Meditation & Feng Shui ~ The Ultimate Soulmates

It’s a funny thing that learning to mentally “do nothing” through meditation, can actively improve your home’s energy and thus your life in the process. In order to explain this apparent dichotomy, I need to first explain another life law that may be new to you. It’s one that I’d be willing to bet you’ve heard at some point or time in your life, but didn’t realize its power at the time. It begins with our thoughts and is usually shared, to our disbelief, with the simple phrase that ‘our thoughts create our reality.’ Or more simply as, ‘thoughts are creative.’ Or my personal favorite, ‘what we think about we CREATE.’

Any of this sound familiar? Knowing this changes everything and it is also somewhat unsettling to admit if you’ve been operating on the assumption that you are a victim of your upbringing, surroundings or some other unfortunate injustice. Those things do exist, I’m not discounting them in the least, but our thoughts are the gasoline that propel our physical vehicle so it’s important to use the good stuff.

“You are responsible for your happiness. In fact, you create it. You attract it. You manifest it. You are the architect of your reality. You choose your thoughts, your perceptions and your reaction to external forces. You possess all of the tools needed to expand your awareness to orchestrate the evolution of your consciousness, to choose happiness, to choose love. You are that powerful. Create the life you deserve. Vibrate love.” ~ Creig Crippen

Using the inner stillness of meditation really gets powerful when it is added to the practice of Feng Shui. When you start to understand your life by seeing your home as a reflection of your inner self, or as your shadow self, Feng Shui becomes a whole lot more fun and more interesting. I’ve floated this idea before but it doesn’t often get a lot of traction. We know that people often show up in our lives and reflect back to us the things we like, love and hate about our selves. So doesn’t it stand to reason that the same would be true of our home? The inconvenient truth is that our homes are actually like a wise guide, patiently waiting for us to notice the obvious invisible that is all around us.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me get to the heart of this discussion. One of the key components of Feng Shui is the use of something called the Three Secrets Reinforcements. Essentially, this involves a mind, body and speech secret. Using the word ‘secret’ is not exactly accurate since I’m telling your about it, but here goes. The mind secret is your thought about a desired outcome and being able to visualize it in your mind. The body secret is a mudra called the “ousting mudra”. Mudras are basically yoga poses that you do with your hands. The ousting mudra looks like the hand gesture used by avid Texas Longhorns fans and the speech secret is a mantra called the Six True Words aka Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum. When they are used all together, we call it the Three Secrets. It is a lot easier to use this tool when you know how to visualize and visualizing desired outcomes is easier when you know how to meditate. See what I did there?

When we learn to quite our mind, and truly this is no small feat because that little bugger is always on, we are able to imprint our thoughts with our desires. It’s like whatever is already playing on the hard drive in our brain has a chance to be wiped and rewritten. Even if you aren’t interested in using meditation as a tool to take control of your thoughts, leaning this skill is will make you more aware of the thoughts that you have and maybe even give you the chance to pause and decide if they are worth thinking.

A few months ago, I decided to reestablish a regular practice of carving out some time in my day to meditate. When I began, I was like, ok, 4 minutes sounds doable. That was literally all I could commit to doing. At this writing, I’ve done this for 112 days in a row. Some days, it’s only 4 minutes of pranayama and some days it turns into 30 minutes of breathing, chanting mantras and clearing the spaces around me with guided meditations. When I think about skipping a day, I know I will regret it, so I don’t.

The point is, now that I have found a way to make this a part of each day, I can’t bear the thought of missing it. Why? It wipes my slate clean. It primes me for a day of God knows what. I’m less reactive and I don’t let my buttons get pushed. The best discovery of all is that I can truly “see” in my mind, the life that I want for myself. I’m the director. I’m the creator, and so are you. It is the hardest easiest thing to learn, and it is the most beneficial tool in my toolkit. Meditation will help you with your Feng Shui cures, and it will help with every single thing in your life. It’s been said that praying is when you talk to God, but meditation is when you listen. Are you ready to listen?

I’m offering a FREE zoom class covering the basics of mediation on Monday night, Jan. 18. If you want to join me, click here to get your free ticket with Eventbrite.

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Traveling with Feng Shui

For Christmas, my son and I took a little trip to visit the sites in Moab, UT at Arches National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park. We had a hotel room for two nights and brought all our gear to campout for a third night which didn’t end up happening thanks to the snow and bad weather that rolled into town. Since I’ve already written about proper camping Feng Shui, I’d like to talk this time about hotel Feng Shui. The layout and design of the spaces we stay while on vacation are just as important as the spaces we inhabit day to day, so I am going to share some of the things that this hotel did right and the things that they did wrong.

As soon as we walked into our hotel room, I started to see the room with my Feng Shui eyes. The first task is always to just do a mental inventory of what is seen. Since most hotel rooms are going to have the basics of a bed, tv and bathroom, this process takes mere seconds. Right away, I noticed that there was a very inviting armchair with its own lamp overhead in the right hand corner of the room. I couldn’t wait to get cozy in the chair and catch up on some reading with one of the books I packed.

Such a nice place to sit and read at the end of the day. Too bad that lamp is just there for looks!

In case you are new to Feng Shui, the right hand corner of any room falls into the Relationship gua of the bagua as it relates to the entry door. This was a fine for a trip with my son, but if I had been with a romantic partner, a small couch or a space for two people to enjoy would have been better. A single chair in this area of a room does not promote togetherness. If there is only one chair, there is only room for one person.

It looks like an ordinary outlet, but it is winking at me!

Once we got unpacked and settled in though, I found an intriguing problem with this area of the hotel room. Upon further inspection, I discovered that the overhead light was unplugged and that the only outlet within reach had the most bizarre outlet plug that I had ever seen. It was literally impossible to plug anything into it! At first I thought it was just that I wasn’t plugging it in correctly, but then I got down on my hands and knees and saw that the outlet could only accept one appliance, and the much-needed heater was already using it.

From a design perspective, this is literally the dumbest thing a hotel could do. Why add anything at all if adding it is just for looks and isn’t functional? Suddenly, the chair lost all its appeal and I ended up using it to pile hiking gear instead. Strike 1.

In the left hand corner of the room was a desk. This area relates to our money, abundance and prosperity. The placement of the desk was not in command position because it was not facing the entry. It invited the user to sit and stare at the wall, it was very cramped and crowded and also not very functional. Strike 2.

The nice thing about this room was that it came with a microwave, a hidden mini-fridge and a very large flat-screen tv with cable. Free wifi was also part of the package here. When you are like me and you don’t have a typical tv setup at home, it can be fun to chill out in bed and watch tv. Once again though, if a couple had been on a romantic getaway to this location, having an exposed television in the “bedroom” is not ideal. This goes for at home as well. I am a firm believer that tv, laptops and computers should all be banned from our bedrooms.

The two queen beds were placed in a command position with a solid wall behind and a view of the front door. This is very good bed placement because it is a perfect example of the command position rule which creates a feeling of safety and security.

“Our living spaces display an external reflection of our internal lives. Using Feng Shui as a tool to discover that which is hidden within us is the great gift that this ancient wisdom provides.”

~ Logynn B. Northrhip

The bathroom was perfectly placed in the front right-hand section of the room which aligns with the travel and helpful people area of the bagua. The element for this area is metal and since bathrooms are known for all the water and draining they produce, having a metal element room is one of the best because it “holds” the water element. When a bathroom is improperly placed, say in the money area, the water can represent a potential for flushing away of income.

As I completed my brief analysis of the space we would inhabit for the next two days, I could see that it was going to provide us with the precise energy that we needed. In other words, it was an energetic match from a conscious and a subconscious perspective. Since our plan was to be out and exploring and hiking, a simple room was all we needed.

One of the more curious aspects of Feng Shui is that we are always attracting the design of any space we inhabit to provide us with the exact experience that we need. If there is deep emotional healing needed, we will fall in love with the house that can provide that healing. However, that same house can be a nightmare if we do not know how use our spaces to create the life that we are seeking. When we know how to work with the ancient concepts of Feng Shui, we can intentionally create better and better experiences for ourselves.

It is fun to practice all that you know and are continuing to learn about Feng Shui when you travel and stay in hotels. If you end up at a hotel that has bad furniture placement, go ahead and move the bed. I won’t tell!