“Smell, the mysterious aide-m\u00e9moire, had just brought a whole world back to life within him.” You have very probably already experienced this wonderful sentence by Victor Hugo: our fifth sense indeed has the power to bring to the surface a flood of emotions and memories\u2014memories, some of which had sometimes begun to gather dust\u2026 It is precisely on the close links between our nose and our emotions that olfactotherapy is based, a practice that Master Parfums invites you to discover today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did you know that smell was the only one of our senses to be anatomically linked to our emotions<\/a> and our memories? To better understand this relationship, we must retrace the path a smell takes when it comes to tickle our nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chemical components of a smell come into contact with our olfactory mucous membrane<\/a>, located right at the top of our nasal cavity. This mucous membrane, made up of millions of olfactory neurons, has the mission of transforming these components into a nervous message that can then be deciphered by our brain. The mucous membrane is in direct communication with the olfactory bulb, which receives this message, then\u2014off to two different systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On one side, there is the conscious system thanks to which we are able to identify smells<\/a>, name them and differentiate them. On the other, there is the limbic system<\/a>, the area of our brain managing our emotions (through the amygdala) and our memories (through the hippocampus).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking into account this physical and neurological proximity between smell and emotions, it is not surprising that our olfactory memory is the most resilient of all. Our limbic system does not merely generate passing emotions; it also keeps a trace of the associations of smells and emotions we experience throughout our life. An incredible faculty, but a double-edged one: if the wafts of vanilla<\/a> instantly bring a smile to your lips, reminding you of that ice cream you savoured every summer, carefree and knee-high to a grasshopper, other scents could send you back to far less pleasant memories. A union for better and for worse!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before defining olfactotherapy more precisely, it is important to distinguish it from other smell-related disciplines with which it is sometimes confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aromatherapy aims to treat physical problems\u2014for example, a persistent headache or muscle pain\u2014and relies for this on the pharmacological virtues of different essential oils. For its part, aromachology is the science examining the way smells affect our mood and our actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while there is indeed a difference between olfactotherapy and aromatherapy, they are nonetheless not so far apart: olfactotherapy is in fact a branch of aromatherapy, the one that helps to heal psychological rather than physical ailments\u2014ailments that are no less real.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOlfactotherapy vs Aromatherapy and Aromachology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Olfactotherapy\u2014What’s It All About?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n