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"Whenever I wear my signature perfume, strangers both male and female feel compelled to follow me off trains and down streets to comment or enquire about the scent I am wearing. I finally looked up what the floral notes of the perfume were, and discovered it includes the fragrances of mandarin, orange blossom, jasmine and vanilla. But what does all that have to do with therapeutic writing?
Well, it turns out that the nose is home to more than 400 olfactory receptors. Smell is ancient, and more evolved in the human body than sight and hearing. Smell takes a direct route to our emotions. When we connect to our past through the portal of scents, smell becomes a powerful time traveller and conduit for writing about childhood memories and experiences of people.
This story is from the August 2023 edition of Psychologies UK.
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This story is from the August 2023 edition of Psychologies UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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