I’d never heard anything ever at all about smudging or burning sage until I met this one friend of mine back in Boulder-town.
She was in the middle of a moving process, from one apartment in her building to another, except that the second apartment was just absolutely not right. No real way to explain it, no real good reason except that it just didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt wrong.
So, she did what she thought she could. She moved the furniture around. She lit incense, she burned candles, she opened windows, she burned sage.
All the other stuff, I got. Feng shui. Chi. Scents, movement, air flow. I get that.
But sage? What the hell? I cook with that stuff. It’s not like I burn basil around here or anything.
As it turns out, sage is believed to help purify. Specifically, white sage is used in traditional Native American “smudging” ceremonies to cleanse an area of its spiritual energy, and to clear negativity, whether around a place, a person, or an object.
Feeling Stuck-ed-ness
I swear, I am always onto something.
Maybe that’s just how I feel with the start of every new month and every new week. I’m onto something. A new idea. A slight shift in the framework of how I see the world. The ever-so-slight tweaking of My Very Own Reality.
Maybe it’s that I actually am on the verge of something.
While wandering through Powell’s Books here in Portland recently, I ran across a little packet of white sage, tucked away in random little corner. Remember what my friend had mentioned about sage, cleansing, and energy, I decided to grab it.
Something about our apartment was feeling cluttered and sticky, and BoyfriendMan both knew it was time to do something about that.
About halfway through Sunday (the best day of the week, forever and ever, amen), I piped up and suggested that we do three things:
- Spend one hour de-cluttering the apartment.
- Drink the champagne that BoyfriendMan had bought in celebration of the fact that he sold his house in Colorado this week. (Yes, he’s owned a house. Yes, it’s been on the market. YES, IT’S FINALLY SOLD!!! YAY!)
- Do the whole “smudging” and sage-burning thing to rid the apartment of negative energy and to symbolically acknowledge that we were open and ready to new ideas and newness in general. I, personally, felt too much negative energy surrounding certain challenges and threats to my own identity, and I knew that they needed to get the hell out of my house already.
Seriously. Sometimes you need a nice little reminder that maybe you a)have too much stuff — physically and spiritually, b) you have so much more in your life worth celebrating than you think you have (gratitude!), and c) you have got to get out of your own way sometimes.
Bad Vibes, Be Gone!
So, we popped a bottle of bubbles, lit the white sage, and from behind our concrete walls, swore up and down to our neighbors on both sides that we weren’t smoking pot.
White sage tooooootally smells like pot, y’all. (At least it smells like good pot.)
And that was that. And then the apartment was clean, the air was new, and the energy was [supposedly] cleansed.
About an hour or so later, we left the apartment. We walked down to a nearby wine bar, had another round of bubbles, and talked about all of the things we were about to do to take the world by storm.
New Energy
And Monday morning we got up and started DOING those things. Interacting with other people a tiny bit differently. Taking the reigns on good ideas and making them an actual reality. Smiling a bit more. Taking challenges in stride, and realizing that there are just some people, things, and ideas in your life you just do. not. need.
And, well… maybe it’s a placebo affect in that maybe I was looking for it, maybe it’s the sunny weather we’re seeing here this week, or maybe it’s the fact that I might be high on the best decaf vanilla latte of my life right now, but…
The spiritual energy in my general little bubble — especially my home — feels completely renewed. And for all intents and purposes, I’m going to say it’s the sage.
What do you do when you need to hit the refresh button?
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Ok, this is fantastic and I want to try it! Did you have to wrap it like that yourself? Or did you buy it ready to burn this way, rather than cook with it?
I bought it just like that!
I have been in an ultra funk lately and this seriously sounds like the thing I need to get myself back on track! Not just the sage burning but getting rid of clutter and definitely enjoying some tasty bubbles.
i’ve never heard of this sage burning, either. i’ll totally have to try it the next time i get that skin crawly stuckness feeling. i’m guessing it works best when mixed with champagne, so i’m stealing your idea!
My mom was super into smudging and Native American spirituality as I was growing up and I’m pretty sure every place I lived in as a child was smudged before we moved in. This practice had totally slipped my mind until I saw this post and made me realize I should do this in my own home.
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