Essential Feng Shui Tips: Creative Expression
Feng Shui Definitions
Expressing yourself creatively is one of the most powerful ways to enhance the vitality of the Ch’i flowing through your home. Your creativity activates joy, enthusiasm, and participation in life. Creative expression includes cooking, arranging flowers, playing music, singing, dancing, writing, building, planting, and artistic pursuits. Unleash your creativity, and enjoy being an inspiration to yourself and others.
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Essential Feng Shui Tips: Stairways
Feng Shui Definitions
Consider stairways with a critical eye. Likened to waterfalls of rushing Ch’i, their location plays an important role in how Ch’i flows through your home. The least favored placement is directly in front of the main entrance to a home. The longer and steeper the stairs, the greater their tendency to whisk Ch’i too quickly down and out the door.
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Essential Feng Shui Tips: Philosophy of Feng Shui- The Ch’i in Everything is Changing
Feng Shui Definitions
The third Feng Shui principle states that the Ch’i in every person, place, and thing is constantly changing. In fact, the one constant in our physical universe is change. And it becomes a gift when we embrace it as a force that can improve our lives.
Embracing change is often resisted in our Western culture. We want to look 25 forever, buy furniture only once, and have one career that lasts a lifetime. As we all know, life doesn’t work that way. Change happens. As we grow older and hopefully wiser, we may marry, have children, divorce, change careers, move, make new friends, remarry, and through it all, experience tremendous inner and outer changes. When we fully join the dance of change and “let it happen,” we grow in wisdom and experience, and our homes reflect these changes.
Read MoreEssential Feng Shui Tips: Colors in Feng Shui
Colors in Feng Shui
Feng Shui Definitions
Colors in Feng Shui are kind of a big deal. Because color is a very personal and powerful tool for enhancing the Ch’i in your home, make sure to surround yourself with the colors that feed and nurture you. New colors can be easily introduced via flowers, candles, fabrics, and other decor. However, to remove or replace paint, carpet, and upholstery colors in your home is usually a big job. You can’t just throw them off at the end of the day like a bright red shirt or yellow dress. You will live, eat, and sleep with your color choices for a while.
This isn’t to suggest that you should be timid with color, just smart. Experiment with color before ordering enough to fill a room. For instance, before buying a bright blue couch, lay out bright blue paper or fabric where the couch will be and live with it for a week or so. Are you still as in love with the color on the eighth day as you were on the first? If certain wall colors look good in a magazine, try painting a section of your wall that color, put your furniture or artwork against it, and live with it for a few days. You may find that you’d like it deeper, richer, paler, or not at all. If you live with other people, make sure they like the colors you’re choosing. Take your time. When chosen well, colors add a powerful healing quality to your home.
When working with the Bagua Map, use the color associations that you find appealing. Don’t feel pressured to use black to enhance your Career area, or red to bolster your Fame and Reputation area unless you like these colors. Any color enhances the Ch’i if it inspires you each time you see it (see other Ch’i enhancers).
Read MoreEssential Feng Shui Tips: Everything is Connected by Ch’i
Everything is Connected by Ch’i
Feng Shui Definitions
The second basic principle of Feng Shui is that everything is connected by Ch’i: Every person, place, and thing. Although our connections are usually strongest with the people, places, and things that are close by, we are essentially in relationship with everyone and everything on Earth.
Conflicting relationships can diminish or damage the quality of Ch’i in our lives. When we recognize that we cannot isolate ourselves, we see the importance of resolving our conflicts and cultivating good relationships. Because everything is connected, resolving relationship problems greatly improves the overall quality of our lives.
Read MoreEssential Feng Shui Tips: Collections
Collections
Feng Shui Definitions
In our materially abundant culture, it’s easy to collect items of interest. Some collections such as crystal, jewelry, and antiques involve making an investment with every new piece, while other collections are meaningful because of the memories they hold. Whatever you collect, make sure you are managing it, and not vice versa.
- Determine if you are still interested in your collection. People often lose interest in the items they’ve collected, in the same way that children outgrow certain kinds of toys. Let go of collections that no longer interest you to make plenty of room to pursue your new interests.
- Decide if there are pieces that no longer belong there. As your collection evolves, make room for the new by sorting out the ones that no longer fit.
- Enjoy your collections. This keeps the house nourished with the Ch’i that comes from loving what you live with. You may have room to display only part of a collection at any given time. Revolving your collection renews it as you circulate pieces from storage to display area and back again.
- Like art, collections can be lent to friends, the local library, museums, hospitals, schools, or galleries so others can enjoy them. When you are ready to let go of a collection permanently, do so in a way that honors the time and work you put into it. This will give you a sense of completion and free you to enjoy your new interests.
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