Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Some of my earliest memories are of the creek, the woods and the fields behind our house. Every free minute, I was out there collecting plants and flowers, I remember eating chamomile as a snack then I would bring them home and put them into my mother’s expensive perfume, wanting to make tea from random herbs I found, rub my barbies with them or cook with them in imaginary kitchens. I was deeply attuned to nature. A little alchemist, a little herbalist, though I had no words for either. Until I was about 8 years old, I was also a sleepwalker on full moons, going outside into the garden in the middle of night, talking to the full moon in an abstract language, my mom told me, until I suffered a concussion from it when I fell one night. I guess you could say, that I was always deeply in touch with animals and nature from an early age.

Then I forgot all of it, as most of us do when real life begins. I studied at university, went into the corporate world and spent more than a decade in project and event management in Berlin, leading large projects across Germany and Europe. It taught me a great deal about people. Ambition can take you a long way. But high performance has a price, and the body and the nervous system is the one that pays it.

For years I believed success meant doing more, faster, better. I never questioned it, until my body stopped going along. A severe burnout ended the conversation for me. I had overworked myself to a point of complete physical and mental exhaustion. At my high, I was working almost 90 hours per week. I didn’t have a social life anymore. I lived to work until I couldn’t work anymore and found myself at the ruins of my life. It made me question my entire existence and the purpose of it all. I started asking myself who I am and what I would want to look back at when I retire, what my ‘I wish I would have’s would be and what really matters in life, what makes a life fulfilling.

Shortly after the burnout, I was introduced to the Huni Kuin Tribe, an ancient tribe from the Amazon forest, who are deeply in tune with nature, living as being part of it. I remember I was sitting in my first ayahuasca ceremony with them and all I could see and feel was darkness, nothingness. It was all empty. I felt nothing, no connection – neither to myself nor to nature. I realized how detached I had become from myself.

Eventually, with time and daily meditation and more attentiveness to my body, it was all still there for me, waiting – the creek, the connection to plants, my deep interest and fascination with the healing powers of botanicals.. gradually everything since then has been that child finding her way back. I learnt that the exhaustion I had been ignoring would eventually turn out to be my savior and my purpose.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: What we are shaping through our work is deeply rooted in a broader sensory vision. The holistic aspect is the most important for me in all products and services we provide. The bespoke signature scent creation for example, which is a big part of what The Alchemist Muse specializes in, is actually creating the individual essence of a person or a space. We create holistic, botanical scents that make you feel better. And that’s the essence of what we provide and are dedicated to. Our intention at The Alchemist Muse is to facilitate a state where the body, mind, and soul reside in effortless harmony. We honor the belief that true beauty cannot be separated from alignment and that we humans are innately part of nature. We don’t use any synthetic materials. We create perfumes with purpose from pure botanical materials.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: In my creative process, I never start with asking what smells beautiful; instead, I start with what people genuinely need.

The scents I create are meant to live with the person or the space. All scents I create, whether the bespoke signature scent or the other botanical creations, they all have a purpose.

A scent made to impress and a scent made to make you feel good are two different compositions. When I ask what someone needs, I really mean on all levels, body, mind and soul. I think about the person wearing it: who they are, where they are at in life, how they feel right now, what they need on all levels, what they long for or want to call in, their health background, maybe re-occurring issues. Beauty comes second, and it comes more easily then, because it has a real purpose, it has depth and character, like the person or the space themselves. That’s what makes the difference.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: It starts with an in depth conversation. I ask about memories, favorite things, places, moods, the rhythm of a person’s day, their astrology, their medical record and career path, their emotional landscape, what they are drawn to and what they can’t stand, their hopes and fears and dreams. I’m listening for material and to see them in scent.

A childhood garden might become something green and damp. A need for grounding might become roots and resin. Then I shape it like a story with an opening, a melody. It’s a composition, meticulously crafted with knowledge and a lot of intuition. After that, we test. I adjust drop by drop until the person smells it and recognises themselves. When that happens, I know it is finished.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Traditional plant knowledge has been written down, studies and passed on for centuries and still some of it is hidden, like a sacred treasure that is guarded, available only to few. Lucky if you get to know or learn about.

Scent has always fascinated me for this reason and I have been obsessed with the magnificent power of plants and scents for as long as I can remember, and I have huge respect for it. It speaks a language older than words and touches parts of us, that no one or nothing else ever can. I don’t think I will ever be able to reach the point of knowing everything about it, because there are endless new discoveries and even more history. That’s why it never gets boring for me. Not a day goes by where I don’t learn or discover something new and I love it.

Modern research is finally able to ask more precise questions about it and has, to an extend started to recognize the potential of working with plants and plant essences. Things like: how scent affects mood, attention and memory are now finally being scientifically relevant and partly proven. I find that meeting point exciting and important.

But we have to be honest about what the evidence supports. Scent doesn’t cure anything, and it doesn’t treat disease. What it can do however, is work on the nervous system. It can change how a room feels, it can help you focus, shift your mood and anchor a ritual into a daily practise that then helps you stay healthy. Its not the equation, it’s part of the equation. That’s why I always talk about holistic approaches within my work, because it’s a co-effort that achieves something. That is already a lot. Promising more than that harms the field I care about the most.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: The word natural doesn’t automatically mean safe and it’s widely misused in the industry of health products and cosmetics everywhere. Something says ‘Natural’ on the front of the label but on the back of it is a long list with ingredients one can hardly pronounce. That’s because there is no proper regulation yet of what natural actually means and what is allowed to contain and what not.

It tells you where the origin may derive from, yet not how much of it is harmless to use. Botanical materials in their raw form are powerful because they are concentrated. The right use and education here therefore is crucial. Some oils and plants can irritate the skin, some aren’t suitable during pregnancy or around children and pets, some can cause allergies if combined with others. That’s why it’s paramount when doing this kind of work, to know how different plants and essences behave and work with each other, before combining anything or use them. Aromatherapy is not a cute DIY project, it’s essentially science. Things can go wrong when handled carelessly and may have negative effects on health, too.

Natural perfumery compared to synthetics also has limits. The palette is smaller, some scents are not available because they can’t be extracted, some fade sooner, and every harvest is a little different. Personally, I love that actually. It’s like a fine wine or a really good champagne. Each year has it’s distinct personality. A botanical scent is alive. It changes with the season, with the year and the harvest and it behaves and smells differently on each skin, too. Compared to synthetic perfume the plant is not mimicked, it is the pure essence of the real plant and hence releases its healing properties.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Whenever we feel stretched to our limits or disconnected from ourselves, the mind needs a break so that the body can regulate itself, so that the breath can regulate itself. A small scent ritual offers that. Even if it’s just a minute or two.

You pause, you take a slow intentional breath, and you smell an oil you chose on purpose. A flower carries its scent through the air. Resin holds the memory of a tree. Rain releases the smell of earth. One breath can bring an entire landscape into the body.

Done regularly, that scent becomes a signal for the nervous system and the body. The body learns it means “stop for a moment.” It won’t remove the cause of stress, but it interrupts it, and in that pause you get your choice back and the feeling of a minute of something that makes you feel good. And consequently the energy to deal with that stress returns naturally.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: True nervous-system regulation means that the body can shift from fight-or-flight mode into a sense of safety and inner peace. In real life, that looks like an unclenched jaw, an extended breath that reaches the belly, soft neck muscles and being able to stop in the middle of a day and feel the feet on the ground and smile.

Intentional living isn’t about stopping everything or being overly selective. You can slow down and still be performing. Intentional living is about deciding what has priority and remind you of what’s truly important – your health. It’s about choosing consciously what gets more attention and letting the rest go. That is the real luxury, more than just time – intentionality with time.

I recognise a pattern in ambitious people, because I lived it. I see a lot of CEO’s and Entrepreneurs being excellent at their performance but out of touch with their own body sensation. They know their calendar better than their own needs. They rest only as a reward. They call exhaustion normal. They don’t take care of themselves as much as they take care of their car. From the outside they look composed and perfect. On the inside, it’s static requires maintenance. Most don’t know or forget that the way back to health is harder than pausing in between and readjusting. And it starts by simply noticing.

Reminding ourselves every day that we are here as part of this living world and in conversation with every living thing that exists. We need it now more than ever, this remembrance with our own true nature, with nature itself and with the nature within us.

We are humans, not robots. To be able to truly smell the flowers, feel the water and the earth, to bring body, mind and spirit together, is what differentiates us. To be human, is to be alive, not just to be functioning and performing.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Sit down. Take off your shoes for these five minutes if you can. Sit down or stand firmly on the ground. Put one drop of an essential oil blend or even something pure, like lavender, cedarwood or bergamot, on a tissue and hold it a hand’s width from your face. Close your eyes and inhale and exhale for a few rounds. Notice how you feel different. Then hydrate, drink a glass of water and continue with your day. The results will speak for themselves.

If you have a minute longer, place your hand on your heart and feel your breath connecting to it, your own heartbeat. Breathe until your heartbeat is syncing with the speed of your breath. Finish by naming three things you can feel: your feet, the chair, the air on your skin; three things you can smell; three things you can see and three things you can taste. Then end with a long exhale and a sigh. Keep the tissue with the scent nearby for the rest of the day and sniff on it every once in a while throughout your day.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Silence is unbearable for most people. It’s uncomfortable and loud at first. People meet their restlessness with nowhere to put it, the thoughts get louder, nowhere to hide the sudden space that fills the room with emptiness. Often around the second day, something softens and opens up. There comes a tiredness they didn’t know they were carrying, because of the auto pilot that now finally gets a pause. Usually after a first good sleep, which is usually significantly longer (because the body really gets the permission to rest and goes into recharge mode rather than press pause and snooze) relief starts to settle in, sometimes in the form of tears, sometimes laughter or a long sequence of extended yawning and deep vocal inhalations and exhalations.

People discover in those moments often the magnitude of auto pilot they were in, sometimes for years nonstop.

When we finally stop after running a marathon, only then we really feel the exhaustion and the way that lays behind us. Small things we didn’t notice before are suddenly coming out of the shadow, some start to dream again in their sleep for the first time in a long time, because the mind has finally space to create again.

They eventually discover that their senses were never dull, just too occupied. A cup of tea becomes a true moment of bliss and peace, they suddenly notice the taste for the first time truly. Most of all, often they find that the noise itself was never the problem. It was forgetting to pause in between and listen where its coming from.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: This is a really important topic for me. As a botanical perfumer I take from living systems, and I see it as my responsibility to be aware of that and give back what I take. It starts with knowing where every ingredient comes from and how it is sourced.

Sustainability and work environment ethics are important to me. I believe that these things also are reflected into the energy of the materials. That’s a very spiritual take on it, but if we consider the fact that everything is energy, it makes sense to consider all aspects when working with living substances on a holistic level. Before I founded the Alchemist Muse, I spent two years researching sustainable companies, how they work, what’s important to consider, what to look out for in the collaboration with distributors and what to be aware of… Sourcing and working with plants and people harvesting them is a relationship, not just a purchase. That means paying growers fairly, being open about who they are and considering the environment and it’s changes.

Some plants are under real pressure, some are rare, difficult to grow or not always available in the quality we are seeking for the purpose we want it for. For those, I decide whether to use them at all and only with verified origin, or I leave them out. We work in small batches. Bespoke helps here too: we produce upon request, not what can sit in a warehouse.

Luxury without care for its origin is just greed in my opinion.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: Poetry, music, scent, healing are not separate chapters for me. They are all intertwined: they create an atmosphere where something can happen to a person, touching some deeper invisible parts of us.

Yoga and meditation build inner states.

With Proxybell, I built mood out of rhythm and voice, furthermore I processed my own through the sound and transformed it into a feeling.

Writing and interviewing taught me to notice the small details people give away without knowing it and it helped me process my own thoughts and alchemise them into something tangible and relatable.

A melody has structure. A poem has structure, a scent has structure, too. What they all have in common is their invisibility on the outside, yet they can move a lot on the inside of us. All are great tools to bring us back in tune with our innermost connected self, when we tend to abandon it ever so often as adults navigating life.

Janica-Valesca Hieronimi: As life gets more digital, being present becomes rare, and rare is what luxury has always been about.

I think people define and rate luxury now more like an experience. It’s not the purchase of an expensive perfume but what it does, what it gives them.

The wellness industry currently is experiencing such a boom because people crave experiences that create memories. Our world is moving faster than ever, so to freeze time, to experience a moment that can last forever as a beautiful memory, is worth more than the thing. It’s not about the expensive bottle of champagne so much anymore, as it is about the location where and the people with whom.

It is not so much about the deluxe hotel but about the trip as a whole. You get my point. We are moving away from owning things and toward living experiences: sensory spaces, personal rituals, meaning. What an object does for you matters more than the object itself. That’s why I am confident that what we are creating at The Alchemist Muse is the future – creating scent experiences with a purpose; scents that actually make you feel better, not just smell good.

If The Alchemist Muse grows the way I hope, in ten years fragrance will be seen as a relationship rather than decoration, like it used to be in ancient times. It is said that Cleopatra would send out fragrant ships to announce her arrival days beforehand. Scent was never meant to be only decoration, especially not one that smells the same for everyone.

Perfume is personal, unique, intimate. It should be like a personal signature is, too. In many of the arabic countries it’s even part of their heritage.

The Alchemist Muse is the first company to work with scent like that – reviving its origin, with its purpose and meaning. Nobody else does that so far. I am sure that over time we will inspire others to start something similar. But it feels good to be a pioneer in this scent revolution movement, as part of the holistic evolution which we are currently experiencing globally.