It was over 20 years ago when a friend convinced me to attend a Feng Shui class. She owned a kitchen business which is a key room in Feng Shui practice and had read lots of books. I went along and was hooked. After attending the course, I was fascinated to learn about placement, balance and other aspects. However; it was the Compass school and I started to get confused. Friends know that I get lost in a building, so using a compass isn’t even in my mindset! I let it go and just used the basics. We moved a few years later to Penang, Malaysia and in the only English bookshop, I fell upon a book – Feng Shui Demystified by Clear Englebert. I had found my Feng Shui path. Clear follows the newer Form school which resonates with my pragmatic interior design knowledge. I promptly contacted him and he has been my mentor ever since. From two Penang apartments, a Swiss apartment, French 18th century townhouse, Manhattan, NY 25th floor chic shoebox, classical and avant garde German apartments and now our Cotê d’Azur apartments, he has coached me to seek inner harmony within my living space.

Recently, I have started to consult and am really honoured to help friends and clients to achieve a sense of space. Often, we can’t deal with the outside world but we can create a space to shut the door and find balance. You don’t need any real tools except paper and pencils. If you are tech savvy, you could superimpose the Bagua map over your floor plan. If you have a proper floor plan, print several off as they are great to use for practice.

 

If you have read my past posts there are eight basic rules that start any Feng Shui consultation.

  1. Draw your floor plan and match it to the Bagua square. Don’t panic if parts are missing, this is often the case. Look at the colours and matching Elements in each sector (Wood, Fire, Water, Earth, Metal). If you have a red entrance in your Career sector, you are adding Fire to a Water sector and basically putting out the energy as water douses out fire. Consider repainting the entrance in black or a deep petrol blue.
  2. Check where the bathroom(s), kitchen and main bedroom are placed and include the home office if you have one. These three rooms are the main areas that we use and therefore; have the most energy moving through them. Check out your kitchen and how you have balanced the stove, fridge and sink – the elements of fire and water.
  3. Mark where the main door is as this is the mouth of the house. I often stumble over coats and shoes when I enter a house. Look to keep this clear and watch for the ‘corridor affect’ where the energy goes straight through and out a back door or a window. There is an easy solution as can be seen in my other posts.
  4. Remember your energy, your Chi, is the same force that walks through your living areas. Get a friend to walk through with you to check what they see and where the doors and windows are located. They may see a block or a strange area that you hadn’t considered or even validate what you were thinking.
  5. De-clutter – get rid of what you don’t use, get a friend who is willing to ask why you have five black dresses that look the same. Let go, donate, it is very liberating and I often rediscover lovely clothes and items I have.
  6. Start with the bathroom. The originators of Feng Shui, the Chinese, had terrible outhouse toilets and they were seen as draining any good energy through the water elements in that room. This practice still holds however; in the Form school we review where the bathroom is placed and look for some solutions. It may just be that you need ceramics and stone to ‘ground’ the water. And leave the ‘seaside’ look for another area!
  7. The kitchen needs more care as we are mixing fire and water here. Check out my posts on this area to see how to balance this – there are practical reasons for having the stove separate from the sink as you are mixing electricity with water!
  8. Our bedrooms are key for relationships and sleep. I recently saw a chain of hotels adding a mini gym inside their rooms. Unless you are in a studio, move out the TV, gym equipment and office as these all add too much energy to this space.

Let me know what you think and I’m open to any questions or comments.