Understanding Feng Sui

"We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us" -Winston Churchill

What is Feng Shui?

Do you believe in or practice with Feng Sui? Even if you don't know yin from yang, you can understand and benefit from Feng Shui, one of today's hottest trends. More than just an interior decorating style, Feng Shui is a life philosophy. Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice ~ all about rearranging your environment in an auspicious manner. Auspicious literally means "with the stars." Put another way, when you arrange to be in the "right space" at the "right time" and you "do the right thing," your life is good. Feng Shui, literally translated as "wind" and "water" in Chinese. It is based on the idea that the universe is filled with invisible, cosmic energy, called chi. Chi is in constant motion, flowing around us and our surroundings. The goal of Feng Sui is to harness this life force and encourage it to flow in beneficial ways. Good chi can promote happiness, health and prosperity. Bad chi can cause sickness, strained relationships, and financial problems.

Do you need a Feng Shui home makeover?

Feng Shui has specific rules for the optimum location of a home or business as well as the placement of furniture. While each environment is unique, Feng Shui brings awareness of how to position yourself to provide greater support, efficiency, and psychological well being. If you're really serious about Feng Shui...another way to go about this is to schedule a professional consultation with a "feng shui practitioner" and be sure that he/she not only understands these principles but must also have a highly developed intuitive sense, to see and feel how the chi behaves in each particular situation. Following are some basic highlights of the Feng Shui approach to your home which I found from the web.

Start at the entrance. Put a light at your door. For the most part, brighter is better. Lights are comparable in effect to miniature suns. Lights are a positive force. Also, hang a wind chime outside your door. Have the chimes make pleasant sounds to resonate with beautiful energy to channel into your place. Red flowers outside of the door tend to attract money. Outside gardens complete with rocks and sculpture are encouraged as is cultivating yourself.

Inside the home, start to think of your desk chair as your seat of power. A decent chair and good desk space will go a long way to help you organize your life and create a more abundant future. Fortify your desk by hanging a mobile overhead. Also, to command and control, position the chair so that you view the door and windows. Unless you want to live in fear, avoid facing the wall and sitting with your back to the room.

The chef's station is that place in your kitchen where you whirl around preparing your meals.It's the place that's central to your stove, refrigerator, chopping block, etc. Fortify your chef's station by hanging a mobile overhead.

The stove represents your wealth. Do all of your burners work? If not, fix them. Also use all of your burners equally. If you only use the front burners, you're only accessing half of your income potential. Install a mirror either alongside or behind your stove. Thus you will symbolically double the amount of burners and also double your income potential.

Mirrors play a central part of Feng Shui. Better mirrors are bettor mirrors. Mirrors should be one piece, not sectional. Mirrors should be hung so as to not cut off the head of the tallest person in the household. If you hang your mirrors low, you will create pain with taller people. Round mirrors are good, octagonal mirrors are exceptionally powerful.

Your bed is critical. You spend about a third of your life there and can have a much better time if you position the bed so as to see the door and command the room. To improve your love life, hang humming birds over the bed and include some original sensuous art works in the bedroom.

By now you have noticed that mobiles, wind chimes and other hanging ornaments play a central role in Feng Shui. They are good for raising the overall level of energy and for circulating good vibes. For example, if you want to receive more phone calls, install a mobile over your phone, If you want to receive more correspondence, install a wind sock or chime over your mail box. If you want people in a large office to cooperate, and enjoy more team work, install a mobile in a central location in the office.

Briefly, some other good Feng Sui concepts are: Install a fountain, install an aquarium, get a couple of halogen lamps, illuminate prized possessions, create good first impressions when you enter a building or room, keep the place in good repair, avoid clutter.

It is good to have a variety of lights and lighting. For example, there is great benefit from low voltage lighting such as is found in some little "christmas" lights and forms of outdoor lighting. These low voltage lights set up electric fields that are helpful in keeping out unwanted psychic vibes. Consider a string of lights or two on your porch, in a nearby tree, or inside of your home, perhaps decorating house plants.