Friday Feng Shui: Creating a Feng Shui Home

Get Rid of Clutter

The first thing to do is to remove all the clutter. And, everyone has clutter. What about that closet you have given up to the dust bunnies? Where do old lawn tools go to die? It’s probably somewhere in your garage.

Hold a yard sale or a swap meet to get rid of stuff you don’t need any more. Donate clothing in good condition to the local charity. Much of the extra stuff contributes to your energy not flowing throughout the house as it should.

Use the Map

Next, create a bagua or energy map of your home. There are four cardinal points (North, South, East and West) and each one can be further divided (NE, NW, SE and SW). You now have eight distinct areas in your home. Each area has a governing element and colors recommended for your use.

Feng shui is applied not only to building harmony and releasing energy in your home but also to cures. Even a home needs to be cured now and then.

Have you ever walked into a place and felt depressed or sad? Something is wrong with the energy in that place, according to feng shui theory. Feng shui cures extend to using crystals, essential oils and representations of the elements to cleanse and bring your home back to a stable energy level.

Create Elemental Harmony

Learn everyone’s governing element. Determine which element each member of your family is most alogned with and use that element in each person's bedroom. The décor will create harmony in everyone’s private space.
In the common areas, bring all of the elements together in balance through furniture, artwork, flowers and other features. Using miniature fountains is a great way to bring water into the picture.

In medicine wheel feng shui, the elements are earth, water, fire and air, and it is that system I will be referring to in the weeks to come as we look at creating a home for your soul.
Is Everything in the Right Place?

Where everything in your room is placed is also important. You want the energy to flow unhindered. Resist blocking natural doorways with furniture. Avoid re-cluttering your home with a lot of furniture or accents. Less is more. Simple changes make a big difference in a feng shui home.

A feng shui expert can give you direction as to how much of one color to use in any given space. It is your job to be open to the changes suggested to create positive energy in your home.

Wordless Wednesdays: The Sea

Blessingway Baby Shower: Bonding with Her Baby

Bonding with Her Baby

Many people believe that we exist with God or the divine or the universe as spirit before we come to earth to be born into our families. Part of the traditional blessingway experience is to have the mother-to-be take a few moments to connect with the baby who is coming to her.

In this blessing ritual, she can make it fit her own belief system, keeping in mind that the idea is to increase her feeling of closeness to her little one. The other women can support her by taking a few moments to connect by spirit with the children they have already or just breathe deeply and send the energy of love to the mother-to-be.

So here, you might create a brief meditation where you have the mother-to-be place one hand on her heart and the other on her tummy and focus on the love that wells up within her, telling herself that her baby feels her love and is safe and warm within the circle of love she has created. You could read the following quote.

"As you talk and play music to your unborn baby, and massage her through your belly, you can make her feel calm, safe, tranquil and loved. When she's feeling this good, her brain is bathed in love hormones such as serotonin, which help her develop into a healthy, happy baby." -Miriam Stoppard, Bonding Before Birth

Friday Feng Shui: The Colors of Feng Shui

There are five elements that are essential to feng shui: fire, wood, metal, earth and wind. Each element is associated with a color or a group of similar colors that represent its energy. You’ll be surprised to see where you favorite color turns up.

Earth – In feng shui theory, the earth represents stability in your life. It helps you to stay rooted and grounded in your relationships. The colors associated with the earth element are beige and a light shade of yellow. Light colors like these on walls will lighten up a space and make you feel as if anything is possible.

Fire – As you might imagine, colors associated with the fire element are red, orange, bright yellow, pink and purple. If you think that pink doesn’t seem to fit, you haven’t seen the “hot” variation. All of these colors will make your heart race and feed your energetic attitude.

Wood – In feng shui, the wood element is an ancient symbol of prosperity. Trees are made of wood and they contain lush green leaves and provide an abundance of oxygen for the people of the world. In keeping with these “life givers” the colors for this element are green and brown. So, it’s not a coincidence that money is green!

Metal – If you’ve ever looked at metal you see how it has definite lines and shapes. In feng shui, metal brings clarity to your life. The colors gray and white represent these qualities.

Water – Water is an element that represents abundance and a refreshing spirit. When you bathe in water it makes you feel clean. Using the colors of blue and black in your home promotes that purity.

Don’t be afraid to add color in your home or office. How and where you use each color is governed by the feng shui energy map of your living area. 

Color isn’t just for the walls but also the artwork, furniture and accents. It inspires your dreams, opens your hearts and brings new life into your home.

Wordless Wednesdays: Autumnal Emotion

Blessingway Baby Shower: Nurturing & Empowering the Mother-to-Be

Nurturing the Mother-to-Be

In a blessingway ceremony, this is the yummy part where everyone focuses in on pampering the mother-to-be. They massage her shoulders, wash her feet, and all sorts of wonderful things.

You could place her in the center of the room in a comfy chair, and choose several ways to pamper her. You want to be careful not to overwhelm her, so don't let everyone jump on her at once, but have each person who will be nurturing her decide in which order each activity will take place.

In fact, for the blessingway experience, in general, you might want to gather together everyone who will be helping you before the big day and plan out how it will all go.

Empowering the Mother-to-Be

One of the features of the blessingway is empowerment through storytelling.

Mothers-to-be hear terrible stories about the horrors that could befall them during pregnancy, labor and delivery. Other mothers sometimes seemed to relish passing on fear as if it pays them back for whatever suffering they experienced.

The blessingway experience counters that by giving the mother stories that honor women and mothers, that increase the mother's trust in the process. Stories of love, of bonding, of motherhood.

Friday Feng Shui: The Elements of Feng Shui

The Five Elements

There are five main elements in traditional feng shui theory. They are wood, fire, water, earth and metal. Each element plays a crucial role within the space that you occupy, whether it is your home or your office. After you have used a compass and your home’s floor plan to create the bagua (energy map) the next step is to look at the elements that control each of the eight areas.

Each element has a particular life area that it influences. Knowing what areas those are helps with creating the design of your home and the use of furniture and accents that demonstrate that specific element.

Fire – As you can imagine, anything that has to do with fire inspires a passion that burns deep within. The fire element also adds a high amount of energy to anything that you do. This includes your work (career), your leisure activities and for couples, your sex life.

Water - Water is a refreshing element. Water flows freely bring with it an abundance of good fortune. In ancient rituals of many cultures, water was used as a purifying agent. Using the water element in your home adds purity, abundance of energy and a fresh feeling.

Earth – The Earth element brings a feeling of stability and security to your home. Mother Earth nurtures all who live on it and within it. The same goes for the earth element in your home – it nourishes each family member.

Metal – You may be wondering why metal is an element. Metal is used to represent efficiency and clarity of mind and purpose. Your work will have both a well-defined purpose and good qualities when the metal element is present.

Wood – The wood element equals health to the body. Healing cures using feng shui include the wood element in their composition. Prosperity in your home is also governed by the wood element.

Each feng shui element serves a different purpose in the home. The associated colors and areas that work best with each element help you to build positive energy throughout your home. Each area will be strong in a particular element and give you a certain feeling when you enter that room.

Note: In medicine wheel feng shui, the elements are earth, water, fire and air, and it is that system I will be referring to in the weeks to come as we look at creating a home for your soul.

Wordless Wednesdays: Mystic River

Blessingway Baby Shower: Opening to Guidance

Opening to Guidance

This is an ideal time for the mother-to-be to begin to seek intuitive guidance from the highest wisdom available. I believe that anyone can be guided to make the very best decisions for herself and her family if she chooses to ask for guidance.

In Bond with Your Baby Before Birth, author Kim O'Neill advises the mother-to-be to make contact with the energy of her unborn child and ask her baby to tell her what he or she needs.

To help her access that wisdom briefly during the blessing ritual, create a meditation sequence that involves deep breathing and relaxation, imagining a peaceful scene, and then, asking for Wisdom (God, an angel, Spirit, a guide, her baby or whatever fits her belief system) to meet her there.

Lead her to ask if there is anything she needs to know today and make plans to return in the days and weeks ahead to talk with this source of wisdom again.

Next Post: Completing the Ritual

Friday Feng Shui: What is Feng Shui?

What is Feng Shui?

Feng Shui is a spiritual system that began in ancient China about 3,000 years ago. There are many complex notions that go into feng shui but a simple paring down of the philosophy has become popular in the Western hemisphere today. Basically, feng shui revolves around the "chi" or energy that surrounds all life.

The words feng shui literally mean "wind water." Both concepts are associated with prosperity and good health in the Chinese lifestyle. To have good energy flowing through your home, use the basics of feng shui.

Basics of Feng Shui

In a given living space, each room has its own energy. The energy has to be allowed to flow freely throughout the items within the room to create a total atmosphere of positive things.

Feng shui theory says that you can affect the energy around you simply by creating a space that is favorable to your life. This involves knowing the five feng shui elements, feng shui colors and how the energy moves throughout each room in your home.

Wordless Wednesdays: The Lake

Blessingway Baby Shower: the Worry Jar

Aromatic Blend

Lavender, chamomile and rose are nurturing, comforting essential oils that can help everyone release fear and worry.

Add 10 drops of each to a carrier oil, or lotion, roll the bottle from side to side to blend it, pass it around to each woman present to put into the palms of her hands, rub them together and lift them to inhale, and create a very nurturing experience that will help each one let go of negative feelings.

The Worry Jar

Another possibility that can help everyone release worry and fear is to create a worry jar. They can write out their concerns, fold them up and place them in the jar.

The jar, then, placed in a central place, serves as a powerful reminder, every time anyone sees it, that she is letting go of fear and indeed, has released it, already.

The next part of the blessing ritual involves empowering yourself and opening to guidance.

Blog Plan for October

For the month of October, this blog will continue but in a slightly changed form. Mondays will still provide Native American spirituality (specifically, info about the blessingway ritual, which I think is so easily adapted and used as a healing experience for anyone, pregnant or not).

But October Wednesdays will be wordless Wednesdays and will offer video inspiration for meditation.

On Fridays, I will offer you basic information about feng shui.

Then, in November, we will likely return to our regularly scheduled programming :).

See you Monday!

Jeanine