Each month, Corinna explores one of the essential oils featured in her Aromatic Soul Journey. This approach uses fragrance as more than just a beautiful smell. Ready-diluted pure essential oils are applied to specific acupoints on the body, combining fragrance and touch to support nervous-system settling and wider wellbeing. It offers a quick, simple tool you can use in everyday life.
Cardamom has always been precious. ‘She’ travelled extraordinary distances along the old spice routes and became one of the most treasured spices in the world. In India, she is still known as the queen of spices. Especially in the Ayurvedic traditions, we find her in celebratory food, wedding rice and festival sweets, and in the coffee offered to an honoured guest. A single pod, cracked open, can perfume a whole kitchen.
There is something unmistakably rich and regal about her – and by working with her fragrance through essential oils we can be reminded of these qualities within us.
When I say regal, I don’t mean Cardamom makes us feel more important than anyone else. I mean something older and more intimate than status. I mean the feeling of remembering our own value. Our spine lengthens. Our breath deepens. Something within us knows again that this life is sacred and that we were never meant to be an afterthought within it.
Cardamom reminds us that we are worthy of being deeply nourished and taken care of… and not because we have proved ourselves first. Just because… we are…
For many of us this is a more radical idea than it first appears. We may be very comfortable caring for other people, anticipating what they need, feeding them, listening to them and making life beautiful for them. Yet when nourishment turns towards us, something can tighten. We can minimise our needs. We feel guilty about rest. We tell ourselves that beauty is unnecessary, that pleasure can wait or that receiving without immediately giving something back is selfish.
The Abundance of Cardamom
Cardamom seems to meet this old contraction with warmth, generosity and magnificence. Her fragrance is rich without being heavy. Sweet, spicy, fresh and earthy all at once, it has a fullness that fills the senses. It can feel like being welcomed to a table with plenty, where a place has already been prepared for us… Working with Cardamom’s fragrance can make us feel more welcome in our lives.
This is the abundance I feel in Cardamom: the deep bodily knowing that there is enough to go around. There is enough warmth. Enough beauty. Enough food. Enough care. Enough life. And there is enough for us too.
The aroma reaches very deeply. Smell speaks to parts of us that are older than explanation. Long before we could describe comfort, celebration or belonging, we knew them through the body: the scent of food being prepared, the warmth of a kitchen, familiar activity moving around us, spices opening in a pan. For many of us, food aromas are among our earliest sensory memories of being fed and held within a human world.
Cardamom carries that ancient language. Even when the memory isn’t conscious, the body may recognise something in her fragrance: food is coming; warmth is near; something good is here; I am allowed to receive.
Of course, our early experiences are not all the same. Some of us learned that nourishment was uncertain, hurried or entangled with care we had to earn. Some became very good at needing little. Cardamom does not ask us to pretend that history never happened. She offers another experience in the present: a warm, fragrant moment that demands nothing from us. We can begin to practise receiving, gently.
Cardamom is also traditionally valued for digestion, which relates to her deeper message. To be nourished, goodness is not enough for it to simply arrive. We must be able to take it in, break it down and make it part of us.
This is true of food. And it is true of life. We digest conversations, relationships, changes, beauty, grief and love. We take in the atmosphere of rooms, other people’s feelings and the countless demands of an ordinary day. When there is too much to process, even something good can become one more thing we cannot receive.
Cardamom brings warmth and movement to this inner work. She helps us remember the difference between what feeds us and what merely fills us. What can I receive? What is truly mine? What am I ready to let go? Digestion is the intelligence that turns nourishment into nourishment.
And this is where her regal nature becomes embodied. It is one thing to say that we have value. It is another to let that value change the way we care for ourselves. If my life is sacred, how do I feed it? If I am worthy of care, what do I allow myself to receive? If I belong to an abundant world, can I stop living as though I must justify every moment of rest, pleasure, or support?
Our royal nature does not require a crown. It may simply look like eating before we are depleted. Resting before our bodies force us to stop. Allowing someone to help. Choosing the beautiful cup. Making time for the person who brings us back to ourselves. Letting pleasure be wholesome rather than suspicious. Saying no when a yes would require us to abandon ourselves.
Experience Cardamon
If you would like to experience a little of Cardamom’s medicine, start with something simple.
- Use a properly diluted Cardamom blend and place a small amount between your fingers.
- Let the aroma come to you without forcing a deep breath.
- Then find the soft hollow on the inner edge of your foot, just below and behind the base of the big toe.
- This is Spleen 3, a point traditionally associated with nourishment and our capacity to receive what is good and make it our own.
- Rest your fingers there comfortably. No need to press hard.
- Stay for three unhurried breaths.
- Feel the warmth of your hand and the support beneath your body.
- Then say quietly: “I receive what truly nourishes me,” and simply notice how you feel.
You might ask yourself: what would feed me now? Let the answer be simple. Rest. Beauty. My favourite meal. Time outside. Music. Help. An hour with someone who makes you laugh. A few minutes in which nothing is expected of you.
Then ask the more tender question: “Can I allow myself to have it”?
This is the practice Cardamom offers. Not merely recognising that nourishment exists, but remembering that we are worthy of receiving it. Not merely believing that the world is abundant, but allowing some of that abundance to reach us.
Use essential oils according to the product directions and appropriate dilution guidance, keeping them away from the eyes, mucous membranes and damaged skin. Seek individual professional advice during pregnancy or breastfeeding, for children and when managing a health condition.
Cardamom has long been called precious. Perhaps her deepest gift is to awaken the same recognition in us. We are not more precious than anyone else. But neither are we less so.
We have a place at the table. There is nourishment with our name on it. There is beauty we do not have to earn. Cardamom, the queen of spices, invites us to sit a little taller, open our senses and remember the royal dignity of being alive.
Corinna Kitchen
Find out more about Corinna’s work and the Aromatic Soul Journey at corinnakitchen.com
Experience Cardamom on the next live online event with Corinna – Thursday 15th October
Come and experience Restore and Uplift, a live online ‘Introduction to the Aromatic Soul Journey’ with Bergamot and Vetiver.
Saturday 5th December
4 – 6 pm
The £65 fee includes high-quality, ready-diluted organic essential oils and a card package, posted to you on sign-up so you have everything you need for the whole experience.
Find out more and reserve your place at: corinnakitchen.com/restore-and-uplift
Or join Corinna for her free restorative midweek meditation.
From Wednesday 28th October
8 – 8.30 pm
Sign up at corinnakitchen.com/midweek-meditation
Corinna Kitchen is a Senior Licensed Biodynamic Psychotherapist and Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant based in Lewes, East Sussex. She offers one-to-one consultations online and in Lewes, as well as online aromatic experiences through the Aromatic Soul Journey.
corinna [@] corinnakitchen.com
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Our Editorial Team are writers and experts in their field. Their views and opinions may not always be the views of Wellbeing Magazine. If you are under the direction of medical supervision please speak to your doctor or therapist before following the advice and recommendations in these articles.
