Basic Feng Shui Cure #5: Use Heavy Objects for Stability

Note: This series explores the 9 basic Feng Shui cures.
 
Feeling unsettled? Does your life lack stability? Do you jump from job to job, or always fear the next big change, simply because you're tired of flitting around without direction?

If you crave stability, placing heavy objects -- or symbolically heavy objects -- in various segments of the Ba Gua can help.

Outdoors, you can employ large stones or boulders to activate different sections of the Ba Gua. For instance, if you want greater job security, place a boulder in the career section of your yard. However, make sure the rock is not too close to your front door, or you will risk feeling “blocked” and stuck.

If you fear that your partner may leave and want a more stable marriage, place a heavy object in the marriage section of the Ba Gua. If your health constantly fluctuates and want greater consistency with good health, a stone, statue or rock garden in the health section of the Ba Gua will attract better health and longevity to you.

Heavy Objects Indoors
Indoors, a small rock garden that is symbolically heavy can suit the same purpose. You can activate different sections of your home, a room, or your desk using heavy objects.

The Chinese often rely on a symbolically heavy object called a “Yu” to add stability to a certain area of life. A Yu is a small Chinese ink pot with stones in the bottom. Placed under the bed in the master bedroom, a Yu will add a sense of stability and security to your love life and also help you sleep better.

Learn more about how to add stability to your life with heavy objects.

Is Your Home “Making” You Spend Money?

There are many reasons people spend money -- even money they don't have. J. Money offers fantastic budgeting and financial tips on his blog at Budgets Are Sexy.com. But if you've been following financial advice and still can't seem to attract wealth into your life -- there could be other factors at play.

Feng Shui is an ancient eastern art and science that helps people harness the chi (life energy) of their living environment to help them achieve their goals and live a more fulfilling life. Unfortunate home layouts, floor plans that prevent chi from moving smoothly through a space, “missing” areas of your home and other “Feng Shui don'ts” may contribute to your financial issues.

The Universe is energy (chi). We are energy. Even money -- and the things money can buy -- is made up of energy. By making sure all the energy in your space is aligned to work together, you'll see greater success in all areas of your life.

Feng Shui Results
I recently visited the home of a client who is an aspiring musician and actress. She confessed she hadn't been writing much music and hadn't seen much success in her career recently. We moved her piano to the “wealth” corner of her living room, and encouraged the flow of chi around that space. This video of my audition for a Feng Shui televison program on Oprah's new network, OWN-TV, reveals the amazing results she experienced.

Feng Shui Factors that Block Wealth -- And How to Fix Them

Let's look at some common factors in people's homes that may be blocking their financial success. Do any of these situations sound like your home?

Staircase leading directly to your home's main entrance - A tall, narrow staircase that begins at your entryway causes chi to rush out of your house rapidly -- and with it, your opportunities for income and, quite often, your cash. If you find yourself spending money beyond your means, getting hit with emergency expenses regularly, and if money seems to leave your hands as quickly as it enters, the staircase could be contributing to the problems.

To slow the flow of chi down the staircase, hang wind chimes  from the ceiling at the bottom of the stairs, between the staircase and your front door. The best wind chimes have five tubes, representing the five elements in Feng Shui.

Bathroom in clear view of entryway - If your bathroom is in the clear view of your entryway, you may experience wasteful spending. Your money may literally get “flushed down the toilet.” Keep your bathroom door closed, and hang an octagonal mirror on the bathroom door to deflect the chi.

Dirty/unused stove - Your stove, along with your home's entryway and your master bedroom, is one of three most important areas of your home, according to Feng Shui principles. Your stove represents your wealth, career, and how people view you in the world. If your stove is dirty, broken, or you don't use it frequently, you may find your career and income adversely affected.

Keep your stove clean, and make an attempt to use all four burners regularly -- even if you're only boiling water.

You can also place a mirror behind and to the side of your stove, in order to “multiply” your wealth.

Missing “wealth corner” - Feng Shui consultants use a plan called a “ba gua,” which divides your home into nine separate sections. If you lay out the ba gua over your home's floor plan, the Wealth corner will be in the left back corner if you are standing at the doorway and looking into the room. If chi can't flow freely through this corner -- or if this area of the room is cluttered or missing -- it can lead to money problems. Placing a water element, such as a small fountain or a fish tank with live fish, in this corner will encourage the flow of chi and help improve your financial situation.

Use Your Intention to Attract Wealth
Feng Shui consultants use a combination of practical means and Feng Shui cures to help clients improve their situation. Mindful spending and following the principles outlined by J. Money on this site, combined with following these easy Feng Shui tips, can help you improve your financial situation.

3 Ways Your Entrance Could Be Hurting Your Health and Opportunities

How do you feel when you enter your home? Do you feel uplifted, yet relaxed at the sight of the first room you enter, or depressed, stifled and unmotivated?

Do you frequently welcome visitors who love “dropping by” your home? Or do people look uncomfortable when they enter and leave quickly?

How your home's entrance makes you and others feel could also reflect the effects your home's entrance has on your life, health, wealth, success and happiness.

Let's look at 3 ways your entrance could be blocking your path to success.

Dark, narrow foyer - Chokes chi, limiting opportunity. May cause respiratory problems or difficulty with childbirth. A skylight, bright light on the ceiling and painting the entry light colors will visually open the space. Hanging a mirror on the wall you see as you open the door will create a sense of depth.

Foyer wall too close to the door - Inhibits chi, causing residents to feel as if life is a constant struggle. To create a sense of depth and permit chi to flow more freely, hang a mirror on the wall.

Front door faces back door or window - Chi (as well as money and opportunity) rush through the house too quickly. To disperse the chi and permit positive energy to linger in your home, hang windchimes, a Feng Shui Crystal or plant between the two openings.

3 Simple Ways to Feng Shui Your Front Door

We've often said that the entrance is one of the three most important areas of your home. But what about your front door, specifically? When you stand in your doorway, you should feel a sense of balance in the home from all directions. Here are three more Feng Shui factors to consider when you first enter your home.

1. The front door should open into the widest part of the room. If it doesn't, there are a number of cures you can employ. You can re-hinge the door so it does. If this is impractical, you can mirror the wall facing the door opening, so you can see the rest of the room from the doorway. You can add an automatic light that comes on when the door opens.

If a bedroom is located behind the direction of swing of a front door, this could lead to unrest for the people who sleep in that room. Hang a shopkeeper's bell on the door to avert physical danger and misfortune.

2. If your front door opens onto a long narrow corridor along the center line of your home, you may have financial problems caused by chi rushing rapidly in and out of the home. Hang windchimes or Clear, Faceted Swarovski Feng Shui Crystals along the corridor to slow the flow of chi. You can also use mirrors to give the illusion that the corridor is wider.

3. The best color for a door is green; this color will bring fortune and luck to the people inside the home or apartment.

Feng Shui a Factor in Celebrity Divorce?

TMZ reported that Sandra Bullock and Jesse James finalized their divorce last week. Meanwhile, an article on ShelterPop revealed that Jesse James is selling his 3,600-square-foot Mediterranean-style villa in Sunset Beach, California. 

Photos and videos of the house and property reveal some interesting Feng Shui mistakes that may have contributed to the couple's divorce and, as Sandra Bullock called it in the TMZ article: “discord or conflict of personalities.”

Exposed Beam in the Master Bedroom: While the bedroom provides symmetry with matching nightstands and table lamps, an exposed beam directly above the center of the bed spells trouble for a couple. Beams on the ceiling overhead, virtually dividing the bed in two, create a sense of downward pressure and can cause a relationship to split.

Corners pointing directly at the front door: When you view the video on the real estate brokers' site, you'll notice a corner pointed at the front door as soon as you enter the home. A pillar corner also points at the front entryway. These type of sharp corners represent sha, or killing chi, and can create misfortune for the residents of a home.

Anyone who follows celebrity news knows that a number of factors caused Jesse James and Sandra Bullock to divorce. But a quick glance at their home reveals that bad Feng Shui could have been a contributing factor.

Do you have relationship problems that a Feng Shui consultation may help you resolve?

What's the First Room You See in Your Home?

The first room you see in your home can affect how guests feel when they enter your house or apartment, and also the areas which will get the greatest focus in your life.

While the three most important areas of a home are the entrance, master bedroom and kitchen, the other rooms can have significant impact, too -- especially the first room someone sees when they enter the home.

The following is a list of rooms in many houses or apartments, and how their placement near the home's main entrance can affect the home's inhabitants according to the principles of Feng Shui.

Foyer: A large, spacious foyer is a good way to welcome opportunities into your life. Foyers should be well-lighted, clean and inviting. You can make a space even more welcoming with the addition of live plants or wind chimes.

Living room: A living room is very auspicious to have near your home's entrance. Residents -- and guests -- will tend to relax and feel at home.

Study: If you have a study, den or home office near the entrance, expect residents to be focused on education, learning and fulfillment.

Kitchen: If the first room people see when they enter your home is a kitchen, your family life will be focused heavily on food. In fact, it may even encourage over-eating, especially with children. Guests, too, will come only to “eat and run.” If this is the case in your home, you can place a screen or other barrier that will obscure the view of the kitchen from the front door. This is especially important if you can see the stove from the front door.

Bathroom: It's not auspicious to have a bathroom in clear view of the front door. This can affect health and wealth adversely. You may find your money being “flushed away.” Your health may suffer, and your home's residents may spend too much time on personal care in the bathroom. They may become obsessed with their appearance. Placing a mirror on the outside of the bathroom door can deflect this negative energy. Remember to keep the bathroom door closed, too.

Bedroom: Having a bedroom in clear view of your home's entrance could be making you feel tired all the time. Hang a mirror on the bedroom door and see if your energy increases.

Would you like to know if the home or apartment you're thinking of moving into will help you achieve your goals? I can help with home selection as part of my Feng Shui consulting services. We will consider the layout of the rooms, the architecture and landscaping, the neighborhood, and the overall chi of the space in order to help you select a residence where you and your family can thrive.

Feeling Blocked? Five Ways You Can Change Your Surroundings to Get Unstuck

Do you feel a sense of depression or a heavy, oppressive weight as you step through your front door? Often, bad chi affects us the moment we set foot in a space and can block us in every area of life.

If you feel “stuck,” evaluate these areas of your home or apartment, and take some positive action to help the chi flow.

- Your street
- Your landscaping/neighboring buildings
- The path to your home
- Your front door / entryway
- Your stove

Your Street - If the streets in front of and behind your apartment or house run uphill, especially if your house is below the road level, you may feel blocked. Illuminating your yard with spotlights pointing up “lifts” the chi of your property and removing that feeling of pressure.

Your landscaping and neighboring buildings - If a hill or mountain sits directly in front of your home, you'll feel the pressure of having a huge obstacle blocking your way to fulfillment. Similarly, if you live across the street from a tall, imposing structure -- a high-rise apartment building or a house much larger than your own -- you'll feel “dwarfed” in its shadow. Hanging an octagon mirror on your wall facing the house difuses the energy.

The path to your home - The pathway to your house should be free of obstructions. If you have a tree that “blocks” the path to your front door, it will block the chi and opportunities, too. You don't want the path to become narrow as it approaches the entrance to your home. If shrubs line the path, keep them well-trimmed. A path that is gently curved, and gets wider (rather than more narrow) as it reaches your front door, is best to attract opportunities and make us feel as energetic inside our home as outside of it.

Your entryway - Just as the path to your home should be open and spacious, the space as soon as you enter your home should be free of obstructions. Paint the entryway in bright colors and make sure your door can open a full 90 degrees. You can see 8 other ways to Feng Shui your home's entrance in this video.

Your stove - Our stove represents our career, how we make our living and how others view us. A stove in which all four burners don't operate properly can make the occupants of a space feel “stalled.” If you want to get out of your own way so you can begin “setting the world on fire,” add mirrors behind and to one side of your stove in order to multiply the wealth you can produce.

Feng Shui Colors: A Room-By-Room Guide

One of the least expensive ways to give your home new life is a fresh coat of paint. Even those who live in apartments can often convince their landlord to let them paint, as long as they return the walls to plain white before they leave. The investment is minimal -- less than $80 buys three gallons of paint, rollers and brushes to do a few rooms.

But what are the best colors to paint using the principles of Feng Shui? It depends on the room. When you select colors for the floor, walls, and ceiling, make sure to employ the Five-Elemental Cycle using three colors. Also, don't think a ceiling has to be white; light beige or even brighter colors that complement the walls add depth and creativity to a room.

Entryway/Foyer - Small entryways are enhanced by lighting and light, bright colors. Off-white and shades of blue, pink or green represent hope and welcome. Green, black or red are auspicious colors for the front door. As with a fence, avoid a white front door. You can learn more about Feng Shui in your front entrance in this article.

Kitchen - The best color for a kitchen is white, the color of purity and cleanliness. White permits the food's true character and colors to show through -- bright reds, greens and yellows on a white pallet. The kitchen's basic element is fire, and metal (represented by white) overcomes fire to better balance the chi.

Avoid black and gray (water element), because it destroys fire, and avoid red, because it will make a kitchen too “hot,” literally and figuratively. A red kitchen may be prone to fires while the cook will be prone to temper flare-ups. Read more about Feng Shui in the kitchen.

Bedroom - The color of your bedroom will depend upon your age, personal goals, and whether your room is the master bedroom or not. Pink is best for a master bedroom, because the marriage position on the bagua is placed between fire (red) and metal (white), and pink is the blending of these two colors. Pink or red sheets and blankets ensure a “fiery” marriage bed.

For single people seeking a mate, pink or peach is an auspicious color for the bedroom.

For anyone else, subdued hues of greens and blues promote rest. You can learn more about how to use Feng Shui in the bedroom in this article.

Children, on the other hand, thrive in rooms of green, which create peaceful calm and serenity while encouraging learning and knowledge. This article talks about Feng Shui in a baby's nursery.

Dining Room - If you have a dining room where you eat and entertain as a family, pinks, greens and blues work best to encourage conversation and stimulate the palate. There's a reason many restaurants have green decor -- it stimulates the appetite. Avoid blacks and whites unless the goal is to lose weight.

Bathroom - The bathroom should be a sanctuary where you go to prepare yourself to face the day or retreat at night to prepare for sleep. The best colors for a bathroom include lighter shades of green, blues, pink, or white. Black or gray, which correspond to the water element, make good accent colors. Or, you can use pastels or white with bright accents to enliven the space. Remember, as one of the first rooms you visit in the morning, the bathroom is one of the three most important areas of the home in Feng Shui.  

Painting your home in pleasant, Feng Shui colors helps balance the chi within yourself, members of your family, and your home.

What Can I Expect During a Feng Shui Consultation?

If you're having problems related to your career, finances, romantic relationships or overall mood, a Feng Shui consultation might help. By altering your environment and surroundings under the watchful guidance of a professional, you'll be able to see positive changes take place in your life.

When a Black Sect Feng Shui consultant visits your home for a consultation, expect an interactive experience. Black Sect Feng Shui employs both transcendental (spiritual) and mundane (connected to everyday life) methods to improve the flow of chi (energy) through your home.

The Feng Shui Ba Gua in Your Home
Black Sect Feng Shui does not use a compass to determine the trigram positions or the direction in which to overlay the ba gua over a space. Instead, the Feng Shui consultant will determine the position by which chi enters your home (usually through a front door, but sometimes through another door), and lay the ba gua over the space with the front door in one of three front sectors of the ba gua.

He will also find the central palace (tai chi position) of your home, and assess the placement of important rooms (including the kitchen, bathroom and master bedroom) in relation to the central line and central palace.

After completing a site survey, in which he uses his knowledge of Feng Shui, observational skills, intuition and other techniques to assess the chi in the space, he will assess your Feng Shui needs in relation to your personal chi and the dynamics of your home.

Working with your Feng Shui Consultant
At the start of the consultation, the Feng Shui consultant will discuss with you the areas of your life you feel need help, where your priorities lie, and what your future goals are.

Be prepared to think -- and speak -- in depth about the areas of life covered by the eight Trigrams and the tai chi position (the central palace). You'll want to consider strong and weak areas of your life, and how your surroundings may affect these areas. It's a good idea to brainstorm your goals in regard to these eight areas. It may help to ask yourself the following questions:

- What role does money play in my life? Do I have enough? Do I spend it (or lose it) as quickly as it comes in? Is increasing my wealth a major goal right now?

- What are my goals in regard to children? Do I want to conceive right now? Do I desire better control as a parent?

- Do I feel creativity lacking in my life?

- What is my reputation at work and in my community? Is it important to me that I'm highly regarded amongst my peers?

- Am I stuck in my career or advancing quickly? What aspects of my business life would I like to improve?

- Am I looking to further my education or take part in career development? Is this a priority right now? How are my children doing in school?

- How is my love life and my relationship with my partner? Or am I seeking a romantic relationship?

- How are my relationships with others in general? Do people help me when I need it? Do my friendships have a fair amount of give and take?

- What is my overall health? Do I have any illnesses or ailments? Do I have a lot of energy everyday? Do I sleep well at night?  

- What is my overall mood? Am I typically in good spirits?

Intention in Feng Shui
Since intention plays such a large role in Feng Shui, it's important to visualize the improvements you'd like to make in your life, and to know that the Feng Shui cures an expert implements will help you to realize these positive changes.

Learn more about working with a Feng Shui consultant to experience your full potential.

How Spring Cleaning Can Improve The Feng Shui In Your Home

Black Sect Feng Shui deals in both the mundane as well as the emotional and spiritual. Feng Shui consultants use intuition to assess the flow of chi through a space, and, if we find a home unsuitable, seek ways to remedy problems. We also emphasize the importance of intention when we implement a specific Feng Shui cure.

It is with this intention in mind that it's important to talk about clearing clutter from a space -- and what better time to think about spring cleaning than the start of spring?

Benefits of Reducing Clutter
A clean and uncluttered home makes guests feel welcome and makes its inhabitants comfortable. It's often easier to think clearly in a neat and organized room -- and that includes the desk in your home office.

Clutter represents stagnant, confused chi. It may be difficult to make a decision in a cluttered home, or even to make positive moves toward growth and personal development. Our clutter also has our emotions tied to it. We may not want to let go of it for emotional reasons -- and that leads to our feeling “stuck” in our life.

Good Feng Shui is characterized by free-flowing chi -- not too fast, and not too slow. If a human being can't walk across a room because furniture is filling the space with no wide pathways or toys, books, and random clutter blocks the path, the chi can't flow freely either.

Clutter in Your Attic, Basement or Garage
When we own a home, we tend to place objects we don't use -- or intend to some day throw away -- in our attic, garage or basement. Even if we can't see it, this clutter can weigh us down.

Clutter in the Bedroom, Kitchen and Entryway
Clutter in these three areas is the worst of all when it comes to free-flowing chi and Feng Shui, because these three areas of the home are the most important in Feng Shui. Clutter in the bedroom can prevent a good night's sleep.

In Feng Shui, the kitchen represents our career success and how others perceive us -- getting rid of clutter in this area and always making sure appliances (especially the stove) are clean, can lead to increased wealth and career success.

Our entryway creates a first impression and affects the chi that flows through the rest of the house. If the chi is blocked by clutter at your front door, it can't move freely through the rest of your home in a positive, life-affirming way.

How to Clear the Clutter
Begin by sorting through your belongings. Does everything serve a purpose? That purpose may simply be that it makes you happy -- that's okay. Objects that don't serve a practical purpose or bring you joy when you see them should go. Recycle, donate or, if you truly can't find a use for it and don't think anyone else can, either, throw it away.

With the remaining objects, find a place for everything and put it there. Keep everyday items in easy to reach places. Store clothes and other objects used seasonally neatly in closets, the attic or garage, where you can find them easily when you need them.

When you're finished using something, put it back. It really is as simple as that to keep clutter at bay and let chi flow freely through your home.