I started smudging last year which is when I first even heard about the practice.
I had seen the herb bundles at my favorite place to get a massage in my neighborhood and was definitely intrigued.
The thing is, I wasn’t even first intrigued by the idea of “clearing negative energy” from my home which is the classic indication of doing it. I mostly wanted to have my house smell nice without the toxicity that is associated with a lot of candles. (And especially because my husband has very reactive sinus passages. Yes, I know this can be helped with a functional approach. Yes, even us health care providers have a hard time making our husbands do stuff!)
Still, I liked the idea of making my home feel like a more relaxing, magical place….so I did a lot of thinking about this whole negative energy clearing.
As a scientifically minded person, I have no clue how burning dried herbs clears the energy of a room. I really don’t.
But I also allow for the fact that we don’t know a lot about our world. Heck, there’s some mind boggling number of species of fish that we haven’t yet recognized. And then there’s millions of lightyears of space that we haven’t ever even seen telescope pictures of.
And who knows what else we’re completely missing in our time and space limited world??
All that being said, here’s the thing I DO know: I’m a happier person when I set aside specific time to appreciate my home, center myself away from all the craziness of the outside world, and make my surroundings a beautiful place to be.
So I smudge.
What’s funny is that my family has come to really love the process as well. My husband smudges whether I’m home or not, even though he put up a fight initially when I first brought my bundles home. (Me almost burning down our home when I didn’t sufficiently extinguish a bundle may have contributed to this. Which is a fair point!) When my in-laws visit for extended weekends, they always ask for me to do it as we hang around the house.
Whether this is because we all feel the clearance of negative energy or not, there’s something to be said for having a daily ritual that allows you to truly enjoy the space you’ve created around you.
I also like to deliberately link some of my daily gratitude practice in with the smudging that I do. There’s not much rhyme or reason to my routine…I mostly just wander around my house for a few minutes with my smudge stick and take mental note of all the things I’m thankful for.
Here’s one furry thing I’m grateful for in my home:
(Because the internet needs more cat pictures! Cough not cough.)
So here’s my verdict: smudging can be crazy helpful, not just crazy. And my house smells nice! So there’s that.
XOXO,
