Tyler (5:14)

Sleep is important, but so is how you wake up.

Jessica Porter (5:18)

If you want to start your day with a little more intention, Wake Me up is the podcast for you. It's like a warm cup of tea for your mind. Here's a taste.

Lunet (5:28)

Hey there my friend. Welcome to Wake Me Up. This is the place to start your day on a positive note. Taking some time for yourself first thing in the morning to clear, calm and focus your mind can have profound impacts on not only your day, but your entire life. So join me Tyler, your host here on Wake Me Up. Each and every day you'll find a variety of episodes from affirmations to Meditations to motivational talks. Truly, there's something for everyone. So just search for Wake Me up in your favorite podcast player and see why millions of people are living better days in and lives with Wake Me Up.

Tyler (6:28)

Great.

Jessica Porter (6:29)

Tonight, get sleepy in a French parfumerie or perfumery.

Tyler (6:38)

Spoiler alert.

Jessica Porter (6:39)

You will have to deal with my French accent sometimes. Tonight, a listener named Melissa suggested this episode and I thought, I love that idea. In fact, when I was a teenager, I was taken on a tour of a perfumery in the small town of Grasse in the south of France. It was a very memorable experience. And now, many years later, with little help from the Internet, I can bring.

Tyler (7:06)

Us all there tonight.

Jessica Porter (7:08)

So lean back, relax, and we will have a lovely sensory experience in the south of France. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position. And let's begin.

Tyler (7:29)

So allow your eyes to close easily and gently.

Jessica Porter (7:36)

If you want to take that nice.

Tyler (7:37)

Deep breath with me, please do. As you bring your awareness now to your breathing.

Jessica Porter (7:47)

And you don't need to do anything.

Tyler (7:48)

Interesting or fancy with your breath because right now we're just bringing our awareness to the breath.

Jessica Porter (7:57)

This is a way of hijacking or reeling in your awareness.

Tyler (8:03)

Your awareness loves to just move around, explore, jump like it's a kid in a playground. And we're just gently inviting it back to the breath, gently inviting it back to the body. Good. So now I'd like you to bring.

Jessica Porter (8:35)

Your awareness up a bit from your.

Tyler (8:37)

Breath into your eyes, specifically into your eyelids. And imagine that your eyelids are feeling very, very sleepy, heavy relaxed. And the nice thing about the imagination is once you start imagining things, the body follows. So as you imagine your eyelids getting heavy and relaxed, they're becoming heavy and relaxed. And now I'd like you to imagine.

Jessica Porter (9:11)

That your eyelids are so heavy and.

Tyler (9:13)

Relaxed they won't open. And then I want you now to test your eyelids to make sure they won't open. And that means wiggling your eyebrows. And I need you to pretend they won't open. I know you could open them, but we're pretending. By pretending really strongly, we're entering your imagination and that's where we want to be tonight. So pretending that your eyelids won't open, I want you to test them by.

Jessica Porter (9:45)

Wiggling your eyebrows, just to give them a tug.

Tyler (9:48)

Good. Well done. As you go deeper and deeper and deeper and you find that your head is becoming heavy on the pillow, heavy like a rock on the pillow. And that wonderful relaxation that you had in your eyelids lets imagine it's spilling back into your brain. So it's taking over your brain like a weird mist. And everything in your brain is becoming soft and even a little fuzzy in a good way. And the muscles of your face are also becoming soft and relaxed as you go deeper and deeper. And this lovely heaviness in your head is moving down into your shoulders, into your arms, down into your arms. Imagine your arms are heavy, like they too are made of stone. Just for right now, imagine your arms are made of stone. And let them be heavy. Heavy. It feels nice to let go of the day, to let go of any excess tension you may have been carrying as you take yourself deeper and deeper. And the sound of my voice is taking you deeper and deeper. And all of the sounds going on around you and your environment.

Jessica Porter (11:59)

Are taking.

Tyler (11:59)

You deeper and deeper because they're just vibrations. As you allow them to simply move through your body, they're taking you deeper. And at some point, as you're listening tonight, perhaps it's already happened. My voice will seem far away in the distance in the background as you drift and float and dream. And that wonderful mist of relaxation up in your head is moving down now into your chest, softening and opening and releasing your chest, spiraling inside of you, the relaxation deep in your body, moving down as a mist, moving down now through your torso, now deep into your belly as it spirals and circulates and softens you from the inside out. And any muscles you may hold unconsciously during the day are letting go. And the muscles of your back or letting go as your pelvis feels heavy on the bed. Your buttocks are relaxing. And the relaxation is moving down into your legs. Now down deep into your legs, so that your legs are feeling heavy. Heavy like they are made of stone, as you take yourself deeper and deeper. And it feels so nice to let go. Imagine it is a warm late afternoon and you are in the small town of Glass in France. Perched in the hills above the French Riviera, this historic town is known as the world capital of perfume. And the air itself seems to shimmer with scent. You are walking down a winding cobblestone street, past ochred colored buildings, their shutters flung open to reveal flower laden balconies spilling over with jasmine, lavender and roses. The higher you walk in this little town, the better. You can see the sparkling Mediterranean Sea just off in the distance. Although France is now the center of the perfume trade, it did not arrive here until 1533. When Catherine de Medici, at the tender age of 14, came from Italy to marry the equally young King Henry ii. She brought to France, her personal perfumer, Drinato Bianco, who created her signature fragrances. As you continue to stroll beyond the town center, you arrive at rolling fields of blossoms stretching toward the horizon.

Jessica Porter (18:45)

You see rose de May.

Tyler (18:50)

Their soft, pack pink petals shimmering in the light. These May roses are hybrids originally developed in Holland, but now grown mostly in France, particularly in this region, and harvested in May. You come to a gorgeous, wide open rose blossom. It seems to have a thousand petals, and as you lean in to take a whiff, its rosy scent seems to jump out at you. The roses of May are prized for their unique scent and are used in perfumes and soaps and other scented products. You look up and see rows of lavender swaying like purple waves in the wind. Their color is so bright and powerful, it excites your brain. And then there are vines of jasmine covered in tiny white star shaped blossoms, their aroma thick and intoxicating. And here and there, you see bees flitting between the blossoms, adding their own happy hum to the symphony of nature. A farmer walks by, carefully plucking the blossoms by hand and placing them in a burlap bag. Thousands of freshly picked petals are needed to create just a single drop of essential oil. By the 17th century, perfume had become very popular in France, and very necessary considering the lack of running water for bathing. The court of King Louis XIV sprayed itself with so many exotic sense that it was known as the Perfumed Court or La Coule Parfumet. You arrive at a grand wooden door with gilded lettering that reads Maison the Parfum. You step inside and the scent of citrus, vanilla and delicate florals envelops you. You are in the main room of the perfumery, the boutique, and it is bathed in golden light, filtering through lace curtained windows. Glass shelves and wooden cabinets line the walls, each displaying elegant flacon delicate bottles filled with amber, sapphire and rose hued elixirs. Crystal decanters stand proudly containing pure rose du maille, tuberose and violet absolutes, their floral essence captured in shimmering liquid. The decanters bear handwritten labels, each one a work of art in itself. The ancient Egyptians believed that scents could guide souls into the afterlife, so the tombs of the pharaohs contained beautiful perfume jars made from alabaster. Legend has it that Cleopatra spritzed her palace with intoxicating floral perfumes to enchant lovers like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. You lift a small paper blotter, dip it into a cobalt blue bottle and inhale. A delightful mix of citrus and jasmine unfolds, transporting you to a sunlit garden. As you go deeper and deeper.

Jessica Porter (25:56)

A.

Tyler (25:56)

Door opens into the perfume laboratory, the atelier, where a master perfumer known as Linnay, French for nose, is at work. He is slim and graceful, dressed in all white, and wears wire rimmed spectacles over his expert nose and French moustache. In the atelier, shelves are lined with amber glass bottles holding thousands of raw materials, from exotic resins to rare florals, from tonka bean to iris root. The first recorded perfumer was named Taputi, a female chemist from Babylon who did her work over 3,000 years ago. She distilled flowers, resins and oils with water and solvents, creating some of the early perfume making techniques that laid the foundation for modern perfumery. At his wooden blending table, tiny vials are arranged in meticulous order. Lunet dips a blotter into a vial labeled Bergamot de Calabre, swirls it and inhales deeply, closing his eyes in concentration. He has trained his amazing nose, spent years in fragrant schools, studying chemistry, botany and olfactory science. Over time, he has developed his scent memory and now has the ability to identify innumerable compounds and to imagine how they might interact with one another. He has been an apprentice to more experienced noses and is mentoring some younger ones. Now he is both a scientist and an artist, a connoisseur and a creator. He gestures for you to try. Handing you a glass pipette, you mix a few drops of rose absolute vanilla bean extract and a whisper of ambergris, a perfume taking its first breath. This will mature over time, he says with a knowing smile. Just like wine, perfume needs to age. You take a sniff. You too have a nose designed to explore the world of smell. Until recently, scientists believe that the human nose could detect an impressive tens of thousands of smells. But a study conducted in 2014 determined that our noses have the ability to detect one trillion different scents. One trillion. As you go deeper and deeper, Lunae leads you through an arched stone doorway, and you enter the distillation room, where copper stills gleam in the dim light. Baskets overflow with freshly harvested jasmine, orange blossoms and roses of May, their scents filling the air with heady sweetness. Some scents are extracted through steam distillation, a process invented by a Persian physician, Avicenna, a great genius who was born just before the first millennium. By applying steam to blossoms, perfumers could extract essential oils from the more delicate types like rose and jasmine. Over time, the Middle east became a major hub for the perfume trade, importing exotic ingredients like sandalwood, ambergris and musk. You watch as Rose petals swirl in a copper still, their essence condensing drop by drop into a small vial, the purest form of scent imaginable. In the next room, you come across large stainless steel vats filled with aromatic elixirs. Vanilla pods and tonka beans are soaking in alcohol to release their deep, creamy fragrances. This is a technique called maceration, similar to the aging of wine, and it allows individual scents to unify with others, creating a seamless aroma. You return to the boutique and notice that the sun has set and warm, glowing lights have been turned on. All the glass shelves and crystal decanters are sparkling, reflecting and refracting the light. Before leaving the maison de parfum, you select a bespoke perfume blended just for you. It contains your favorite scents blended together perfectly. The bottle is sealed with wax stamped with the perfumery's emblem and a final spritz. A fragrant mist lingers in the air as you step back onto the cobblestone street, carrying with you the memory of this small town, timeless artistry. The air is cool now and the stars are twinkling above in the midnight blue sky. Everywhere is the scent of night blooming jasmine. After a short stroll, you arrive at your inn, which overlooks a cobblestone square. You go up to the second floor and unlock the door with an antique key. Your bed has a wrought iron frame and a handmade quilt. Next to the bed is a vase full of May roses. The window overlooks the square and below it is a window box full of flowers, petunias and geraniums. You take a sniff. You put the little bottle of your bespoke perfume on the table next to your be, and you get under the covers between the sheets, so cool and clean. The moon is rising over the square, over the hills and making the Mediterranean sparkle. You turn off the lights, close your eyes as you take yourself deeper and even deeper as you drift and float and dream.