Awaken the heart in your home with Feng Shui

Tending to your environment with Feng Shui is a radical act of self-care and essential for achieving your goals

When you’ve reached a stage in your life where your time is more your own and with more flexibility as to how to spend it, sometimes its also the case you’re not sure how best to use your new-found freedom.

When you look around your home it doesn’t help either.  What you see may feel flat, uninspiring and dated.  Rather than fostering your desires and ambitions for the future, your current patterns of living are dampening and constraining them. 

It’s time to awaken the heart in your home. What you’re experiencing is being stuck in a time-warp; attached to the past you’ve outgrown while the potential of what is available to you is not visible while your outer world (home environment) and your inner world (your vision of the future) are not aligned. 

An unlikely person to have summed up the powerful effect the environment has on us is Sir Winston Churchill when he said: 

The shape of things to come

From a Feng Shui perspective, Sir Winston is absolutely right.  Suffice to say, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire where Churchill grew up certainly shaped the ambitions of the great statesman he became, with its grandiose and commanding presence.

But how do our homes shape the rest of us? 

Looking around you perhaps there are some adjustments to be made.

You may see the remains of the career animal you once were along with the reams of study that helped you become it. 

Perhaps you see the lingering of your partner’s corporate job which dominated his days while you supported from the rear with home and family – and now this is no longer the case.

Maybe you see the residue of family life that once filled every room in the home with young bodies that have now left, or are receding. 

Cameos such as these are common place.  The question is what can be done to shift the energy of your living space to bring it into alignment with where you are now and provide fresh hope and promise for the future? 

The good news is there is a creative and empowering way to achieve this through the practice of Feng Shui.  Ancient wisdom for contemporary well-being.  It can serve to stimulate your heart and vitality while simultaneously awakening more heart in the home.  It’s no coincidence that the centre of the home is called the heart(h).

What your home needs now is a facelift – but not plastic surgery. 

A facelift that resonates deeply with who you are and how you desire to spend your days joyfully fulfilled, knowing that your walk on this earth has significance and purpose to it.

Live well longer

The places we inhabit have a profound effect on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being – more than we may realise, although it didn’t escape the notice of Churchill.  Anywhere we have occasion to sit, rest or sleep regularly – for any length of time – will leave its mark on us the most.  For example the bedroom, the kitchen, the home office.  As a radical act of self-care, these are the areas to attend to first from a Feng Shui perspective.

While a well-being practice like yoga aims to improve the flow of life-force energy (otherwise known as prana or ch’i) to nurture the mind, body and spirit,  Feng Shui is a well-being practice which improves the flow of ch’i in your living environment to nurture you and your life goals. 

Another great master, Albert Einstein, put it this way:

One cause for celebration is that everyone sheltering under the same roof benefits from it, whether they ‘believe’ in Feng Shui or not.  It’s not just the responsibility of the champion of the home who instigates the Feng Shui appraisal. 

When you consciously and mindfully enhance the environment, you make things better for everyone living and working there.

Inclusive, practical well-being

Most people have somewhere they can call home, in some form or another.  Like having a set of teeth and brushing them, Feng Shui applies to everyone. 

Whether you rent or own your home, when you first visited it you no doubt believed it would serve you.  After you moved in, you began to shape and refine the space to meet your needs even further. 

Over time however there is danger that your home becomes so familiar that you stop ‘seeing’ or experiencing it.  You grow accustomed to things as they are – even those niggly things you swore to fix after you moved in get sidelined. 

But like you, your home wants to grow and evolve.  It loses heart when it’s neglected.  To keep pace with the changing seasons of those who live in it, the home needs to adapt and change with the times too.  

What you can’t see

It’s not just the things that are visible that impact you, even after you have stopped ‘seeing’ them.  The apparent ‘empty space’ around you is full of content too.  This includes the psychic residue (thoughts and feelings) of the people who have occupied the space before you – what we call ‘predecessor’ energy. 
  
Imagine walking into a room where people have been in conflict their energy lingers like smoke.  If the conflict continues it leaves an imprint that permeates the empty space, the walls, the furniture – unless the space is ‘cleansed’ of it.

Good questions to ask before taking on a new home are:  What sort of people lived here?  What did they do?  Were they happy?  Why are they moving on? 

If it’s the case you are continuing to live where your relationship ended or an illness endured, consider clearing and cleansing the space as a priority, in order to remove he residual negative energy and start again with a clean slate.

A client shared a shocking story which illustrates this point.  Bear with me as I tell it.  How they came home to find their lodger hanging from their cherry tree.  The tree that had been sturdy and healthy prior had shed a branch within a month of the incident.  Perhaps it had been weakened by the man’s weight alone.  I also believe the tree was intelligently ‘cleansing’ itself of predecessor energy before it impacted the remainder of the tree. 

Encouraging the flow

There is a specific way in which Feng Shui appraises the well-being of the environment and that’s by observing the quality of ch’i energy in it.  This is a funny thing to say because ch’i is invisible and constantly in motion so the only way we can measure it is by its effect.   

A sensitive person can sense the congestion or stagnation of ch’i even when the effect is invisible or concealed behind the closed doors of a cupboard.  Even if you can’t feel it, it will still have an effect on you until the stagnation is resolved.

I advised a client to empty their densely, over-populated armoire before they hung a mirror over the mantelpiece opposite (also a recommended ‘cure’).  They decided it was easier and more exciting to hang the mirror first and were surprised to find they had a law suit on their hands in a short space of time. 

The mirror was magnifying the hidden contents of the cupboard, which included the files of an unresolved court case.  I recommended they remove the paper work in the armoire, review it immediately and take responsibility for their part in it – then spring clean the insides.  They did.  The court case proceeded to reach a conclusion without further animosity, after lying dormant for many years.

You have influence

To improve the quality of your life or change the direction it is taking, you can influence the quality and flow of ch’i in your home. 

One small, conscious adjustment to your outer environment in this way can make a significant impact on your inner world and to your experience of life for the better.

Take a moment to perambulate the home, starting at the front door.  See if you can identify where the ch’i is blocked and where is it flowing.  Where there is vitality and movement and where the ch’i is stagnating.  You might recognise these areas without getting too technical about it because they will irritate or trouble you.

Feng Shui can be likened to a form of environmental acupuncture.  The acupuncturist removes the blocks to a healthy ch’i flow in the body.  With Feng Shui we do the same in the environment where blocks occur. 

My job as a consultant is to diagnose the problem, recommend the ‘cures’, and point out the transformative effect you can expect as a consequence. 

Whether your brief is a preventative one – to make sure there is nothing untoward occurring at home that could adversely affect the health, wealth and happiness of those living there. Or, whether you have a specific intention for Feng Shui, such as to sell the house, find a new one, attract a life partner, get pregnant, improve a health issue, sleep better, get a better job, or boost your income.

The Feng Shui recommendations that follow address your brief and the results are therefore measurable.

Living the vision

The Chinese appear to have cornered the market with Feng Shui because most of what we read and hear comes from their traditions.  That’s because they were the first to document what they observed and understood. 

However, every traditional culture has its own understanding, and protocol when it comes to Feng Shui, including the Indians, Native Americans, Japanese, Scandinavians, and Celts.  Even the Ancient Greeks and Romans were known to worship the goddess of the hearth and refer to her as Hestia and Vesta respectively.  Therefore the ancient wisdom and principles of Feng Shui are universally understood and enable a space to thrive or suffer.

To have a fighting chance of fulfilling your heart’s desires, consider the role Feng Shui can play in strengthening your heart and the heart(h) of the home. 

Start by recognising the ways you’ve outgrown the space around you and allow it to receive a ‘facelift’ that correlates with the future you’d like to create. 

Your environment should reflect who you are becoming not who you were.  That’s why I call this practice ‘living the vision’.

Contrary to popular media, Feng Shui is not about applying a few rules, like keeping the toilet seat down or placing a money plant in the Wealth corner.  It’s about understanding the relationship you have with the space around you. 

When your home is at odds with the direction you’d like to take, it’s better to act now to rectify it.  The longer you continue to head off at a tangent, the more damage can occur and the more time-consuming it is to correct your course.

When your surroundings resonate deeply with who you are, you will feel a corresponding ease in your body while living there.  Shifting the furniture around, painting the walls a different colour, and placing accessories with the right intention, is a visceral experience.  You’ll instantly feel brighter, lighter and happier. 

To remain indifferent to Feng Shui is to turn your back on a well-being practice that is relevant and useful to everyone.  It could represent the missing link to your success and fulfilment in life. 

Even if you don’t know exactly what’s in your heart and where it wants to lead you, the very act of instigating Feng Shui can bring you clarity, focus and vitality so that very soon you will.  So take heart.

I once left a bachelor on his doorstep with 12 bin bags full for the charity shops and a massive grin on his face after we’d spent a morning Feng Shui’ing together.  He wanted love in his life so we made space for it and rearranged his home accordingly.  Within a month he found romance.  Within a year he’d married her.

From my heart(h) to yours, Mary