Loving your home during & after Covid-19

If you are new to Feng Shui, let me tell you, there has never been a more perfect time to get started than now!  With the majority of cities, states and countries “sheltering in place”, people are working from home, homeschooling their children and basically spending every moment inside their homes.  Therefore, it is vitally important that our spaces nourish us in every way possible.  This is actually a wonderful way to define Feng Shui. When used correctly, it brings balance to disorder and chaos.  It creates stability and wholeness.   It invites and nourishes all aspects of life.  It is our not-so secret weapon to thriving and mentally surviving this pandemic.

By now, the reality that we are not getting out of here any time soon, has set in and like it or not, we are all in this together; making the best of a situation that none of us could have predicted.  Our homes can either feel like paradise or like prison.  We have a choice.  This is the time to take stock, and make the changes that need making to create a space that you love.  Feng Shui is a tool of empowerment.  In a time when so many of us feel powerless and out of control to the things happening in our world, it is one small thing that we can all do.  We start within, and expand out.

Having all this “free time” inside our homes, without the typical distractions of life, is eliminating the excuses we often tell ourselves about being too “busy” to do this or that.  As this word loses its power over us, the opportunity to stop procrastinating and take stock of the things that matter takes precedence.  Turns out that this is a great time to organize that closet, drawer(s), garage, guest bedroom, etc. that you’ve been putting off for ages.  It is also a time to take a mental and physical inventory of the things that you see every day, but stopped noticing or appreciating when life became too full of obligations.

Life can be overwhelming, and there just isn’t enough bandwidth to always give it all the attention that it needs and deserves.  When I feel overwhelmed, I find something small that I can do that will have the biggest impact. Since I don’t have a dishwasher, and I don’t wash things immediately after using them, focusing my attention on my ‘sink full of dirty dishes’ is often my favorite place to begin.  My point is, start small.

To help you get started, I am going to share a few Feng Shui pointers that are universally true, will help you feel better in your space and don’t require any previous knowledge or understanding about Feng Shui.

The first thing that you see when you enter your home, has the biggest impact on how you feel while you are there.  From the front door, the ideal room to see is the living room.  We want to invite the chi, which is just an Eastern word for energy, to chill out and get cozy. . . . to relax.   If the room you see does not make you want to relax and unwind,  it may be creating a form of anxiety and restlessness.

Homework #1 – Walk into your home through your front door.  What do you see?  How does it make you feel? Do you feel overwhelmed?  Do you feel calm and relaxed? What can you change?  Are you willing to make changes to feel more productive and focused?  If yes, keep reading.

Homework #2 – I want you to walk around your house and look for doors that hit each other.  Now, in case you aren’t sure, let me explain.   Are there any doors in your home that either hit or have the potential to bang into each other?  It’s more common than you might think. This happens most frequently between a closet door and a bedroom door.  These are called “fighting doors” and they create an on-going, but low-level type of tension.  There are two ways to combat this, but that is something better addressed in a private consultation.

And speaking of doors, it’s best that they be allowed to open fully.  By this, I mean there should not be any furniture, shoes, or toys preventing them from opening, nor should there be any items permanently stored behind them.  This door problem is similar to doors that bang, but it is easier to fix. Homework #3 – if you have something blocking a door from opening fully, find a new place for it, or get rid of it.

There is a rule in Feng Shui called the “command position”.  This means that when you are working at your desk, lying in bed, cooking or even lounging on the couch, you can see the main door to that room.  This is a huge thing in Feng Shui.  I like to compare this rule to the Vito Corleone character in The Godfather.  He would NEVER be caught sitting with his back to any door.  Being in command position demands respect.  It creates a feeling of safety, security and support.  It is so important on so many levels, that I can’t emphasize it enough.  Homework #4 – are you in command position when you are working, sleeping, cooking and lounging? How does it make you feel? Is it possible to move your furniture or yourself in order to be in command?  Are you willing to try it?  If you absolutely hate the way it feels to be in a commanding position, you can always move your furniture back.  Why not give it a try? It’s not like you have anything better to do now that you get to stay home all day and all night.

And lastly, let’s take a look at your stove.  Do all the burners work?  Do you use all the burners?  Is it clean?  The stove, in Feng Shui, is symbolic of abundance and prosperity.  If it is dirty, or if some part of it isn’t working correctly, that will have an impact on the flow of finances. 

I do realize that these tips and homework may bring more questions than answers, but the first step is awareness.  The next step is action.  Since I cannot do in-home consultations right now, I am offering remote consultations at a discounted rate.  If you are interested in learning more or feel like you are stuck, give me a call, text or respond to this post.  I’d love to help.

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The Relationship between San Pasqual & The Oriental Cranes

There is a phenomenon in Feng Shui that occurs when we are too close to a thing to see it clearly.  We become blind to the things that we notice in our daily surroundings and that is one of the benefits of hiring a professional to analyze a space.  A Feng Shui consultant is able to see the items that have become invisible to our clients.  We are not attached so these things pop out at us.  I know all this and yet, I recently noticed something in my own home that I had never noticed before.  As is usually the case, now that I have made the connection, I have made a swift and non-negotiable decision to let them go.

It occurred to me recently that I have been taking the same artwork along with me to every single place that I have lived since my divorce way back in 2002.  One of my favorites was of two Japanese cranes hand-painted on silk.  In East Asia, cranes are symbols of love, happiness, marital fidelity and longevity that mate for life.

Each time I moved, I made sure to hang the cranes in one of the many relationship areas that can be found in a home, and I have always loved it.  I felt like it was a beautiful symbol of what I should want, a permanent mate for life.  I say it is something that I feel like I should want because this is the message that society teaches and preaches.  We should want to get married, have a family and grow old together.  Coming from parents who divorced when I was five, and then getting divorced myself, this idea of relationships has often felt just out of reach for me.

One day, I was standing near the kitchen and for the first time, I noticed the stark dichotomy of the art on my walls.  On the wall opposite the cranes was a framed poster of a whimsical drawing of the Patron Saint of the Kitchen, also known as San Pasqual.  This piece has been in my kitchen as a faithful companion almost as long as the cranes.  However, for the first time, I actually looked at the scene with fresh eyes.  I don’t know a lot about monks, but I do know that they do not typically get married or have intimate partnerships.

In the print, the monk is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking outward away from the viewer with a halo of sorts around his head. The kitchen behind him is full of pies, fresh loaves of bread and cats.   The cranes and the monk do not go together.  They are sending mixed messages about this area of my life.  It was truly a holy shit kind of moment!  It’s times like these that I just really get goosebumps about the power of Feng Shui.  It reflects the subconscious like no other healing system I know.

Within moments, I had taken San Pasqual off the wall.   As much as I like my alone time, I am not interested in being the poster child of pious solitude.  It has been a few weeks since San Pasqual left.  I can already feel the shift.  At first, the walls looked forlorn and empty.  Now, they are like a clean slate where anything is possible.  The beauty of life is that we are the creators of it.  We are not at the mercy of the unfortunate events that have led up to this moment in our personal evolution.  Feng Shui is powerful medicine when you are ready to shine a light on your shadow self.  Are you ready?