Scent 101
I.
Finding your scent
Explore our scent families and discover what resonates with you.
Scent is your most intimate sense — an invisible language with a direct line to emotion. The fragrances you’re drawn to reveal the qualities you’re seeking, whether it’s stability & grounding or sparkle & vitality.
Use our guide below to discover which fragrance family calls to you.
‘Scents are messengers for
how you’d like to feel.’
Fresh
Fresh
Mood — replenishing, uplifting, inspiring
Made from — rinds, piths, leaves, twigs
Fresh types — bright, juicy, pithy, leafy, sharp
From the juicy sweetness of grapefruit rind to the vibrant green of crushed tomato stems, fresh ingredients capture nature in motion. Our approach to fresh notes balances the bright, upward energy of citrus with the grounding life-force of greens. These notes are the smell of happiness & renewal, a reminder of endless possibility.
Find fresh in - Air Perfume, Plants Perfume, Refresh Incense, Refresh Candle, Refresh Set [SEE ALL FRESH]
Aromatic
Aromatic
Mood — clarifying, healing, cleansing
Made from — leaves, flowers, stems
Aromatic types — sweet, anisic, rustic, green, fruity
From Californian sage to Spanish rosemary to French lavender, aromatic ingredients capture a herb garden in full bloom. Our approach to aromatics honors place — we source each herb from its native landscape where sun-baked hills, coastal winds, and Mediterranean soil create authentic character. These powerfully diffusive notes soothe and restore balance.
Find aromatics in — Plants Perfume, Calm Incense, Calm Candle, Calm Set [SEE ALL AROMATIC]
Floral
Floral
Mood — expansive, opening, softening
Made from — petals, blossoms, buds, leaves
Floral types — light, fruity, green, powdery, rich
From the delicate freshness of spring neroli to the intoxicating complexity of night-blooming jasmine, florals capture blooms at their peak moment. Our approach to florals is sophisticated and unisex — we blend rose with incense woods, jasmine with cedar, petals grounded by smoke & earth. These heart-centered notes encourage tenderness & emotional openness.
Find florals in — Air Perfume, LA Woman Perfume, Tenderness Perfume, Purify Incense, Tenderness Incense [SEE ALL FLORAL]
Wood
Wood
Mood — comforting, stabilizing, strengthening
Made from — barks, twigs, leaves, resins
Wood types — warm, fresh, cool, earthy, smokey
From the fresh dry scent of hinoki, to the creamy warmth of sandalwood, woods are the sensory shelter & strength of trees. Our approach to woods captures their dual nature of stability & aspiration with ingredients distilled from the roots to the leaf tips. These protective scents feel like home while inspiring growth.
Find woods in — Earth Perfume, Tenderness Perfume, Building Block Perfume, Ground Incense, Ground Candle, Ground Set [SEE ALL WOODS]
Amber
Amber
Mood — mysterious, meditative, nurturing
Made from — resins, balsams, seeds
Amber types — sweet, sheer, warm, rich, soft
From the honeyed depths of labdanum to the creamy sweetness of benzoin, amber notes create deep, enveloping warmth. Our approach to ambers celebrates their contrasts — sweet resins meet dry incense woods, sheer balsams balanced by smoky depth. These nurturing scents ground & comfort with quiet complexity.
Amber found in — Earth Perfume, Moon Perfume, LA Woman, Building Block Perfume [SEE ALL AMBER]
II.
How Scent Works
The science behind our emotion-first approach
Scent reaches emotion faster than thought. Unlike other senses, smell bypasses conscious thought and connects directly to your brain's emotional core.
When you inhale fragrance, it activates two pathways simultaneously. The psychological pathway triggers your limbic system — the brain's center for emotion & memory. The physiological pathway creates neurochemical changes, influencing neurotransmitters that affect mood & stress response.
This dual action explains why the right fragrance can shift your entire day. Each BODHA blend harnesses this invisible science, selecting ingredients for their emotional effects as much as their beauty.
III.
Using Scent Intentionally
Shift emotions & cultivate presence
Understanding how scent works is just the beginning — the real transformation happens when you use fragrance intentionally. Think of scent as emotional architecture for your day: ground yourself before important meetings, create focus for deep work, or signal transition from day to evening.
Each conscious application becomes a moment of presence, helping you access the emotions you want to cultivate. Our scents are designed as tools for this kind of intentional living — subtle shifts that enhance how you move through your day.
IV.
Our Ingredients
The botanicals behind our scents
Each ingredient is carefully sourced for its unique character & emotional effect. Explore individual ingredients through Scent Club, where we share their origins, qualities & smell examples together.
Fresh
Fresh
GREEN MANDARIN
We use a single blend from Italy made from the cold-pressed rinds of unripe mandarins. Juicy and tart with a neroli-like floral note, it's instantly refreshing.
YUZU RIND
A unique citrus note that's cool & tart. Distilled from the rinds of native Japanese citrus, ours comes from a farmer who uses the spent peels as a natural antioxidant for his cows.
PINK GRAPEFRUIT
Hidden in the opening of our Earth Perfume is the evanescent bitterness of pink grapefruit rind. Sweet and bitter with a great pithy note in the dry down that comes from a particular chemical only found in grapefruits.
LITSEA CUBEBA
Distilled from the fruit of the May Chang tree, it's bright and lemony with a soft woody undertone. Relatively unknown in traditional perfumery, it is native to Southeast Asia, where it has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine.
PETITGRAIN SUR FLEURS
Only a few distillers make this rare version of petitgrain essential oil. Distilled from the leaves and twigs of the bitter orange tree combined with some orange blossoms (hence the sur fleurs), it has a beautiful fresh green floral note that's a little rounder and softer than regular petitgrain.
Aromatic
Aromatic
TOMATO LEAF
The heart of Plants perfume — intensely aromatic, fresh & slightly bitter, it's the smell of renewal. The essence of hot summer days and earthy, resinous vines. That unmistakable green scent of rubbing a tomato leaf between your fingers.
HIGH-ELEVATION LAVENDER
Lavender's scent varies significantly depending on where & how it's grown. We use a very refined French lavender, grown at high altitude, to enhance its delicate, powdery aspects. This special herbaceous green lavender is a well-researched antidote to stress and anxiety.
CALIFORNIAN SAGE
This beautiful white sage is native to the southwest & is crucial for local bees and hummingbirds. Now overharvested, we ensure ours comes from a sustainably managed small family farm in California. Fresh & aromatic with notes reminiscent of rosemary, it's a unique cooling & cleansing scent.
ROSEWOOD LEAF
Steam-distilled from the leaves of the rosewood tree, this highly aromatic ingredient has a fresh green-woody note and a subtle rosy aspect that's gentle & balancing. We only use the leaf of the rosewood, which is a sustainable alternative to the endangered rosewood tree.
Floral
Floral
ROSE OTTO
Our rose otto is a fresh, radiant rose with subtle green & peppery undertones. Produced by a family that has been growing, hand-harvesting, and distilling this heart-opening oil since the early 1950s in Ispara, the rose capital of Turkey.
ROSE GERANIUM
Similar to rose, but fresher and lighter is rose geranium, an oil distilled from the leaves of a special variety of geranium. With its crisp green notes and cool minty edge, it's universally calming & centering.
JASMINE SAMBAC
Native to Tamil Nadu in India, jasmine sambac is a greener, fresher jasmine than traditional jasmine grandiflorum. An enveloping scent that is known as a balancing oil with both yin & yang qualities.
NEROLI
There's nothing like the blossoms of the bitter orange tree with their delicate uplifting scent. Our Moroccan neroli is a little fresher & more citrusy than the more well-known Tunisian version. Neroli is particularly renowned for its ability to bring emotional lightness and ease nervous tension.
YLANG YLANG
The most complex & captivating of all the white florals. We use an exceptionally pure, clean variety of this tropical bloom grown on an organic farm in northwestern Madagascar. Studies show ylang ylang can increase positive emotions & self-esteem.
Wood
Wood
TUMERIC ROOT
A not often used ingredient in the perfume world, I like turmeric's unusual fresh & warm spicy note with a hint of ginger. The oil of this renowned medicinal rhizome is steam-distilled from fresh turmeric roots.
MEXICAN CEDAR
Our wild-harvested Mexican cedar has the comforting smell of pencil wood with a hint of smoke. Made from an evergreen juniper, it's mistakenly known as a cedar due to its scent similarities.
ATLAS CEDAR
Traditionally used for forest bathing & creating sacred space, Atlas cedar is named for its native home, the Atlas Mountains. Due to overharvesting, we source our oil from a Moroccan distiller who only uses waste shavings and sawdust from controlled logging.
HAITIAN VETIVER
Vetiver is known as 'the oil of tranquility' for good reason - its rooty earthiness is the most grounding scent I know. Vetiver smells quite different depending on where it's grown & how it's distilled. Haitian is my all-time favorite, and the key to our Earth perfume.
HINOKI
Sacred spaces in Japan are all scented with hinoki, known as the 'scent of soul at peace.' Hinoki, a beautiful cypress tree native to Japan, has been used for centuries for its fresh, dry wood notes & meditative qualities.
SANDALWOOD
One of the world's most treasured aromatics for a reason. There is nothing like the warm, creamy complexity of true sandalwood. With prized Indian sandalwood long endangered, we only use sustainable plantation-grown Australian sandalwood in our formulas.
Amber
Amber
LABDANUM
Wild-harvested in Spain, labdanum is one of the oldest perfume materials, long prized in traditional Mediterranean medicine. Distilled from the resin-covered leaves and twigs of the rock rose shrub, its scent is rich and deep with sweet leathery notes and a little musky warmth.
PERU BALSAM
Light and vanilla-sweet scent, I love Peru Balsam as a softer amber note. This deeply comforting tree resin has been used to scent ceremonies as far back as the early Mayan culture.
BEESWAX
The smell of honeycomb — rich, warm, and softly sweet, with a creamy smoothness that grounds and soothes. Incredibly comforting to the nervous system, this golden ingredient carries the essence of flowers and sunshine.
FRANKINCENSE TEARS
Perhaps the most transcendent of all scents, with the ability to lift & ground, creating a sense of timeless calm. Dry, a little citrusy, but at the same time deeply resinous, the precious 'tears' from ancient Boswellia trees have been burned in sacred spaces for millennia.
V.
Scent FAQs
Your scent questions answered.
To learn more about scent families & smell individual ingredients join our next Scent Club.
Fragrance Structure & Notes
Fragrance Structure & Notes
TOP NOTES
Top notes are small, light molecules that evaporate quickly, which means they're the first thing you smell.
MIDDLE NOTES
Middle notes are also known as the heart of a fragrance because they usually make up most of the formula. Because of this they often define a scent.
BASE NOTES
Base notes create the foundation of a fragrance and are the largest & therefore longest-lasting molecules in a perfumer’s palette. These are the scents that you'll notice softly lingering long after the rest of the notes have faded away.
Personal & Environmental Safety
Personal & Environmental Safety
We formulate with both personal and environmental safety as priorities, meeting the most stringent global standards while sourcing responsibly. Our approach is an ingredient-by-ingredient consideration based on the latest science and standards.
PERSONAL SAFETY
Our perfumes meet all EU testing and regulations, including IFRA compliance and allergen standards. We also adhere to Credo Clean Standards, ensuring our scents are safe for your skin and body.
ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY
We source natural materials responsibly. Rather than using endangered ingredients like Mysore sandalwood or rosewood heart, we choose sustainable alternatives — Mexican cedar from logging industry waste, Australian sandalwood from sustainable farms, and atlas cedar from sawdust and shavings.
How to Choose a Fragrance
How to Choose a Fragrance
Scent is your most intimate sense — an invisible language with a direct line to emotion. The fragrances you’re drawn to reveal the qualities you’re seeking, whether it’s stability & grounding or sparkle & vitality.
Explore our scent guide to discover which fragrance family calls to you.
How To Use Scent
How To Use Scent
WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO SCENT A SPACE?
Begin with the feeling you want to create & then layer with time. Our smokeless incense changes a room within minutes. For a longer-lasting atmosphere, follow with our incense-based candles. Layer the same scent family across different forms to create added depth & interest.
HOW CAN SCENT HELP WITH MOOD?
Scent reaches emotion faster than thought. When you're seeking focus, choose something that centers you. For confidence, something that makes you feel more like yourself. For calm, something that slows your breathing. Scent is deeply personal, so it's about which fragrances unlock which emotional states for you. To learn more about scent families and smell individual ingredients, join our next Scent Club workshop.
HOW CAN SCENT HELP WITH SLEEP?
Scent bypasses rational thought and speaks directly to your nervous system. Establish a consistent scent ritual 30 minutes before bed — your brain will begin to associate that specific fragrance with rest. Choose grounding, calming scents rather than bright or energizing ones. The ritual matters as much as the scent itself; it signals to your body that it's time to transition from day to night.