What Is Feng Shui?

Taken literally, feng shui means wind and water in Mandarin, two of the five elements in feng shui. In essence, it examines how the placement of every day objects affect the flow of chi (the universal life-force energy) in your environment, which in turn influences your personal energy flow and affect how you perform and succeed personally and professionally.

Fundamental Feng Shui Tips For Your Home

As its core, Feng Shui is about how your surroundings can affect your physical and mental health, your relationships, and your worldly success.

Clean Living: To promote good flow of chi in your home, the easiest thing to do is to declutter. A consistent flow of healthy natural energy not only enhances creativity and improves an individual’s well-being and relationships, it also promotes wealth, prosperity, and abundance.

Balancing Lifestyle: The fundamentals of feng shui relate to balancing your environment. This is achieved using the metaphysical laws of nature—known as the yin and yang—and the five elements: metal, water, wood, fire, and earth. By each itself, none of the seven elements is neither good nor bad. These elements will only “turn against” you when we have too much of one of the elements in our home, and our life will become out of sync.

Basic Symbolism of the Seven Elements:

• Yin: Darkness, Cold, Damp. Passive, Black
• Yang: Light, Warm, Dry, Active, Yellow, White
• Metal: Electrical gadgets, metallic fixtures, Gray, Silver
• Water: Bathroom. Fountains, fish tank, Blue, Gray
• Wood: Wooden furniture, Doors, Brown
• Fire: Stove. Red, Orange
• Earth: Stone. Garden. Orange. Dark Yellow

Ward Off Negatives: To keep negative energy at bay, avoid homes with long, narrow corridors, dark corners or steep stairways or at least keep them to a very minimum. For example, you could add light fixtures in dark corners of the house or break the continuous long corridors by placing a “divider” (i.e side table, floor vase) in between.

Water Enhances Wealth and Luck: Water, an important element in feng shui, is often associated with fortune, intelligence, and wisdom. For some, well-placed water features in the home can enhance luck cycles and bring wealth. However, any body of water, be it in a cup or fish tank, should be clean and not murky.

The above ares general feng shui tips. To define your feng shui energy map or to balance the five elements in special corners of your home, please consult a professional feng shui master.

Related Topics

• How To Organize A Kitchen For Maximum Space
• Organizing Kids’ Rooms In 5 Simple Steps
• How to Reorganize Things to Get More of Storage Area