The Importance of the Feng Shui Living Room

Why your first feng shui priority should be a feng shui living room!

A lot of people gravitate toward a feng shui living room, bedroom, or garden, and there are good reasons for these preferences. Gardens naturally lend themselves to serene chi, with their beauty and connection to the earth. The bedroom has a profound impact on our health and love lives. But the living room is vitally important as well, especially for homes with families.

Why Living Rooms Matter

Why does a living room matter? Well, think about it: where does your family spend most of their time? Especially their together time. Every other room in your house tends to be isolated to either a specific purpose (eating in the kitchen, for example) or a specific person (such as a child’s bedroom). The living room is the only room in your house that exists specifically for, well, living.

That’s why a feng shui living room is so important. How you arrange the living room affects your entire family, and that affects the chi throughout your house. Although some experts would recommend starting with the bathroom or bedroom, I always recommend taking a strong look at your living room first, especially for homes with families.

The Feng Shui Living Room

So what does a feng shui living room look like? Well:

• it takes into account each of the people who will be using it and incorporates something they love

• it’s structured around people, not machinery (for example, having all the furniture circling a television screen is very bad mojo for feng shui)

• it emphasizes comfort in its furnishings, and probably has plenty of blankets and cushions around to boot

• there’s room for everyone in the family, plus guests, to sit comfortably

• No one has to sit with their back to the door (or any entrance to the room)
  

In addition, the perfect feng shui living room has some extra touches:

• The five elements balance (in other words, there are touches of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water throughout the room)

• Something in the room speaks welcome to guests

• It is clean and clutter free

• Something alive is in the room besides its inhabitants -- a goldfish, a green plant, or what have you
  

If you follow these tips, you’ll achieve the perfect feng shui living room in no time at all!

Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

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Feng Shui for Bedroom Happiness

Use feng shui for bedroom comfort, romance, and relaxation!

When people ask about feng shui for bedroom and bed, they usually have one of two things in mind: relaxation and romance. And with good reason: these are the two things you should be saving your bedroom for!

This isn’t just a feng shui idea. Most sleep experts recommend keeping your bedroom sacred to rest and romance. In fact, some theorize that many sleep disorders originate from trying to do too much in your bedroom (acknowledging, perhaps, that a busy energy isn’t conducive to a restful one -- science catching up with feng shui at last?).

Feng Shui for Bedroom Rest

In this area, feng shui for bedroom comfort coincides with a lot of advice from scientists and sleep experts -- so even feng skeptics can enjoy these tactics without worrying about looking strange to their family and friends (hint, hint: it’s a great place to start a wishy-washy friend or family member along the path to feng shui!).

Follow these tips and enjoy a more restful, relaxing bedroom:

• Never work in your bedroom: no laptop in bed, studying on the floor, or desks in the corner. In those situations where it’s completely unavoidable, create a physical barrier (such as a folding screen) between your workspace and your rest space.

• Don’t use your bedroom for exercising -- it creates too active an energy.

• Don’t watch TV in bed. In fact, don’t even have a TV in the bedroom: the electromagnetic energy isn’t conducive to sleep.

• Avoid having mirrors in the bedroom as these can reflect sha chi back at you in your sleep.
  

• Position your bed so that you can see the door but your feet aren’t aiming straight at it.
  

These simple tips will help you create feng shui for bedroom relaxation. But what about...

Feng Shui for Bedroom Romance

Obviously, we mainly use our bedrooms for sleeping. But bedrooms also tend to be the romantic center of any couple’s relationship, so it’s worth keeping a strong romantic energy in the room, too. Even single people will benefit from emphasizing romance in their bedrooms, especially if they’re “looking” -- it can help create a receptive energy.

Follow these tips to emphasize romance:

• Keep the love and marriage sector of your bedroom clean, free of clutter, and full of pink, red, candles, rose quartz, pairs of items -- anything that evokes love.
  

• Treat both sides of the bed with equal respect and make sure one partner doesn’t dominate the room.

• If single, make sure there is physical space in the room for a prospective partner -- ie, space in the closet, the night stand, etc.
  

• Keep one or two romantic keepsakes (NOT from ex-lovers) in the room to help establish the mood.
  

By following this advice, you’ll keep your bedroom sacred to love and rest, enabling you to get more out of both. Remember, feng shui for bedroom life follows the same principle as all feng shui: emphasize the positive chi!

Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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Feng Shui Tips for the Bathroom

Use these feng shui tips to keep your bathroom from sucking away your health and prosperity!

When people ask me for feng shui tips, they're often worried about the bathroom. And well they should be: the bathroom is an incredibly difficult topic in modern feng shui. The ancient discipline never accounted for indoor plumbing, and so no allowances were made in centuries of studying chi for a room with this one's... well, particular uses.

Draining Away

The bathroom actually isn't so much a source of sha chi because it's dirty -- although that can definitely be a problem, and many Asian cultures actually have the bath and the toilet in separate rooms. Ask where the bathroom is in a Japanese home, and your confused host may think you want to interrupt your visit to take a bath!

No, the main reason the bathroom becomes problematic is because it has so many darn drains. Drains are never good for chi. Their only purpose is to suck things away as quickly as possible, and unfortunately, that includes chi. That's why it's so important to observe certain feng shui tips in the bathroom.

Fast Feng Shui Tips

There's no "good place" for a bathroom in feng shui, but some places are worse than others. If the bathroom is in any sector you're trying to emphasize, especially the wealth, love, or health areas, it can literally destroy your ambitions. If it's directly over your front door or kitchen, or just off either, that's a particularly inauspicious location.

However, there are some feng shui tips that will help you minimize the bathroom's impact on your chi:

• If the bathroom is in a particularly bad location, hang a full length mirror on the outside of the door (and always keep it closed). This helps to visually redirect chi away from the bathroom and prevent its loss.
  

• Use grounding items, such as earth-based cures, in the corners of the bathroom. Heavy ceramic vases, containers of any kind, and many types of crystals are effective examples of these tools.
  

• Hang a faceted crystal in the center of the bathroom to absorb and redeflect chi.
  

• Keep the toilet and bathroom door closed at all times, and try to cover the drains in the shower and sink as well (or at least close the shower curtain to create a physical barrier for any stray energy).
  

• Hang a 3 inch round mirror on the ceiling (use double sided tape) directly over the toilet. This will redeflect draining chi (and also makes an interesting conversation piece when you have guests!)
  

Following these feng shui tips is the quickest method I know of to undo any potential damage to the status of your home from draining bathroom chi!


Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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Should I Use a Feng Shui Consultant?

Wondering about the secrets of feng shui? Maybe it's time for a feng shui consultant!

If you're thinking about a feng shui consultant, congratulations: you've taken the first step towards resolving your life and creating a more fulfilled energy within your home. Feng shui is an incredibly powerful tool and, as a feng shui consultant myself, I have often seen the incredible changes it brings about.

Why Use a Feng Shui Consultant?

There's a lot of feng shui you can handle on your own, but there are times when it's nice to get some outside help. Some of the benefits of a feng shui consultant include:

• Experience -- consultants have been doing this for a long time and understand what they're about
  
  
• An outside opinion -- sometimes, you're too close to a situation to see it properly. A feng shui consultant can often sense things about your home that you can't simply because you live there!
  
• Accuracy -- consultants have studied the craft and know what they're doing. You don't have to worry about a bad compass reading messing up your whole house.
  
  

On the Other Hand…

Of course, there are many reasons people choose not to use a feng shui consultant, too. I understand these, even though I do think (obviously) that the benefits often outweigh the costs. Some of those costs include:

• Actual cost -- feng shui consultants charge a hefty fee. Meanwhile, for a scant amount of money, you could purchase a book on the subject (such as my own!) and take on a do-it-yourself project.
  
• Lack of conviction -- if you're just starting out with feng shui, you might want to see it in action for yourself before you spend a bunch of money on one.
  
  
• Inconvenience -- depending on where you live, it may be difficult to find a feng shui consultant (or at least one who knows what they're talking about!)
  
  

Whatever you decide, remember: your consultant is only that, a consultant. The ultimate decisions about your house should rest with you, not a feng shui consultant or anybody else.




Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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Choosing a Decorating Style

Decorating with Feng Shui doesn’t mean you have to decorate in Chinese!

Sometimes when I talk to my friends and family about feng shui decorating, they go kind of funny on me. The principles intrigue them, but they don’t want to hang dragons and Chinese coins in their ultramodern homes. What they don’t understand is that the principles of feng shui decorating are definitely not limited to Chinese style!

The best way to illustrate this is through a client I helped recently (who has very graciously given her permission). Her entire home was decorated like something from a design magazine: lots of white and neutral coloring, everything done in very sleek, modern lines. She was going through a difficult time in her life and hoped feng shui might help -- as long as it didn’t mean compromising her decorating style.

Which, of course, it didn’t -- making her uncomfortable in her home would hardly have been good feng shui. Instead, we focused on making simple changes that brought feng shui principles to play in her own style. Some of the changes we made included:

• Replacing artsy black and white pictures with artsy black and white photos of her with family and friends (we used great silver frames we found in the bargain bin of a local discount store)

• Rearranging her plants to put them in areas more in keeping with the ba gua

• Using some “hidden” decorating to attract positive chi (for example, she now has a small cluster of Chinese coins tied with a red ribbon under her couch cushion, which is located in the very center of her wealth sector).

• Creating pairs of things she loved in her relationship and marriage area (for example, she had a pair of interesting modern art-esque candleholders on her dining room table, which we relocated to a small hall table in her relationship sector).

When we’d finished decorating, you could barely tell we’d done anything. The visible changes in the house were miniscule and it still reflected her unique decorating style, but you could feel the difference in the feng shui!


Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!


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Creating a Feng House

There's more to creating a feng house than just observing the basic principles of feng shui!

Creating a feng house isn't difficult, but it does take a bit of focus and work. While the basic principles of feng shui are necessary to creating a feng house, there's more to it: most of your chi comes from the people in and around your home.

• Given that, there are a few tips you can take to purify your home and create a warm, welcoming, and homey atmosphere for you, your family, and your guests.
  
• Make sure the entrance of your home is particularly welcoming. Never use it for storage and put coats and shoes away as much as possible. Touches like water fountains, green plants, or attractive artwork make a visual welcome when you return home.
  
• Use "air purifiers" to absorb negative chi in your feng house. You can go traditional with this (green plants, candles, incense, a bowl of sea salt) or more modern (a HEPA filter, for example). Small amounts of black in your color scheme also help to absorb negative energy (although too much black creates it).
  
• Observe the old adage "never go to bed angry" to a tee. No matter how mad you are, it's not worth the negative energy that will fester through your house that night. You don't have to resolve the argument, but make sure you give your son/ wife/ husband/ sister a hug and tell them you love them all the same.
  
• Root out and eliminate sources of sha chi in your home. Whether it's an "obligation" item you're keeping around because it was a gift from a rich relative or tokens from failed relationships or their ilk, this sort of negative energy can permeate your entire home, destroying any chance of a feng house.
  
• Balance the elements in your home and your life. Even if you're an overwhelmingly fiery person, you know that you need some water around to keep you balanced. This sort of technique will create a more even energy in your home.
  

Combining these tips with basic feng shui will help you to establish the perfect feng house!


Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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Feng Shui Tips to Beat Common Problems

Great feng shui tips and solutions!

If you're looking for feng shui tips, you've come to the right place! I've been studying feng shui since I was at my Grandma's knee, and I’m only too happy to share my experiences.

The best feng shui tips have to be given in person, since it's hard to know what a home's -- or a person's -- trouble is without seeing them. But there are some general feng shui tips that can help you troubleshoot problems in your life!


Problem: I can't meet that special someone!

Solution: Try applying common feng shui images for love: pink and red, the dragon and the phoenix, candles. Focus these in the southwest corner of your home and get rid of any images of one person or tragedy in those areas. For more ideas, get your free report on creating love with feng shui by clicking here.


Problem: My bathroom is in the worst place possible -- it's sucking my love/energy/money down the drain.

Solution: Use earth symbols and crystals to divert the negative energy. As with many feng shui tips, sometimes the best solution is to, in a sense, ignore the problem: a full length mirror on the outside of the bathroom door deflects energy so that it's like your bathroom doesn't even exist.


Problem: My home is an odd shape, and there are corners pointing at me from all directions.

Solution: Whenever possible, soften those corners with fabric wall hangings, folding screens, or some sort of physical barrier between the corner and wherever people sit, eat, or relax. If that's completely impractical, try hanging crystals or wind chimes to soften the energy.


Problem: I love the exposed beams in my house, but I'm worried they're creating unsettled energy.

Solution: You're right to worry, but fortunately there's an easy fix: hang wind chimes (ideally made of bamboo) from the beams to deflect and slow the chi.


Problem: My city/town is terrible -- it's impossible to find good feng shui cures.

Solution: Many feng shui tips can be used without buying a single thing, or by purchasing common items like pillar candles. If you like the idea of trying out some legitimate feng shui merchandise, try shopping online someplace like Jade Market.


No matter your problem, there's usually a way around it -- feng shui isn't designed to create messes you can't resolve. Hopefully these feng shui tips fix some of the more common problems.



Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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Hints for Feng Shui Decorating

It's easy and fun to practice feng shui decorating!

If you've been wondering how to decorate your home, why not consider feng shui decorating? Not only does it create a unique, attractive appearance throughout your house, it can help create calm, serenity, and even improve your chances of gaining love, money, and health.:The Basics of Feng Shui Decorating

There's nothing complicated about feng shui decorating. Of course, if you want to get into all of the traditions, the ba gua mapping, and everything else feng shui encompasses, you'll have to dig a bit deeper. But if you're simply looking for some positive feng shui symbols you can use for your interior design, look no further!

• -Dragons: Dragons are considered strong symbols of protection. Using a dragon in feng shui decorating creates an Oriental feel to the room and a strong feeling of security, safety, and protection throughout the house.

• Water fountains: A water fountain creates a sense of peace and tranquility, but it's also a yang symbol because it creates such an active energy with its movement and force. A perfect symbol for anywhere you want to create a sense of peace but maintain your vibrancy.

• Candles: Candles activate fire energy, which is very strong and energizing. They are both useful and beautiful, which makes them perfect for feng shui decorating. Never leave a candle unlit, though. You don't have to burn it often, but light it at least once -- unlit wicks symbolize wasted potential.

• Lucky Bamboo: Bamboo is a fantastic plant. It brings luck, prosperity, peace, and a host of other great attributes. You can read more about lucky bamboo in another article on this blog found here.

• Coins: Coins are often used in feng shui decorating to create a feeling of prosperity and encourage the influx of money. Hanging coins, especially Chinese coins, can bring a stronger cash flow into your home.
  

These are just a few of the symbols you can use in feng shui decorating. Check out Jade Market, my favorite online source of feng shui decorating supplies, if you want to find some.



Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!


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Lucky Bamboo: What It Is and How to Use It

If you like feng shui, you may have wondered: what's the big deal about lucky bamboo?

Bamboo is truly an amazing plant, and it's no wonder lucky bamboo became a staple of feng shui. It's an incredibly strong, flexible material, and a staple of Chinese construction. Since feng shui is a combination of construction, astrology, and design, it's no wonder this hardy, attractive plant plays such a key role.

The Basics of Lucky Bamboo

Feng shui masters recommend lucky bamboo not only for luck, but for creating security and energy. Keeping bamboo in your home provides a burst of healthy green and creates a sanctuary from the busy world. It also, as you can imagine, brings fortune and prosperity.

Bamboo has other significance in feng shui. Because the plant is so strong, it represents good health, and its strong wooden qualities make it a powerful aspect of the wood element.

The Significance of Numbers

Bamboo usually comes in specific numerical groups. You'll never see a grouping of four bamboo plants, for example (at least, not from anyone who knows what they're doing) because four is an unlucky number in China. The most common grouping is three: a three stalk lucky bamboo carries three elements -- happiness, wealth, and long life -- that are considered to be very desirable.

Care of Bamboo

Lucky bamboo isn't bamboo, actually -- it's a miniature version of a similar plant called dracaena. But that doesn't really matter. The point is that lucky bamboo is incredibly easy to take care of. It doesn't even require soil to grow, so even if you have a black thumb of death like me, you should be able to grow it no problem. Just plunk it in clean water and change it now and then, and your bamboo will thrive.

Fortunately, bamboo is also a very attractive plant, especially combined with a pretty vase. So enjoy your lucky bamboo and let its benefits wash over you!

Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!

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The Complete Beginner's Guide to Feng Shui

Feng shui is the perfect way to achieve greater health, life, and love!

Feng shui is an incredibly powerful school of Chinese thought combining astrology, construction, and decoration. It's based on manipulating the energy, or chi, surrounding you to create a more fulfilled life and a sense of serenity and peace in your home. 

We achieve this balance by using the ba gua to map the areas of our homes that influence various areas of our lives. Energy is all around us, and it has a powerful affect on how we live and interact with others. Taking small steps to correcting your personal energy can make a huge difference!

If you're new to feng shui, there are some great ideas to get you started. Don't worry: no one expects you to do everything at once. Any action you take toward balancing your home's energy is a positive step.

• Begin by clearing out all of the clutter in your home, or as much as you can bear to part with. There's nothing like clutter to trap negative energy, and cleaning up is the first step in feng shui (I know, it's boring -- but it has to be done).

• Surround yourself with images you love and cherish. Don't hold onto things you don't like because they were gifts or you feel an obligation to them. Release that energy along with the items in question.

• Create special touches in your home. Even if it's just a candle in the living room or a book you really love on the nightstand, creating small, powerful changes will alter the chi around you.
  

Obviously, this is a very cursory guide to feng shui: it's what you can do to get started, not how you should proceed. If you want to learn more about feng shui, explore this site -- there are dozens of resources to get you going.


Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!


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The Feng Office

How to create the perfect feng office

Have you ever wondered what the perfect feng office would look like? If there's one place we all need more calming chi, it's at work: otherwise, the stresses and pressures of our jobs catch up to us pretty quickly. But never fear: there are definitely ways to create a feng office.

Your Desk

For starters, try to keep your desk placed appropriately -- that is to say, in the command position: where you can see the door, but aren't directly facing it. Otherwise, your energy will drain through the open doorway.

A feng office never involves sitting with your back to the door, either -- it's not a secure place to work from. If you absolutely must work with your back to the door, or facing a wall, hang a mirror on the wall in front of you so that you can see what's going on behind.

The Atmosphere

The way you decorate your workspace can have a massive influence on how you feel at work. For instance, do you have a heavy shelf hanging over your desk? Feng shui tells us that it will come to represent the pressures and stresses waiting to crash down on you. Are there unlit candles decorating your workspace? Those fresh new wicks symbolize wasted potential -- even if you don't like burning candles at work, you should light them once to avoid the drain of chi.

Creating a feng office is about finding the right balance between energy and calm. You don't want an overwhelmingly yin office, or you won't have the energy to get anything done. On the other hand, an overwhelmingly yang office will leave you feeling nervous and stressed.

The solution? Create a balance of yin and yang elements. Bright red and calming blue can combine with sharp, pointed fire objects (strongly yang) and a water fountain (very yin). Usually, we don't recommend combining fire and water in the same area as they'll dampen one another -- but in this case, that's exactly what you want.

Just as in other areas of your life, the feng office balances elements with yin and yang to create a suitable mix of energy and calm.

Interested in feng shui? Check out my book, "Feng Shui Secrets for a Fulfilled Life!"

Looking for great deals on feng shui products? Try Jade Market!


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