Illuminating Your Senses with Äi Äi
“If you light a lamp for someone else, it will also brighten your path” - Buddha
Äi Äi ILLUM LAB is a brand dedicated to creating light and scents that naturally nourishes the senses. Taffi believes that the scent in nature that reconnects the beauty in life also heals us.
Äi Äi ILLUM LAB was founded in 2014 by Taffi Wei. A brand dedicated to creating light and scents that naturally nourishes the senses. Taffi believes that the scent in nature that reconnects the beauty in life also heals us. We spent a beautiful morning with Taffi at her home and studio up in the mountains of Wulai in Taipei to converse with her about her personal journey and how the birth of Äi Äi ILLUM LAB came about.
Born in Taiwan and left for the US at the age of 11, Taffi spent her childhood navigating new environments as she moved to different cities in the US and tried to acclimate to her new environment. With a degree in computer information systems from John Hopkins and not completely sure she wanted to pursue a traditional career track, Taffi decided to dive deeper into her yoga training at Mount Madonna Center before returning to Taiwan in 2004.
Upon her return home, Taffi spent her time tutoring English, teaching yoga, modeled and worked for marketing and advertising agencies. One of the most influential working experiences she encountered was her time at a former Taipei yoga studio, John’s Yoga Living run by a veteran yoga teacher, John Ang (who has since moved to Malaysia). John is a mentor and dear friend, Taffi deepened her yoga practice and applied yogic philosophy to her life through his guidance.
When discussing the fruition behind Äi Äi ILLUM LAB, Taffi shares her serendipitous encounter with an old friend in 2013. Her friend invited her on a Vipassana retreat in Sri Lanka. The day before their departure her friend had an accident and was unable to follow through with their trip so Taffi decided that fate had it for her to venture to Sri Lanka on her own! What came next was a life changing experience for her.
“I didn’t expect that experience would be the ultimate Vipassana experience for me, personally. It really opened my view of the world from a more Buddhist perspective to a more dharma perspective. I was able to see and visit my anger through volunteering and it was during that Vipassana course that I learned the concept that giving and taking is the same. When you are giving you are also simultaneously taking. It is a heart to heart exchange, it is the action that cancels each other out, that was a real revelation to me.”
The concept of giving and taking being the same was a realization that occurred to Taffi when she was volunteering in the kitchen at the retreat center. The 80yr old master nun would come up to her, calling her Tarani (her Sanskrit name used at the center) and ask “do you know how to serve?” She reluctantly said she did not know how and the nun took her to the serving line and showed her. When you are serving others at the center the ritual is that you look at the individual in the eye, make a prayer, and thank them. This exchange of energy, the server placing rice on a plate and the person on the other end receiving gave Taffi a very powerful emotional awakening that stuck with her. To give is to receive and to receive is to give that is the beauty of our karmic energy. This notion would be one of the foundations for Äi Äi ILLUM LAB and other initiatives she tries to spread.
Upon her return to Taipei she decided to pack up her life in the city and move into the mountains of Wulai to be away from the grind and immersed herself in the tranquility of nature. This move would mark the beginning of her journey into the mountains. While she secluded herself in her nest in Wulai, Taffi was inspired by the community she was living in and wanted to make candles, as a way to generate that same karmic notion of giving and taking. By creating candles for others to light it was her way of creating that exchange in energy. Having no background in making homemade candles, Taffi started by looking up tutorials on YouTube and began selling her homemade candles at her local community fairs.
Scent is an invisible treatment in our life. When the home is a visually pleasing space, the living environment is more you and your scent that emits from you tells people a lot about who you are.
Back in 2014 scented candles were not popular in Taiwan, unlike in the West, people didn’t have the custom of burning scented candles at home. For Taffi, making candles has a deeper message than just lighting a nice smelling candle. A chapter in Lee Mingtsung’s book “Wu Li Xue” talks about light. He describes the relationship and experience between light and its energy. “Ai Ai Nei Han Guang De Gan Jue” which translates into ``Like dim and faint light love is a discrete feeling within.” This author inspired Taffi to name her candles Äi Äi which represents two candle flames (you can notice it based on the dots about the letters “a” and “I”). Ai in Japanese means love. Hence, Äi Äi ILLUM LAB is dedicated to creating light and scents that naturally nourishes the senses, love needs light!
Currently Äi Äi has 7 main scents in 3 different sizes (50g, 150g, 220g) and on occasion you may find limited edition selections. Each scent has a story, a journey and they all are handmade in her studio in Wulai. In the candle making space and from a consumer perspective many individuals are unaware of what natural fragrance is compared to synthetic. Taffi strives to be an advocate in this space to educate makers and consumers alike the importance of using natural fragrance because that is naturally what is better for us to inhale and bring nature’s positive healing energy into our living space. As the scent market continues to grow it is important that more people are aware of how to use natural scent to improve their livelihood and live a more stress free life! Scent is an invisible treatment in our life. When the home is a visually pleasing space, the living environment is more you and your scent that emits from you tells people a lot about who you are.
When asked about the last 6 years and what she has learned during her journey creating this brand, Taffi shares that she spent a lot of time working on her internal self while learning how coexists in a society. What she would share with others who may want to walk down a similar path is that as long as you are passionate about what you are making, it really shows up in your work.
Taffi is inspired to do what she does as she continues to grow Äi Äi ILLUM LAB and to see where it takes her and not where she can take the brand. Äi Äi came about from a concept of bringing light into a space with it’s natural scent and that karmic give and take exchange that sits deep within her from her trip to Sri Lanka. Äi Äi ILLUM LAB wants to convey the message of the importance of action and human nature. The effect of aroma with all things, the nose is our olfactory system and it is directly connected to our intuition. If you always expose yourself in the natural environment you will develop an instinct that tells you what is not natural. It is “not my duty or responsibility to enforce people to like natural products but it will be my mission to help people discriminate the artificial from natural scent.”
When looking forward into the new decade, Taffi hopes to continue to collaborate with others to form exhibitions and workshops to create sensory awareness, this process allows for her to connect deeper with her yoga roots. Taffi has conducted several sensory exhibitions already, one of which used “depression” as its theme. She realized that depression is created by the disconnect from nature, so for this exhibition she used synthetic and natural scent to differentiate the two to allow one to discriminate between the smell. Last month Taffi held a breakfast shop themed sensory exhibition at Song San Culture Park in Taipei. She used a variety of materials to create the sense of being in a local breakfast shop in Taipei!
The nose is our olfactory system and it is directly connected to our intuition. If you always expose yourself to the natural environment you will develop an instinct that tells you what is not natural.
Besides these unique sensory exhibitions and workshops Taffi wishes to spread empathy amongst younger kids, especially orphans. Whenever she travels around the world she makes an initiative to visit local orphanages. Children can teach us so much. In society today many take it for granted donating materialistic things to orphanages and Taffi feels that orphans should also give the opportunity to practice how to give to others instead of others always giving to them so that they can also have the ability within them to give instead of always receiving. Learning that giving is the ultimate act of self empowerment. You can teach kids empathy, and in society today many lack the ability to empathize. She recalls a time where she brought a depressed dog to work with kids on how to bring a sense of empathy. This exercise she did made a huge impact on the kids to experience this feeling of giving and self-empowerment.
Taffi is open to collaborative opportunities and you can follow her website, FB and IG to see what her latest exhibition, workshop or offerings are and you can also purchase your own Äi Äi Illum candle to brighten your own living space too! We hope you have a better appreciation for the art of natural scented candle making, sensory experiences and to karmic give and take philosophy. Our light shines within us and with you!
First published on October 20, 2020