The Sensory Pause #2: Mapping the Day Through Scent
Full Transcript: English
Hello, it feels good to meet again on different sides of the mic …
Maybe you’ve already noticed that there are now ten full episodes behind us in Languages of Healing — and somehow that feels like a beautiful moment for another sensory pause.
….. A sensory pause…. Tapping into your senses …. A kind of special breathing space inside this podcast, which has always been, in one way or another, a refuge for the soul — for your soul, for mine.
A place where we can sometimes hide for a moment…
…. but also open up.
…. And yes, I know. I’ve probably mentioned in every episode so far that scent is so deeply tied to memory and emotion. And I know that very well. But I don’t think that’s repetition in the wrong sense. I think it simply means that we’re returning to one of the roots of this podcast. And some roots are worth returning to. Again and again. Because this is what roots are for, right? They keep you anchored.
…. So this time, I’d like to invite you into something very simple àctually,
at least I hope so…
To move through a day a little more consciously through your sense of smell…
Not instead of seeing or hearing. Not in some rigid or artifìcial way. Just with a little more awareness — through the nose — of this immediate sense that so often goes unnoticed, even though it connects us so directly to all kinds of memory, emotion, and pure presence….
2.
Because normally, I think, we map our days through what we see.
Through what we hear. Through what we read, what we say, what we have to do.
Through images, words, sounds, conversations, tasks…. That’s how we usually make sense of the world.
But what if, just for one day — or maybe even for a few moments in one day — you let your nose guide you a little more?
What if you noticed the scent of things as they appear in the ordinary flow
of life?
Not to analyse them too much. Not even to describe them too precisely — because scent is beyond language anyway….
Just - to notice them
….And if scent feels distant or hard to catch, that’s okay. Even the intention to notice is a kind of pause…
Because scent has this very particular way of bringing you back into the moment, into your body. It feels immediate. It reveals liveness itself, because scent can only be experienced in the living moment
And unlike so many other things, it resists perfect explanation.
Even if you and I smell the same thing — like a coffee bean, a slice of lemon, — your experience of it will not be the same as mine. And I love that.
That’s also why I’m not going to tell you what these scents should remind you of, or what you should feel. I’d rather leave that space open.
Because your scented map of the day should be yours.
3.
So…. let me just walk you through a few of the scents that shaped my two days last week.
Late in the morning, there was coffee. And already that can become a small world of its own. The smell of whole coffee beans is different from ground coffee. And even the way you grind it changes something — whether you use an old-fashioned hand grinder or an electric one.
It’s such a familiar smell. And still it’s never just one smell.
Then there were cocoa shells. I’ve had quite a lot of them lately, and I really love them. They look almost like little pieces of chocolate — which, in a way, they are. And yes, people sometimes call them a by- product of chocolate production, but that feels far too dismissive to me. If they are a by-product, they’re a beautiful one. Their scent is deep and warm and gently chocolate-like. And for me, they absolutely deserve their place on the scented map of a day.
Then there were my dried rose buds. Beautiful even before anything else — just to look at. And then to smell. And then later, when you brew them into tea… Because that too is part of scent awareness, I think — noticing that something changes from one form into another. The dry rose buds have their own quite distinct fragrance. The rose tea that comes from them has another. Softer. Gentler. More dissolved somehow.
At some point I also opened one of my old paper books — the kind with yellowing pages and that unmistakable old-paper scent. I adore it, I always burrow my nose in these pages …
And yes, there is even something almost edible about it, strangely enough. Part of that scent comes from the way compounds in the paper break down over time, which I find fascinating. But more than anything, it is simply one of those smells that creates a whole atmosphere, right?
There was also a bar of sheep’s milk soap with rose petals — heart-shaped, beautifully made, organic, of course. Again, rose — and yet not the same rose as the dried buds, and not the same rose as tea. And I think that’s another thing scent teaches us: even when the source seems similar, the experience is never exactly repeated.
It shifts.
With form, texture, temperature, memory, mood.
4.
And then, there are the scents that find you—the ones that stop you in your tracks….literally
A few days ago, and then again yesterday, while I was out running, I noticed something that immediately caught my attention.
Along part of the path there are spruce trees for quite a stretch — and yet there was one very specific spot where the air suddenly felt fuller, richer, almost like a small aromatic pocket. A kind of aroma hotspot.
My nose caught it at once. And when I passed the same place again on the way back, there it was…. again.
So I stopped. I went closer. I looked more carefully at the trees. And there, on some of the needles, were these tiny woolly, cotton-like formations. I came closer, took a sniff, and that was it. That was the source.
Those tiny woolly formations by the way … turned out to be spruce galls, formed in response to spruce lice. But what I was actually smelling was not the galls themselves. It was almost certainly the tree's own response — releasing more of its resinous, aromatic compounds into the air….And what struck me most was not only the scent itself, but what happened in that moment. How quickly scent can gather you. How completely it can bring you back. For a moment, everything else falls away. Not because the world disappears,
well, in a way it does, but because your attention becomes so immediate, so anchored, so present.
And then yesterday, when I took the same path again, that aromatic pocket was gone. The spot was still there, of course. The trees were still there. But the scent itself was gone. And even those little spruce galls I had noticed before had disappeared. Maybe because of the weather, it was much colder, no sun … but maybe also because that moment had simply passed.
And I think that is also one of the most powerful things about scent.
It lets you experience life as something happening NOW.
Something shifting.
Something cyclical.
Something that cannot be repeated in exactly the same way again.
And that is why it can interrupt overthinking so easily — because it brings you back into your body, back into the moment, back into aliveness.
5.
So this is a small invitation:
To notice what scents accompany your own day. Coffee, tea, soap, wood, paper, the air outside, someone passing by, the inside of a cupboard, the warmth of a scarf, the first signs of spring, the deeper breath of a forest.
You don’t have to explain them. You don’t have to translate them into something useful. You don’t even have to find the right words.Just notice them. Let them be part of the way you move through the day. And maybe, little by little, let your nose help you draw a different kind of map - one that might reveal unexpected paths.
A scented map. Uniquely Your own.
Would you like to read this episode in German or Polish?
I’ll be glad to send it to you — just reach out.
Sound • Scent • Shade • Presence
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