The Forgotten Sense: Could Smell Be Your Most Unexpected Yoga Teacher

If there is one sense guaranteed to transport, it's scent.

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If there is one sense guaranteed to transport, it's scent. An old boyfriend's aftershave, the perfume you wore as a teen, a particular flower or, less pleasantly, the scent of disinfectant reminding you of being ill, or the drink you had too much of that you can't stand now. The sense of smell is powerful.

There is a direct connection from the sense of smell to the brain's emotional and memory centres. This pathway is shorter than the routes that the senses of sight and sound take. This makes strong feelings and vivid recollections easier to tap into. Little wonder that the fragrance market in the UK alone is expected to be worth almost 3 billion USD by 2033.

How does this relate to Yoga? Very significantly, actually. The use of incense and the burning of fragrant woods or resins dates back to Neolithic times and continues right through to today for ritual, religious and social reasons. India is thought to be one of the oldest continuous users of incense, with Vedic texts describing the burning of herbs and resins as offerings to deities. It creates a sacred space.

I lost much of my sense of smell after having COVID. While it's still intermittent, incense is one of the few things I can always smell without fail. I have deep gratitude for that. It made me realise how important scent is to my own practice, and perhaps to our collective yoga practice too.

The scent of incense is immediately calming to me. I know instantly that I'm in a safe space. I first burned it alone in my bedroom as a young adult, and maybe it comes from that, and the fact that it reminds me of every yoga studio and temple I have ever been to, or maybe it's something deeper, a more profound remembering. Incense has the power to ground me in the place and time I am in while, at the same time, making me feel transported. It brings me to another place. Is it the East? Is it India? Five thousand years ago? Another plane or dimension? It's this paradox that fascinates me. I'm home and safe, but I'm somewhere else entirely. This duality is a feature of yoga. Lunar and solar. Celestial and earthed. Masculine and feminine.

In our yoga practice, we try to encompass all the elements in our environment. While scent is traditionally associated with Earth (Prithvi), for me personally, incense feels more resonant with Ether or Space (Akasha). There is a long association between smoke and the divine, and I get that sensation from the scent. I definitely feel a connection to something bigger. I am connected to Yoga before I even step on the mat.

Lighting incense, sage or Palo Santo is not just a ritual. It's a cleansing, a changing of the inner state, creating an environment of sacredness wherever you are. It helps the practitioner arrive and feel grounded. If that positive association is there, as it is for me, it helps the nervous system settle. It's a cue to the brain to be present, at peace, at home and still.

We don't "do" Yoga; we aspire to be "in" Yoga, even if it's a lifelong process to get there. The postures are Yoga Asana, and Yoga is so much bigger than the postures. Yoga can enter through the senses. The senses are gateways of Prana (life force), so it makes sense. We don't always enter Yoga through movement. We all have different gateways into practice. For me, it was sound and scent long before I ever went to a class or even sat down cross-legged to take a deep breath. Some days, all these years later, my Yoga still is sound and scent, with no Asana. Maybe the conclusion isn't whether incense, or the sense of smell, can deepen our Yoga practice or not. Maybe the real question is: what is your gateway?