Smells and Bells

𖧧  Aroma of Righteousness/smell- Smell in the Context of Ritual  𖧧      Scent is inherently holy. Even as someone who is not religious, I fully believe this. Before I wrote this, I switched out my room scents for fall. There's a honey crisp apple candle sitting under my wax melter and I've reapplied my trader joes pumpkin body butter at least three times because it smells so good. Even my sheets are freshly washed and they smell like the honey rose fragrance pebbles I've been tossing in the washer. The window is open and the fresh petrichor smell becomes stronger with ever wave of rain. Together, it smells like how every autumn since I was a kid smelled like. This is why I think scent is so holy. No other sense has the ability to transport you through time like smell. It can bring you back to a specific place or memory and the exact emotions you felt during that time. For example, with the autumn smells, I feel very warm and happy because fall has so many good...

  Sound and Unity/House Music and Togetherness     When thinking about how sound is used for healing, I always think about the music therapy I had to attend in residential. Every week, me and the other patients would be forced to tap out how we felt that day on a rain drum and pick a song to psychoanalyze. It was my least favorite hour and a half of each week, worse than the awkward group therapy or lowkey scary donkey petting. It was boring and cringey and didn't make me feel closer to the other people there with me. If that was all I considered when thinking about how sound brings people together, I'd think it did a pretty ass job. But outside of those grueling sessions, music played a very different role for us. One of the other six patients loved house music. He'd bump it so loud through his headphones that we could all hear it and we'd dance together.  It was silly and fun and took our minds off harder things. This little ritual brought me so much joy and brough...