Feng Shui for a harmonious home Part 1

A couple of years ago, I read about this guy who in the space of a week or so won a couple of thousand dollars and then a house after sticking a dollar coin on his doorstep. I have to admit that within the hour, I got the super glue out and stuck a dollar on my doorstep. I think I drove my friends crazy for a while as they reached down to pick the dollar up when they entered my home. What this lucky man did was practice the ancient art of Feng Shui.

Feng Shui originated from China thousands of years ago and is based on the premise that people are surrounded by the flow of energy,“Chi” and that each building or room has its own “chi” which will then effect yours. Feng “wind” and Shui “water” together means harmony and balance which is what you want to achieve in the home through “chi”, energy.

You can find an excellent, more in depth explanation here.

I thought it would be fun to do a few posts on this along with some things for you to try at home. Before I continue, I just want to clarify that I’m not an expert and I’m highlighting only a few areas of what is an enormous amount of information and practices out there.

Getting Started:

Like most things, you need to get the basics right so I’ll start there.

Clutter

If you’ve got it, it will be draining the good energy from your home so this is number 1! This means paperwork (Mel!), cupboards, wardrobes and pantries. For some of you, this is going to be a mammoth task and you might have your hand on the mouse right now to click me adios because it’s too daunting to even go there. If that’s you, then you probably need to work on this and it could be done in tiny baby steps. Set yourself a goal of one shelf in the cupboard a day, half a pile of the papers a day – you get what I mean.  Keep up with clearing the clutter while you work on the other areas…

Define your Bagua in your house.

These areas in your home are connected to different things in your life and if you change these, they say you can change your life. There is the traditional Bagua, which is a little more complex, and the Western Bagua, which is what I’ll work with.

Western Bagua:

Draw a grid with nine squares to represent areas in your home (or office). The lower part is in line with your front door wall. See the photo of my very basic illustration.

Note: This drawing is for the northern hemisphere – for the southern hemisphere, simply swap the positions of “love and Marriage” with “wealth”, “creativity and children” with “health and family” and “helpful people” with “personal growth”. For more reading on the reasoning behind this click here.

First Lower Row (front door wall):

Left for northern, right for southern:                     Personal Growth (blacks, blues, greens)

Centre:                                                                           Career (black & dark tones)

Right for northern, left for southern:                     Helpful People (white, greys & black)

Centre Row

Left for northern, right for southern:                     Health & Family (blues & greens)

Centre:                                                                           Heart & Centre (yellow & earth tones)

Right for northern, left for southern:                     Creativity & Children (white & pastels)

Top Row

Left for northern, right for southern:                     Wealth (blues, purples & reds)

Centre:                                                                           Fame (reds)

Right for northern, left for southern:                     Love & Marriage (reds, pinks & white)

Today’s area to work with: Wealth

Colours: Blues, Purples & Reds

While not the most important thing in life, it’s something that most people could do with a little more of, so lets start with ways to bring the positive chi to this area of your home.

Clear this area of any clutter and put/impliment any of the following in your wealth area:

• Healthy lush green plants
• A water feature or picture
• Place what ever represents wealth and abundance in the area; it could be money, gold or a photo for example.
• A gold fish bowl with eight or nine fish, one of them being black (just as long as your wealth area isn’t your kitchen or a bedroom )
• Pineapple, grapes and peaches are fruits that represent wealth and abundance and displayed in this area could bring some to you

Other things you can implement around the house :

• Put a gold coin in the southeast corner of the house (the lucky man’s doorstep must have been there!). This comes from the traditional Feng Shui. If you have an iPhone, it will have a compass app that you can use.
• Plug all of the drains in your house when not in use to stop “money going down the drain”
• Keep in the habit of closing the toilet lid after each use to avoid “flushing money down the toilet”
• Keep the burners and stove in good clean working condition – the Chinese believe that this has a direct connection with your wealth

I hope that you have some fun with it. I’d love to hear of any success stories past and present and any other ideas! I’ll be back soon with part 2 but before then, I’ll see you here Friday.

Wishing you all abundance!

Sources:

Fengshui.about

Way to Feng Shui

Western School of Feng Shui