Why Smudging Your Body With White Sage Is A Must For Every Highly Sensitive Warrior (A Guide To Smudging)

Smudging is the ancient practice of burning medicinal, sacred herbs with the intention of clearing the energy of your home, office, an object, or yourself. It corrects and balances the energy, immediately. It cleanses negativity and even kills germs, as this article states. It’s like taking an energetic shower!

White Sage is one of the more popular smudging herbs used, oftentimes in bundle form (otherwise known as a smudge stick). However, White Sage is often combined with other sacred herbs, such as Cedar, Sweetgrass, Mugwort, Yerba Santa, and Lavender.

Smudging can done by burning smudge sticks or loose herb. But, either way you burn it, once you bless yourself with this White Sage smoke, those dark energies will start running for the hills. And, that’s definitely a good thing!

Why smudging your body with White Sage is a must for every Highly Sensitive Warrior

Why is clearing energy important, particularly for the Highly Sensitive Warrior (HSW)?

Because when you’re Highly Sensitive, you tend to be an “energy sponge” of everything around you.

You’ll sense peoples emotions, and if you’re an empath, you’ll not only feel their emotions, but can sense their pain, emotionally and physically. Not such a bad thing if you are constantly around shiny, happy people all day! But, you’re (momentarily) up shit’s creek if you tend to work alongside with, or regularly interact with, toxic, unhappy, or unhealthy people.

This is particularly true if you live in a densely populated area, such as New York City, like I do. In cities where you’re in constant contact with other people, from brushing against them on the sidewalk, train, or hallway, the Highly Sensitive person is likely to feel overwhelmed quite easily.

Getting overloaded with other people’s energy, thoughts, emotions, and even health issues can make you feel suddenly irritable, fatigued, sad, or you may have physical pain you didn’t have previously (that’s not due to any health issue of yours).

As an empath in The Big Apple, I tend to attract other Highly Sensitive and empath souls in my private practice. Sometimes they are aware that they are a Highly Sensitive Warrior or empath. Others have absolutely no clue until I describe common symptoms they may be feeling. Then their eyes light up as if to indicate, “Finally! Someone who knows what I’m talking about!”

The descriptions of what they’re going through echo similarly:

• “I feel like a sponge picking up other people’s stuff.”
• “I feel so overwhelmed just walking down the street or being in the subway.” (Although, seriously, you don’t have to be an HSW or empath to have severe dislike of traveling in a packed subway train, am I right?)
• “I just want to shut myself off away from people, it’s just too much.”
• “I could sleep all day, I’m so exhausted from all the action.”
• “I had to shut down my chakras and energy, because it’s just too much to digest.”

By the way: NEVER shut down your chakras due feeling overwhelmed. By actually tapping into their strengths, you cultivate them to feel more spiritually fortified! When you shut down your chakras, instead of cultivating them, particularly if you are awakening, you leave yourself vulnerable to denser energies that get attracted to the untapped light. It’s like keeping your knife or weapon dull.

Oftentimes, HSWs and empaths feel a great need to regularly defend themselves – physically, energetically, or spiritually. By focusing on this, rather than clearing and cultivating your energy, you will drain yourself and feel fatigued quickly.

And, almost always I can feel the initial frenetic energy in their aura drop 10 decibels once they realize they aren’t going crazy. They just need to learn how to clear their energy and start learning how to psychically protect themselves, as well as getting in touch with, and cultivating, their own energy.

That’s the secret to thriving as a Highly Sensitive Warrior or empath (especially in the big city) – clearing, protecting, and cultivating your personal energy.

It’s then that you are able to get from feeling like you’re listening into a radio that has many stations sounding off, to tuning into just one station, crystal clear.

Reasons why you’d want to smudge yourself

• When you’ve had a bad day
• After an argument
• When you feel sad
• When you feel scattered
• When you energetically feel off, particularly after coming in contact with someone who may have toxic energy
• You’re feeling overwhelmed
• When you feel darkness sitting in your heart
• When you feel like your energy field has accumulated too much energetic black muck, and you just want an energetic shower

How to smudge yourself using a White Sage bundle or smudge stick

There are many ways to ceremonially smudge yourself with a White Sage bundle.

I want to share with you one of my favorite ways of using it to cleanse my energy field. It’s quick and effective. This is how I do it after a full day of seeing patients. And, I always smudge my entire treatment room, as well as tools I’ve used throughout the day, after cleansing myself.

1. I set the intention to raise my vibration, and ask the Universe/Source/God/dess to bless my body. I also invite my Spirit Guides to help me cleanse, since I am often cleansing my work or living space after blessing my body, and they’re great at helping you remove denser vibrations!
2. Taking my sage bundle in one hand, I light the tip of it, using a lighter, with my other hand.
3. Letting the plume of smoke activate into the air, I use my free hand to waft the smoke directly to my Heart Chakra. I bring it straight to my Heart, because that’s where we most accumulate any denser energies. While I do so, I say, “I bless my Heart and cleanse it of any energies that do not belong to me.” If you desire, you can start at the top of your head (your Crown Chakra), or start at your feet. I personally bring it directly to the place where the denser vibrations can catch the business the most! I suppose that whole getting straight to the point thing reveals the New Yorker in me.
4. I then proceed up or down my midline, catching each chakra, clearing and blessing each one aloud or with silent intention.
5. I make sure to bring the cleansing smoke to my sides, under my arms, above my shoulders, along my back, down my hips, thighs, calves, and feet. All the while, I’m blessing each area. For instance, when I bless my shoulders, I say, “I cleanse and bless my shoulders, and release all energy that I may be carrying that does not belong to me.” If you’re pressed for time, and/or if you’re old hat at the whole smudging thing, you can simply sweep the smoke with your hands, throughout your body, saying simply, “I ask the Universe to bless my body, and remove all energy that doesn’t serve me.”
6. Make sure that, when needed, that you gently tap the tip of the smudge stick in a fireproof container to catch any ash that’s about to fall off, so it doesn’t wander off on its own and burn something!
7. A variation on the cleansing your body is spiraling the smoke around your body, exchanging it from one hand to the other as you move to cover your body from front to back, starting near the top of your head, and spiraling all the way down to your feet. Using this spiraling motion catches all angles, and creates a nice forcefield.
8. As you cleanse your body, notice how the energy in certain parts of it lift and shift immediately to a feeling of clear or release. You will be surprised what you carry even when you don’t realize it!
9. Once you’re done blessing yourself, thank your Spirit Guides for helping you bless yourself, and thank the Universe for the joy of being more connected with yourself, and at a place where you are more able to vibrate with greater love with other sentient beings.

You can either gently press the top of your smudge stick against a fireproof container, or sprinkle a few drops of water onto it from the sink, to smother the smoke. If you’ve wet the bundle to extinguish it, rest it in a well ventilated area to dry out.

How to smudge yourself using loose White Sage

When smudging yourself with loose White Sage, it’s often fun to blend it with other loose sacred herbs. Some favorite of mine to combine with loose White Sage are: Mugwort, Lemon Balm, Hyssop, Calendula, Yerba Santa, and Rose Petals.

You can use the above steps to smudge yourself with the loose herb, with the difference being that you use a container to burn them in.

Make sure that it’s a fireproof container. Some people use abalone shell or tortoise shell (the latter is a favorite of a friend of mine that she found during her travels). I use either my large abalone shell, or, more typically, my mini-cauldron made of cast iron that I’ve had for ages.

Some people simply lay a small layer of herb within the vessel, and take a lighter to a few spots to ignite the herbs into smoke.

Others like to use a charcoal tablet (which you can find in most places that you can find incense, such as health food stores, wiccan stores, or in the streets of New York from vendors who sell resin incense). To use it for burning loose sacred herbs, light it with a lighter until the tablet starts to sparkle. Because I burn loose incense at home (and because I’m a healthcare practitioner), I use a hemostat to quickly light it on my stove, and place it in my cauldron.

After igniting your charcoal tablet and placing it in your fireproof container, sprinkle your loose herb in the middle of it.

Out of the two options of burning loose herbs, I personally prefer burning them on top of the charcoal tablet, because the burn is more even and lasts longer (which is particularly effective if I’m blessing my entire apartment!)

Just like the instructions for blessing your body with a bundle of White Sage, you would create your intention to bless your body and waft the sacred smoke of the loose sage towards you, blessing every part of you as you go along.

What are you favorite herbs to bless your body with?
Do you have a favorite way to cleanse your energy with ceremonial herbs?
I’d love to hear about it in the comments, below!

Clear that temple of love!

 

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