Well these don't smell fishy, but waft with the seductive scent of Jasmine that has been drifting through the courtyard these last couple of days with the advent of spring. Today I was working on a series of images for a new customer and about to be launched business that specialises in handcrafted personalised perfumes and colognes. Pretty cool, huh? Yet today I was distracted by a flood of very personal bitter sweet memories which have nothing to do with Jasmine or personalised perfumes.
It has been well documented the powerful link between smell and memories. The Fifth Sense and organisation that supports people with smell and taste disorders explains that "Upon detecting a smell the olfactory neurones in the upper part of the nose generate an impulse which is passed to the brain along the olfactory nerve. The part of the brain this arrives at first is called the olfactory bulb, which processes the signal and then passes information about the smell to other areas closely connected to it, collectively known as the limbic system." The limbic system is the part of our brain that houses memories.
A smell can quickly evoke memories, but also is important to our enjoyment of food. Did you know that the flavour of our food is almost entirely detected in the nose and not by the tongue. The nasal cavity contains around 12 million different oderant receptors, each sensitive to slightly different chemical structures. When molecules in the air enter the nose and contact the various oderant receptors, a "picture" of the chemical composition of the air is generated and sent to the brain, which we experience as smell.
The Queensland Brain Institute conducted some research in 2014 which further investigated the link between smell and long term memory. It suggested that our preferences for different foods and beverages are linked to our sense of smell, and that long-term scent memories modify how odours are perceived. In a nutshell: our smell experiences shape our preferences.
So food, smell, and memories with their emotions are closely linked. Once again, understanding the physiology of what is taking place as we function from day to day and make certain life choices can also suggest what needs to take place to loosen up those bonds to create new or different experiences for the future. To do so we have to go back into the brain and do some rewiring.
I have a personal (and somewhat embarrassing) life experience that will bring to light the power of smell. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I was visiting my grandmother at dinner time. Now I adored my grandma and she was an amazing cook - her kitchen always smelt amazing. This night she put in front of me a huge plate of white food. I asked what it was and she told me "mashed potato" because she knew that was one of my favourite things to eat. Well I sat there and started to eat - it didn't taste like mashed potato and it didn't smell like mashed potato. When I questioned her, she told me again with no uncertainly that I should "Be a good girl, eat it all up, it is mashed potato". Now who am I to question my grandmother, I ate it up but it just didn't seem right. When I had finished the meal she then told me that it was fish. I could not believe that my grandmother had lied to me. That feeling of betrayal must have been so great that in my 4 or 5 year old brain a memory had been preserved and over the years much more got linked to that memory. From that day I could not face eating fish, refused to eat it and over time even the smell of fish would take me back instantly to that childhood emotion of betrayal. It was the first time I found out with absolute certainty that even the people who love you and who you deeply love will lie to you.
Ironically on the first wedding anniversary of my first marriage, my husband took me out to a very fancy and expensive restaurant to celebrate. He wanted to be the complete gentleman and decided he would order the champaign, the wine and the meals. My meal came out - a complete rainbow trout with it's murky eye just glaring at me. I wanted to throw up. It was a seafood only restaurant, so I enjoyed the wine instead.
As the years have passed, I know how ridiculous that my food choices have been profoundly affected by that single memory of being in my grandma's kitchen. However, early this year I made a very conscious decision as part of my healing journey. A decision that I would once and for unravel that synaptic Gordian Knot that linked the smell and taste of fish to the emotion of betrayal. At one of the workshops I went to, I reworked that memory of being in my grandmothers kitchen over and over again, until I could fill that memory with appreciation and gratitude, and to leave no trace of those bitter emotions. In doing so, I broke the bond between fish and betrayal. As a result, last Saturday night when I went out to dinner with a friend, we went to a seafood restaurant. I ordered and thoroughly enjoyed the crab cakes. I wanted to cry they were so delicious - this is what I had been missing out on in the past because of some over hashed, over used, olfactory emotional link.
When we travel along a journey of healing, it is sometime funny the little things that emerge to be worked on. It might smell fishy, but I am OK with that.
Flying Solo Tip 069365 : Some memories emotionally haunt us and pervert our decisions and life choices. They are nothing more than trapped emotions that tie us to the past by reinforcing pre-exiting neural pathways in our brain that have no place in the enjoyment of our todays.