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SCMP Reporter

IF you have tried fung shui for your office or apartment and are still out of luck, try smudging it.

 Yes, you read it right. Smudging is a native North American purifying ceremony, involving incense-burning, rattle-shaking and drum-banging aimed at driving out bad vibes.

 In recent years, the ancient Chinese art of fung shui has become hip among America and Europe's rich and open-minded. Now smudging is making waves and starting to ripple in the opposite direction into Asia.

 New York smudger Eleni Santoro, who is trying to pioneer the art in Singapore and Hong Kong, said: 'More often than not it works. A lot depends on whether or not you open your mind to it. I would put the success rate at 80-90 per cent.'   The name comes from a stick called a smudge used in the ceremony.

 Famous afficionados of the art are said to include X-Files actress Gillian Anderson and pop star Elton John.

 Ms Santoro has won widespread publicity in the US for her work with real-estate companies, ridding the bad energy from properties.

 Her first such case was with Corcoran Group Realtor, which called on her services after struggling for six months to sell a prime US$4 million seven-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue in a block once inhabited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

 The apartment had been the home to a bitter divorce. Three days after smudging it, a young couple walked in and offered full price.

 'It really does work,' said Barbara Corcoran, president of Corcoran Group, one of Manhattan's largest real-estate brokers, now a regular client.

 Other American customers have included Ashforth Warburg Associates, which has had 20 prime properties smudged.

 Ms Santoro's media appearances have ranged from The New York Times to CNN. During this, her second Singapore trip, she has smudged homes, offices and a restaurant, as well as giving promotional talks.

 Her charges are similar to those of fung shui masters, ranging upwards from S$399 (about HK$1,814).

 Hong Kong is her next target, where there is no shortage of people needing a little bit of special help to shift unsold real estate.

 'Smudging can be used alongside fung shui,' said Ms Santoro. 'Fung shui has a continuous effect. Smudging's effect is immediate. I'm in there and the negative energy goes.'  The managing director of Singapore's Healing Gardens reflexology and aromatherapy centre, Kyoko, had her offices cleansed last Sunday.

 'After the smudging, I've definitely been getting more business,' she said.

 Michael Taussig, professor of anthropology at New York's Columbia University, traces the practice of smudging back at least 1,000 years, with its roots coming from ancient Greece.

 It has been described as a more exotic form of Catholic exorcism, a comparison some smudgers do not like.

 There are thought to be several hundred smudgers in the world primarily in North America and Latin America.

 Ms Santoro, who also claims to have psychic powers and to have learnt smudging from her Greek ancestors, believes she is the first to bring the art to Asia.



Smudging makes mark in the realms of fung shui