by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger | Dec 10, 2013 | Sylla's Confessions
In the mid 70’s, like all good hippies, I went on a 6-week road-trip with my Mom in a VW microbus camper to California and back. I found the first scent shop I had ever seen in Dallas, TX. That shop changed my life! The smells were wonderful; the colored oils in glass decanters with pipettes for dispensing were a sight to behold! I bought at least six samples including patchouli, and so-called rose and jasmine (synthetic, as I discovered later). I mixed various scents together, patchouli and rose one day, patchouli and jasmine the next; and I observed how people reacted. This helped me define my own trademark scent that I still wear to this day.
I gave scents to my friends and family. I remember my brother D began first by scenting his fiddle case with patchouli, then it became his scent that he wore for the next 40 years. Another friend had been given a blend of vetiver/patchouli and I became obsessed with that too. I made perfumes, and perfected my famous personal scent. My own scent left a trail where I went; people would say I knew you went to the library on campus when I smelled you on the door after I opened it. Once at a party someone said I was at the airport on a particular day as they had smelled me in the elevator. At first I didn’t know what they were talking about. Later though, I remembered I had taken my Mom to the airport to fly home after a visit; sure enough I had been in the elevator at Tampa Airport that day in October. My scent followed me wherever I went and became a signature for who I was and who I would become.
Once I had my massage license (1979), I began adding oil blends to treatments and I saw that more intensely deep relaxation and occasionally psychological miracles occurred. I really thought I was onto something, wondering why anyone hasn’t anyone done this before?. “Surely this could be something big,” I thought. I understood a new potential and began an earnest quest for more information and more oils.
I ordered patchouli and “musk”- at the time really popular scent from Kiel’s pharmacy in NY, and begin to locate oils at the local food co-op, early health food stores and “head” shops.
I found advertisements for essential oils in the herbal magazines, as aromatherapy slowly entered the US through the door of herbalism, and the natural health movement. Many of the first teachers were herblists such as Jeanne Rose and Mindy Green and of course Colleen Dodt.
Odd that today, many aromatherapists are moving back into herbalism, wishing for a deeper understanding of the traditional medicine, and wanting more info on the plants these oils come from. With that in mind I have asked another well known herbalist to help create a course for our students, so watch this space!
by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger | Nov 18, 2013 | Sylla's Confessions
When many aromatherapists gathered for the 2006 Aromatherapy Conference by Michael Alexander in St. Pete, FL, my brother D, allowed us to raffle him for a dinner date for United Aromatherapy Effort, Inc. to raise funds. Jane Buckle won him and wrote a poem I shared in my recent presentation, so I want to dedicate this blog post to D. Even though my brother passed from this earth a couple of years ago he is still with me cheering me on! I really think he may have been at the conference when I did the RE start me up show, as one of those orbs in the picture.
My roots go back to North Carolina. I started this life in the tiny town of Mt. Gilead, NC in 1950 having been born Sylvia Ann Baucom in Troy, NC, where the closest hospital was. My first memories of exploring the world were following my constant companion “Irish twin” Donald or D as he came to be known. He was ten months older than me and we were raised as twins in our early lives, knowing where each other was, having that special bond siblings have.
We moved to the larger city of Raleigh, NC where I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s as an only girl with D and two older brothers (14 year gap). This may have set me up for a life of gathering “brothers” who became mentors and teachers, helping me along the way. Together D and I grew up in the 50’s and 1960s, so we remember well when the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Dylan started.
The fascination with smell began when mom would take us into woods behind our house and show us pitcher plants (what she called them). Their leaves smelled of sassafras. She would collect soil from woods. to use in her potted plants. My mom showed me sewing, practical things, listening, and unconditional love. She made clothes for herself, rarely splurged for Avon beauty products and only had a hair cut occasionally. My neighbor Mrs. Ellis, having two boys, loved showing me how to apply proper make up and perfumes from beautiful bottles with glass stoppers. I became aware of perfumes in high school, noticing the soft scent of Shalimar on the rich girls who wore the best clothes, settling on Intimate spray as gifts at 16 and Estee lauder Youth Dew when I was working and could afford more. Finally, in my 20’s, I received real Shalimar, but by then had switched to naturals so could hardly enjoy it anymore.
In high school, after looking to no avail for a summer job, I decided to go to beauty school instead. I thought at the time beauty was external and important! My early role models were my sister in laws, Joyce and Arlene and they had curly hair. Once when I wanted curly hair as a pre teen, my Mom was gave me a painfully rolled, uncomfortable and smelly perm. When I complained she said something like “one has to work at being beautiful” (or to have curly hair.)….so I thought it was something you had to pay for, to cultivate and work on, etc. Somehow I didn’t understand how the frizzy hair that resulted from my perm did that for me!
By high school, my thinking was what better way to have access to beauty ‘secrets’ than to go into the field. At the time I believed that beauty was something one “did”….with make up and hair instead it coming from within, but hey, I was young! I did the 1200 hours through my last two years of high school in my free time every Thursday night after school, Saturdays, holidays and all of summer vacation. I got my license at 19, a month after graduating from high school. Once working, I moved into my first apartment, my Dad passed away, I met and married my neighbor, and then before the year was up we divorced with me keeping the name Sheppard! Shortly thereafter I moved to Florida, settling in Tampa, and proceeded with my life away from my hometown and family.
While becoming “Sylla” (nick name from friends), I also attended a couple of years at University of South Florida, and feeling beautiful, I lived the organic hippy life for a while. I earned a degree as a natural health care practitioner (LMT) in 1979 while I cut hair at a local unisex salon.
By the mid 70’s I began my collection of these scented oils that were so magical. Long before I found the Valnet and Tisserand books, I realized this could be something big. Who would ever think from then to now, what adventures I would have. I really thought I invented it!
by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger | Nov 4, 2013 | Sylla's Confessions
I started out as a child of wonder, in a natural world of soft, furry animals that would let me rub their ears on my upper lip. We had woods in which to discover nature and build secret camps. I rolled down hills, I ran in grass, and witnessed the seasons of change as I marked my years up to 19. After moving to Florida I lost track of time as my second journey of using healing scents unfolded in the form of aromatherapy. Vintagearomatherapist.com is the house of the story of that long aromatic journey of forty some years; my version of the history of aromatherapy as known in the USA.
My Irish twin brother “D” and I grew up together and in our mid teens in the 1960’s. Bill Cosby was just a new young comic and one of his first recordings was titled “I started out as a child”.
Not his best, but we knew every line with all the accents. So in writing this, this line came to mind and I thought a good place to start.
The point is: we started out as children, but this blog is MY journey from start to finish from the 1950s forward. My daughter, Nyssa, pointed out a lot of ways I have grown yet am still child like. I am easily delighted and always looking for the good in others. There is a huge difference in child like and childish. These days I am much more wise and I can see that there is much work to be done. Nyssa quoted me in saying that I wanted to be known as a “woman who was up to something,” surely during my Landmark Education days when I became “authentic’, let my silver hair grow out and be more true to myself.
So here I am now, heart open, ready to confess. Stay tuned 😉
by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger | Nov 2, 2013 | Sylla's Confessions
Dawna Markova wrote the poem,
I Will Not Die An Unlived Life
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
She could have written that for me, and often it seems as if she did. When I received this gift from Robbi Zeck in 1998, I was going through radiation for breast cancer. I read the poem, put it up on the wall, read it again, and in a few years the poem became my mantra. I learned to say it out loud to the point that it was not only very empowering, but affirming.
As can be understood, I had a fear of falling and I avoided heights. As a child I did not like going over bridges in the car or walking on the pier at the beach high above the ocean deep, with little gaps between the boards.
I had the fear of catching fire since someone bumped into my arm at a college party with a cigarette, causing a bad burn when I was a teen. Ten years later, at another party, I was donning some wild and heavily hair sprayed hair, and sat next to a candle that lit the ends of my do, giving me a layered look. Lucky for me a biker had his jacket handy and covered me before any damage, but it really STUNK up the party. After my older brother lost his home to fire I became obsessed with the element for a long time and still don’t use candles.
Despite my past experience with fire, I am happy to say I no longer have those fears and can quickly dismiss fearful pop ups when they occasionally happen. In my sabbatical away from AT I was able to release that through some powerful work called Heart Forgiveness, which allows one to release anger and gives tools to continue moving forward with a peaceful heart. This is done in four sessions with a facilitator with follow up home work with a CD.
The Heart Forgiveness sessions allowed to feel that I can look at the past now and deal with anything that resurfaces, putting it to rest and being free.
A result of being free are Confessions of a Vintage Aromatherapist being developed, as well as this blog project where I can recount the history as I have lived it. It will include the viewpoint of guests who can add their knowledge to our histories database. As many myths of aromatherapy are being busted, I hope the insights of my friends and I will add to the historical data of the field and provide entertainment so that when my time comes, I can screech out, all used up, yelling whoohoo!
