Smell Training - Three

This is the last of my three posts about my smell training sessions with Chris Kelly, and do you remember me finishing my last post with the words......"So in my next post I get lazy and have a kip"?  Well let me enlighten you on that little snippet.

Mindfulness quote from 'Greater Good' website "Maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment". I thought this was a really good way of summing it up. We all live in a crazy fast paced world where taking time out for ourselves is hard work, which is where mindfulness plays its part, because it's so relaxing, you can do it anywhere and it doesn't take long at all. It can also help in so many different areas of your life such as the situation I am in now with my Anosmia. So we ended on the following.

Mindfulness exercise: colour, smell and texture visualisation.

This was a great finale for my smell training! I was asked to lay down on an extremely comfortable chaise longue, close my eyes and try to visualise certain tasks to trigger my smell memory. That's the best way to describe it really as its almost like watching yourself experience the smell and taste of things and in that way remembering what they actually do smell and taste like.

One of the memories I was asked to visualise was eating a tangerine, the colour, texture and feel of it. Then to imagine peeling it, remembering the smell of the peel and fruit itself, then biting into it and remembering the taste. It was very relaxing and certainly triggered something, because even now, as I'm writing this I can remember the sweet tang of how a tangerine would smell and how juicy they used to be. I haven't tried one yet as they were not very pleasent after Parosmia decided to enter the scene all that time ago, but maybe it's about time I was brave and went for it! We also carried out some other visualisation exercises and I just outlined this one for you as an example.
This last part of the training took about twenty minutes and left me feeling calm and relaxed, which for me is an achievement in itself. After this we had a good chat to summarise everything I'd learnt and experienced throughout the day. I left feeling a lot more positive and ready for the new challenges that lay ahead, armed with my bounty of scent jars!

If anybody reading this suffers from Anosmia, I really would encourage you to get in touch with Chris Kelly. She has been such a help to me and is a very strong, caring and compassionate person. You can get in touch via her website at www.smelltraining.co.uk.

As for me, well I'm going to keep trying and give this a go. It works for Chris so I think I'd better kick myself up the arse and get on with it. Stay tuned for the next post to find out how I've been getting on!

photograph courtesy of Chris Kelly.