When we initially think of Feng Shui, most of us think of it as a way to rearrange our living rooms, but a second glance tells us there is a lot more to it than that. Feng Shui is an Eastern ideal on how your environment influences your life and inner self. These ideals are applied in terms of indoor living spaces, like homes and offices, and the theory behind these ideals says we can incorporate and move around certain pieces to encourage improvement in different areas of our lives. We are going to take a deeper dive into Feng Shui basics, and how you can apply them to your living spaces.
What is Feng Shui?
Feng Shui might seem a little bit unfamiliar to you, since it comes from the opposite end of the globe. The practice of Feng Shui stems from Taoism, which is an eastern belief that all human life is deeply connected to the environment around us. Of course this means outdoors, but also indoors. When applied to our spaces indoors, Feng Shui can be a great way to situate your home to invite personal growth and the right energy in. To learn more about Feng Shui, here are some basic terms and concepts you should know:
The Commanding Position
The commanding position is going to be the spot furthest in the room from the door, but not in direct line, so most likely diagonal from the door in either direction. No need to measure, though! You’ll want to put certain important items in the commanding position. The bed, desk and stove are all recommended because they represent three important areas in your life: Rest and self-care, your career and nourishment.
Feng Shui Bagua
Think of a bagua like a map of the way the energy in your home is laid out. The bagua is part of Feng Shui basics, in that it shows you how to reorganize and situate your home. However, depending on your school of thought, the bagua you follow can vary slightly.
So what does this mean? If you look at a bagua, there are different areas of a home that represent different aspects of your life. For example, the center of the room represents your health and self-care, as it’s the center of everything that goes on in your life. If you look into that position in the room on your feng shui bagua map (whichever one you decide to follow), you’ll see, for example, that if you want to improve things within your family, you should add one of the elements that promote “family” to wherever the map says is the “family” area of the room.
So in the “family” area, you should add something with a column or rectangle, or something that is green or blue. The theory is that by adding items with the elements that align with family to the part of the room that represents that facet of life, your family life will start to improve. So you can use the bagua of your choice to figure out how and what to add to a few sections of the room that represent what you want to improve upon in your life, and once you add to that, you’ll see improvement.
The Five Elements
The Five Elements are also a big part of Feng Shui in that they tie into the bagua, and can help you encourage positive energy into your home. The Five Elements are earth, water, wood, metal and fire. Now, this doesn’t mean you need to have a cup of water in each room! It’s more about the essence of these elements that you should harness to embrace Feng Shui basics.
Here’s what we mean: The earth element and the bedroom both relate to self-care and wellness. So since they tie in together, you should try and incorporate this into the bedroom. Just to give one example, utilizing flat shapes and Earth tone Feng Shui colors, like brown, can help you tie in the earth tone element into a room.
Tying in Bagua and Earth Elements
This might seem like a lot to take in at first, but you don’t have to make each area of your home perfect. The best way to tie all of these concepts together is to pick 2-3 areas of your life you’d like to improve upon. Whether it’s health, family relationships, your love life, or something else. Then look at your bagua and the earth elements and figure out how to align objects to encourage energy flow to those desired areas of your life.
The great thing is: You can always rearrange and make changes if you’d like to change the energy flow to another facet of your life!
Feng Shui Home
So what are some ways you can simply add some of the ideas behind Feng Shui into your home? We have some Feng Shui design principles that will help you begin to add aspects of it into your home.
De-cluttering
This is a huge thing to check off your Feng Shui basics list. Make your space as open and useful as possible by de-cluttering, especially around doorways. Doorways in Feng Shui represent how energy enters the home and each room, so you want to make sure your doorways can open fully and that the energy can flow smoothly. That also means making the area around each door clean. Make sure the floors are mopped and swept regularly. Generally, the more space you can create for yourself to move freely around the home, is the most ideal.
Adding Plants
You may or may not have a green thumb, but you should know live plants are essential to the philosophies of Feng Shui! Of course, the whole point of Feng Shui is to be connected to your environment, and there is no better way to do that than by bringing in plants. If you don’t know much about plants, don’t worry. There are many varieties of gorgeous house plants, some that need low-light, some that need high-light and everything in-between; even the least plant-savvy person can manage to keep them alive. All you need to do is take a trip to your local nursery or florist and ask a few questions to find out which plants might be right for the space in your home.
Be aware of your color choices
Color choices in a room can impact so much. From how big the room feels, to how you feel when you are in the room. Colors also can align with The Five Elements. So if you want to incorporate The Five Elements of Feng Shui, color would be a great place to start. Metallic tones are great to incorporate for wisdom and clarity, for example.
Landmark Realty Group
At Landmark, we love learning new things, especially when it comes to how we can make our houses feel more like homes. That’s why we love the ideas behind Feng Shui basics and how you can use them to do some decorating. We even have a broker who is very educated in Feng Shui named Pam Nellis! If you need some Feng Shui advice or really any other advice on making your mountain house a home, let us know. It’s what we do!
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