Burning bundles of sage, or as some say, "Smudging" yourself and your home, can be a helpful and cleansing practice for your spirit as well.  A quick Wikipedia search will tell you that:

"Smudging, or other rites involving the burning of sacred herbs or resins, is a ceremony practiced by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While it bears some resemblance to other ceremonies and rituals involving smoke from other world cultures, notably those that use smoke for spiritual cleansing or blessing, the purposes and particulars of the ceremonies, and the substances used, can vary widely among tribes, bands, and nations, and even more so among different world cultures."

       I wasn't familiar with this practice until I was a newly married 24-year-old standing with my mom in the first home my husband and I would buy together. She mentioned that I should burn sage to cleanse the house from evil before we settled in too much. I remember thinking it was an odd thing for my Catholic mother to say. She didn't believe in any kind of witchy stuff and burning sage to protect from evil sounded kind of witchy to me. Witchy, hippie, I didn't know, it just didn't sound like something I had ever heard my mom say before then. Typically, she was all about praying to protect from evil. I had our second daughter days later and was released to go home to our empty house the next day. As we settled in, I never cleansed it with sage. I never thought about it again. I just moved in and moved on with my life. Ironically, the most challenging years of our life were on the heels of that decision. I'll never know if it would have mattered, but as we settled into our new home, hosting the whole time, we may very well have benefitted from me considering this practice more seriously sooner.

       Early on we had a pretty wide-open door policy at our home. We were used to people just dropping by with no warning, because they were in the neighborhood. We were hosting parties, and hosting sleepovers, and hosting house guests, and couch dwellers. We were constantly opening our home up to the energy that others brought with them, and I was doing absolutely nothing to protect my home or prevent the emotional and spiritual chaos our kindness and open-door policy was causing. In the wake of my personal lowest season, as I was dissecting and rebuilding and deconstructing and remembering parts of my life that had gotten suppressed, or ignored, or completely blocked out, I began to see many things very differently and the burning of sage was one of those things. I became curious, and in 2019 I remember purchasing my first smudging kit from a little shop by my home. I walked in and out of every room, burning the sage bundle and a palo santo (because that's what was in the kit I bought) and reciting a prayer that was more like a discussion than a poem. I can't really explain it, but over the weeks and months after that, the energy in my home felt different.

      I became an immediate believer in the spiritual practice because my spirit was feeling a difference. It was then that I began more consistently burning sage and palo santo, and since then, I have continued to widen and expand my use of smudging, burning other herbs and resins for a multitude of additional benefits. Now I own my "inner witch" and look at it as an extension of my faith. Before 2019 I was unsettled in my spirit, a little unsettled in my faith, and as a result, I became increasingly unsettled by many things as I worked through some difficult and vulnerable parts of my life. I was further unsettled at the idea of doing a relatively simple ritual that could bring peace back into my spirit.

       At that time, I felt like the hard stuff I was going through was somehow penance for all of my wrong doings. I felt deserving of such punishment, largely because my focus was gone, my faith was wavering, and I was giving power to the wrong voice in my head. The voice of evil, who wanted me fearing, and doubting, and growing weaker. When I reconciled this, I realized that the more I felt unsettled, the more I was probably going in the right direction. If evil was steering my spirit in those seasons, then I would certainly get triggered or unsettled by things that may actually help me heal, grow and come into alignment with my purpose as I actively tried to let faith steer my spirit. A faith I had deconstructed and was reconstructing for myself.

       For me, smudging is an integral part of my self-care rituals and routines, as I have come to a place in my life where I value energy and maintaining the integrity of my energy field is a priority. I seek to source my herbs and other witchy items from reputable local businesses to me who take great pride in maintaining the integrity of the practice, aiming to be mindful of over-harvesting and appropriation by sourcing from indigenous suppliers. As I continue to move through life defining reconstructing my faith, and deciding what spiritual practices and beliefs fit into my spiritual practices, I find it an incredibly educational and informative process to navigate. I hope to have contributed a little bit of information to help you determine if smudging is a spiritual practice that feels right for you.

~ Live Dazzling

Rebecca Jackson