Smelling stuff is much more than smelling nice

The first time Sarah and I ever spoke, we talked all about 4160Tuesdays, the Scenthusiasm Patreon and the Scenthusiasm School, which was soon to be relaunched. But what she also explained clearly was how completely fascinated she was by the connection between using our sense of smell to understand and identify things and our brain’s health.

Sarah understood without any doubt that working our brains, as we would our muscles, makes them stronger and more resilient. She also knew that training it through smell is a really effective way to do it, and that getting more involved in this is something she would be focusing on in the future.

When we spoke about this again recently, and she was explaining the Mental Fitness Through Active Smelling Scenthusiasm Challenge she had just created, I put it to her that working on this and sharing her knowledge was very generous of her, almost charitable. She is helping to improve people’s brain health and putting the information out there for free. However, she waved away my comments for the most part and explained that this is an area she is completely fascinated by. She loves the idea that smelling and identifying things can help keep people’s brains healthy, and she wants to keep exploring it and following new discoveries. She shares what she learns with her community simply because of her passion and intrigue, and the fact that it helps people is a wonderful outcome.

Sarah has plenty of ideas, and even some seeds already sown, for how she will continue moving in this direction and focus on it even more in the future, and with neuroscientist friends to hand, she will always have brain experts to share her thoughts and ideas with. 

On to the Mental Fitness Through Active Smelling Scenthusiasm Challenge. We’ve been sharing this all over the place, starting with our Scenthusiasm Patreon, because this is where members pay to be part of a small community that follows and joins in with Sarah’s most creative perfumery work from the inside.

If you can see the benefit of a community around scent, and of Sarah continuing to explore the advantages of active smelling and how to make it understandable and accessible for people, come and join our community. It helps give Sarah more time and space to work on something that may play a significant role in brain health. (That’s only a tiny part of it, there are lots of interesting things for members, and it’s generally a nice place to be).

In addition to Patreon, you’ll also find the challenge on Facebook and in our emails. We really do want everyone to benefit from it, so we’re sharing it around where we can.

The Scenthusiasm Challenge is simple, but not entirely easy. On the first day, there’s an introduction film in which Sarah explains how it all works, and after that there’s a series of films over 12 days explaining how to explore the scent of something in a way that would seem unusual to most people.

You can smell a smell, but can you feel, hear, touch, or visit a smell? Yes, you can. But for most people, it’s a brain workout to get there. Sarah shows you how to gently search your brain for new ways to experience the things you smell. And as much as we talk about how this has been proven to improve brain health, which it has, and is a good enough reason to do it in itself, it’s also quite wonderful to be able to do more than just smell your fragrances.

We want you to enjoy and benefit from this challenge regardless, so it’s available for free on Patreon. But if you’d like to support Sarah in spending more time on the creative side of perfumery and our sense of smell (which I believe is going to have a big impact, even if she’s just doing it for the fun of it), consider joining one of the Patreon paid memberships. 

I’m hoping Sarah only half-reads this before I publish it on our blog page, as she may have me change it. She’s not too keen on us asking things like hit subscribe, follow us, or join the community. I’m sure if you’ve watched any of her YouTube films, you’ll have seen Arthur try to sneak it in too 😅 We do it because Sarah isn’t really one to toot her own horn, even if it needs a good tooting every now and then.

Anyway, go and do the challenge, get your brain juices flowing, and we may see you in our Patreon community of scent enthusiasts.

Take care, 

Sinead & Team Tuesdays