A friend came in today and helped me do the final cleaning of the shop (er... studio). It was a good session, even before the smoke cleared.
First off, I have to remember to use the word ‘studio’ instead of ‘shop’. I have been told enough over the past years that although filled with medical terminology, and a very real part of modern healthcare, massage is an art form, and the therapist an artist. So I need to follow that line of thought by calling the shop a studio. In actuality, the biggest room of the shop is my sister-in-law’s (she is an artist). She will be doing her painting there, so indeed the place is a studio.
At any rate, my friend came over and looked at the cleaning I had done on the place thus far. She liked what she saw (or felt). She thought the treatment room was very nice, and had a wonderful feel to it. (It should. I had cleansed it doubly and had it double shielded.) She liked the feel of the lobby and other rooms, but had a problem in the big room where my sister-in-law will be working. She felt like something was pressing down from the ceiling, or from above the ceiling.
Now, the area above my suspended ceiling is an open space, which is shared by all the companies within the building. (Keep this in mind as it comes into play later.) This means that whatever was up there had access to all the businesses in the building.
To clear the negativity from the area, we lit a sage stick, and spread the smoke throughout the studio, including above the ceiling. Sage is a neat herb that has the ability to clear negative energies. When you see the Catholic priests coming down the aisle, there is usually someone with a container of something that is smoking. This is a type of incense for the same purpose. Many of the Pagan religions, or those that work with energies a lot use sage to clear a place or people.
Now, I had used the sage stick a couple weeks ago, but not to this extent. I had been having trouble with it not giving off enough smoke, and I had to keep relighting it. This works like most incense where you light it, let it burn a moment, and then blow out the flame. The thing should keep burning and produce smoke. What I learned today was that one has to blow on it to keep it burning so it produces more smoke. Ahhh, another secret laid bare.
Well, this time we had plenty of smoke. Thankfully (at least I say that this time), there is no smoke detector in my studio. But there was a point that we were lifting up a ceiling tile here and there and blowing some of the smoke up in that area. A couple minutes later, there is a knock at the door. It was the realtor whose office is on the other side of the large room. She is also the owner of the building and my landlord. The first question she asked was “Do you smell smoke?” I explained that we were burning some sage to clear the energies. I reassured her that we were not burning down the building and that everything was ok.
When we finished, the place was thick with smoke, and we had to open the door for a while to get it to go out. I also went over to my landlord’s office to reassure her again. As I walked in, I could smell sage quite strongly. I made sure that she realized that this is not something I do on a regular basis, and not to worry.
When the smoke had cleared, the energies in the place were wonderful.