Creating Soothing Environments with Essential Feng Shui, November 11, 2004

It is a real act of courage to open your Feng Shui eyes and take a detailed look at what your home is saying about you. It usually leads to extraordinary insights, immediate calls to action, and deeply empowering inner and outer changes. ~Terah Kathryn Collins

Feng Shui (fung shway) is a 3,000-year-old Chinese design philosophy that encourages you to analyze and change your environment for personal growth and relaxation. As your mind starts to change, this change is reflected in your environment. You can also change your environment and adjust your viewpoint or even bring more success and peace into your life.

Terah Kathryn Collins is an internationally recognized consultant, speaker and teacher. Her writing style is highly creative and filled with positive energy. Her ideas are enlightening and comforting and they changed how I viewed my environment. Through the application of her ideas you can improve your creativity, change your health, bring positive energy into your home and create a home that reflects who you are becoming. This is a practical approach with personal flair. You can personalize the ideas to suit your goals. There are 125 black-and-white and color photographs to give you ideas and to explain the text.

Dance of Rainbows Crystal

After a quick introduction to this art, Terah Kathryn Collins introduces "The Bagua Map." This was great fun to draw (This just looks like a tic-tac-toe board drawn over a footprint drawing of your home.) and by the time you have your house mapped out, you can start to map your office and bedrooms. Then, you can make notes around the drawings. Additional chapters include:

Yin and Yang and the Five Elements
Romancing the Home - art, color, crystals, lighting, living things, mirrors, nature objects, sound makers, water features and wind dancers.
The Front Entry and Foyer
The Living Room
The Dining Room - Nurturing Body, Heart, and Soul
The Kitchen - Nourishment's Birthplace
The Family Room
The Home Office
Bedrooms
The Sancturary
Bathrooms
Laundry Rooms and Garages
Attics, Basements and Other Storage Areas
Hallways and Stairways
Windows and Doors
Cleansings and Blessings - Creative ideas for making a home yours, especially if you are not the first owner.

This book also explains why you can buy dried flowers, but presents the idea as a long-term arrangement instead of a permanent arrangement. There are also cautions against placing crystals in windows with direct sunlight and other cautions that can keep your home safe.

Essential Oil Blends for Feng Shui

I realized the power of Feng Shui personally when I moved my desk so I could see the door and the window. The gift of a wonderful Zen fountain and the placement of a lamp on the desk also brought more serenity to my writing experience. It is amazing how much more relaxed my relationship with my husband has become just because I moved my desk. Now I can see him entering our home and even when I'm deep in a writing trance, I can acknowledge his presence and Princess Sasha cat now enjoys looking out of the window while I'm typing. Air can flow more freely into the room and the scent of flowers from the planter drifts over the desk as I type. Just one simple example of how Feng Shui changed my immediate existence. The desk on page 167 was my guide for arranging a more effective writing space.

Personally, I'd recommend making changes over time. Moving furniture could be the first step and then you could purchase items over a few months or years. Even the author explained how she made small changes at first and planned for changes in the future when she could afford to buy a new couch, etc.

Half the fun is making changes over time and seeing wonderful energy start to flow into your life. The author promotes inner and outer work. She explains how "you" breathe "the magic" into the changes you make. When your environment is more positive and nurturing, you will feel more creative and this can lead to lasting changes.

If you love to decorate you are going to love this book! This is my favorite Feng Shui book because it has ideas that have changed my life.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

Ideas about Feng Shui that I've tried recently and they worked: 

Take a mirror out of your bedroom. They say having a mirror by a bed hurts your heart. My bedroom
does feel better now and I placed the mirror in another location outside the bedroom to open up a space. 

Items I'm still working on: 

Front Door - Plants with jade color
Plants in bathrooms
8 Plants on deck
Crystals

BTB Feng Shui for Enhancing Energy, August 28, 2005

David Daniel Kennedy's Feng Shui Home Study Course is based on the BTB (Black Sect Tantric Buddhist) Feng Shui taught by Grandmaster Lin Yun Rinpoche. The Ba-Gua map used in this course is the Later Heaven Ba-Gua (octagonal arrangement of trigrams).

A compass is not used so it seems easier to understand. The Ba-Gua is the compass of the heart. I compared the Ba-Gua map to the one I had been using and it was the same one that had worked well in the past. Once you draw a floor plan, you can analyze your environment and decide on colors, placement of items and additional "cures/actions" for areas of concern to add a new vitality and Qi/Energy to your home.

Some of the Sessions Include:

Meditation for Qi Circulation
The Human side of Qi
Natural Healing Practice
Kitchen
Social Center
The Front Entry
Landscaping
Freeing Your Life from Clutter
Folklore Secrets

There are ways to enhance energy through seasonal rituals like sprinkling orange peels on the floor. The rituals draw on a mindful approach and with the power of intention they can become a powerful force leading you towards more success. Transcendental solutions are reinforced with body, speech and mind.

Areas of the house you can enhance include: Career, Knowledge Cultivation, Family, Wealth, Fame, Marriage, Children and Travel.

Each area has colors and items, like the Fame area has the color red and you could add more candles for the "fire" element. The phases of energy from wood to fire, earth, metal and then to water is taught in a way that is easy to understand.

This program emphasizes intention and there are segments that include practices to enhance your energy and gives methods for shaking off negative karma. The Heart Sutra Meditation with a heart-calming mudra (hand positions you may recognize from yoga) was incredibly interesting and I could feel energy moving in my body. After the meditation, I felt renewed and it was the same experience as when you work with Chakras and visualize colors. You will go into a beautiful peaceful state that renews and refreshes.

There are times when you will be using your voice to heal your body (chanting, mantras (sound vibrations) and other unique sounds) and this course goes into healing practices that make complete sense. There is also information on the colors to wear if you want more romance in your life and a variety of ways to solve real-life issues.

You may find yourself changing the positioning of your house numbers on the front of your house, putting more candles in your kitchen or moving your bed to the commanding position in the room.

David Daniel Kennedy encourages the reader to seek balance when removing clutter. While listening to this course, I reorganized my entire house and threw out at least nine bags of items I no longer needed. "Nine" seems to be a significant number in Feng Shui. This is great to listen to as you sort out your file cabinets. I feel like a weight has lifted.

The illustrated study guide provides diagrams and additional information. There are examples of how people changed their home and instantly realized a new sense of comfort and security.

One of the issues discussed in this course is how living in an apartment can affect your life. The people above us (who used to fight and were very noisy) finally moved out and the energy in my apartment below is now much calmer and we seem to be able to relax more.

David Daniel Kennedy's Home Study Course is comprehensive and healing. It goes beyond simple furniture placement and color design and enters the realm of spiritual considerations. The meditations can be adapted for any religious belief system. The information could help you Prevent a Divorce, Enhance a Career, Allow more Financial Security into your life, Create a more Harmonious Living Space or even Clear out Negative Energy left by former tenants. There is a "Home Finders" checklist if you are looking for a new home. Lot, house shapes and color schemes are discussed.

The first time I tried Feng Shui it was to increase income and I remember putting a fountain by the front door and then receiving a surprise check in the mail. I now see the connection between intention and the physical reality of my life.

A good way to imagine how this will change your life is to imagine a dark room and then to imagine a room filled with sunlight and yellow flowers and the scent of oranges. There are subtle ways to increase energy flow and more dramatic ways. You can decide on what you wish for and then you can create the means by which the results will manifest themselves. This is all about making you feel happy, safe and comfortable in your home.

After 24 audio sessions, Feng Shui will be much less mysterious and you will be able to apply the principles to your daily life. The book is wonderful to refer to after listening to the CDs, but you may find yourself listening to various CDs numerous times because the information is so interesting.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

Feng Shui for Skeptics

Lotus Blossom Essential Oil Diffuser

Before reading this book I wondered why you could have wood furniture (see page 13) and not dead plants in the form of potpourri (you can still have dried flowers - page 118). You might also be wondering if you have to use all of the five elements in each room. Kartar Diamond says you don't have to include all the elements in each room and explains how you should not try to decorate each room with equal does of the five elements of water, wood, fire, earth and metal. I didn't actually realize I even had significant metal items until I realized how many tables and bookshelves I have that are made of metal. So, after reading this book, I now understand which element to increase. I have enough wood, but need to increase the "water" and "fire" elements.

Should you paint a front door red?
Should you place a mirror behind a kitchen stove?
Is it harmful to store things under your bed?
Can books in your bedroom cause insomnia?

This book will be especially helpful for designers, interior decorators or anyone considering the purchase of a new home. There is a detailed chapter on using a compass. You may want to hire a professional if you are serious about an extremely accurate reading. The "Actual Case Study House Types" shows how specific house types can contribute to romance or even divorce.

If you enjoy this book and are looking for pictures of Feng Shui furniture placement , I think you will also enjoy The Western Guide to Feng Shui: Room By Room. I have arranged my desk like the picture on page 167 and found the book to be especially helpful in setting up my desk space and living room. After reading a few books on this subject, I've started to realize that you may even be currently practicing a form of intuitive Feng Shui without even reading a book on the subject. Many decisions about furniture placement, just feel right.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

Chinese Style

Lyrical Beauty, September 18, 2006

"Lacquer is a natural sap from a sumac tree...growing in southern and central China between elevations of 1200-1500 feet. Applied in layers over logs, beams and furniture, its protective qualities preserve the wood over time. And, its transparent sheen enhances surfaces, while reflecting light." ~pg. 33

Chinese Style is a mingling of ancient beauty with modern functionality that still embodies a spirituality evident in the rich symbolism within the designs. Camphor wood cabinets, apothecary chests, softly rustling silks, intricate screens, fragrant teas, exquisite porcelain and richly colored lacquered antiques fill the pages with beauty.

You can imagine yourself wandering through an Antique store filled with warm colors, rich crimson accents and comfy soft fabrics covering chairs in which you could read for hours. The details on the chair on page 44 are very intriguing and the complexity almost becomes serenity.

The main chapters include:

What is Chinese Style?
China's Export Trade
Recognizing Authentic Chinese Antiques
Poetic Imagery as Design Symbols
Rooms that Welcome and Entertain
Rooms that Nurture and Heal
Rooms that Celebrate Memories
Beauty in the Details

The pictures throughout are the highlights, but each section describes the designs and gives a deeper understanding to the furniture's purpose that goes beyond simple form and function. The bathroom with a fireplace looks very inviting and the author explains how a statue of an elephant gives the room a sense of peace and prosperity.

Sunamita Lim also explains the meaning of bats, bees, bears, butterflies, cranes, dragons, eagles, fish, dogs, lions, goldfish, horses, ducks, roosters, peacocks and tigers. The next time you see a rug with various fruits like cherry, pomegranate and persimmon, you may think of a long life instead of just a display of fruit. Foods also have deeper meanings as do plants and symbols from the natural world.

"Bamboo, in symbolizing nature's purity and steadfastness, is most significant for the higher ideals that scholars seek, such as integrity and noble action." ~ pg. 72

If you are decorating, you might want to consider a beautiful moon window that gives a room such a nurturing quality. If you love reading poetry, the symbols from nature will be enlightening all on their own. This book can be enjoyed for its spiritual and aesthetic dimensions.

~The Rebecca Review

P.S. You may also enjoy Japanese Style and Spa Living