LESSON 3:

BOTANICAL PERFUMERY VIDEO 

TRANSCRIPT
 
Featuring: Jennifer Allen, Mythique Aromatics 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Hi, my name is Jen Allen and I’m from Mythique Aromatics. I’m a botanical perfumer and herbalist. I got my start 
in 2012 after I completed my internship with Rosemary Gladstar. It was during those weeks I spent with her and 
my other classmates that I discovered that I had a deep love for aromatic plants and became really interested in 
working with them as ways to express story and ancestral lineage through aromatic plant medicine. 
 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AROMATHERAPY AND BOTANICAL 
PERFUMING 
 
What I want to talk about today, at least to start off with, would be the differences between aromatherapy and 
botanical perfuming. They are similar in some respects, but they also have kind of a different end goal. Typically, 
aromatherapy is done to achieve some type of therapeutic outcome. We might be using essential oils to perhaps 
help with an upper respiratory infection or maybe to help somebody relax when they’re feeling a little nervous or 
anxious.  
 
Perfuming is different. Perfuming is more of an art form. We can think of it very similarly to how we would think 
about painting or writing in which we’re using scent as a way to create a very multilayered artistical expression. 
That doesn’t mean that it can’t have a therapeutic benefit to it or that it might bring up some type of emotional 
response or even a sense of physical wellbeing, but the way we’re working with it is to make sure that the aroma 
is working in a complimentary or synergistic way. 
 
So, for example, if I was working with aromatherapy and I wanted to created something to say, reduce infection 
or bacterial situations in the air, I’m not necessarily concerned about whether or not the clove in that formulation 
might be overpowering the lemon in the formulation, it’s more about the aromatic molecules just diffusing into 
the air to create a therapeutic outcome. Whereas in perfuming, we’re looking for the different layers or 
ingredients to work in a more harmonious fashion, either bringing out the best of each other or just working in a 
way to create a sort of a unique expression. 
 
THE RITUAL OF AROMATICS 
 
So, one of the things that’s really important to me in my work is to help people have a more ritual use of plant 
medicine in a much more sensory-based way. 
 
As a psychotherapist, I notice in my work that a lot of people feel a sense of disconnection, oftentimes 
disconnection from each other, but also disconnection from nature.  
 
Aromatic medicine is a really wonderful way to help people reconnect. These days, people’s idea of ritual is often 
tied into electronic devices, which in essence creates more separation and more distance. So, being able to 
pause throughout the day and maybe breathe in a perfume locket that someone’s carrying with them, or some 

 
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type of aromatherapy bracelet is a way for people to just, one, take a nice deep, full inhalation, which helps to 
bring about a relaxation response, but it also allows us to tie very directly into our sense organs.  
 
By tying into our sense organs, it allows us moments of grounding and so it helps us just remember where our 
center is and to be able to move through our day moving from that place. 
 
One of the other things that I feel is a bit of a disconnect in our culture is that our noses have become quite 
accustomed to synthetic scent. Rewilding ourselves by being able to reacquaint our bodies with plants or with 
aromas that are coming from a natural plant source is a much healthier way of us breathing things in than using 
synthetic scents. 
 
THE COMPOSITION OF PERFUME 
 
If we were to organize a perfume composition, we would think of it similar to music. So, in perfuming, we talk 
about an accord. An accord is a series of notes: a top note, heart note, and base note, that come together to 
create a final composition. 
 
So, very much the way an orchestra would work, if the drums were overpowering the violins or the cellos were 
overpowering the flutes, there would be something lost, and it would feel more chaotic. So, the rule of the 
composer is to make sure that all of those elements are working to create a beautiful outcome. 
 
So, understanding the different qualities and the different diffusion rates of the notes is important. If we’re 
looking at top notes, top notes tend to diffuse more quickly, and those would be things that most people are 
familiar with in terms of the culinary world.  
 
Citrus would be one form of a top note and people might think that that would be limiting on some level, but 
there’s a lot of variety in terms of citrus. So, we have many different types of orange, many different types of 
grapefruit, and it is something that most people are familiar with. 
 
The other thing that would fall in our top note category would be different types of spices, so things like black 
pepper or pink pepper, different types of herbaceous elements, like basil or tarragon. So, a lot of the culinary 
spices that people are familiar with and that they have on hand in their pantries could be utilized as a top note 
accord. 
 
In order to create a perfume though that has longevity, we need to have other things kind of holding that up. 
Because although these are refreshing and crisp and beautiful, they are going to diffuse at a much more rapid 
rate. 
 
So, oftentimes when we see body splashes and things of that nature, people are using a lot of citruses, but in 
order for that to have longevity on the skin, we need to have other plants underneath that that have a slower 
diffusion rate that’s going to help to sort of anchor the fragrance to the skin. 
 
So, if we’re looking at heart notes, heart notes would be a lot of our florals. So, things like lavender absolute. So, 
lavender essential oil actually would be a top note because it diffuses more rapidly, but lavender absolute is a 
little bit thicker, a little bit more viscous. Heart notes tend to have more of the mediation role. They sort of create 
some complexity and some interest to the formulation and are often the more expensive price points, if people 
were to be purchasing essential oils or absolutes. 
 
So, anytime you see the word absolute, typically speaking, but not always, it would fall into the heart note 
category. Other absolutes would be things like a fir absolute. So, a lot of the fir absolutes have a sweeter type of 
aroma to them.  
 

 
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So, base notes are the things that people often associate with the spice route of long ago. These were prized 
resins and incense and balsams and sometimes lichens or even grasses that people would travel long distances 
for. These were the types of ingredients that were used to honor gods and to show respect for kings and 
queens. These are things like frankincense and oakmoss and vetiver and patchouli.  
 
These are the types of ingredients that are a little bit more difficult to work with, often because of their viscosity. 
Usually, they need to be diluted in order to work with them more effectively. And just one drop too much is 
enough to overpower your entire fragrance.  
 
They’re also oftentimes prized and even at times endangered. If we’re thinking about things like sandalwood, we 
want to be really mindful in our consumption of some of these things, because they are endangered plants. So, 
always making sure that we’re accessing these things from sustainable sources is really important. Especially to 
me, it’s something I try really hard to be mindful of. 
 
And also thinking creatively about how you can find some of your own base notes in a bioregional way. In my 
case, I live in the Northeast, and so I have access to a lot of different evergreens. I can use the resins from those 
trees to create base note accords in a way that’s a little bit more sustainable and a little bit more ethical. 
 
THE COMPOSITION OF PERFUME 
 
When we think about the ethical use of aromatic plants, we see a lot of media these days talking about the 
endangered sandalwood, the overharvestation of white sage, the over-usage of palo santo. And I think that’s 
what’s important for us to recognize and realize, is that it is our responsibility to give back on some level, so 
making sure that we are using methods that perhaps wouldn’t require the same volume of plant material in order 
to produce it. 
 
So, for example, when we are creating an essential oil, we’re looking at many, many pounds of plant material. 
This is actually a 20-liter still, so you’re looking at several pounds of plant material that would need to go into this 
in order to produce a very small amount of essential oil. We have to think about maybe other methodologies that 
we can use where we’re using less of a precious plant material but still getting an aromatic product. It may not 
be as strong as if we’re using essential oils, but we can then use less essential oils on top of that to reinforce it, 
than just only straight using essential oils. 
 
The other thing to think about is being culturally sensitive in terms of using plants from other cultures. One of the 
things to maybe think about is your own ancestry and kind of identifying different aromatic plants that come from 
your culture. If you’re unsure of your cultural roots, you can start just by taking it from more of a bioregional 
perspective. So, getting creative in terms of what’s growing in your backyard. You know, what types of plants 
could operate as a base note, a heart note, or a top note for you. What are things that you could grow in your 
garden that have some type of emotional or even astrological significance to you as an individual? 
 
Some of these ancient techniques have been around a really long time, but we’ve forgotten a lot of these things, 
so one of the things I find most fascinating about this work is the historical piece. So, it’s exciting to find old 
books or old documentation that show ancient Egyptian ways of extracting scent.  
 
And what’s interesting is that a lot of these methods are things that herbalists use all the time, but we think 
about it more in terms of pulling chemical constituents out of plants to be used internally or topically for like skin 
healing, but we don’t really think about it in terms of how we can use that as a layering system for scent. 
 
EXTRACTION METHODS 
 

 
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So, one of the methods that we can use to extract scent from plants would be maceration. Maceration would be 
taking a base oil, something like an olive oil, something that’s going to give you a bit of shelf stability, but also 
accessible and easy-to-find. And I would use a light olive oil, because we don’t want the aroma of the olive oil to 
overpower the aromatic plants that you’re trying to extract. 
 
But this would be put over a slow heat and we wouldn’t want the temperature to rise above 150 degrees. It’s the 
kind of thing that you would have to babysit a bit, so you would be mixing the plants and just watching for when 
the plants start to become a bit wilted. If we’re working with precious flowers, things like rose petals, once they 
start to become translucent, you would strain that plant material out and then you would recharge that by adding 
in fresh plant material. So, this could take several hours or even several days, but it would produce a nice base 
oil. 
 
So, if we look at the ancient perfumes, going back to the times of the Sumerian people and the Egyptian people, 
oils were the very, very first menstruum that was used for perfuming. Sometimes this was solid and sometimes it 
was more liquid. 
 
Interesting, a lot of them would create these cones of fragrant oil that would be placed upon the head and then 
as they were moving about in the warm sun, the oil would melt and it would anoint the hair and anoint the skin, 
which would make a lot of sense, given the fact that they were in areas of the world that had extreme heat and 
so not only was it a way to create aroma and smell beautiful, but it was also practical in terms of protecting the 
skin from sun damage. 
 
So, maceration would be one way. And then I could take that base oil from that maceration and depending on, 
you know, the level of aroma, if I needed to enhance it in some capacity, then I could then add essential oils on 
top of that or absolutes or resins on top of that. But again, it would diminish the amount of product that would 
have to be utilized in order to achieve whatever it is you’re desiring to achieve. 
 
The second methodology would be tincture. Most herbalists are familiar with tincture in terms of pulling medicine 
out of plants that we could then ingest. But perfumers oftentimes are working with high grain alcohol, very 
similar to what we would be using in herbal medicine. Some states, it’s difficult to get this, but typically, most 
resins are going to break down in an alcohol that’s at least 70% alcohol, so I’m pretty sure in most states, you 
can get 75.5 Everclear versus the 90%, that is more difficult to get without a license.  
 
So, if that’s all you had available, that would potentially work. And by creating tincture, same thing, I’m able to 
pull the aromatic molecules out of the plants or out of the resin and use that as now a base alcohol if I wanted to 
make a perfume that would be diffused through a sprayer or even through dabbing it on the body. 
 
One of the things I really like about working with alcohol is you can oftentimes tincture things that are 
nontraditional aromatic elements. So, for example, if I wanted to create something to kind of think about the 
harvest season or autumn in general, I can take things like leaves, different types of autumn leaves, and some 
acorns, and maybe bruise those acorns a bit so we get more surface area. 
 
And if I wanted to get that feeling of dried autumn leaves, like walking through the woods with dried autumn 
leaves, I could tincture these leaves and I can tincture those acorns together and that would prove a very unique 
kind of base note. It’s not something that we would think about, but what’s fun is that you can’t get essential oil 
of acorns and leaves, so it allows you a lot of creativity in terms of what you would like to represent in your 
perfume story. 
 
Other things that you could tincture would be things like—well, I’ve tinctured old book pages in order to create 
the dusty book element. I’ve tinctured seaweed and seashells. I’ve tinctured propolis, so I’m also a sacred 
beekeeper, so my bees always seem to end up in there in some way. And so, you can get a lot of really 
interesting results from working with nontraditional types of ingredients just by understanding how to work with 
alcohol in terms of tincturing. 

 
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So, one of the other things you can do with your tinctured alcohol base, if you wanted to, if I wanted to create a 
more concentrated or viscous solution from that, if I leave that alcohol out in an open dish and allow it to 
evaporate over time, what it does is, it becomes much more reduced and much more concentrated. What you’re 
left with is a much thicker, more viscous concentrated version of your original product.  
 
The only thing I will caution with this is that remember that as we’re evaporating alcohol, like we’re releasing 
alcohol vapors into the air. You want to do this in an open, ventilated area where you don’t have any heat 
sources around because that can be quite dangerous, right? And we don’t want to be doing this in our kitchen 
by our gas stoves or around your sacred altar where you’re lighting incense with a lighter or anything like that. 
So, you want to make sure it’s in a dry, covered area. If you have like a shed or a gazebo or some place where 
the air can circulate freely but you’re away from any kind of fire element. So, that is sort of a layman’s way of 
getting an absolute without having really fancy equipment, different types of equipment, distillation equipment. 
 
One of the last things I want to talk about though is using smoke. As herbalists, we know that smoke has been 
used internally in terms of breathing it in for healing in short amounts of time. But we’ve also used smoke to kind 
of clear spaces in terms of burning it, to take down pathogens that might be in the air, in the hospitals of long 
ago, they would burn things like pine in order to reduce bacteria in the air. 
 
So, we can use smoke—and this is like a whole separate thing—but kind of looking at incense, which is actually 
one of the first perfumes, and actually the word perfume, parfum, right? ​fum​ means fire or to burn, so it’s one of 
the very, very first ones that was ever used. So, you could simply burn aromatic plants and use that smoke to 
cover the hair or to perfume your clothing.  
 
A lot of women in the Middle East still use this type of technique to perfume their body and their hair and it adds 
a little bit of that smoky note, which can be really exciting.  
 
Another thing you can do is to use a very old Egyptian technique of trapping smoke into fat. So, the way this 
would work is you would take a bowl and you would cover the bottom of the bowl with fat and then you would 
decide which plants you wanted to burn. So, if you were burning some type of incense that you really loved—so, 
I actually got some incense from the Middle East that somebody brought back for me and I wanted to prolong it, 
so one of the ways to do that was this technique. 
 
So, you would coat the bottom of your glass bowl with fat, some type of semi-solid fat, and then you would light 
your incense and then you would invert the bowl over the top and it trap the smoke into the fat.  
 
You could do this over campfire smoke, right? So, the same thing, you would hold it over the campfire smoke 
until it traps that fat. It traps the smoke into the fat and then you would have to then transfer that somehow into 
alcohol and then that smoke would be captured in your alcohol and that becomes the base for your creation, for 
your perfume. 
 
So, smoke is just another way that we can capture scent and I can use a very small amount. So, if I’m looking at 
frankincense resin, you know, I can take a pound of this frankincense resin and put it in this still and get a very 
small amount of essential oil, that I could then use that oil in my perfume composition.  
 
Or, I could pull off a very small amount of this and burn it and capture it in the fat and create a much larger 
volume of perfumed alcohol, which I think is a more ethically usage of this resin. 
 
ANCESTRY AND FRAGRANCE 

So, studies are starting to point to evidence that memories, or scent memories, can actually be passed down 
genetically. Recent studies involving mice have indicated that mice who were subjected to certain types of 

 
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smells and then had an adverse reaction, that genetic was passed down to not just their children, but their 
grandchildren. So, that anytime mice would have that smell, they would be nervous, or they would become 
agitated. 
 
So, if we think about certain smells that not just animals, but people also are wary of, we can think of things like 
smoke. So, the second we smell smoke, we know to kind of look and find the source of that smoke. So, what’s 
really interesting about the concept that not just our biological DNA can be passed down, but then also this idea 
of scent can be passed down, is that people who are trying to understand their ancestral lineage, there might be 
certain smells or certain plants that you’re really drawn to and you’re not quite sure why you’re so drawn to 
them. Maybe you didn’t grow up around them, but yet they feel oddly familiar. So, there’s indication that this is 
stuff that’s buried deep, deep in the recesses of our memory and it’s just part of our history or part of our 
lineage. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SCENT 
 
Aroma definitely impacts the psyche. So, the olfactory bulb stimulates the limbic system, which is the oldest, 
most primal part of the brain, and it’s directly tied into our memory center. So, this is why we can smell 
something like, you know, cooking, like baked pie or something and it makes us think of a particular person or a 
particular moment in time, and it can be really, really comforting. 
 
People who are triggered by scent—so, I work as a psychotherapist and there are situations where people are 
adversely triggered by scent. So, we can even use scent as a healing tool in these capacities to help that person 
identify a scent that feels deeply grounding and safe for them and then give them that option in terms of 
portability by creating some type of scented locket that they could keep on their person at all times so that if 
they were to be in a situation where they might be triggered by scent, all they would have to do is simply use 
their safety scent to kind of help them feel safe and grounded in a situation.  
 
So, understanding the psychology of how our bodies respond and how our psyches respond to scent can be, 
you know, a really important advantage in terms of working with aromatic plants in more of a healing or 
therapeutic capacity. 
 
GETTING STARTED 
 
Usually when I’m teaching beginning perfuming, I recommend that people start with oil-based perfumes and 
there’s two reasons for that. One, it is the most ancient form of perfuming and I think it’s always good to start at 
the beginning and work our way forward. 
 
It also is typically more accessible to people. Most people have either fractionated coconut oil or jojoba oil or 
light olive oil that they can utilize for those purposes. 
 
Typically, we’re working with in the beginning, you want to start with small quantities, so maybe 5 ml of an oil 
and then you’re adding about 25—if I’m working with essential oils—I’m adding about 25 drops of essence to 
that 5 mls of oil.  
 
It’s better to work with smaller quantities because of the fact that we don’t want to create any unnecessary 
waste. 
 
The other thing to think about is, out of those 25 drops, you can arrange those in a way that feels comfortable for 
you. Some of this is going to take some trial and error. So, it’s kind of thinking of the simple approach of like 
keeping things very simple. So, when you’re first starting, instead of getting very complicated and doing lots of 
top notes and lots of heart notes and lots of base notes, just pick one of each. Pick one of each and see how 

 
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those three interplay. It’s kind of like when we’re learning to formulate herbal medicine, right? We start just by 
getting to know one plant really, really well and working with that plant for an extended period of time. 
 
Another way to do it, if you’re okay with creating a perfume that doesn’t have lots of longevity, but you’re just 
trying to start off, the top notes tend to be less expensive. They’re a little bit more accessible. You can get them 
in a lot of health food stores and things like that. Even some supermarkets these days are carrying oils. 
 
So, you can just create what we would call a top note accord. So, that would be instead of having a top note, a 
heart note and a base note, I’m going to pick three top notes, right? So, maybe I would pick like a lemon and 
some type of grapefruit and then maybe some type of spice, right? And I would create things that would kind of 
interplay in a nice way together. 
 
What will happen in the beginning is you’ll create things sometimes and it will look beautiful on paper, or maybe 
you’ll pick three things that you love a lot. You’ll say, “Oh, I love these three things. I’m going to put them 
together.” Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to play nicely together. It’s kind of like people. So, 
you have like three friends that you really, really like a lot and then you get those three friends together and 
maybe it doesn’t go so well. So, plants are like people, right? 
 
So, you might do that and say, “Oh, this didn’t really work out,” which is why working with smaller amounts of oil 
is better. That way we’re not wasting.  
 
Having said that, sometimes you’re going to create something and when you initially work with it, you’re not 
going to like it. You’re going to say, “Yeah, this isn’t really what I thought it was going to be.” My suggestion is 
always to cap that and put it away in a dark, cool place and let it sit for a while because a lot of times as some 
scents start to stew together and macerate together, it ends up aging into something that’s really, really 
beautiful. You’ll open it 6 months later and you’ll be really pleased with the results of that. 
 
So, this is very much a patient art. Just like pretty much anything else in herbal medicine, you need to have 
patience, you need to be okay making mistakes because you’re going to make mistakes. That’s one of the only 
ways you learn.  
 
But it’s also about this level of mindfulness because you’re teaching an organ that is often underlooked or 
overlooked in our culture to be more sensitive. So, it’s going to take time for you to be able to tell the difference 
between sweet orange, bitter orange, and blood orange, just by scent alone, without looking at bottles. 
 
So, it’s just like anything else, the more you do it, the more comfortable it will get, and that’s probably the best 
way to start. 

CUSTOM FORMULAS 
 
You have to think of the different layers of the human being, right? So, if I look at this from a base note 
perspective, if I start from the ground and work up, so, if I’m looking at a person in front of me and I’m trying to 
understand their base, right? So, their base would be where do they come from? What’s their culture? What are 
their family of origin traditions? And so, like what scents would represent that aspect of who they are as a 
person. 
 
The heart notes, I always kind of think of heart notes in terms of the present. How are you manifesting in this 
material realm now? What are the things that you love in this world? What are the things you’re passionate 
about? What are the places you’re passionate about and how do I represent that in terms of an olfactory palate, 
right? 
 
So, if the person loves the ocean, what types of plant elements could I bring in that would represent the ocean? 

 
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Top notes I think of more in the spiritual realms. So, you know, what is their astrological sign? Can I think of 
different oils that might represent the different aspects of that astrological sign? What’s their spiritual traditions? 
You know, maybe there’s some type of aroma that they associate with their spiritual traditions. 
 
It’s more of a mythological way of working with people and that’s kind of my thing. I guess that’s one of my 
signatures is that, you know, I’m more interested in telling a story through scent. So, pretty much all of the 
perfumes that I craft are either about people in my life or inspired by people in my life or inspired by situations or 
places that I’ve had in my lifetime.  
 
And so, when you’re working with someone in more of a custom way, it’s about really getting to know, you 
know, the essence of that person and then try to creatively correspond that through aromatics. 
 
The hard part with it, is I think it’s so subjective, do you know what I mean? And like I feel like as a culture, we do 
this thing where it’s like, “Well, lavender is relaxing,” you know? And like I know people that are really turned off 
by lavender. Like they’re just like, ew. 
 
I have like a client, she’s coming to mind in particular, she just has this very strong reaction to it, you know? And 
part of that is traumatic, as something she went through as a child, you know? So, like if I made that 
assumption, right, that lavender was relaxing, and I diffuse this in my office and this client walked in, like I could 
potentially hurt her.  
 
So, like as a therapist, I don’t typically diffuse scent in my room. If we’re talking and the client tells me that 
they’re interested in scent, then we talk about what works for them. And if I have that in my organ there, then I’ll 
pull it out and then we’ll put it on. 
 
In psychotherapy, we have a term called person-centered. So, coming from a person-centered approach, right? 
So, it’s not me necessarily making an assumption of what would be best for them but letting them cocreate. 
Even if I’m doing a treatment plan and therapy, like it’s not me telling the client, “This is what is going to work, 
this is what you should do,” it’s more like, “These are some ideas I have, do you think this would work?” You 
know? 
 
And I think because scent is so subjective on some level, that person needs to be part of the process. So, 
typically if I’m doing custom work, you know, it’s easier for them to just come to the home studio where I have a 
wide variety of things. The perfume organ is what it’s called, and it’s set up very much like a musical organ. 
 
And so, all of the, you know, top notes, heart notes, and base notes are organized by that method and so then 
it’s just better for people. They can kind of like select things that they think they might be interested in or there 
are certain things that they know right away that are not comfortable for them, then we don’t even need to open 
that bottle. 
 
But then we have like more—they’re able to select an array of things and then we kind of narrow it down from 
there in terms of what’s going to work best, and then that’s where the skull piece comes in. It’s more my job to 
say, “I think this would complement this or this might overpower this. Could we maybe try this instead,” you 
know? 
 
So, again, like the whole process is really collaborative, which I like because, you know, you learn a lot about 
people that way when you kind of bring them into the process with you. And that’s kind of the best part, because 
a lot of times the person might be curious about something and then they realize like it’s something that really 
resounds for them, you know? And so, that’s kind of nice, too, when they have like this exciting a-ha moment of 
like, wow, this makes me feel like really solid in my gut. I just feel really, really good when I smell this, and I never 
would’ve ever imagined that this would be producing that kind of feeling in my body. 
 

 
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I will say the hardest part for me in perfuming, personally, is I do things in a very intuitive way. I don’t like 
measuring things. I’m not very mathematical or scientific, but perfuming, in order to duplicate something, I have 
to do that. So, for me, that’s my biggest challenge, is being precise so that I can duplicate something again. 
 
One of the things I’m starting to get away from, though, is that I feel that that limits me as an artist on some level. 
So, I’m much more interested these days in co-distillation, which would be essentially taking wildcrafted plants 
from my yard, just kind of collecting in no sort of—not weighing everything, you know? Just throw it into the still 
and then get this very unique profile that comes out. And it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I’m never going to 
duplicate that. And there’s something really magical about that for me. 
 
I’ve also become really interested, these days, in working with plants that people considered to be invasives, so I 
watch the honeybees a lot to see what they’re pulling from, you know? And so, like if I’m working with goldenrod 
or Japanese knotweed or something like that, it may not have like this really complex aromatic profile that, you 
know, roses would, or something, but that’s where I live. Like that’s the profile of where I’m at. 
 
So, it’s that. It’s like just being willing to just do what feels right as opposed to—you know. So, getting out of this 
cognitive thing, like our culture seems to really praise like the mind. And I think we’ve gotten away from the 
intuitive work. I think plants have this really magical way of bringing us back to that place. 
 
So, for me, this work is super grounding. You know, it gets me out of my head, actually, and much more into the 
scents or sensual experience of being a human being. And I think that that is solely lacking in the culture. 
 
 

 
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