detour past the usual relay stations and weave straight into parts of the mind where emotion and memory are braided together.
A single inhale can feel like a time machine and a mood shift at once. When I build a small ritual—strike the match, breathe in, and voice inside what I want to feel—I’m not just decorating the air. I’m laying down a cue. Research shows that odor-evoked memories tend to be unusually emotional, vivid, and often older than those cued by words or pictures1. That “Proust effect” doesn’t just tug the heartstrings; it can tune my state in real time. If I pair a rosemary or citrus note with deep work, for example, the scent becomes a handle my brain can grab the next time I need focus. And smells are potent prompts, because of their neural wiring.
Some scents do more than recall—they nudge physiology. Peppermint has been shown to heighten alertness and improve certain aspects of cognitive performance; I keep a tiny vial at my desk and touch it to the underside of my wrist and sides of my neck when I’m dragging through an afternoon of emails2.
It’s not an espresso, but the peppermint aroma somehow makes my processing feel crisper and my energy steadier.
Rosemary is subtler for me, a green, resinous thread that seems to stitch attention together. I’ll diffuse it lightly when outlining a talk I’ll have to give; later, the faintest whiff helps me re-enter the structure I built.
And then there’s lavender, my evening scaffolding. I add a drop to the shower or massage it into my temples before winding down. The evidence base is nuanced—oral preparations appear most robust for anxiety reduction, while inhalation shows promising but varied effects. For me, though, the ritual is half the medicine: slower breathing, softer light, a signal that the day is shutting down. The research suggests I’m not imagining it, but it also reminds me to keep expectations grounded.
These practices work best when I treat scent like music: consistent, purposeful, matched to the task or the memory I want to evoke. A “focus blend” lives by my keyboard; a “peacefulness” note waits by the bed. On anxious mornings I revisit a steadying aroma while recalling a time I handled hard things well—using odor as both anchor and bridge. It’s ordinary, even domestic, but that’s the point.
Ritual doesn’t need grandeur; it needs repetition and attention.
With each inhale I’m rehearsing a way of being, and the nose, happily, is an excellent teacher.
Herz RS. The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health. Brain Sci. 2016 Jul 19;6(3):22. doi: 10.3390/brainsci6030022. PMID: 27447673; PMCID: PMC5039451.
Moss M, Hewitt S, Moss L, Wesnes K. Modulation of cognitive performance and mood by aromas of peppermint and ylang-ylang. Int J Neurosci. 2008 Jan;118(1):59-77. doi: 10.1080/00207450601042094. PMID: 18041606.
Thank you, I really appreciate you sharing this information. I’ll revisit the article to remind myself when to use different scents ❤️