Today I diluted 35 essential oils, absolutes and concretes that I had sitting waiting for a new shipment of bottles and alcohol. Phew!

Apart from being surrounded by wave after wave of new olfactive impressions for my brain and riding a roller coaster of images that the scents conjured I was struck by something that I’m sure they would teach you in a face-to-face class room setting but that I had to figure out for myself and that is how very important it is to not be in a hurry when working with raw materials.

While measuring out the grams on the scale the mind wanders…it flits to things still to do on the to do list, things I said to LV over the weekend, my daughter’s life, people I haven’t gotten back to yet, how far I feel I’m behind still in my learning, comparing my progress to other perfumers and on and on.  And as these thoughts raced I noticed so did the drops flowing out of my pipette!  The moment I slowed down my thoughts and breathed into the moment, the more centred I became and relaxed in the exercise of simply measuring out and doing a precise job of it.

I bring it up because to me the energy with which we do anything has an impact on the final outcome, it is important; recognising the energy I was expelling in that moment and then making the necessary modifications to my thoughts and my breathing is as important to the art of perfumery as learning the individual notes.