Time for Feng Shui Healing. We can all learn how to balance energy and clear stressful mental or emotional baggage, right?
Often times, we become overwhelmed with constant stress or fatigue. This can lead to psychological turmoil and irrational decision making. In fact, emotional exhaustion can have significant impacts on your personal life, work relationships and even day to day behaviors.
There are many different occurrences that cause deep emotional exhaustion. Some of the most impactful include:
Enduring a significant life change (divorce or death of a loved one)
Being a caregiver
Experiencing financial strain
Giving birth or taking care of children
Juggling too many responsibilities
Living with a chronic illness
Working long hours
Working in a high-stress environment
So how can we combat the negative effects of emotional baggage in our busy lives? Take a second to consider your home life with the positive forces of feng shui.
Feng Shui is a commonly known decor style that places a strong emphasis on the arrangement of furniture, colors, shapes, materials, and accessories throughout the home.
Popular principles of this ancient practice include dividing the home into directional divisions based on specific areas of life and placing ‘cures’ (also known as adjustments or remedies) within the space to better activate or enhance energy.
The Bagua Map
The most frequently asked question regarding feng shui is, “where do I start?” For the answer, let’s take a look at a Bagua map.
The Bagua map is the most pivotal tool when implementing feng shui in your home. Use the map to improve overall energy, identify or focus your innermost intentions and create a nourishing, sacred space that enhances your mind, body or soul.
The map is useful for determining the types of energies that correspond with the different areas in life that most affect our day to day struggles. By balancing this energy, negative vibrations are less likely to get stuck and accumulate in living spaces we spend much of our time in.
For example, yin and yang energy is a mainstream theory to feng shui. The image of the yin yang represents the two forces of life — the light and the dark.
A similar, more practical comparison could be made about wellness and finding a work-life balance in your life. One cannot coexist without the other so finding a harmonious equilibrium between the two is the best choice.
Immediate surroundings have a great influence on both our conscious and subconscious experiences so to avoid bad energy from building up, take a look at how to optimize for each sphere of life and which cures work best in those areas.
There are nine life areas to consider in your home. They include career, romantic relationships, family, health, wealth, friendships, creativity, knowledge and reputation. Depending on what life area you’d like to focus on, there are specific colors and elements to include within that space.
When optimizing for wealth, include items and accents in the color purple as well as objects that are known to bring good fortune, like money trees. In the reputation sector, fill the space with red hues as well as any accolades you may have, such as diplomas or awards.
In the far right corner of your home, improve energy for relationships by placing items in pairs and focusing on the color pink.
To activate the family sector, place green accents and look for items made of wood to symbolize growth and sustainability. Yellow is the color for health and is maintained by keeping the area full of vibrant, fresh flowers.
When regarding creativity, try adding objects that are white in color and promote inspiration.
Knowledge is most satisfied with blue hues and should include items that foster learning. Black is the color for career and success, so include accents in this color and have plenty of mirrors for self-reflection.
Finally, in the near right section of your home, use a gray-toned palette and fill the space with pictures and frames to foster friendship.
Furniture Arrangement
Once you have mastered these basics, work on the arrangement of your furniture next. Feng shui strongly emphasizes object placement in its technique to ensure that energy flows freely from space to space. The energy that is blocked or incapable of transferring becomes convoluted, making it negative in nature.
The Living Room
The living room is the perfect place to start and you may already own many of the items required for living room arrangements. However, if you are going to refurnish, look for sofas and other focal pieces with smooth, round edges to prevent straight lines and “poison arrows” of energy.
Accent Pieces
End tables, coffee tables, and lighting should also be void of sharp corners and pointed angles to prevent energy from being too narrowly focused on a specific area.
In addition to curved edges, furniture should be pulled away from beams, windows, and walls to increase security within a space. To further improve stable surroundings, keep the front legs of the furniture on a rug. Gallery walls and getting rid of clutter further prevent the negative effects of poison feng shui arrows or blocked energy flow.
Other Tips
There are several other simple tips that will improve not only feng shui but also your quality of living — keeping stress and frustration at bay.
Improve Air Quality – Healthy feng shui spaces value the importance of wellness as a way to boost positive energy. One easy way to achieve this is by focusing on the air quality in your home.
Prevent colds, the flu and other airborne illnesses such as allergies by using a humidifier to dampen the surrounding atmosphere and keep dust or dander from permeating the air.
Stay Organized – Though the process of getting organized can be quite a hassle, it will surely pay off in the long run. Dispose of random clutter like junk mail and random litter to make more room for the things that matter.
By having a place for everything, you ensure the safe passage of energy throughout your home and hamper stress from creeping up on you in everyday life.
Lighten Up – Having effective light sources in your home allows energy to fill necessary spaces. In spaces with yin energy that should help you feel tranquil like the bedroom and bathroom, use soft lighting techniques like lamps and candles.
In areas where you should be productive such as the kitchen and office, utilize yang energy and brighten up the space to stay focused on the task at hand. Just make sure you stay environmentally conscious and connected to the elements by installing energy-efficient lighting.
No matter how you feng shui, this technique provides excellent practice at taking a personal inventory on what you need or want in life.
By analyzing each sphere of life, you’re able to see where you are lacking or succeeding most and make adjustments accordingly to better manage stressful circumstances that come with everyday routines.
Identity Magazine is all about guiding women to discover their powers of Self-Acceptance, Appreciation, and Personal Achievement.
We ask that every contributor and expert answer the Identity questions in keeping with our theme. Their answers can be random and in the moment or they can be aligned with the current article they have written. In that way, and as a team, we hope to encourage and motivate each other, thus inspiring you to Get All A’s.
What have you accepted within your life, physically and/or mentally? Additionally, what are you still working on accepting? Now, we’re not talking about resignation, rather stepping into, embraced, and owned.
I have accepted that sharing my knowledge of home interiors with others is an effective way to help pass enrichment in many areas of healthy living.
By staying up to date on current lifestyle trends, I am able to learn more about myself and help others discover new passions.
Appreciation is everything. What have you learned to appreciate about yourself and/or within your life, physically and mentally? On the other hand OR in contrast, are there elements of who you are that you’re still working on appreciating?
I have learned to appreciate many things in life – one of them being hardship. Each obstacle I am able to overcome I learn something new about myself. I am still trying to overcome my inability for perfection and instead valuing all of my flaws.
Share with us one of your most rewarding achievements in life? Tell us not only what makes YOU most proud but also share the goals and dreams that you still have.
One of my most rewarding achievements in life is becoming the dog mom of a rescue. My pup brings so much joy into my life 🙂 In the future, I’d love to travel and see more of the world!
Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash
