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The Invisible Sense: Rediscovering Berlin Through Smell

Elisabeth Schaduw

Photo: SR Berlin Launch © Jonannes Nikolaus Kapros

Elisabeth Schaduw is a Berlin-based perfumer, artist, and founder of Sensory Recovery. After losing her sense of smell during Covid, she began researching olfactory training and neuroplasticity to help her recover, eventually building a scent-training platform. Elisabeth shares her journey exploring the power of scent for sensory recovery and wellbeing.

If smell loss recovery is a journey through scent, then my own journey through the olfactory realm began when I left Amsterdam a decade ago and arrived in Berlin. I had done a year of art school in the Dutch capital but I didn’t know myself well enough yet to understand how to translate my way of thinking into art. My artistic education transitioned into a career in DJing, but I always felt there was more I could explore. Berlin had a reputation for creative freedom, so I moved without hesitation. The freedom I found here felt playful, experimental, open – a city that allowed me to explore how I wanted to develop my artistic medium.

Experimentation for me was key, as I delved into the medium of photography, took a screenwriting course, worked as a florist, and even learned to play a Japanese harp, the koto, leading to a performance in the foyer of the Berliner Philharmonie. Each attempt taught me something about how people connect with experience and emotion. But what stayed with me most was scent. I became fascinated by how smell connects to memory, identity, and intimacy between people. That fascination eventually led me to study perfumery in Grasse, in the south of France.

When I returned to Berlin, I came back as a ‘perfume witch’. In this role, I designed ‘scent potions’ inspired by people’s secrets, which I’d collected through an online confession booth. Instead of speaking their confessions out loud, people could wear them as scents – acting as a kind of olfactory confidant, through which their secrets could be shared via smell rather than speech, producing its own kind of healing.

Slowly, people began to notice the work. I was featured in magazines, invited to exhibitions, and asked to create scent pieces for theatre productions. Then Covid happened. And I lost my sense of smell. It didn’t come back. Losing that connection made me realise how much scent anchored me emotionally.

Before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I often struggled with anxiety, and nature had always been my way of self-medicating. I would go to the forest and breathe in the smell of trees, soil, and fresh air to ground myself. Japanese studies, particularly on shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), show that breathing in phytoncides (natural compounds like pinene) released by pine trees can enter the bloodstream and significantly boost immune function.

But suddenly, from one day of convalescence to another, that was all gone, and so was my way of managing my anxiety. With the onset of these new symptoms, I discovered that when smell disappears, the world of flavour collapses too. Food became dull and strange to me, and I began experiencing the world as if it had no colours.

After two months without improvement, I knew I had to actively search for a solution. I started researching how the brain can rebuild sensory pathways through olfactory training. This research fundamentally changed my understanding of scent. Previously, I had worked with smell as a medium for storytelling and emotional connection. Now I began to see its potential as a tool for health and neurological recovery.

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