Meditating with Aromatics ~ a unique interactive project that grows
Over the last year I have published a number of meditations that use fragrance as a starting point and the intention has been to write an entire book of them. After much thought I decided that I would start by making the meditations available during the process of writing the book and publishing it in stages. There’s a few good reasons for this. The first is that it gives me a greater incentive to write them. The second is subtler. Making a book available during its creation rather than when it is a finished product would normally be the very last thing I’d ever do but this is different. It’s different because I want the readers to be involved in the creation. How often have you read a book and wished to ask the writer to do something different? Ask for instructions to be clearer or more detailed? Or make a personal request? This time you can.
Meditating with Aromatics is a work in progress that you can help shape as it is written. You can request that I write a meditation for a fragrant substance that has special power for you. You can suggest scents I may not have considered. You can try them out and let me know what would work better for you. I have made the booklet free to download from Lulu, but as they have no stats counter for free downloads, all I ask is that if you do download it, you let me know that you have done so, and that if you pass the link to others, they let me know if they have. That way I have a good idea of the scale of my readers and their reach.
I’d also be delighted if people bought the paper copy. I am actually very proud of how it looks and feels. Each time I update it, a new revision will be created until the final product is completed but it’s not going to break the bank at this stage to buy a copy. I am smugly delighted with my cover design showing a beautiful English garden in full summer glory.
So buy or download, pass it on to anyone who meditates, and let me know what YOU want. There aren’t many books that are truly written for the reader’s benefit, so take advantage of this and get involved. I’d also be immensely grateful if you would repost, Facebook, blog, tweet and retweet and mention whenever you feel it’s appropriate because reaching the people who might benefit from this project is going to be as interactive as the writing of the book itself.
Thank you all in advance.
Can be bought from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meditating-Aromatics-Vivienne-Tuffnell/dp/1470923408/ref=la_B00766135C_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436261585&sr=1-9
or from Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/meditating-with-aromatics/15734841
or the download here (which is currently FREE):
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/meditating-with-aromatics/17394678
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I have just received my copy – I will probably get back to at some time. Scent is very important to me. Unfortunately orange is an overpower scent for me, not too distateful, but a bit much. Though orange blossom is another thing altogether.
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I am with you on orange blossom, Flo; saved my sanity more than once. The problem is it is so expensive, I almost daren’t recommend it.
When you’ve had a while to explore the meditations in the book, if there is a fragrance that you’d like a meditation for, let me know and I’ll see if I can write it and send you a pdf of it. The final version of the book is probably years away.
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Like a good rose maroc [I always carry a bottle of aqua oleum rose maroc] you can usually buy in dilution and because such an amazing scent it works wonders even in small drops.
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I have a rose meditation I am planning but waiting for the weather to warm a little.
Is there any sort of setting you’d hate?
And I am passionate about roses of all sorts; I love the scent. Rose maroc is a favourite of mine.
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Really quite intrigued by this. I have only just started trying meditation, mainly through guided visualisation exercises, but I will definitely try this.
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Excellent.
I am slowly writing more and post them here, usually on a Monday.
Enjoy!
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Hi Vivianne, I would like to thank you for posting these aromatic guided meditations. You truly do a wonderful job at creating these. The first meditation I worked with is your orange tree meditation. So incredibly healing and powerful. I just downloaded a free copy of your book on lulu and am eager to be experimenting with these meditations over the winter. I was curious if you have had any feedback or requests given to you since you published this book or this blog post? I have been working as an aromatherapist for the last eight years and have recently been offering group aromatherapy sessions for a support group at a assisted living residency. I chose to work with lime oil and was inspired to guide them using your orange grove meditation. The response was HUGE. By the end of the meditation everyone was smiling and glowing. I felt it was important to share that with you. You have a beautiful vision for this book, and I trust that your book will reach and touch many people as it has touched me. If you are still open to aromatic requests I think we could have a field day sharing ideas.
Thank you,
Samantha
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Hi Samantha,
thank you for such fabulous feedback. The book has languished almost ignored, sadly, for all sorts of reasons, and one of those reasons is an almost total lack of any response whatsoever. I have written quite a number more (they are in the relevant section in this blog) and people do find them both helpful and useful (slightly different!) but in real terms, I’ve had very little feedback and lost heart. I had had the idea of a much bigger book, covering seasons and various needs, and have a list of possible scents, but it’s gone no further than that. My own health, especially mental health, has been dire and summoning the energy and cognitive function to write at all, has been hard.
But perhaps next year I might try and get some more out. I am working (at a snail’s pace) on short stories inspired by famous perfumes but apart from one (and one, called Mechant Loup that’s on here somewhere) all are written long hand in a notebook.
All the very best and thank you for your kind words,
Vivienne
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