Q: What do you do when you’ve got very little time to spend evaluating single notes  but you don’t want to lose the ground you’ve gained in training your nose?

A: Olfactive contemplation

I’m waiting for a school composition exercise to mature first in the freezer then in the fridge before I can move forward in training also beginning this week and for the next two months I will be in a teaching flurry with little time for scent immersion so I decided to keep the nose in shape by choosing  three notes each day (if I can) and just BE with them. That’s right, nothing more than just letting their personality wash over me, talk to me and simply listen to their story, how they express themselves.

This is definitely not an active exercise in training the nose but a very passive route of discovery.  During this time I try to observe my breath by practicing breathing yoga; paying attention to how the note affects me on any level including my mood, how often I reach for it and if I am able to remain neutral to any that do anything less than thrill me.

It truly is an exercise in itself not to push, reach, try to, grasp for meaning, awareness or revelation but to simply create a space to be with the single note.

Hope all is well with you and yours.  Have a joy-filled day!