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.

Register on Eventbrite

Advertisement

Do you have too much stuff?

“That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is, a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house at all. You would just walk around all day.” ~ Comedian George Carlin

When it comes to our “stuff”, it seems as if there is no end in sight.  As a society, Americans are excellent at the art of accumulation.  There is always a desire for bigger, newer, better things whether it involves our cars, our homes, or our shoe and purse collections (ahem, I of course wouldn’t know anything about that!)  Advertising agencies excel at encouraging us to constantly upgrade and none of us is immune to their efforts.

One of the ways that our stuff begins to morph into a living blob, gobbling up free space faster than your iTunes collection is through clutter.  When we accumulate new stuff faster than we purge it, clutter becomes inevitable.  Ask anyone with a garage or an attic!  This is exactly how storage facilities stay in business!

When our things begin to inhibit our ability to navigate easily within our home, our clutter is probably more than meets the eye.  In fact, there is likely a psychological reason for it.  Let me explain.  One of my former clients invited me to her home for a consultation. Of all the rooms in her home, the bedroom in the relationship area of her home was so crammed and jammed with stuff, that she could no longer use it. The room had become an internal storage area.  After our consultation, she decided that it was time to sort and conquer and within a few weeks, she had managed to clear the room!

However, over the next few months, the room started to fill with stuff, and my client confessed that most of the things in the room had come from other people. A family member moved out of state and gave my client a bunch of old furniture and clothes. A friend had lots of left overs from a garage sale and she gave all her unsold rejects to my client.  Her once cleaned room started to resemble the local Goodwill store.

If you can relate to the above example, you are not alone and it might surprise you to know that clutterers don’t clutter because they are incapable of being organized. They clutter because cluttering is a physical expression of their emotional condition. (source unknown) When you use Feng Shui to understand your own psychology, you begin to set the stage for true transformation. Just remember, it is best to take your time, and don’t try to get rid of all your clutter at once. It is a good idea to let go of clutter slowly and with some introspection. Otherwise, the pattern will just return and the opportunity for deep healing will be lost.

Top Five Ways To Clear Your Clutter

1. Toss the things that are broken. Who are you kidding, you aren’t going to fix it!
2. Give away the things that no longer fit or are out of fashion. The rule of thumb is that if you haven’t worn something in six months, you never will. (I added that last bit because it’s mostly true).
3. Donate your kid’s baby clothes – if you are done having children, just let their vomit stained clothes go!
4. Learn to “just say no” to freebies from relatives and friends unless you really want the items they are giving up.
5. Make a profit!  Learn how to use eBay, Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and sell the stuff that you are ready to discard. Remember, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!!

Fighting Foreclosure with Feng Shui

“All things are vibrating energy fields in ceaseless motion” – Eckhart Tolle

In recent years, foreclosure has become more commonplace then ever before. Foreclosure is everywhere and probably coming to a neighborhood near you. There is one thing that foreclosures often have in common; they are in a state of disgrace. If they have been empty for long, they usually look dilapidated. When families are forced out of a home, it is not uncommon for them to destroy the property in retaliation.  Foreclosed homes that stay empty too long, have a tendency to lower the property value of homes around them by virtue of their poor energy.

Ideally, an investor looking for a sweet deal will swoop in, pay cash, give it a makeover, and sell it for a fat profit.  In fact, entire cable programs have grown up around this concept.  There is just one problem with this scenario.  If the structural problems and predecessor energy that contributed to the home’s demise are not addressed, there is a strong probability that the new owners will have the same or similar issues.

If the problem with a foreclosed home was simply ugly carpet or paint, then replacing those items would eliminate the pattern.  However, ugly carpet does not in and of itself cause foreclosure.  In order to understand structural foreclosure causes, we must look to some of the age-old Feng Shui rules for an explanation and creative solutions.

I am going to share a few Feng Shui design flaws that may contribute to a home’s  potential to an unstable financial flow.  Our homes are a mirror to our lives, so when one begins to deteriorate, it is probable that the other will follow.

1. The front door aligns perfectly with a back door – While this design is not enough to create foreclosure all by itself, it does often lead to money coming in and going out too quickly.  Ideally, energy enters a home, meanders around and nourishes its surroundings.  However, with this design, there is no meandering, thus, there is very little energy retainage.  Now, let’s replace the word “energy” with money.  They are synonymous.
2. The front door opens up to a set of stairs – There are many variables that impact this design with the main one being the distance between the stairs and the door.  The closer the stairs are to the door, the worse it is.  The type of stairs also matters.  Stairs that have a landing, can cause less issues than the kind that cascade straight down.
3. A bathroom is located in one of the commanding areas – If you are familiar with a Feng Shui bagua, then you know that the commanding areas of any home are typically in the back of the house.  These areas correspond with the bagua sections of Abundance, Fame and Relationships.

The nice thing about Feng Shui is that by working with the elements of Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, as well as the colors and shapes that represent these elements, we can nullify negative architectural designs.  By learning to rehabilitate homes that have been devastated by the ignorance of improper home design, and using the tools we have been given within the system of Feng Shui, we can create homes that are healed.  As we heal our homes, we heal ourselves, and we create a planet that allows all life to thrive and prosper.

If you know someone that is facing foreclosure, share this article with them.  I’d love to help them prevent that potential outcome.  I can be reached at fengshuidesignconcepts@gmail.com, logynnbnorthrhip@gmail.com or at 512-496-9232.

Let’s Talk about Patios

Do you have a patio at your home or apartment?  Are you curious how to make it a positive part of your home’s overall Feng Shui?  Patios can be problematic if we don’t make the most of them.  A patio in this particular discussion is one that has a covered roof above it.  When the patio is covered it is often included as part of the roofline of your living structure, which means it is also part of the Feng Shui bagua of your home.  Just because it is outside, does not mean that it is separate.  Let me say it in another way, the patio is just as important as any other part of your home.  Whatever you do, don’t disregard it.

If you are in a house, the covered patio is most likely in the back.  If you live in a condo or apartment, it could be in the back, on the side or in the front.  Without getting too technical, let me give you a few tips that will be helpful regardless of its location:

One of the things that will help the most when it comes to a patio, is to actually use it.  Sounds logical right?  However, you would be surprised at how many people shun that part of their home.  One of my recent remote clients was exactly in that group.  She flat out refused to put outdoor furniture on her patio even though in her case, it would have been very helpful for her relationships.  She did do a few things that I suggested, but she was not willing to commit to going outside to enjoy the outdoors from her patio.  So the first step is to use your patio.

Second, because it is outside and not something you will use as frequently as you indoor spaces, I suggest that you invite nature to use the patio when you can’t.  Hanging a bird feeder on your patio is a great way to keep the chi active. If you don’t like seed feeders, try feeding the hummingbirds or leaving a little pile of acorns or peanuts for the squirrels.  Animals represent the fire element, and their activity on your patio will keep the chi circulating, even when you are not there to use it.

Third, keep it clean.  Many people treat their outdoor spaces as a storage area for overflowing garbage, a catch-all for kids toys, gardening tools, & unused flower pots, to name a few.  Some other items that I have recently seen on my neighbor’s patios are rotting dog beds, broken furniture, brooms, and dirt-covered knick knacks of all sorts.

A patio can be a place to unwind at the end of a long day with a glass of wine or at the beginning of the day with your trusty pooch and a hot cup of coffee.  If you can find a way to make your patio space colorful and inviting, you will be amazed at the benefits it will provide.

Re-Starting the Single Life With Feng Shui

I’ve been helping people understand and use Feng Shui design concepts for over 15 years, and during all of these years, I have never had anyone intentionally use Feng Shui to remain single, until now.  A few months ago, I ended a four-year relationship that had become somewhat toxic and simply wasn’t meeting my needs.   After it ended, I was a little shell-shocked by its suddenness, even though I was the one who initiated it.  That was when I realized that I needed to undo some things that I had done in my home, when a relationship was part of my life.

Love & relationships are one of the most popular reasons that people become interested in Feng Shui, but using it to undo a relationship was new to me.  In my case, I wanted to create a space for healing; one that would allow me to re-align with my truest self, my needs and my desires.  Considering that Mercury just went Retrograde on the 19th, this is the perfect time to reAssess and the perfect time to make changes.  If you are unfamiliar with the dynamics of Mercury Retrograde, I can tell you that it is a time to reView, reEvaluate, reCharge & reCreate.  It is not a time to start brand new ideas, businesses, or new relationships.

Since not everyone has an in-depth understanding of all the Feng Shui rules surrounding relationships, I’d like to share a more intuitive approach. If you find yourself in a position of un-coupling, I’d like to invite you to walk around your home and intuitively look around.  You may also want to have a storage tote or two within reach. Does anything pop out as a reminder of your former love?  Do you still have photographs of the two of you displayed or hanging on the wall?  Go ahead and remove them.  There is nothing worse after a breakup than constantly being bombarded with reminders of all the good times that you had with your lover.  You aren’t going to burn them or anything, you are merely putting them in a safe space, as you would with any precious memory.

For me, this was particularly challenging because my former love was very handy with tools and he often made me hand-crafted gifts and mementos which were sprinkled everywhere around my home.  I took some of them down, but some are just there forever, like a dragonfly caught in amber, to be admired and loved in spite of everything else.

Once I was satisfied with this step, I decided to intentionally look at the right hand corner of every single room in my home.  This included the bathroom, the kitchen, the closets, everything.  Since I use Feng Shui daily, I knew I wouldn’t find any trash cans, litter boxes or spiky cacti plants in these areas, but I did find several examples of artwork and decor with couples.  In their place, I am searching for art that reflects my new relationship status.

I love to paint, and so after my relationship ended, I added a gorgeous accent wall in my bedroom, and moved the bed. With these changes in place, my room feels totally different than it had been, so the memories involving my former love have been dissolved a little.  Now every time I walk into my bedroom, I am instantly happy.

If you were married to your former love, I’d like to suggest that you put away the champagne glasses that you used to toast your marriage, and maybe even relocate the fine china that you had displayed, but never used.  If your bed has been in the same place for the entire length of your relationship, why not move it like I did.  In fact, I have an even more radical idea, get a new mattress!  When you consider how much time we usually spend in our beds with the one we love, the idea of a new mattress is very appealing.  A fresh start can be the best start, and a new bed is always a good idea when a long relationship ends.

Since my goal is to RE-member my value and reconnect with the Divine Feminine that I am and always have been, I replaced the relationship “cures” that I had originally set up, with images, art and decor that help empower me as a woman.   Luckily, I already have some really cool items that I simply moved around to anchor this desire.  A few years ago, one of my yoga students gave me a figure of a woman sitting alone in meditation.  I had originally placed her in my home’s Life Journey area because she represented my interest and use of meditation to know myself.  During my intuition walk, I felt like a better place for her would be in one of my relationship areas.  Now when I see her, I am reminded of my intention to reflect on my journey through my relationships and remember my value, desires and goals.

Another example might include replacing a love seat with a soft and inviting one-person chair.  Think of all the awesome, cozy chairs that you see at coffee shops, and consider investing in one or moving an existing one into an area of your home that currently has a love seat. Do you ever notice that those single seat chairs are the most sought-after at your local coffee shop?  There is a reason for that!

The examples are endless, and limited only by our ability to know what we want and create accordingly.  Our most intelligent guide is how a thing makes us feel when we see it.  Does it align with who you are or who you want to be?  Does it make you feel happy and at peace?  Or does it make you angry or full of fear and uncertainty?  A little bit of Feng Shui and a whole lot of honesty and willingness to move forward are your best tools to healing and creating the life of your dreams.  You simply need to trust your feelings and go from there.  This too shall pass, and when it does, you will know exactly what you do and don’t need in order to create the next, best and highest version of you.

Space Clearing & the Art of Flame Watching

First off, let me apologize for the 1 1/2 year vacation I took from writing this blog.  I guess you could say I’ve been making some changes to the way that I share my knowledge on Feng Shui, and I needed a little break from writing about it.  At any rate, I am back and ready to write!  P.S. You may have noticed that I also changed the name on the blog to my actual business name instead of Feng Shui Girl in the City.  Once upon a time, I was trying to link my title to the success of the show Sex in the City, but nowadays, I just want to share my knowledge without all the hype!

Today, I had the entire afternoon with nothing scheduled.  I’d been wanting to do my annual space clearing ritual for a few weeks, but it wasn’t until today that I felt like the time was right.  One of the tools that I use to determine “rightness” is from the World of Feng Shui website.  It offers a calendar with the most auspicious dates for marriage, but I use these dates for everything from space clearing, to buying a house and last but not least, for making big furniture-placement changes.

Another resource that I use for this ritual is from the Pensacola Paranormal Society.  They have a wonderful space clearing prayer that I like to recite when I clear each area of my home.  I have asked their permission in the past to share from their site, and I will make sure to give a full link to it as well.

If you have never done a space clearing, let me start by saying that there are many different ways to get it done.  One of the most common is to burn sage; however, the method I am about to share is my personal favorite.  It is an epsom salt space clearing, and I have had a lot of success with it.  There are a few things that you will need in order to get started.  First, you need a pyrex bowl.  I got mine from Goodwill because I knew I was going to ruin it, and didn’t want to spend much on it.  You will also need some sort of trivet or bricks to place under the Pyrex bowl.  This will ensure that you do not burn a hole in your floor, so make sure you don’t skip this step.  Other ingredients include plain epsom salt, 91% isopropyl alcohol, and a lighter or extended fire clicker.

Once you have your auspicious day, another way to add benefit to the process is to do it between the times of 11 – 1 in the a.m. or the p.m.  The way I would describe this is to say that it is something of a doorway or a time when there are less energetic disruptions.  When I am moving furniture or doing anything else Feng Shui related, I try to do it during this free zone, although that isn’t always possible.  It just so happened that for this space clearing, I was able to honor this part of the recipe.

If you have a  two-story home, you will want to start downstairs and work your way upstairs.  This time, I decided to simplify the process.  Instead of doing the salt burn in all nine (9) areas of the bagua, downstairs and up, I mentally divided each floor into four (4) areas.  This entire process took me over 3 hours, so you can imagine how long it would take to do it 9 times on the bottom floor and 9 times on the top.  Now that we have all the little details covered, here’s the way to begin:

Say your prayer for protection and intention.  Here is the one I used from the Pensacola Paranormal Society.  

“Mother, Father, God, I command that all negative energy and energy that is not condusive to my well-being be removed through this process. If there are any attached spirits to this home, I evoke Archangel Michael to use his sword to remove them and their tie to this place. I ask for your protection and guidance in the process. Thank you, it is done, it is done, it is done!”(pensacolaparanormalsociety.com/heavy_cleansing.php)

Once you have said your prayer, you are ready to go.  Put a layer of the epsom salt in the fireproof bowl, cover it completely, but don’t drown it, with the alcohol, and light it up.  Just for fun, I decided to time the duration of the flames and photograph the results.  Some areas seemed to take much longer, and some were done in less than 15 min. The amount of black residue on top of the salt at the end of the burn is supposed to represent the amount of negative energy present that has been burned away.  It would seem that certain areas of my home had way more negative energy than others! The good news is that after this process, my entire home feels purified and energetically clean.

Example of a lot of negativity burned out

Example of very little negativity caught in the salt

One other thing that I did this time around, was to stare into the flames and focus on each life area with a specific intention.  Alternatively, you can think about the things that aren’t working in your life and give them to the flames to be transformed.  The part that I love the most, is the photographs.  The images that emerge within the flames are sometimes a little spooky, but always interesting.  It reminds me of cloud-watching and how a single cloud can look different depending on the person watching it.

After the first burn has stopped completely, move your bowl and trivet to the next area, add another layer of salt and alcohol, say your prayer, and light that layer.  I suggest that you have one bowl for the bottom floor and one bowl for the top floor.  After you have completed all four areas downstairs, and the bowl has cooled, you will need to flush the salt mixture into the toilet.  This can be a little bit daunting because it will be as hard as a brick.  Just add a small amount of water, stab it with a fork to break it up, and flush a little at a time into the toilet until it is all gone.

I’ve heard it said that when the flames leap very high and seem to be dancing, that it is a clear sign that there is spirit energy on the site.  I do not claim to know this for certain, and I could not find anything on the internet to corroborate this, but I wanted to mention it just to be thorough.

What do you see?

I recommend that this type of space clearing be done at least once a year, or anytime that you feel the energy getting stagnant.  If you have a lot of visitors in your home, keep in mind that you may need to clear your spaces more frequently.  This would also be a great tool for realtors or for someone who is selling their own home, as well as if someone has died in the home.  If you have a question or comment that I didn’t address here, please email me at fungschwaygirl@yahoo.com.

Why You Should Care About the Helpful People Area of Your Home

‘Helpful People’ sounds like an ancillary benefit to Feng Shui until you find yourself in need of some truly reliable and helpful people in your life.  To be honest, more people become curious about Feng Shui because of the allure that it will improve their finances or love life, than for the probability that it will allow them to ‘receive it forward‘.  In fact, the Helpful People/Travel/ Service area may be one of the most overlooked areas on the Feng Shui bagua.  We all need to be able to give and receive stellar service as we move through this thing called life, and when this area is in sync, things just have a habit of going your way.

So who are these “helpful people” anyway?  Let’s run through a few scenarios where helpful people are very appreciated.  You were just in a wreck, you call your insurance company and they jump through hoops to make sure that all of your needs are met.  Need a tow truck, car rental or doctor?  Chances are that your insurance agent is acting as a very helpful person in your life in that moment.  Here’s another example; let’s say that you walk out of your apartment and your car battery is dead.  One of your neighbors has jumper cables, and offers to give your car battery a jump with their’s.  They just did a “pay it forward” and they helped you out of a frustrating start to your day.  A helpful person could be the girl taking your order in the drive-thru window or it could be the contractor in charge of your home’s plumbing needs.  Regardless, it is always a good idea to tweak this area BEFORE it becomes a issue in your life.

“When this area is in sync, things just have a habit of going your way.”

Now that I have your attention, let me give you the 411 on this area.  If you mentally visualize an imaginary tic tac toe box around your home, it will then be divided into 9 evenly placed squares (the example below is not perfectly even, but at least it gives you a visual).  The Helpful People area is located in the bottom right hand corner in relation to your front door.  Using your mental bagua, go to each room, locate the helpful people area and do an inventory of your findings. Your home is an overlay of multiple helpful people areas, and they all matter!  Once your inventory is complete, you’ll want to analyze the data.  Did you find your daughter’s collection of headless Barbies or did you find a chaotic table full of un-filed papers, bills, receipts and other symbols of overwhelm? Whether you found your meditation pillow and yoga mat, or your son’s legos scattered like land mines all over the floor, it doesn’t take a Feng Shui license to know what you need to do in order to bring some balance back into your life.

The next step is to eliminate the most obvious problems first.  If your area is filled with clutter and broken items, clean it.  Don’t wait for your kids to call Hoarders, and embarrass you on national television!  Next, remember that this area revolves around being of service.  From a Feng Shui point of view, all areas can be enhanced by balancing the elements.  Helpful People is strengthened by the metal element.  The  colors that enhance this element are obviously metal tones like silver, bronze and gold, and metal items like bells or metal Tibetan Singing Bowls as well as white and light pastels.  The shape that represents the metal element is a circle, so adding round, metal items would really pack some punch.  Obviously, whatever you add, needs to be able to fit in with the decor that already exists within your home.  Placing a Feng Shui “cure” in your home just because the store clerk assured you it will bring good luck is not nearly as powerful as finding a way to allow the cures to be blend seamlessly into your surroundings.  It is much more desirable to have your friends walk into you home and feel great about it without knowing why, than for them to walk in and be confronted by all sorts of  kitschy Feng Shui Chinese items that have no relevance to your life or culture.

Feng Shui may have its roots in some of the more esoteric and secret aspects of Chinese culture and lore, but at its most basic level, it is a very common-sense way to add a little peace and happiness into your life.  Have fun with it, and whatever you do, don’t take yourself too seriously!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Feng Shui Changes You Will See WHEN You Believe!

There are those who practice Feng Shui from a scientific perspective, however, I am not one of them.  For me, Feng Shui has always been faith-based.  That may sound strange since we usually associate ‘faith’ with religion.  Yet, in my life, Feng Shui shifted into a transformative process when I let go of the belief that I had to see it in order to believe it, and instead followed the philosophy that “you’ll see it when you believe it”. (Wayne W. Dyer)   I am a natural skeptic, and analytical to the core, but on the flip side, when I tap into my intuition, go with my gut and trust that I am doing what my creator intended, I interpret my world in a whole new way.

When I first discovered Feng Shui, some of the claims were so outlandish that I felt I needed to prove them to myself in order to believe them.  My house became my own personal guinea pig.  In order to benefit fully from this ancient system intricately woven into the fabric of life, I had to open myself up to trust and faith, two concepts that were not welcomed in my mid-20’s.  I was recently married and a new homeowner when I first discovered Feng Shui.  I came home from my first week-long Feng Shui intensive and started to put all that I had learned into practice.

The house we lived in was on three acres and the previous owners had added on a partial sunroom to the back of the house.  With my newly-learned knowledge about Feng Shui, I discovered that this was not ideal.  I also discovered that the shape of the three acres was not complete and that the place of its incompletion was in what is considered the money section of the bagua.  Little by little, I discovered tiny flaws, but luckily, I also knew that most Feng Shui issues can be adjusted.  How? Well, over the years, I have come to view Feng Shui as a mathematical equation. When the equation is incomplete, you have to add or subtract something from it.  In Feng Shui, the elements of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal are the variables that are used to balance the Feng Shui equation.

In the end, no amount of Feng Shui could save my marriage, but what a blessing that was!  The changes that have occurred as a result of that process have made me into a person that I really love.  As I created balance in my home, the people in the house who were not in alignment with those changes had to either adjust and shift up or stay the same and shift out.  That is what happened, and that is why from one perspective, it might appear that Feng Shui did not “work” for me, but in reality, it did.

The art of Feng Shui is one that typically brings subtle changes, along with a new awareness of the things that we value and believe.  It is not a quick fix by any means.  It is a life-long process that shifts you toward your authentic self.  While it is rarely going to create sweeping dramatic changes, it can put you on a path that you never saw possible for yourself.  It can bring awareness to the source of your greatest challenges in your career, your health, your finances and your relationships.  Awareness in itself can be somewhat unsettling because once you know something, you can not Un-Know it, no matter how hard you try.   You can ignore it, but you can’t stop knowing it.  However, if you view the process of Feng Shui as a way that the God of your understanding has chosen to communicate with you, then you might be able to see it as a way to increase your faith in your Self and in a Higher Power.

Discovering the Yoga of Your Home with Logynn B. Northrhip

I’ve been discovering everything I can about Feng Shui, and helping others do the same for over 14 years, and I’ve been discovering the joys and challenges of doing and teaching yoga for over 7 years. The thing that strikes me about both of these ancient, and thoroughly modern day practices is how well they go together.

The Merrium-Webster dictionary defines yoga as “a Hindu philosophy that teaches a person to experience inner peace by controlling the body and mind.”  When you get right down to it, Yoga is like Feng Shui for your Body; and Feng Shui is like Yoga for your Home. The difference is that the inner peace we seek through yoga, through the active participation of the body through movement and breath, is applied to the home by controlling, or supporting our surroundings based on the placement of rooms, the elements of the bagua, the 9 life areas, etc.  The common result of both Yoga and Feng Shui is inner peace, and Feng Shui, just like yoga, is always evolving for the individual.  There is always another level for us to shift out of and into.  Feng Shui and Yoga also share another thing in common.  They don’t ever end, because they are essentially a lifestyle choice.

Through the physical action of asana, we learn to quiet the mind and allow a sense of peace to pervade every area of our body.  We say in yoga that we learn to practice this peace on and off our mat.  How we handle the stress of driving in bumper to bumper traffic or a busy schedule with no gaps or breaks can become our”yoga” of the day.  It all begins with the breath and with awareness.

The way that we can apply this same principle to our homes is simple, but requires a re-envisioning of a typical flowing yoga sequence. We begin with a moment of silence and a connection to the breath and our intention process.  During a flow practice, we typically move the body gently at first to stoke the inner fire with twists, with breath-connected movement and action that resembles a wave.   In our homes, we start at the front door.  How does the house breath?  Does it take a “breath” that fills the home evenly?  Or does it take a breath like a smoker with asthma?

In yoga, we learn about our body’s chakras or energy centers.  According to Wikipedia, “Chakras are part of the subtle body, not the physical body, and as such are the meeting points of the subtle (non-physical) energy channels, called nadiis. Nadiis are channels in the subtle body through which the life force (prana), or vital energy moves.”  With this in mind, it is good to point out that Feng Shui is also a subtle energy system, and it thrives on chi as its vital energy.  Chi is a life force energy that meanders throughout nature, and when we build homes, it filters in and around our homes as well.

Using Feng Shui, our ultimate goal is to create a sense of balance in all areas of our lives.  We want our careers to be balanced with our health, our family and all our personal relationships.  We want adequate financial abundance to balance with our creativity and passions, and we want our sense of well-being to balance with the flame of our reputation.   Understanding and discovering the yoga of your home is a way of combining Feng Shui principles with yogic wisdom to create a common ground that unites these two ancient practices and philosophies, and gives us endless opportunities to evolve and manifest the life of our dreams!

A Feng Shui Focus – The Top 5 Contributors to Foreclosure

Here’s an absolute truth about Foreclosed homes; most of them are not Feng-Schwayically sound.  What does this mean?  I’ve looked at a lot of houses over the years, and while poor Feng Shui design is not always why a home goes to foreclosure, when you know what to look for, foreclosed homes host a higher number of the ‘usual suspects’ that tend to drain money out of a home, than homes that do not have them.  Because a home can have as many “prosperity” areas as it does separate rooms, there are many places to look for these financial energy drains.

Without exception, every foreclosed house that I have ever “inspected” has more than its share of financial energy drains.  In the photo below, there is something about the dead trees & overgrown grass that add to the desolation of this foreclosure, but there is something more significant that could be a cause.  The one thing that every house requires is a Mouth of Chi.  Look closely.  Do you see one? Well, there is a mouth of chi, but it is very much hidden, and not in one of the usual three areas in the front of the house.  It is located on the far left, about halfway in the middle of the house.  When chi has to work this hard to enter the house, its going to be weaker than usual.

1. A hidden or blocked mouth of chi is one of the top 5 contributors to possible foreclosures.

2. Unfortunate placement of a door, the stove, or both!  In the example below, the kitchen is in the back of the house, along with the back door.  This particular door has a piece of wood covering the doggy door, but it is the placement of the stove in line with the door that is a bigger problem.  As we know, the stove represents our abundance, and our potential to increase it.  Placing it in this type of location is like placing a stack of cash in front of a large vacuum.  It just gets sucked out!

3.  Missing areas that never get used is the third in the top five contributor list.  When you have a house that is not a perfectly square, which includes most houses, you are bound to find what we call in Feng Shui a missing area.  Basically, the space that is considered missing, is not underneath the roofline of the house, and almost looks as if it were a piece cut out of the whole.  What you do with your missing area, is what truly matters.  If you incorporate it into a beautiful garden design or create a relaxing sitting area with it, then that missing area becomes a part of the whole, and feels complete, regardless of the home’s design.

4. The back left of the house (in relation to your front door) represents the main area that corresponds to your finances.  If that happens to be where your master bathroom is placed, then you will have to use a combination of the proper elements, Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal, in order to balance out the overwhelming water and draining energy that is present in this room.

5. If the shape of your lot is incomplete in the area that corresponds to wealth and accumulation, then you will need to use the Method of Minor Additions to balance it.  This method changes with the house, and can be as creative or as dull a correction as you would like to use.

The bottom line here is that one or two of the above listed characteristics is more of a nuisance that can easily be overcome by using Feng Shui knowledge of color, elements and other placement techniques to create wholeness and balanced.  When a house has all of these and a few that aren’t listed, there is a high probability that money goes out faster than it comes in, and the probability of foreclosure is likely.

Ideally, all future homes would be built based on principles of Feng Shui that align specific rooms with the life areas that match them.  For example, build so that the children’s rooms are located in the part of the home’s bagua that relates to Children/Creativity.  Let the master bedroom be located in the Relationship area of the house, etc.  A home that doesn’t need a Feng Shui correction would be so amazing.  The homeowners would have balance in between their work and the relationships, good health, enough money, happy and creative children and great friends and family all around them.

When you consider that your home is most likely your biggest investment, it makes sense to use all available resources to protect it from foreclosure.  Just imagine how much the property values might increase if none of the homes in your neighborhood looked like the ones posted above!  For every imbalance that is created when Feng Shui wisdom is ignored, there is a corresponding and highly effective solution that you can implement to correct it.

You’ve probably been to someone’s house that just made you feel really relaxed and happy.  You can’t really figure out what it is about their house, but you feel good when you are there.   It may have been really fancy, or it may have been small and cozy.  Either way, it was inviting, and the time you spent there was enjoyable.  That is really what Feng Shui is all about.  It isn’t some arbitrary way of forcing you to see the world or all the rooms in your house.   It’s about enjoying the spaces where you spend your time, living a full and happy life and never settling for less than you want or deserve.

If you would like to learn more about learning all the Feng Shui secrets that will make your home and your life more balanced, contact Logynn at fungschwaygirl@yahoo.com.  Plans are in the works for a Practitioners Course in Austin in 2014!