Clear your body, mind and spirit.
Smudging is a deep, tribal, metaphysical cleansing
that is used for clearing energy and promoting health.
A ritual purification.
A spiritual practice.
It clears the energy.
Our spaces, including our body space, can get cluttered, both physically and energetically. Everything is absorbing the vibration of what surrounds it as well as anything that comes into the space…our breath, our mood, our blood, our clothes, our furniture, our family and friends. When a space is not attended to, the energy can become stale, stuck in objects, and it begins to feel like this, stagnant, draining, and heavy or maybe upsetting, irritating, frustrating.
A clean space feels light, engaging, and inspiring.
Smudging connects us to the source of all energy, our higher spirit, and to the blessings of our helpful spirits, and ancestors. It purifies our body and our souls, bringing peace and clarity to our ever busy minds. It is especially potent and important in times of crisis and times of ceremony.
You can smudge your body, or you can smudge a space, or both. There are heaps of ways you can smudge and give attention to clearing the energy of a space. One form of smudging that most people have experienced, is the smoke from a smudge stick.
A very popular, and very old smudging practice is the use of sage. Sage is bundled into smudge sticks and dried. That is a sage stick in the featured pic at the top of this post.
The easiest way to smudge is to use your thoughts and body, pray and play in the space. Moving the air around you with a feather, or a fan to create a breeze of clear intention.
Smudge with sound
Sharp, sudden sounds—often metallic ones—vibrate on a frequency beyond what our ears can detect, compelling the objects and atmosphere to resonate in harmony and neutralizing the space. These frequencies even penetrate resistant energy blocks that smudging alone can’t always get rid of. It’s an all-encompassing ~cleanse~. Different methods of sound cleansing date back thousands of years, across cultures—such as Tibetan bells and singing bowls. While these sounds are powerful, you don’t need to splurge on expensive instruments to cleanse your home. You can use pretty much anything that makes a noise, even if it’s just your hands. 
—Kerry Ward
Everything is vibrating.
Sounds, especially musical sounds, are deeply penetrating vibrations, ideally suited to the task of getting in and breaking up the energy of a space and everything in it.
As Kerry says above, you don’t need to have all the sacred bells and whistles, anything that emits a sharp, sudden sound will work. The more your practice, the more you will be able to hear and feel into the clarity, the cleanliness, of the sound, which is a direct reflection of the cleanliness of the space.
Smudge with smoke
The simple smoke from a fire is a smudge. You can use mists. Rattling gum leaves across an open fire to stir up the smoke is used on country. You can burn scented leaves like bay and lemon myrtle, or resins and incense. Sticks of wood can be used like Palo Santo, Cedar and Sandalwood and other holy woods. A range of herbs can be used and there is a theme of white green plants around the world. If you are using these sacred plant medicines, source them in a sacred way and use them sparingly.
Give any ash back to Mother Earth as an offering of humble gratitude and she will recycle and re-gift us with new growth in our gardens.
As we mentioned in the introduction, one of the most popular smoke smudges uses sage (pictured below). The smoke from dried white sage changes the ionic composition of the air, and has a direct effect on reducing our stress response lifting our mood and focus. It removes almost all of the bacteria in the space…and it keeps the bugs away!
Find a sacred vessel for your smudge sticks. We use a small cast iron cauldron, sand is placed in the bottom with sand to douse the burning stick when you are finished.
As you light your smudge stick, pause and breathe your intentions, as the flames lights up feel your connection to spirit also ignite. Let the flame burn for a few more breathes to ensure it is lit enough to keep burning, then use your breath, a feather, or a fan, to blow the flame out and allow the smoke to pour forth.
As you smudge, visualise the smoke taking up and away with it any energy that no longer serves. Coming down the same column of smoke you call in fresh, new energy, full of possibility and creative power.
You can say an prayerful incantation like: “Let this smoke take all that no longer serves, and return with new life”, or use an established mantra, like “om gam shreem ganapataye namaha” which is a prayer to Ganesha, the remover of obstacles and bringer of abundance, or make up your own.
Smudging a person
Safety first
The truth is you will be wielding a burning object quite close to peoples hair, eyes, skin, clothes, their entire body really. So, be mindful of where you have the stick at all times. The idea is that you are smudging with the smoke coming off the stick, so using a feather or a fan can really help move the smoke quite some distance meaning you can keep the hot, burnie bit of the stick back from the person.
Always pre-frame the smudge process to check if anyone has any allergies to scents, smoke, etc, or never experienced it before and have questions.
Listen and adapt accordingly.
It is also fairly common to have tiny embers come off the smudge stick – especially when you blow on it to keep it burning between people – these embers can fly onto the person you are smudging. It will happen, trust me, just be mindful and respond as quickly and lovingly as you can.
We smudge a lot!
Invite the person to step up to you and stand facing you with their arms raised out a bit to the sides.
Start above the head, directing the smoke down over the head, face and shoulders, then move along under the arms, and keep working your way down the body to the feet.
Then ask the person to turn to face away from you, arms still out a bit, and repeat the process from head to foot again. You can ask the person to raise first one then the other foot, to have smoke wafted beneath their feet – cleansing their connection to the earth.
Ask them to turn back to facing you.
In our practice, we finish the process by circling the stick over their head three times, speaking a quick prayer each time:
Something like, “Journey with peace…Journey with power…Journey with love.”
Experiment with with what feels good and fee free to change it for each person based on what they have shared about their intentions and their healing journey.
When there is specific healing being done, and specific parts of the body involved, you can target and spend more time on these areas. offering prayers focussed on their healing.
You can leave the smoking smudge and the feather or fan in a set position where everyone can access it and after demonstrating on your self, invite everyone to approach and guide the smoke over themselves.
Smudging a space
When smudging a space, everything is the same in terms of the tools and the conscious thoughts you bring to the process.
Work around the space with intention and in your own rhythm, directing the smoke into every corner, through the air, around and over all objects.
Sometimes I find specific areas and/or objects call out to me and I am drawn to smudge them first.
My usual personal rhythm is:
Smudge myself before I enter, then clear the main entrances/doorways to the space.
Then move to the centre and feel into anything that calls for attention and tend to them.
Once this is done, I return to the centre and spiral my way around and out until I make it back to a wall. I work along the walls, up as far as my arms can stretch and down to my toes, corner to corner.
Once I have completed a lap of the space, I move back to the centre and again feel into anything calling for more attention.
Once complete, I return to the centre and close with a song/chant of gratitude.
What you can smell is the scent of thousands of years of people coming together on purpose in meaningful ceremony. It is said this smudge smoke has healing powers, and carries our prayers to our ancestors.
Why smudge…?
Smudging is an ancient ceremonial purification practice that appears in many cultures all around the world. Though not every culture has the same methods and beliefs around it; many share similar beliefs in the healing powers of smudge, and its ability to carries our prayers/intentions to our ancestors and beyond.
When you inhale the smoke, scent, feel the heat, hear and feel the sounds, you are becoming a living participant in every such ritual that has occurred over many thousands of years, as people across our planet have gathered in this sacred way to pray, play, heal and celebrate together.
In loving service 
