Healing Through Pine: A Story of Resilience and Ritual
There are moments in life when the ground beneath us feels like it’s disappearing. For me, that moment came years ago, while living in Japan. My marriage was unraveling, and though my children were too young to understand, I knew I had to protect their world from the shadows of passive-aggressive behavior that was becoming our daily reality.
So I began creating small escapes — rituals of grounding and calm that carried us through.
One of the most healing of these was taking my children out of Tokyo and into the pine forests. We would spend hours riding through the trees, letting the crisp air, the scent of resin, and the stillness of nature hold us. They thought of it as adventure and play — for me, it was a lifeline. The scent of pine became an anchor: steady, resilient, timeless.
At home, I would use an aromatherapy diffuser, filling our space with scents chosen carefully — lavender for calm, citrus for lightness, frankincense for grounding. My children never knew these were intentional choices to soothe and protect them; for them, it was simply the smell of home. For me, it was a way to create safety in an unsafe time.
Looking back, I realize that scent became one of my most trusted allies in those years. More than just fragrance, scent connects directly to our nervous system, to memory, and to emotion. It can calm the body, shift the mind, and carry us into presence. Those pine forests, those quiet diffusions at home, were not luxuries — they were medicine.
This is why scent has remained a pillar of The Abi Method. Because I know, not in theory but in lived experience, how powerful it is to reconnect with ourselves through our senses. Nature and scent gave me grounding when everything else felt uncertain.
And this is also something you can practice. You don’t need a pine forest in Japan to find it. You only need a moment to pause, breathe, and let scent become your anchor.
Try this:
Roll a grounding scent (pine, cedarwood, or frankincense) onto your wrists or diffuse it at home.
Inhale for 4, hold for 8, exhale for 4.
Repeat for a few cycles, noticing how your body softens and your mind clears.
The pine forest saved me, not by changing my circumstances, but by reminding me that I was still rooted. That resilience — that quiet strength — is what I now pass on in every ritual I share.
If you’d like to explore scent as part of your own rituals, I’ve created a collection of roll-ons and aromatherapy blends inspired by these same principles. They’re designed to support grounding, clarity, and presence in everyday life. You can discover them in the shop.