This is a mirror site of archive pages: The ideas are updated and far clearer in https://AnimalSense.online

FIRST SMELLING EXERCISES
Chapter 4 is still rather disorganised - 20th Feb being rewritten

Tasting and smelling are intrinsically connected, and they are a far stranger and deeper world than seeing and listening.

Modern day humans are so unfamiliar with their senses of smell and taste, that we need time to relearn about them and start to recognise their potential.

With tasting, discover all the different taste areas in your mouth and on the lips, between lips and teeth, under the tongue and above it, roof of mouth and throat.

To start with, the most important smelling exercise is to recognise the difference between the ‛in-smell’ and the ‛out-smell’. Over the next few days and weeks, whenever you notice a smell, take a moment to let it fill you, and then notice the contrast of the out breath. This has deeper effects, but at first just practically, if you only concentrate on the in-smell you will soon get dizzy, noticing the contrasting out-smell, regulates the speed of breathing.

It can be done with fresh air and old air, but if we can make the incoming or outgoing air more noticeable, it stimulates the sensation.

Focussing on Strong Smells to Stimulate Awareness
The outgoing breath and smell is easy to amplify with coffee, whisky, southern comfort, or chocolate, etc. And it's better to use one simple strong taste, rather than after a meal, when the taste of the meal seems to fill your whole body.

BUT you will need a variety of nice things to inhale. You don't want to inhale the same thing every day, a few days long if you enjoy it, but then it gets boring, and probably has one-sided effects.

Indoors, these days, i often use aroma therapy oils. (from China 1.50-2.00 euro per bottle, go to 'Kiuno' or 'Pyrrla'). In summer, i would advise you to rub your nose in a few roses or honeysuckle, and empathise with bees.

Trying to find household equivalents is tricky. Tiger balm and clove oil don't work so well, peppermint oil is good but somehow thin, deeper smells are better like vick, and tea tree oil is very good. ... i have little rags and heat them on a lamp ... rub them on my nose ...

Ideas on how to encourage these neglected senses are described in Tasting and Smelling Games. The smelling apparatus itself and how hedgehogs use it continues with Isolating the In-smell and the Out-smell.

Back to Chapter 4 : Smelling and Tasting