“I feel therefore I am”
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.” From Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust.
Old age is often accompanied by loss of memory followed by depression and loneliness. Many families rely on institutions able to support their parents.
The scent workshops play a positive role in their immediate and long-term well-being. Bringing scented compositions and raw materials to seniors and residents of EPHADs and care centers, can soothe them and subtly help them to recall happy memories. Aromachology is a pleasant way to get them out of their psychic isolation and to bring them on a ground evocative of links and harmony.
Our teams lead individual and group workshops during which residents are invited to smell familiar scents and tell us about their feelings to get them to tell us a story, theirs.
Through a palette of scents, the past of each patient will emerge in bits and pieces, like so many pieces of a puzzle to piece together. These smells have the power to bring back memories and emotions.
Where language is no longer, where memory fails, they bring back memories, emotions and sometimes words …