Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Keep one strong smell for when you have gone flat, lemon or peppermint, and one soft smell for when you are wound up, something like lavender. Smell asks nothing of you, which is its whole advantage.
Set this up in advance, because the moment you need it is the moment you will not feel like planning. A small bottle in a bag, a sprig in a pocket, a cut lemon left on the side. Match the strength to the direction you need: sharp to come up, gentle to come down. If a particular smell carries a hard memory for you, leave it out; there is nothing to prove here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
It was He who made His tranquillity descend into the hearts of the believers (Quran 48:4). Calm is described here as sent down and received, which is close to the way a scent works on you rather than by you.
هُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَنزَلَ ٱلسَّكِينَةَ فِي قُلُوبِ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ لِيَزۡدَادُوٓاْ إِيمَٰنࣰ ا مَّعَ إِيمَٰنِهِمۡۗ وَلِلَّهِ جُنُودُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِۚ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ عَلِيمًا حَكِيمࣰ ا
It was He who made His tranquillity descend into the hearts of the believers, to add faith to their faith––the forces of the heavens and earth belong to God; He is all knowing and all wise––
Qur’an 48:4read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling 306 experiments, a meta-analysis of emotion regulation strategies found that changing what you attend to, or how you read a situation, worked better than trying to push a feeling down once it had arrived. A scent is a fairly blunt way of changing what has your attention, and that review did not test smells as such. Take it as support for the shape of the move rather than evidence for aromatherapy.
Webb TL, Miles E, Sheeran P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A smell arrives without you having to think about it, so it still works when thinking is the part that has stalled.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If the even square does not touch it, stretch the shape: in for six, hold for four, out for six, hold for four.
Before you try anything, give your distress a number out of ten. Do the thing. Then give it a number again.
Slide your right hand under your left arm so it rests at the side of your chest, and lay your left hand on your right shoulder. Then just sit, and notice whatever happens between your hands.