Harnessing nature ...
... silencing the emotional noise!
We live in a world obsessed with understanding our emotions. Every feeling requires investigation, every sensation demands explanation. Yet this very quest to understand why we feel what we feel keeps us trapped in cycles of stress, addiction, and disconnection. What if the solution isn't more analysis, but less? What if healing comes not from figuring out our emotions, but from learning to simplify them as naturally intended?
The Hidden Communication Network
Humans are walking chemical communication systems. Through aryl hydrocarbon receptors and ectopic olfactory receptors scattered throughout our bodies, we constantly receive molecular messages from the environment around us. We detect cortisol from stressed friends and colleagues, pheromones from our partner along with countless other chemical signals that directly influence our nervous system, including the GABA receptors responsible for helping us self-soothe.
Recent research confirms what indigenous cultures have always known: there's a skin-brain axis where emotional states amplify through interaction. When someone near us experiences fear or joy, we don't just witness it—we receive it chemically, and our bodies respond accordingly. Yet we're making a mistake when it comes to interpreting these signals.
The Paradox of Nature Connection
We recognize that we're disconnected from nature. Everywhere we turn, there's a reminder to spend time outdoors, forest bathe, and reconnect with the natural world. Yet despite hiking more trails and attending more wellness retreats, we return to the same default interpretive frameworks that created our stress in the first place.
This disconnect isn't just philosophical—it's physiological. We're designed to receive environmental information for our protection. Our aryl (aromatic) hydrocarbon receptors regulate our epigenome, our system of adaptation (also known as transformation). Yet we've become environmentally illiterate, no longer able to decipher the chemical conversations happening around us.
The Addiction to Drama and Analysis
When we can no longer interpret natural signals accurately, we instinctively create an emotional intensity. Over time, we become addicted to this ‘drama’ because it mimics the heightened awareness we'd naturally have in a higher state of presence. It's counterfeit aliveness—the emotional equivalent of processed food when we're starving for real nourishment.
This addiction includes our relationship with our own emotions. Every sensation becomes a mystery to solve, every feeling a problem requiring investigation. The moment we wonder "why we’re feeling this way?" we've activated what neuroscience calls the appetitive state—our survival mechanism that motivates us to seek life-supporting activities to avoid harm.
But here's the trap: once in seeking mode, we interpret our sensations as evidence that something's wrong and there’s a problem to be solved. We consume information—books, videos, social media, advice—that confirms our beliefs about dysfunction and weakness. Even healing modalities often operate from this premise, keeping us stuck in the very state we're trying to escape.
The Revolutionary Simplicity
What if the source of our sensations doesn't matter? What if healing comes not from knowing where the sensations originate, but from understanding how to relate to them?
The solution is delightfully simple: Does this feeling in your system feel light, expansive, like a "yes"? Then breathe into it and let it fill you up. Does it feel heavy, constrictive, anxious, like a "no"? Then let it be a signal to pause just enough to return to a more neutral state.
That's it. No investigation required. No childhood trauma to unpack. No stories to construct about what it means. Just immediate, embodied awareness: expansion or contraction? Yes or no?
Essential Oils as Reset Buttons
This is where genuine essential oils become powerful allies. Unlike casual wellness trends, genuine essential oils work directly with our chemical communication systems. Constituents like linalool, limonene, geraniol, and beta-caryophyllene have neuroprotective properties that soften nervous system communication, helping us return to neutral quickly.
When used consistently throughout the day, oils create a cumulative effect that transforms our baseline from hyper vigilance to ease. They don't mask emotions or solve problems—they restore our natural capacity to receive environmental information without getting lost in stories about what it means.
A simple inhalation can shift someone from feeling stuck to being a witness to their own thoughts and emotions, eliminating the need to figure out causes or control outcomes. The oils help our system interpret the incoming information in effective and responsive ways, supporting the microbiome and nervous system simultaneously.
Leadership and the Ripple Effect
This has profound implications for leadership. C-suite executives, shaped by their own survival patterns, often carry unaddressed stress that cascades to staff and patients. When leaders learn to navigate their internal landscape without getting trapped in analysis, they create environments of ease rather than tension (inside and out).
Leaders who operate from neutral awareness rather than survival reactivity make decisions from clarity, not compensation. They model what it looks like to fully receive and effectively interpret information—whether from quarterly reports or interpersonal dynamics—demonstrating how to responsively lead others no matter their position.
Breaking the Cycle
The path forward isn't more self-awareness in the traditional sense. It's learning to be attentively intentional with ‘what is’ without immediately constructing stories about what it means. It's trusting that our bodies are sophisticated receivers designed to utilize complex environmental information, rather than being broken systems requiring constant repair.
When we stop treating every sensation as a problem to solve, we free ourselves from the endless loop of analysis that keeps us stuck. We become observers of our experience rather than prisoners of our interpretations.
Nature's wisdom is simple: receive the information, feel whether it's expansion or contraction, respond accordingly. The oils help us remain connected with this process rather than getting lost in the complexity of translation that we've created around it.
A Call to Authentic Connection
Real healing happens when we remember that we're not separate individuals having emotional breakdowns—we're interconnected systems communicating with one another. Every sensation, every feeling, every moment of dis-ease is information, not pathology.
The invitation is to stop analyzing and start feeling. Stop investigating and start responding. Stop trying to understand your emotions and be guided by them.
This isn't about rejecting science or dismissing real challenges. It's about realizing that the human body communicates with the rest of nature and is far more sophisticated than we've ever been taught to believe.
Health is simple. Dis-ease is complex.
Ready to explore how nature's wisdom can transform your relationship with stress and emotion? Connect with me to discover personalized approaches that honor your body's natural intelligence while supporting your nervous system's return to ease.