Central Coast Lavender

After years of growing lavender, distilling its oil, and formulating with it, I still make time to study.

My most recent study was a Nose to Brain course on essential oils and the central nervous system, with Robert Tisserand and the Tisserand Institute. It moves past the familiar link between scent and memory, into the research on how the constituents of an aroma might act in the body.

So this chapter of the Story of Scent opens with two questions. How do we smell an aroma? And how might its constituents act in the body?

Over the chapters ahead, here on this feed, I will walk through what the science shows, and keep the settled findings apart from what is still emerging. Sit with the questions first. The rest follows.

Comment the word lavender below, and I will walk the Story of Scent with you, chapter by chapter.

From flower to feeling, a single breath finds the seat of calm.

Keywords: lavender, essential oils, aromatherapy, nose to brain, olfaction, scent and the brain, central nervous system, Robert Tisserand, Tisserand Institute, estate distilled lavender, Paso Robles

Formulation Friday. Before anything else, I am a lavender grower and distiller, but formulating with my aromatherapy training is the part I love most.

At the heart of it all is the lavender essential oil. Every product we make is built around its delivery and function, and finding new ways to benefit from the oil is one of the most creative, unseen parts of what I do. Honestly, my favorite.

The oil distilled slow in a copper alembic, the balms poured and cured by hand, the mists bottled at the estate, the eye pillows sewn and filled one by one. Twenty years of it, every batch small, every label done by hand. You are not buying a fragrance. You are buying lavender made by the person who grew it.

From flower to feeling.

With love and lavender, Lila
centralcoastlavender.com

Lavender or lavandin? Two plants, two oils, often sold as one. Do you know the difference?

Lavender aka English Lavender, gives the softer note, rounded and a little sweet. Lavandin aka French, runs brighter and sharper, with more camphor. Same family, different character.

On the estate we grow both and distill them here in Paso Robles, so the difference reaches you in every bottle.

From flower to feeling.

Next in the Story of Scent: nose to brain.

With love and lavender, Lila

Wednesday Wellness, as October draws to a close: make a little room for something you enjoy. A few minutes in the garden, a favorite book, or a conversation with a friend. What would you choose today?

Before the word existed, the plant already had a following.

In 1937, a French perfume chemist named René-Maurice Gattefossé published a book called Aromathérapie. He gave the field its name. He did not begin it. Growers, distillers, and whole cultures had been working with aromatic plants for centuries before him.

This week our Story and Science series turns from where the name came from to what happens in a single breath of lavender. One farm, one season, told one chapter at a time.

As growers and distillers, the line between old knowledge and careful study is the part we love most.

Comment LAVENDER for our Daily Lavender Rituals guide.