How To Hack Your Suboptimal Holiday Sleeping Arrangements

featured recently on MindBodyGreen by Lindsay Kellner

There's no place like home for the holidays, and yet, if you're like most people, you're traveling. While it can be wonderful to travel, getting out of our regular routines can shock our bodies, making it more difficult to eat healthfully, stay regular, and, perhaps most importantly, to sleep well. We spoke to our experts Anjie Cho, a feng shui specialist, and Ellen Vora, M.D., mbg class instructor who specializes in anxiety and is a board-certified psychiatrist, licensed medical acupuncturist, and certified yoga teacher. Both provided tips on how to ready your space and body to get your best sleep ever no matter where you are. Here are their pro tips:

1. Clear the space.

Whether it's a hotel room, sofa, or your childhood bedroom—a space that's been used by someone else or left dormant for weeks (or months) needs clearing. "There can be residual energies from the people that have stayed there before or just from the people you're staying with," Cho said. The holidays in particular can make you feel more sensitive than usual to "foreign energy," she warned. "By clearing the space, you're just giving the place a little perk to provide a restful and spacious sleeping situation while traveling."

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Check Out A Feng Shui Designer's Blissed-Out NYC Apartment

featured on MindBodyGreen by Emma Loewe

Today on Holistic Home Tours, we’re checking out the New York City home of interior architect and feng shui designer Anjie Cho. 

Perched in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, Anjie Cho's space feels worlds away. The interior architect has used her knowledge of feng shui to deck out her new apartment—which she shares with her husband, Jeremiah, and their two Chihuahuas, Javier and Pearl—like only a pro could. She's letting us in on how she used feng shui to create an oasis in the middle of the city, and you're going to want to take notes.

What are three words that describe your design philosophy at home?

Simple, bright, calm.

What was the first room you tackled when you moved in?

Definitely the bedroom. We needed a place to sleep, and in feng shui the bedroom is thought to be the most important room in the house since it represents who you are. Since I have a home office, we split the bedroom up with some white fabric panels to create separate spaces. My husband loves how soft and tent-like these feel.

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How To Feng Shui Your Beauty Routine To Bring Love Into Your Life

featured this week on MindBodyGreen

Your face offers valuable information in feng shui. You can glean information about health, personality, and influence others with just your face. Here are some feng shui tips to welcome love with a few tweaks to your beauty routine.

Hydrate with rosewater.

Rosewater is soothing and hydrating for the skin and excellent to spritz on your face, neck, and body before, during, and after any beauty regime. Roses represent love and sweetness—the fragrance of flowers (especially roses) can lift your energy and is said to attract love. On a physical level, rose has a profound tonic action on the heart, activating sluggish blood circulation, relieving cardiac congestion, and toning the capillaries. That's literally why we get a flutter from it.

Apply makeup symmetrically, in pairs.

Humans are attracted to bilaterally symmetrical faces—this symmetry in our faces connotes health and vibrancy and resonates with beauty. When applying makeup be sure to keep both sides as even and symmetrical as possible, and apply everything in pairs. The number two (a pair!) also represents love and partnership in feng shui.

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by Anjie Cho

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