If you’ve heard about Feng Shui before, you can be glad to know that, contrary to what they have said, it’s not magic, mystery, superstition, or religion. It’s not about putting your lottery ticket underneath your money tree or placing lucky charms all around your house to bring you good luck, but if you do like the way it looks, it won’t do you any harm.
Feng Shui is more commonly known in terms of interior design space, how you place certain objects around the house, or what colors work together to bring a more harmonious flow of energy into a room. But that’s not all that falls under the category of Feng Shui. Everything from the home’s entire layout, garden, building materials used, and even the front door is key to bringing harmony into your home.
We can also move towards something so small and simple, like wind chimes, whether inside or outside can generate Qi (or chi), the positive energy released from Feng Shui. If you decide to place it inside the house, the metal and wood elements can bring you peace, whereas outside the melodic sound will calm you with the peace you require.
What Is Feng Shui
So if you’re still wondering what exactly is Feng Shui, well here it is. If you’ve ever walked into a space, whether it’s a house, a room, or an office and you feel comfortable in said space, that results from Feng Shui used properly. The opposite can also be true when Feng Shui is not used properly and the space can feel uncomfortable or unwelcoming.
Feng Shui is so much more than just a decorative choice. If you want to use proper Feng Shui energies in your building, incorporate the five elements. Let’s inspect these five basic elements.
- Wood–This represents growth and creativity. By planting trees or different plants, you can achieve this.
- Fire–This represents passion and energy. Incorporating an indoor fireplace is a good example.
- Earth–This represents stability and balance. Any form of rock and ceramics will bring a sense of stability and balance to your home.
- Metal–This represents logic and intelligence. This comes back to the metal wind chimes we spoke about earlier when placing them inside instead of outside.
- Water–This represents wisdom and serenity. A wonderful way of achieving this is by placing a water feature in your garden.
These five elements interact with each other in balance to produce a productive cycle. Supporting each other in a chain to bring forth positive Qi in and around your home. When these elements are out of balance, we refer to a destructive cycle. What this means is that the cycle is broken and produces no positive Qi and without that positive Qi, the spaces we live in work against our wellbeing.
Bringing Feng Shui To Your Home
If you decide that it’s time to bring Feng Shui into your home, there is some thoughtful evaluation that needs to be done. The best way to go about this is to start by going into each room and asking yourself if you feel comfortable. Once you have established which rooms you feel comfortable and uncomfortable in, you can start at the very beginning.
This is, of course, the front door. The main entrance to any building is the most important aspect because it’s the connection point to the outside world. So you can understand why the door must be in the correct direction and position so it can channel wonderful opportunities into your house.
Now that we’ve established the importance of the front door, it’s time to move on to the second important space, which is the center of the house. Many place their kitchen at the center of the house, but that’s not advised. The best practice is to keep the center of your house as spacious as possible. The reason for this is that it has been called the heart of the house, and just like a human heart, you want to avoid any blockages.
Is there any room in your house which you don’t enjoy spending time in? A fun way to understand exactly why you don’t like to spend time there is to describe the room in three words. Then you take those words and look at the opposite meaning and try to figure out if you can change the room according to the opposite words and if the room will make you feel better.
Let’s look at an example. If you have a room that is too dark, the opposite word is light. So, the best way to brighten up a room is to bring in bright colored accents or artwork, bring in more actual light, or you can place mirrors in the room. Mirrors are wonderful for allowing light to bounce off them.
There is called the Bagua Map. We can translate this as a Feng Shui energy map for the house. This is a very common tool used to analyze space. When looking at the map, has nine quadrants, and color represents each quadrant, and each color has a meaning. Those meanings are wealth, fame, love, family, health, children, wisdom, career, and helpful people.
This map is wonderful for those who are deciding what to do with a space. They can sketch up a blueprint of the space and, with the help of the map, decide which colors and elements to add to best achieve harmony.
You must choose the correct colors that will correlate with the five elements to bring balance and achieve polarity in your home. One of the wonderful ways to do this is by bringing the natural world indoors. Add plants, stones, water features, and natural materials into your home.
The reason for this is our strong connection to nature. We’ve always had a strong relationship with the natural world and by incorporating that into our homes, we bring about a calming, nurturing environment.
It’s crucial to consider how you feel when you drive up to your home. If the feelings aren’t positive, we suggest it is time for a change, as one’s home is a safe space, a space where you can unwind and calm your mind, body, and soul. If these three aren’t aligned, there will be some serious problems along the line.
With the practice of Feng Shui, you’ll not only be able to align your mind, body, and soul, but also bring about a space that will bring you pure joy.
Yin, Yang, And You
Yin and yang, better known as polarity, is a vital element of Feng Shui but also our everyday lives. Yin is best introduced and important to your bedroom and bathroom because this is the passive energy that brings relaxation into your home. The best way to achieve this sense of relaxation is by bringing in calm colors, relaxing music, and even pictures of water. Now moving on to yang, which is considered the active energy in your home.
The places where this energy is vital are in your home office, kitchen, and front door. To achieve this active energy, you can use vibrant colors, bright lights, and tall, strong plants. When you want the yin and yang to work in harmony with each other in your home, achieve a balance between the passive and active energies. When the balance between yin and yang work in harmony with each other, your home not only becomes a place of tranquility but also prosperity, creativity, and abundance.
Feng Shui influences all aspects of your life. Whether you want to accept it your entire life is being influenced by the Feng Shui of your home. By adding the required elements to achieve Feng Shui, you can shift that energy to help support your efforts and benefit you for the good of your career, relationships, finances, and health.
The Realistic Application
For many people, the idea of Feng Shui is not by realigning doors, knocking down walls, or even moving to a new home. No, for Feng Shui to exert its benefits to your life, your home should resonate harmoniously with you. First, you are the essential part of making Feng Shui work for you. By achieving the effective solution it can have in your home and life, you still need to keep within your preference and taste. The reason for this is each one of us is different in the way we want our homes to look and feel, Feng Shui doesn’t need to break that from you, just bringing in something that you didn’t know you need without disrupting your personal space.
Feng Shui Today
Today Feng Shui has moved on beyond just the way we decorate our home. We value it because of the positive benefits it has in our lives. It is also used with a positive impact on construction and design trend for offices and homes alike.
When looking at the more classical way of Feng Shui, we can still see it in the solutions to safeguard ourselves from undesirable solutions and the strategies we used to gain positive energies. The way you arrange your space is also something that can influence the flow of Feng Shui in your home. The things you ignore or the objects you choose to keep can all affect something that might hold you back subconsciously.
By embracing the Feng Shui change in your home, you can eliminate that which is holding you back and embrace the change of positive energy in your home.
Love, Luck, and Money
Feng Shui has power over the positive energy it releases to bring peace and tranquility into your home. It does, however, rely on powerful symbolism to support its claims. The biggest determinant of how well Feng Shui can work for you is your belief in it. If you accept what traditional Feng Shui is based on, you might overlook any lack of scientific proof.
Feng Shui is something personal to the person who practices it and brings that practice into their homes. When talking to people who have introduced Feng Shui into their lives and homes with the evidence of their lives changing for the better because of the positive energy it brings, can be all the proof you need.
Does Feng Shui Work?
Feng Shui can be quite a complex tradition, with many components to incorporate for the full experience to come alive within your home. You can, however, start by taking baby steps to learn about the world of Feng Shui and start by taking one room at a time. Just remember to keep an open mind when bringing Feng Shui into your homes, especially with removing objects in certain rooms or just moving them to a different room.
There are things Feng Shui can’t help you with which you need to keep in mind. For example, Feng Shui can’t help people conceive children or get rid of cancer. Beyond that, you might be surprised by how the tweaks and tricks with the help of Feng Shui you can achieve a more peaceful home that allows you to embrace the moment and appreciate the beauty of it.
