INCENSE

Defined :

Incense is made from a combination of natural ingredients such as aromatic woods, plant resins, flowers, herbs, and essential oils. Incense comes in various forms, including sticks, cones, coils, and powders.

Dipped Incense :

Dipped incense is produced by coating a stick with wood powder, then dipping it into fragrant oils. When burned, the primary aroma comes from the essential oils, providing a consistent and predictable scent experience.

Whole Plant Incense : 

Whole plant incense is made entirely from plant fibers. This traditional approach is valued for its depth of natural fragrances. The base is typically a wood powder, combined with a blend of flowers, herbs, roots, leaves, or resins. Whole plant incense releases the natural scents of these plant materials, offering an authentic and nuanced fragrance experience.

Synthetic fragrances :

Synthetic chemicals, commonly found in various incense products, include a wide range of artificial fragrances and preservatives. These are often added to enhance the scent, prolong shelf life, or to cut costs. These include and are not limited to the following : phthalates, parabens, benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, artificial dyes, synthetic musks, acetone, and propylene glycol. In incense, the presence of synthetic chemicals can significantly compromise both the natural scent quality and the safety of the product. None of these are used in our incense. 

Uses :

Incense is used as a tool for spiritual communication, celebrating life events, provoking memories, and creating atmosphere. It's used for cleansing objects and spaces, masking odors, and measuring time. Welcoming guests with incense signifies hospitality. It is used for altering moods, aiding meditation, and instigating energies. Each type of incense and its specific fragrance can have different associated uses and meanings, varying greatly across different cultures and individual preferences. Your use, is for you to decide. 

Scent in the Brain: 

Scent is the only sense that does not firstly run through the Thalamus. The Thalamus is named the “consciousness detector”.  It makes sense of, and categorizes all the information we perceive, except smell. Because of this, our experience of smell is often uninvolved with our conscious awareness. There are many theories that smell and emotion are stored in the brain as one memory.

Scent is directly wired to the limbic system. When we smell something, the information is sent to the olfactory bulb, which then sends this coded structure to the limbic system. The main components of the limbic system are the Piriform Cortex which identifies smell, the Amygdala which generates emotion, and the Hippocampus which organizes memory. 

We unconsciously use scent to assess likability, social preferences, emotional states, sexual attraction, direction, fear, and environment. Ever notice how when we are smelling something, rather than labeling it as an odor, we compare it to a moment in time or the likelihood of something else? Ever notice how smelling something can provoke a memory you thought you had lost, or a feeling of deja-vu? Some say that scent was the first sense to develop.

Olfaction remains radically mysterious to much of the scientific community. So, let us delight in the mystery, and smell damn good while doing it.