We have been exploring our sensory world through John Kabat Zinn's book 'Coming to Our Senses'. This week we examine what John calls 'our most delicately attuned sense'. Remarkably our noses can detect even the faintest aroma with even as little as a few parts per trillion. Our sense of smell is of course largely dependent on our environment and the molecules that are carried by the air around us.
But even more remarkably our brains can conjure up olfactory memories as if they were real and close to original smells that are particularly fixed in our minds - perhaps pleasant smells of comfort foods, our favourite flowers, the soil after a rain, the fresh scent of clean laundry. Equally we might recoil at unpleasant smells that we recall from past experiences.
The ability to smell has had an important evolutionary purpose - it allowed us to distinguish what is safe and what is not. Kabat-Zinn says that it served a 'biological imperative of approach and avoidance'. Based on smell we could decipher which plants might safe to eat. We could sense danger when we smelled certain animals. And chemicals called pheromones that are released by our bodies allow us to detect people that are known to us versus those who are not. Of course pheromones play an important role in attraction to partners and in forming bonds with our children who, especially as babies, know their parents through their scents.
Many other animals have far superior olfactory abilities than humans. John talks about taking walks with his dog who needs to have the freedom to explore her environment through her sense of smell. He notes how she needs 'to be free to wander wherever her nose carries her, but this has its own problems in a human-dominated world'. As is often the case, we forget that we are but one species on this planet and thousands of other animals, insects, and plants occupy the same space we do and are impacted by the smells in the environment.
Smells and scents have a way of grabbing us even in our busiest moments. We may be walking or driving somewhere, perhaps is a rush as we humans often tend to be, and then a smell suddenly hits us. It has the power to invoke all sorts of positive or negative emotions. A foul smell may turn our stomachs or ruin our appetite. Equally, passing a neighbours house or a restaurant with delicious smells coming our way can make our mouths water. Walking into a familiar place like a parents or grandparents home, or a favourite trail we like to frequent, can invoke joy through smells that signal a sense of comfort, safety, love or aliveness.
Like most of our senses, it is possible to become de-sensitized to smells. Certainly if we spend a long time in a space, a new scent that hits us when we first encounter it, fades as we become accustomed to it. As John says 'the nose is a fine instrument, but it tires quickly if overwhelmed. It's hard for us even to smell the food we are eating right through a meal.'
So as with our other senses, it is easy to lose track of the rich smellscape all around us. The nuanced aromas that add to the richness of each day. Smells that connect us to our environment and to those in it. And to the food that nourishes not just our bodies but my hearts and minds. So this week, we can take particular notice of the smellscape as our days unfold. Smells wafting in through an open window - maybe the flowers outside, the fresh-cut grass, the soil after a heavy rain. Maybe we can hold our children a little tighter breathing in their baby smell or their freshly washed hair. And ofcourse, the glorious varieties of smells in our kitchens from that first morning coffee brewing, eggs cooking at breakfast, garlic and onions and herbs mingling together on our stove tops and in the air. Being mindful about the world of scents around us is just one more way to be immersed in the moment by moment experience of life unfolding. It may surprise us how much we have missed, and what ha
