Abundance | Fairy Feng Shui

Smudging My Life Away, part III

Some final (?) thoughts on bringing a smudging practice into your daily routine and life events. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little mini series! I certainly enjoyed sharing some of my practices with you.

Control Allergens

In our current world, with Covid-19 running rampant through all corners of our existence, the use of sage to purify your surroundings can add some calm to your home and heart. Though don’t stop the practice when someday Covid-19 is no longer a top subject of the day. We smudge ourselves and all purchases when we come home from any outing. But there are a few other benefits to smudging to manage allergens as well.

Do you suffer from allergies? My husband has horrific spring allergies. He has to ‘gear up’ his body about a month before allergy season, and it’s always a guess on the timing. He starts taking allergy medication as soon as the ground defrosts (we live somewhere with all four seasons), but the smudging daily adds a huge level of protection as well. This is because burning sage can help release negative ions and neutralize positive ions.

Positive ions are allergens like pet dander, pollution, dust, and mold. Burning sage can help control the levels of these allergens around you and in turn help manage your allergic reactions to them. The spring months are when we go through the most sage in our house, for sure.

While the fact that smudging can help rid our environment of allergens should be enough to bring the practice into all of our homes, there is so much more that it can do for you!

Deeper Meditations

Even the most peaceful of us can find negative energy in our home and heart at times. Sometimes it comes from conflicts we carry or energy a visitor left behind. Some negative energy is difficult to discover and some is easily recognizable. But the simple practice of smudging can help us release it and find focus to move intentionally through the negative energy and discover it’s lesson.

Whatever the level of negative energy you are wanting to dispel, smudging with sage can provide the energy shift you are seeking. Doing a deep smudging experience prior to an intentional meditation practice to clear your mind of excessive chatter, can help you find calm quicker. The act of performing a smudging ritual, as well as sages’ aromatic changes to your space, can calm and quiet our spirits when our minds are loud.

Secondhand Success

I love to buy second-hand; antique shops, estate sales, garage sales, facebook marketplace. I love finding that piece of furniture or lamp that has exactly the right character I can’t find at the cookie cutter stores. I also love hand-me-down clothing from my sister and stylish friends. But buyer beware! Second-hand items come with second-hand energy. Smudging can clear out the old and bring in the new.

Note: your biggest and most second-hand energy heavy item is likely your home – even if you built new (no matter where you are ‘building new’, someone or some animal, at some time, lived on that piece of earth). Smudging your home and property can open the windows for old energies to leave and open the doors for new energies to arrive. Especially if you are renting, this is an important step to complete prior to move in.

You can use the smoke from sage to clean impurities off items and prepare that item to redirect it’s energetic connection to you, it’s new caretaker.

Grab a bundle and light one end
As the smoke emerges, wave the bundle around the item you’re clearing
- Smudging that secondhand chair or dresser is pretty easy and straightforward
- Smudging your new home is a many layered complex task (do not attempt alone, bring in professional guidance)
As the sage smoke engulfs the item you are smudging, chant a prayer to release the old energies it knows (“I release the past from you”)
Work your way around the entire item with the smoke from the sage
- You can use a hand fan to help move the smoke where you need it
Once the smoke from the sage clears, light one end of a braid of sweetgrass
Follow the same steps to work the sweetgrass smoke around the item, this time chant a prayer to welcome in new energy (“I welcome the future”) *note: Sweetgrass burns out quickly, keep your lighter at the ready to relight as needed.

Keeping Bugs at Bay

Burning sage when entertaining on the back deck or while out in the wilderness camping is a must for me. The scent of sage helps keeps flies and mosquitoes away, which makes the entire outdoor experience that much nicer in my view, and no pesticides are needed!

For keeping the bugs away from you and your friends you will want a continual, or close to continual burn while you are outside. This is particularly well suited to bundled sage. Light one end of a bundle to where it’s going good and strong, then lay it in the abalone shell to burn as you socialize. If your bundle is still burning at the end of the night, you can use it to smudge yourself and your space before tapping it out.

When you are out camping, of course, be mindful of the local burn laws and regulations. If permitted to have a fire, you can use loose leaf sage and occasionally toss a small handful onto the campfire throughout the evening. As the night wraps up, you can toss on a final handful while cleaning up, then fan some of the final campfire smoke around yourself before sleep.

I use sage daily for cleansing and purifying. Some days it’s only to clear my mind of the story I watch on whatever movie or tv show we are watching these days. Other days I need to calm my anxieties as a friend or loved one has moved on. Every time, for every reason, smudging has never failed me.

I hope you find it to be your go-to energy changer as well!

Namaste.

Turtles!

Hopefully, everyone has heard of the great race between the rabbit and the tortoise. The story goes, the ego of the quick and agile rabbit worked against him at all the obstacles along the journey that he traveled without intention. While the tortoise wins the race with slow and consistent progress through the same path as his competition, though he moved forward with intention. The tortoise becomes a legendary sacred animal with this victory and provides support to universal energies in many ways.

Let me share some of the most powerful ways to bring the energy of the legendary tortoise into your world to lighten and lift or calm and harmonize the energies around you.

Feeling anxious or unsettled

Often as we experience challenges, we can feel unsettled, nervous, or anxious about life. This is likely very prevalent in life these days during COVID-19. Things might feel as if they are moving very fast and out of control. Or maybe they’ve come to a complete halt and things are paralyzed. A tortoise can help pull in the grounding energies that can lift you out of these feelings. Tortoise energy helps us slow down and move forward with intention through our struggles.

Carry a small black tortoise in your pocket while going about your day. Be mindful of that protection being with you throughout activities.
Place a black tortoise on your bedside table for calmer dreams.
The black tortoise is one of four celestial guardians of your dwelling. Place a black tortoise (statue, painting) at the very back of your backyard, right up against the fence (in the center of the back fence).

Abundance and enhancing powers

The tortoise is known to enhance anything it is around. You can strategically place a tortoise anywhere that you would like to increase the energy of that area.

A tortoise next to an indoor water fountain will magnify the protection energy of the tortoise and the abundant energy of the water.
Place a gold turtle with a wealth bowl in the southeast of your home to boost the wealth energy of your life.
Keep a tortoise (preferably a blue one) in the north of your home to improve your career and success wealth.

Be Mindful

When placing a tortoise anyway in our outside of your home, be mindful that it is facing inwards to the center of your home. You want the tortoise to look like they are walking into your home with their gifts, not leaving your home.
Be mindful not to place a tortoise in the east, inside or outside of your home. The east is energies of new beginnings, family, and ancestry. The east is ruled by the rabbit, and the rabbit is still mad he lost the race. Adding a tortoise the east will create conflicts and struggles with family or any attempt to kick off something new in your life.
When placing or using a tortoise enhancement, be sure to do so with a focus on your intentions. Example: when you add a black tortoise to your bedside table to invite restful sleep. Pay attention to how the tortoise faces, hold the tortoise, and think clearly about how well you wish to rest.

With this most ancient of animals, we are reminded that moving forward, no matter how slow the pace, is the most important thing. Keep moving, you will get to where you are heading. The tortoise reminds us that as long as you are moving forward, you are making progress. You don’t need to push yourself too hard or move too fast, often this results in mistakes and creates more challenges. Pace yourself. Enjoy the journey.

New Year, New Envelopes

The Chinese red envelope exchange is centuries old. It’s an ancient symbol of energy, good luck, and happiness. Giving a red envelope to someone is a way to send good wishes and luck to them.

Typically, when gifting a red envelope, you would put money inside. The amount doesn’t matter, but always in increments of two. Two coins of the same value, two dollars of the same value. And then increase in twos as well. If using paper money, you want the paper to be crisp new bills. When using coins, you want them to be clean and shiny.

And though the money is nice, the red paper is the sacred element. Red and gold in the Chinese culture represent abundance and blessings bestowed onto the receivers. The red envelope is used for happy occasions and keeps away inauspicious chi. It is not favorable to open a red envelope you have received in front of the giver. Those blessings contained within are for the receiver only. When receiving a red envelope, always accept it with both hands for the balance of your yin yang energy (left hand is feminine, the right hand is masculine).

Traditionally these envelopes are given out to family and friends at Chinese New Year. Feng Shui practitioners also use them for payments towards services. But they are also a strong tool for manifesting affirmations when placed above your front door or used to hold sacred wishes.

To manifest affirmations, write your affirmation on a piece of paper adding the words “with harm to no one” at the end, and put it in a red envelope. Hang that red envelope over your front door inside your home.

In a child’s room perhaps write your wishes as a parent for how the child will learn and develop into their own person (with harm to no one) and put the envelope above the child’s bedroom door inside the room.

If using a red envelope to manifest energy or affirmations into one of the nine landform directions, write your wish or affirmation (with harm to no one) and then place the paper in the red envelope. Find an inconspicuous spot within that sector of the home to hang the red envelope. Example: Maybe your North sector is your garage. North is about your life path and career. You could write an affirmation that your career remains strong and develop, place that in a red envelope and then hang the red envelope someplace within your garage.

Many blessings.

Clutter is a killer!

There, I said it. Loud and clear. Clutter is a killer. It kills auspicious chi as soon as it arrives. It kills your calm as soon as you’re immersed in it. Excessive consumption and accumulation seems to be a large part of the American way of life. You can pull up a startling number of statistics from Joshua Becker, my favorite go to source for many years now for such information.

We all know how clutter makes us feel. Congested. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Shame. Guilt. We’ve all walked into homes that immediately raise our heartbeat, so much stuff strewn about everywhere. Sometimes it’s our own living rooms.

If that’s how you feel when you come into your space, how do you think the auspicious chi feels when it’s flying into your home? It likely just turns around and leaves. Chi needs to feel welcomed into your home and life. If there is no sense of calm and harmony, no place for it to swirl and pool, no place for it to rest or enhance, why would it stay? Yet auspicious chi is what every home and life needs to live fully, and at it’s most happy state.

When I’m working with a client on their home, clutter is the first thing we attack. There are nine directions in feng shui landform, and none of them like clutter. None. Clutter in your home, in any of the directions, will create harm. Period. You likely don’t even notice it because you’ve been living with the clutter for so long that it’s your sense of normal now. Our minds are built to adjust to things, so when clutter is the norm you no longer notice it. But you can feel it.

Any decluttering you do is time well spent and visual clutter it phase one.

Every time you clear off a counter top or put away a pile of paperwork, you are opening more space to let the chi flow into you home and life. Pick one room in your house and get busy. You don’t have to hold every item, you don’t have to clear out the entire room, you don’t have to minimize down to a certain number of any one thing. You do have to work at a pace that keeps you able to commit to the process, you do have to be consistent about your efforts, and you do have to find your level of acceptance in the environment within which you live.

This goes for your outdoor spaces also. Have a beat up old shed that you toss broken stuff into randomly sitting in your southeast area of your backyard? Recycle or give away all the things you aren’t using, repair or remove the follow down shed. She this area some love, the southeast direction is energy focused on the abundance in your life, your wealth and self worth. Care for this sector and watch your confidence blossom.

My guess is since you are still reading that your current environment isn’t working for you. You want something different. You’re frustrated when you come home and your home makes you feel more so. You dread having people just show up at your door. It takes you days to ‘clean up’ for a social event. You don’t sleep well. You don’t eat healthy. You don’t have ‘down time’ because there is always something to clean up before you can sit down.

You are not alone. More often than not a clients home is congested with clutter. They are having relationship problems (southwest) or work life balance struggles (north). And more often than not the landform direction that serves those energies for them are a mess of excess and disorganized clutter. Cleaning up these areas and intentionally creating some space for your relationship or career, sends a loud message out to the universe. A message that these things matter to you and that you aren’t going to neglect them anymore.

Curating your spaces is a seriously intentional act that raises the vibrational energy of your home, the property and your life. I can help decipher the landform mysteries of your property with the ancient geomancy of feng shui.