Deep Listening to Aromas and their Music

Music, a non-verbal metaphor for non-verbal aromas.

Listening to aromas

Many years ago, I had the great fortune to exchange a few words with the American composer Phillip Glass, who told me that music must be played and not kept in silent scores on dusty shelves. The very same may be said of essential oils; that they must be experienced rather than only read about in books and collected in our homes.

One reads about the therapeutic qualities and studies the chemistry of essential oils, but it’s impossible to receive a sensorial understanding, which is a personal imprint of the characteristics of the plant, until we interact with it.

As a creator of artisan essential oils (I co-founded EssènciesCat in 2017), I am fascinated with the non-verbal realms of aroma and plant consciousness. As a musician, I appreciate that music helps us come closer to the non-verbal world of aroma by giving us non-verbal metaphors to understand it’s action and movement and how to incorporate ‘deep listening’ into our personal aromatherapy practice. Lucia Dlugoszewski tells us,

“The first concern of all music is to shatter the indifference of hearing, the callousness of sensibility, to create that moment of solution we call poetry, our rigidity dissolved when we occur reborn, in a sense hearing for the first time.” (Dlugoszewski). I need a year of publication and the page number for this quote. It will also need to go in the references section.

Now replace the words ‘music’ with aroma and ‘hearing’ with smelling. How can we smell as if for the first time? How can our senses and perception be ‘shattered’ by an interaction with an essential oil?

The composer Pauline Oliveros writes about Deep Listening:

“To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived. Deep has to do with complexity and boundaries, or edges between ordinary and habitual understanding. Deep listening is learning to expand perception to include the whole space / time continuum encountering the vastness and complexities as much as possible.”  (Oliveros, 2005) I need a page number for this quote.

Rather than smelling essential oils, I prefer the term ‘listening’, it feels more expansive. ‘Deep listening’ refers to the opening perception towards a language that is non-verbal and a consciousness that is non-human; the language of plants and their aroma. We apply our imaginative capacity to form an unforced dialogue with the plant kingdom and her essences.

Both aroma and music ‘speak to us’ with impressions, triggering emotional and physical responses. We open and become ‘more ying’; receptive without trying. ‘Happenings’ occur, landscapes unfold, transforming into portholes to wordless worlds whose aliveness isn’t limited to time and space, matter and mind. Shifts in perception, concepts, understanding and insights beyond our study and logic ‘happen’.

After a long olfaction (between 20 minutes and 1 hour) of deep listening to an essential oil, we reflect on our experience which can be translated into poetic images of the complex chemical nature and character of the aroma.

Active imagination

Sharon Blackie (2019) talks about the ‘mundis imaginalis’, “the imaginal world”, a term inspired by Sufism that values the world of images that lies between our senses and our intellect as being as real as either. “The mundus imaginalis is the place that all spiritual and transcendent experience comes from. It is the source of synchronicities, of ‘psychic’ experiences and creative insights; it penetrates into our dreams and other visionary experiences” (Blackie, 2019).

There are less ‘active’ mindsets we can also apply. Contemplation and daydreaming are also quiet ways to incorporate aromas gently. Before we know it, synchronicities happen, the world becomes alive, there is something beyond what we are ‘seeing’. We are choosing to step into the realm of profound dialogue. This is how our ancestors lived. Now, we call it weird and wacky. The mystery begins to whisper to us. Is she within, without? It doesn’t matter. The whisper lingers. Memory lost. We remember that we have forgotten.

A working example

On the site of our distillery, at EssènciesCat, we created ‘Rhizome, Healing Arts Centre’ in 2023, to offer immersive, aromatic experiences. One such was a watercolour and aroma workshop that focused on Fennel. We began our morning in the heat outside, observing and contemplating the plant; where it grows, what light and soil it prefers, the insect and bird activity on it, snails and butterfly larvae tucked between the shooting stalks. We considered the architecture of the plant, it’s geometry, it’s texture, feel, flexibility, taste. We wrote and drew quick, non-thinking notes until we chose a section to cut and take inside. We arranged it as we felt best and started drawing the outline in pencil before applying pale colours first, building the intensity of ink gradually so as to not destroy our artistic efforts. All the while fennel was evaporating from the diffuser in the centre of the table and some hot fennel tea was in the pot. After completing our paintings, there was time for some to go freestyle and create improvised paintings inspired by fennel. We finished with sharing our paintings and sensations of what we had experienced.

I then read about Fennel from an aromatherapy book, and everyone was astonished to find that what they had felt, and ‘heard’ through contemplation, observation, subtle communing and long olfaction (through the diffuser, not with full concentration but while painting) was exact to the words of the books. Everyone had felt and understood the therapeutic qualities of fennel, without being ‘taught’ in a traditional sense, but by immersing themselves in a non-verbal dialogue.

Christian Escriva, of the ‘Sensorial Approach’ and founder of ‘Le Gattilier’ uses long olfactions of an oil or mother tincture in seminars to enquire about the genus of a plant. (Genus is the being, essence or soul. So this is different to what we would think of as the genus in terms of botanical names (and it being between family and species?). We may need to expand on this a little or reword to eliminate confusion. The group share observations from their body, emotions, mind, colours and images after an olfaction. There are always correlations between the observers and so a map of the plant is made, each person contributing to the outline, contours and movement of the plant. For example, we studied Helichrysum italicum together in rhizome (not sure what you mean by together in rhizome? Can you explain please) and all ‘saw’ it’s golden light, experienced a sense of being enveloped, heat around the heart, motherly warmth and references to generational trauma. Together, we received confirmation that our intuition is real and is to be trusted. The relevance of group study is clear when we share our personal perceptions to witness together the multidimensional versions of the plant genus, revealing a deeper understanding of its whole. 

Describing aromas non-verbally

What if there is a real dialogue between plants and humans that can be revived from our ancient roots? Our intention is to deepen our understanding and therefore relationship with essential oils. We want to get closer to the plant’s physiology, symbolism, chemistry, aromatic character and therapeutic uses. How might we describe all of this without words? Can we use the non-verbal language of music in order to integrate our knowing into an experience that makes a lasting imprint?

When we hear music, we understand it to be sad, happy, triumphant etc. We understand these messages subconsciously because a language was developed during the 17th and 18th centuries in a style of music known as baroque. Baroque composers such as Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Rameau developed complex rules that must be followed in order to execute a composition. Melodies have meaning because the space between each note portrays a different emotion. Tonalities also carry meaning. E.g. D major represents victory (think Hallelujah chorus), D minor, female melancholy. There is a separate symbolism for each of the 24 tonalities. Harmony takes us on a journey, away from home, exploring other colours and back. Each instrument has a character; melancholy cello, fiery violin, brass to add pomp and energy. Baroque composers were craftsmen for their employers (the church or nobility). Putting music to text for special occasions so their employers and congregations could understand and receive the often spiritual significance of the occasion was of paramount importance. What if we use this very language to reflect the movement, story and medicine of the plant kingdom?

Music is able to describe emotional landscapes, epic stories and physical sensations. Let’s take a strong aroma such as Oregano (Origanum vulgare). A phenol. Fire. Rage. A densifying, descending movement, volcanic eruptions. Take a drop and listen to Il giardino harmonico’s interpretation of Summer by Vivaldi. The violin represents the devil in a baroque mind. The aroma is dense. So is the music. The gentle opening of descending scales in thirds is disturbed by violent, hot eruptions. The stifling Mediterranean heat is disturbed by hot summer storms. Let’s go back to those thirds – writing ‘in thirds’ was a compositional tool to enhance a melody; just like carvacrol and thymol working so well together potentiate the action of Oregano. Those eruptions resemble the action oregano has on microorganisms, bursting the lipid bilayer of a bacteria cell membrane, causing lava leaks of vital cell contents. After the fiery release of rage, it’s not uncommon to recoil under a diminishing of immune strength. The solitude expressed by the solo violin in the adagio movement, with memories of the hideous argument close by at all times (expressed by tremolo in the orchestra) beautifully captures our desperation after a heated debate or outburst (take note and be on the alert for how the body expresses rage after an explosion or when it is not expressed). The furious final movement is an expression of oregano’s explosive energy, its heat, its tremendous power to burst forth.

Even without being a music scholar, I’m sure most people can hear the music within the aroma. That’s why it could be so useful to use music as a metaphor to ‘hear’ the movement and character of aromas. We can begin to vibrate with the aromas and plants. We incorporate their non-verbal language into ours. We resonate together.

Aromatherapy; a spiritual practice.

Administering plant essences to clients, friends and family, we encourage others to create a sensual, meaningful relationship with plants that deepens their healing. It is through connection that we heal.

We are capable of creating a relationship with anything, from our car, our pet, our coffee, our mascara, our phone and of course pills. They’re called drugs. Plants are not drugs. They are medicine. They can be sacred, endangered, challenging, awakening. Health comes through a healthy relationship to self, to others and our environment. By offering an experience of deep listening to a plant, we are creating space for a personal relationship between patient and plant to begin. When in the presence of an aroma, we hope to shatter the callousness of sensibility, to create that moment of solution we call poetry, our rigidity dissolved when we occur reborn, in a sense smelling for the first time.

So let’s tune in with plants and their essences and harmonise with them. Let’s vibrate with them. Let’s listen deeply to them, write poetry inspired by them, paint them, dance with them in a non-thinking, creative dialogue that expresses their non-verbal language more profoundly as they resonate within.

References

Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep listening, a composer’s sound practice USA: iuniverse

Blackie, S. (2019) The mythical imagination. Available at https://sharonblackie.net/the-mythic-imagination-2/ (Accessed 17/09/24).