The Power Of Scents
By: Elías Alejandro, Alejandra Rodriguez, Manola Sunza and Alejandro Valderrama
This week, we did aromatherapy as part of an English class activity. The purpose of this activity was to relax, calm ourselves and write down what we felt, what we liked, and what we remembered when we smelled each of the scents. The scents were chosen by the teacher and we were assigned to have them ready on a certain date so that we could do the activity in class. In our personal experience, this was a really cool and great activity. We learned how different smells can calm you down and the benefits or effects they can have on your physical and mental health such as reducing fatigue, rage, and inflammation, relaxing or calming some of the flu symptoms, and even helping fight anemia.
Based on Elías’s experience, although he was very thrilled and excited about the activity, he struggled a bit to find the ingredients but in the end, all went okay. While doing the activity he enjoyed smelling the scents (Orange, mint, cinnamon, oregano, and clove) but he found them unattractive when we needed to write down our thoughts and feelings. Still, he liked the activity. Personally speaking, Manola said “I found this activity very interesting, we learned how the smells can stimulate your mind into remembering some events and how they can have a positive impact on your health. Aromatherapy is a very simple way to deal with some health issues”. Both Manola and Elías recommend the activity to relax and take some time for yourself to enjoy and beware of your mental health, but according to Elías, he says this activity would be better without the writing down part.
Based on Ale’s experience, she wasn’t very comfortable with the activity, but she tried to do the activity even though she is kind of allergic to strong scents. She would recommend the activity for some specific people, to people who don’t get dizzy or with the flying feeling. For other people, aromatherapy is very helpful and she recommends it completely. Alex's personal opinion is that was quite positive. He never got used to smelling scents, and this activity helped him to be able to notice the details of the soft scent of the products and bring him nice and not so nice memories as it doesn't always remind you of good things. I recommend this activity to anyone because it helps you to get out of your problems, and it reduces stress and anxiety ”.
To conclude, aromatherapy is a way to use aromas in your favor. In the end, we can all agree on the fact that using aromatherapy is very helpful if you want something natural for whatever issue you are dealing with. Studies show how some scents can help release stress, anxiety, insomnia, and even help with depression, and much more. So why not give it a try?
Our Experience with Aromatherapy
By Anna Espinosa, Mariana Figueroa and Tiago Vargas
On Friday, May 7th, the Impact 4 group started taking aromatherapy sessions for our project. We were given a series of aromas to experience, and everyone chose one. We smelled them starting each English class, a total of four days a week. The activity’s main objective was to experience aromatherapy and determine its effectiveness. We researched its benefits in order to confirm if these are true, plus, we wanted to track their effects on ourselves. In the course of our research, we found out that according to Healthline some of the benefits of aromatherapy are to manage pain, improve sleep, reduce stress, agitation, anxiety, among others.
For example, Mariana and Anna Cecilia chose clove. Mariana found herself in a difficult situation because she has an almost null sense of smell. Therefore, she chose to eat the clove instead, and give the activity an opportunity. She found out as the days went by that clove’s taste became less and less spicy and easier to eat. Anna, on the other hand, had no problems during the activity. She found the scent of clove funny, so every time she smelled it she couldn’t help but laugh. Mariana felt satisfaction after eating clove and Anna felt joyful. Those things considered, both students recommend the activity.
Tiago said he was very excited before doing the activity because he loves new experiences. When he smelled all the scents the first day, he relaxed, and some memories came to his mind slowly, which he wrote down. He chose mint because when he smelled it, Tiago felt like his airways were freshened, so he calmed down and felt more focused. After each session, he felt more relaxed, but with a lot of energy. He thinks this therapy works because some scents stimulate your brain by bringing old memories or just by calming you. Tiago recommends this activity to anybody who wants to relax before classes or before sleeping.
To sum up, we were able to confirm aromatherapy’s effectiveness regarding stress, agitation, and anxiety. We found some difficulties while experiencing aromatherapy, but we were able to overcome them successfully. We recommend practicing constantly by smelling the chosen scent three times but avoiding any scent that causes discomfort. Overall, we found the aromatherapy experience nice with soothing results. In conclusion, we recommend trying aromatherapy.
Aromatherapy as a Way of Releasing Stress
By Federico Herrera, Bibiana Herrera, Aoife Torres and Emiliano Velazquez
As mentioned before, the pandemic has affected the stress levels of people all around the world. We´ve seen many ways of reducing stress like reading, drawing, coloring, and painting mandalas, but now we´ll talk about aromatherapy. Aromatherapy is a holistic treatment that uses scents such as eucalyptus, mint, rosemary, lavender, vanilla, lemon, coconut, thyme, Azahar, rose, pine, and others, for many things such as healing, releasing stress, and even bringing back memories, but, is it really effective?
From Bibi's point of view, she really liked the activity, because she felt more relaxed after smelling the scent which was mint, and that's why she thinks she had a better performance during the week. In addition, Emiliano's opinion is that the activity was really helpful to understand and know the effects that a scent can have on you, and how different reactions there are for different kinds of people. For example, he got sick of the smell because he thought the scent was too strong.
Following up, in Aoife's opinion, this task was really helpful, because when she smelled her scent, she felt happy. The only thing that she didn't like was the dizziness after a few minutes of smelling oregano because it was strong. On the other hand, Fede's view
on the matter is that aromatherapy helped him calm and also remember some moments of his life since he chose mint as the scent he wanted to smell. He also felt calmed and focused during the classes.
Taking everything into consideration, aromatherapy can have different effects depending on each person's scent preferences, feelings or memories. If you need a way of releasing stress, aromatherapy is definitely a good option, it may also help you remember things you had forgotten, and stay focused during the daytime. Some of the scents used on aromatherapy can also help with health issues like insomnia, fatigue, asthma, and a lot more. In conclusion, aromatherapy is able to help people in many different aspects and it is really effective.