Smudging is the act of burning certain herbs, roots, or resins, to purify the air around us. Common choices are California White Sage, Palo Santo, or Sweetgrass…
People usually associate this with a spiritual or esoteric practice (especially by Native Americans), as it is said to evacuate negative energies and spirits, but scientific studies have shown that it actually physically purifies the air, by turning the positive ions back to negative ions (negative ions = positive energy, positive ions = negative energy!…).
Personally I really like the smell of burnt sage (in cooking too! 🙂) which is what brought me to this in the 1st place. An Abalone shell is often used to catch the ashes (and how gorgeous is this one!? 😍), and a big feather can be used to waft the smoke around.
If you’d like to learn more about the subject, check out those links:
Elephant Journal: scientific facts that make me want to start smudging right now
Bee's Zen Garden 