Scented candles are an enduring self care go-to. From the strike of a match to the first inhalation, they are a tried and tested remedy for stressful days and an effortless way to help you relax.
Before we learned to weave scent and wax together, we found safety, warmth and nourishment around the fire. The human connection to flame is ancient and profound.
The power of scent, though, to boost your mood and support your well-being, is often still underestimated.
While aromatherapy has historic roots, and enduring modern appeal, the power of scent goes beyond just the therapeutic properties of essential oils.
Of all the senses, scent is the most directly wired to our emotions and memories. Because of this connection we can use a wide variety of scents to help change how we feel. Here at Great House Farm Stores we call this ‘Home Scent Practice’.
Read on, and learn how something as strikingly simple and breathing in the right candle can drastically improve your wellbeing.
How To Boost Your Mood With Scent
Home Scent Practice is the simple process of changing how your home smells to connect you to more of what you need. So, a straightforward example is, if you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed you fill your home with scents that calm and unwind you.
In this instance, we drew on the most calming scents found in nature, roman chamomile and geranium are two we included, and harmonised them in a velvety soft Original Scent Recipe which makes up our Calm refillable candle. So, in times of stress and agitation, when your heartache is spiking and you start to feel that horrid disconnect from your body, we prescribe our Calm candle.
Perhaps your need is more emotional, less directly physical? A broken heart or emotional wound for example. Maybe a loneliness that feels so tangible you can trace its impact in your body? It’s for moments like this we made our Love Original Scent Recipe. It’s a hopeful, confident scent that turns you back towards connection. Palo Santo, Vetiver and Rose Geranium have many properties but it is in this unique and moreish combination they release sweetness and a gentle optimism that maybe love really does conquer all. This tender, gentle, scent is also what we turn to when we want to mark or cherish a relationship.
A Scent That Feels Like Home
Sometimes we need our home to feel like a sanctuary. A safe space to escape to and tuck away in while the world goes around. Times like this require our Home Comforts refillable candle, its delicious scent blend includes cinnamon buns and steamed milk and is the closest to a hug you can get in fragrance form. As this sweet, spiced, scent fills the room it helps to connect your present moment to memories of delicious indulgence and warming comfort.
We could go on and on about our various Original Scent Recipes and the purpose of each one, of how every ingredient is carefully considered for not only its therapeutic impact but its emotive effect too. Scent is a shortcut to changing how you feel, it is a profoundly powerful way of shifting gears and helping your brain go from stressed to calm, tired to energised, or low to joyful.
Improve Your Well-Being With The Right Scent
It’s easy to miss the opportunity to improve your wellbeing with scent by simply being creatures of habit. We repeat buy the candles we’ve liked in the past or that we see in a friends house but our connection to scent is not that simple and shouldn’t be given so little thought. The right scent to burn in any given moment is the scent that connects you to more of what you need. Not just a scent that sparks a jolt of pleasure, lovely as that is.
Every year we write four new limited edition Original Scent Recipes, one for each season. These are only available for one season and they are written with one purpose: to connect you to the siren song of the season at hand. To help you root into the moment and find fresh depths of joy and life in the season.
Seasonal Living Through Scent
These limited edition scents are powerful tonics, fragrant invitations to get the most out of the season you can. They do this by signalling to your brain that it is spring, for example, and help you then shift your posture into something suitably springlike. While a candle filled with cinnamon or nutmeg is a wonderful thing come winter, when your body craves warmth. In Spring those scents would have little really impact. Whereas scents like almond blossom, moss, rain or verdant grass will attune you to the season, refreshing and energising you as only a connection to nature can.
Once you’ve realised just how much of an impact Home Scent Practice can have on how you feel, and the feel and shape of your days, you won’t think about scented candles in the same way again. They are not merely decorations or a scent to cover up a bad odour. They are a critical part of your self care regimen and your wellness practice. They are an investment in your well-being.
There are two simple ways to help you find the right scent to boost your mood. First up, sniff a small dose. Whether by ordering a Discovery Tealight Pack to smell a range of our scents, or our Aromatherapy Tealight Pack perhaps, or by signing up to a 6 Month Subscription where you immerse yourself in a new Original Scent Recipe every month. Explore the scent range and, as you do, take note of how each scent makes you feel.
Secondly, slowly read through the refillable candle scent descriptions. We put great care into describing not just how our candles smell, but the impact that they have. As you read make sure you read slowly, breathing deep and letting the words sink in. Do any of the words resonate? For example, read through this list and see which candle name your eyes settle on: Heal, Rest, Calm, Revive, Restore, Energise.
It really is as simple as slowing down and seeing what scent stands out to you. Our bodies send us constant signal and, for example, an immediate attraction to the word ‘Heal’ is a little footnote from your brain to pay attention too.