3 Expert Tips For Finding A Fragrance To Match Your Mood (& Align Your Chakras) 

Finding your fragrance—be it a signature scent or just your perfume for the day—is an art form. You may think of it as nothing more than a spritz and an afterthought, but it's so much more than that, says fragrance expert, reiki healer, and founder of Perfumerie Mindy Yang on a recent episode of Clean Beauty School.

When you are looking for a new scent—or at least the perfume you want to wear that day—experts recommend you bring your palette to a neutral base. At department stores, you'll see coffee beans. However, neutralizing your olfactory receptors is much more simple than that. 

You've probably heard this factoid: Smell is the sense that is closest to memory. And it's true, long-term memory, emotions, and scent are processed in the same part of the brain. 

"You actually experience the sense of smell: It triggers our emotions and the memories before you're able to actually process the actual experience," says Yang. "So here is no immediate processing—the processing actually happens after the fact, right? When then your brain lights up, how you are experiencing it or how you then translate what you're experiencing and being able to put that into words, it's actually tied to your cultural experiences."

And these memories and cultural associations should play a role in how you find your fragrances. Think about it: You are going to, ideally, wear this scent regularly—you want to make sure that it evokes pleasant moods and thoughts. 

Fragrance notes—be it lavender, neroli, jasmine, or so on—evoke energies. Yang recommends harnessing this to meet your specific needs. Don't know what those are? Well, chances are your body does.

"Especially the people that are holistic-minded like me would say, 'If you're craving something spicy, go eat spicy foods,' because your body knows what it needs," says Yang. "This is actually very related to energy and chakras. If someone is really into neroli and ginger at that moment, it's because your second chakra is thirsty and you're looking for that energy."

While this concept of aligning scents and mood has been practiced for ages in various cultures—Yang notes that it seems that younger generations seem to be embracing it currently, too.