My sense of smell is incredibly sharp, allowing me to catch subtle scents that others often miss. Each scent triggers a complex network of olfactory receptors in my nose, connecting to the limbic system deep in my brain. This system unifies the two hemispheres, intertwining emotions and memories through structures such as the amygdala, which processes feelings, and the hippocampus, which stores memories and links to basic responses like hunger and thirst - perhaps explaining comfort eating as a reaction to emotions.
Early Memories
One of my earliest scent memories takes me back to the bustling streets of India when I was four. I can vividly recall the fresh, bright aroma of eau de cologne wrapping around me, a sensory snapshot that remains alive in my heart. My Nana’s favourite fragrance matched her neatly pressed nursing sister's uniform, bringing a sense of order and calm to the room. She was always steady and calm, never shaken by the chaos outside. My second was the smell of my mother's perfume, ‘Shocking by Shaperelli’, a nightly ritual I watched with enchantment as she daubed her pulse points before climbing into her stage gown, ready to huskily sing jazz songs. These images are indelibly imprinted in my brain, as are the smells of rose and sandalwood in a Hindu temple, the citrusy amber of church incense, and the sharp, seasonal, sweet scent of blood orange. The sour faecal scent of decay and the agrestic smell of stables where we visited our horse are still easy to recall.
Life’s a Scented Journey
Who would have imagined that a single scent memory could unfurl into a lifelong passion? My aromatic adventure began in therapy, where essential oils first worked their quiet magic and began to build my fragrance palette. By 1989, I had launched my debut fragrance line, Essential Therapeutics, inspired by crystals and marking my first steps beyond my mentor Micheline Arcier's guidance. A decade later, I opened my own clinic, and the journey deepened. I crafted Pure Alchemy, a cult favourite at Spa NK and the luxurious Cowley Manor spa C-side.
Strangely, it was at Cowley Manor that I took my next fragrant leap, inspired by Mandy Aftel’s book Scent and Alchemy. Almost overnight, I found myself in San Francisco, learning the art of natural perfumery with Mandy herself. The experience was transformative, prompting two more study trips that liberated me creatively from the sensibilities of traditional aromatherapy. To be fair, my formulating style was far nearer to natural perfumery; it just validated my intuitive process and taught me how to indelibly lock in these aromas.
A Sense of Something New
I created my third range, Roques ONeil Therapie, vowing that this time, my work would embrace all my passions: essential oils, natural perfumery, alchemy, crystals and Reiki. I started working on Therapie two years after closing PA. At its core was self-healing and transformation. Stress and mental health were becoming increasingly common factors globally. I noticed that key symptoms were treated separately, such as depression, Insomnia, with anxiety and stress the common denominator.
I set out to curate a compact range of five products that targeted the autonomic nervous system. In a time-poor world, my inspiration was to teach people to take moments of respite throughout their day, shorter ones at work, or on their way to a meeting or longer rituals at home as emotional prep for their day or at night as a transition between work and home, but never more than 20 minutes, and become proactive in their own wellbeing. This was back in 2010; we launched in 2012. Self-care was not the catchphrase it became in lockdown. My aim was to shift self-care from a guilty pleasure to a priority. These were supercharged formulas, practical yet charged with a spiritual dimension.
A New Perspective
In 2024, I closed Therapie. What was going to be a brand refresh became something bigger. I didn't want to simply repeat what I’d been doing for the last 12 years, so I looked for a fresher approach, as many other brands had caught up with us. And then Quantum Alchemy came to life. In 2025, I began exploring the connection between quantum physics and spirituality. Much of what has been discovered in the scientific arena has validated the metaphysical sciences I’d studied back in the 1980s, and it was definitely part of the treatment ethos I’d been taught at Micheline Arcier.
My main impetus was a question: ‘There had to be more to life than perpetual challenges. I knew I was missing something and began to investigate a neuroscientific approach and the work of Dr Bruce Lipton and Dr Joe Despenza, while also looking at sacred geometry, the physics of plants, and the frequencies of essential oils. I wondered whether there was a way to increase frequency through them, and whether breathwork and meditation, having always been part of my energy toolkit as a qi gong practitioner since the mid-80s, could shift brainwave function and raise it. This opened a new way of working, approaching the oils through a different lens, purely vibrationally, and I discovered a whole new universe.
As I worked, I came to understand a subtle duality emerging between our physical world of matter and the quantum world of energy, and how each oil is encoded with a unique signature. One works with particles (molecules), and the other through frequency. As we tend to be reactive by nature, many of us get stuck in habitual cycles and fight-or-flight beliefs that require regulation to access our more perceptive states and raise frequencies. In simple terms, self-care has become part of the habitual stress response cycle rather than a catalyst for evolution.
My Scented Alchemy
So here you find me poised to help people access the benefits of these powerful scented allies, increase our own capabilities, and free us from default behaviours into a freer, more expansive perception of life. We have been in a collective amnesia, and it’s time to take a leap of faith and connect to these natural gifts not as tools but as teachers and allies.
I created Scented Alchemy as an entry point to experience the power of scent unlabelled, as an energetic dialogue that magically creates its own alchemy. It doesn’t seem to matter whether people are perfume aficionados, esteemed aromatherapists, or just interested in the power of scent; each experiences something profound. For me, the three hours will expand into a one-day retreat later this year.
I would love to gently awaken as many people as possible.