Smudging My Life Away, part II

I’ve heard from a few folks about what might be reasons for smudging their living spaces, as well as wanting some detailed instructions to do so. So here are the biggest inquiries I had and how to use smudging for a deeper change to the energy in which you are living.

When a child grows from toddler to teen, their room needs to be reinvented with them as they develop into this new stage of themselves. And again from teen to young adult. Heck, do this again if an adult child finds their way back home for a while also. Or if you happen to take on caring for a parent or other loved one and they move in with you. Even if you are just taking on a new roommate, this is a great process to welcome their energy to grow and expand while in your home. (this is the most impactful when performed in an emptied room)

  • Open every window in the room.
  • At the door (with door closed), standing outside and facing in, light a bundle of sage.
  • With the door remaining closed, work your sage smoke from the lower right corner of the door, up the right side, across the top to the left and down the left side. Moving in a counterclockwise direction unwinds things, in this case removes the old energies from this doorway.
  • Open the door and waft in some smoke before you enter. Then intentionally step into the room taking in a deep breath and accepting the power to bring change to this space. 
  • Work your way through the room in a counterclockwise direction. Hitting all the corners of the room, at the floor and the ceiling. 
  • Allow the smoke from the bundle to bellow out against each wall, out through every window, into the closet spaces, and across the ceiling.
  • All the while chant some intentions for these actions. 
    • suggestion for child’s room: Goodbye to the child you have been, we close this chapter, we clear for the new.
    • suggestion for most other new occupants: Thank this room for what you have provided to our home, we are preparing for a new use to your space. 
  • As you complete the counterclockwise walk, smudge the door frame from the inside, moving from the lower left corner as you did upon entering, then exit the room.
  • Close the door after exiting.
  • Allow the room to clear of smoke completely, however long that takes. You can peek in the room every 30mins to see if the room is clear.
  • Then perform all the steps again, though in a clockwise direction now. Moving in a clockwise direction is moving energy forward, it’s stirring things up to get them creating something new. 
  • With the door closed start bellowing out your sage at the lower left corner of the door, working your way up the left side and across the top to the right, then down the right side.
  • Open the door and waft in some smoke before your enter. Now intentionally enter the room, taking in a deep breath and once again accepting the power to bring change to this space.
  • Work your way through the room, now in a clockwise direction. Hitting all the corners of the room, at the floor and the ceiling. 
  • You again will allow the smoke to bellow against each wall, out through the windows, into the closet spaces, and across the ceiling.
  • Chant again for these actions you are taking and why.
    • Suggestion for a child’s room: Chant about your hopes for this young person. You will now be inviting in the future of this young soul, the discovery of who they will be, and the wonders they shall discover in this space. 
    • Suggestion for a new occupant of almost any other kind: Chant about this new occupant finding peace and prosperity while sharing this home with you. Invite the energy to help the occupant heal from old wounds and brave forward to a new path. Whatever is suitable for the situation, each one is so uniquely personal. 
  • As you complete the clockwise walk, smudge the doorframe from the lower left corner to the lower right corner and exit the room.
    • Leave the door open! When you are wanting to invite in new energy, leave the door open for it! 
  • Let the room clear of smoke again and then proceed to move in and redecorate as desired. Absolutely allow the occupant of the room to voice opinions and participate in the move in process. 

Before or after any social event! Dinner party, game night, birthday parties, holiday parties, etc….they all bring friends and loved ones through your home, who all carry in their own energy, good or challenging as it may be. Here is what I like to do before and after those gatherings. 

  • About an hour before your guests arrive, smudge your home. Your house can be set up and ready, but you want to do this before the first guest arrives. 
    • Grab your abalone shell, lighter and sage bundle.
    • Start outside your home with the front door open, holding your supplies. 
    • Light your sage and smudge the exterior of your doorway in a clockwise direction. Waft in some smoke as if you were ushering in a welcome guest.
    • Step through the door into the home and walk in a clockwise direction through every room where you expect guests will be (don’t forget the bathrooms!).
    • Repeat words of joy and togetherness, a wish for the event, or something along those lines as you work through the house.
    • Make a full rotation through the house so you end back at the front door.
    • Say a final prayer for the gathering and find an intentional spot near the front door for the abalone shell and sage to rest, preferably outside, until the end of the event.
  • After the last guest leaves, no matter how late it is or tired you are, take the time to smudge and clear the house again. You can do this before you cleanup from the event, but if you do, I suggest doing it again after you’ve cleaned everything up and reset your house back to itself. If it’s late and you decide to clean up the next day, at least do a quick smudge through the house before you go to bed, then smudge again after you have cleaned up and reset your home the next day.
    • Pick up the abalone shell from where you left it before the party began, standing inside the house, at the front door, light your sage and get the smoke bellowing. 
    • Smudge yourself, then begin walking in a counterclockwise direction through all areas of the house where guests have been (don’t forget the bathrooms!). 
    • Repeat some words to release the energies your guests brought, thank your guests for their visit, wish your guests light and love in whatever comes next for them.
    • Make a full rotation through the home so you once again end up back at the front door.
    • Open the door, say a final prayer of gratitude for all these beautiful friends you spent time with, and let the smoke bellow out the door taking those prayers to the heavens. 

Some other ideas for smudging as energy changes. 

  • When you buy or sell a home! Though both the buying or selling of a home is one clearing I strongly suggest you use a professional for, you can DIY. Of course, for a truly meaningful smudging, it’s a bit more involved than anything I’ve shared yet, so maybe this will be it’s own blog post!
  • To welcome a new family member! Whether you are birthing a child, adopting a child, adopting a pet, getting married, etc. when a new person or animal joins your life, you can welcome them with smudging and intentional words of prayer. 
  • It’s also very calming to use during end of life, helping a departing soul move gracefully to the next realm. While it’s always painful for those of us left behind, it can be scary and uncomfortable for those leaving as well. The scent of white sage alone calms the deepest parts of our ancestral soul. 
  • When you start a new job or start a new relationship. And of course, when you lose a job or end a relationship. 
  • When you sell a car or buy a new one (especially if it’s a second hand vehicle)!
  • When you remodel or redecorate a room. 
  • When you start your garden each year and when you close the garden for the season. Or before and after you do any landscaping work in your yard!
  • You can smudge your mail or gifts before you open them.
  • I smudge my cat after he has been in a fight! 

There is always a reason to clear the air and start anew. What will you smudge today?

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.