Every ancient civilization has a practice or ritual of using smoke from natural substances or medicinal plants for cleansing and healing, which is called smudging. Each civilization discovered these methods and extensively utilized this smoke during prayer, rituals, or on a normal Wednesday when they were looking to get over the hump.
So then when the first invaders set foot on the North American continent, they were introduced to heavy doses of Native Americans and their smudging ritual using sage. The air was always pure back then…the good ole days!
Scientifically, this wasn’t proven until 2007 and so the humans didn’t believe in the power of this smoke. They used it because it was a tradition — “we have always done it this way!”
When this literature was published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology (is that a word?), sage and incense manufacturing suddenly became the talk of the town. What did they find?
They finally proved what the ancient traditions knew — Smudging was a powerful antiseptic!! The God-sent researchers discovered that after 1-hour treatment with medicinal smoke from burning wood and a mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs in a closed room, the bacteria in the air was reduced by a whopping 94%! [Source: Medicinal smoke reduces airborne bacteria https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874107004357?via%3Dihub]
Wait — there’s more! They also found that the smoke’s ability to purify and disinfect the air was maintained for 24 hours. A whole 30 days later, much of the bacteria that was found before the smudging remained undetectable in that closed room.
When external spaces are being cleansed from smoke, why can’t our internal spaces? Doesn’t smoke travel to all open spaces, through all openings and pores, much like the air that’s all around us?
No wonder I’m in a great mood when I’m burning sage.
For this very reason, smoke from herbal mixes is used to aid lung, brain, and skin function according to one study that aggregated information from 50 countries over 5 continents. Further research is also being conducted around smoke-based remedies — the advantages are rapid delivery to the brain, more efficient absorption by the body, and lower costs of production.
Based on this knowledge, I’d say that smudging also reduces negative thoughts and clears our spiritual bodies of negative energies by 94%.
Scientific studies have proven the benefits of smudging your spaces.
The Sri Yantra is a complex geometrical structure — either two-dimensional or three-dimensional — with each line, circle, and shape having a particular meaning. Such as the dot in the middle signifies the real YOU, pure consciousness! Read to find out more! What is Sri Yantra? The word Yantra literally means machine towards a specific […]
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels I received a phone call in June 2020 that confirmed my belief in sage. More on this in a bit!! Smudging is the process of using smoke from natural substances or medicinal plants for cleansing, protection and healing. These natural substances include incense, sage, palo santo, rosemary, dragons blood, […]
Rudraksha (Pronounce it as ‘Rud-ruck-shh’) is commonly used in prayer beads in Hinduism and Buddhism. Om Namah Shivaya is one of the mantras repeated for each prayer bead. Why do we need Rudraksha in our lives? Rudraksha balances the vital forces within the body, is an anti-inflammatory and fights all kinds of contaminations. This quality […]
