...Chemical Dependency...

Yesterday I started using my Lemongrass for aromatherapy. Today I wondered how it could be that this scent could wake me up more than that gigantic coffee I get every morning does. Can I abolish this chemical dependency also? My personal thoughts on it have always been somewhat negative. Why do I need to depend on a chemical to work right? I remember when I first started drinking coffee, when I was in art school and I had put off an assignment until the last minute. I told myself that coffee and cigarettes would help me get the job done, and quick.

One rainy night as I was smoking and painting a piece for my portfolio, the window open so that the smell of the cigarettes wouldn't invade the entire house, a wind came through and blew over my large coffee. Light and sweet all over my painting. When I brought it to my instructor, he made it work for the piece, like a wash of sand and biege sky behind a woman with hair blowing in the wind perhaps at the beach. It worked for that, yes.

What I am thinking of now is how long I have been dependent on this drug, caffeine. How I led myself to believe that I need it and cannot live without it. Then how I recently read that excessive caffeine actually has the reverse effect because you may have so much of it that it causes your body to overwork to process it and then become tired. I also think that I began ingesting more of it when I quit smoking over six years ago. I also learned that my cholesterol was high when I was pregnant with Markus, and so I stopped using cream and sugar. Now coffee is alright, not the light and sweet fattening drink I sucked down for years and years, expecting it never to catch up with me.

Now I am reading about yoga more than just doing yoga and seeing that there is so much more to the practice than just the movements and the breathing. Those things are primary in the practice, yes, but there is now so much more that I am realizing is attached to this. For the first thing, and taking baby steps to learning so I can properly apply it and integrate it into my life, the breathing part is essential to working through the poses and some of them are excruitiatingly focused on the breath.

Which takes me back to the Lemongrass and aromatherapy. How and why does it work? Through breathing the scent in and out. Activating rememberance and stimulating certain quadrents of the brain as well as enhancing and renewing sensors of the body. So, the smell of coffee may be awesome but the taste without the sugar and cream has gotten to be just something I think I need everyday...or do I?

Until Next Time

Namaste