Q&A Sunday: Abundance, Giving, and Receiving

Guest User April 25, 2021

How can I work on bringing in more abundance?

This is a popular question, and I invite you to read through some of my earlier blog posts on feng shui and abundance as well. Today, I want to talk about how we can approach this from the perspective of giving and receiving. There’s a Zen saying that there’s no giver and no receiver. I encourage you to think about what this means to you. It might sound paradoxical, and there are many ways to unpack this statement.

I invite you to contemplate how you give and receive, and what generosity means to you. In BTB feng shui, we were taught by our teachers to honor something called the red envelope tradition, and this is something we teach our students at Mindful Design School. It’s a way to formally exchange energy with our students, since we are offering them teachings. At the same time, my students are also my teachers because they help me to become a better teacher.

Whenever you do give something, you can think about why you are giving. Is there a balance in what you’re receiving? How can you be generous in new and different ways? This concept connects to the feng shui area of abundance, called Xun. In feng shui, the opposite areas of the bagua are closely related. Opposite Xun is Qian, which has to do with benefactors and helpful people. How abundant you feel is directly related to how you can invite helpful, supportive people into your life, and the way to invite more helpful people into your life is to become a more helpful person. A lot of people want to work on wealth, and it’s something I get asked a lot about as a feng shui practitioner. Often, however, what people really need to work on is how to give and receive. How can you become a benefactor to others, and how can you receive what is offered to you?

A lot of people, myself included, have a hard time receiving wealth. One lesson that many of us are learning is to not help other people so much that we hurt ourselves, and to be open to receive when people do offer their help and support. In addition to being open to support from others, it’s important to be able to support yourself too.

If you’re working with abundance, I encourage you to think about your relationship to giving and receiving. How can I give and support others, and how can others support me? Feng shui isn’t just about moving things around. Changing the objects in your home is just one way you can start to manifest these deeper philosophical concepts in your physical world.

by Anjie Cho

Thanks for reading our "Q&A Sunday". If you have personal questions, we encourage you to check out Practical Feng Shui or hire one of Anjie's Grads.

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

Feng Shui for Prosperity

Guest User April 21, 2021

I wanted to share a little about feng shui and prosperity. Something I’ve noticed in my most prosperous clients is that they all frequently make changes in their home.

This is an important thing to do to invite more prosperity and good qi. My business partner Laura Morris always has a home project she’s working on, and I’m actually doing a renovation this year. Many of my clients renovate some part of their home every year.

I think we can all visualize visiting a relative who hasn’t made any changes to their house in years. I once went to somebody’s parents’ home, and they literally had furniture from the sixties and seventies, and it even had a certain smell because it had aged.

Of course, you want to reuse and upcycle things as much as possible. At the same time, there’s an importance in changing the energy of your home, in having home projects and investing time, energy, and money into improving your home.

If renovating isn’t within your budget, or you live in a rental, there are also very simple changes you can make. One thing you can do is change your bed linens each year. Your bed is a great place to make changes, because it’s the part of your home that’s closest to you. You spend so much passive time in bed when you’re really absorbing the energy around you. You want to buy the highest quality linens possible — if you can, go for organic, non-toxic, ethically made products. It really does make a difference to invest in high quality changes in your home.

There are a few things you can do with your retired linens so that they don’t go to waste. I like to use them as picnic blankets. You can also call your local animal shelter, and they’ll usually take them for the rescue animals. Another option is to take them to a textile recycling center where they can be reused for things like packing materials. It’s important to be mindful of what you let go of, and making sure you are recycling, repurposing, or passing them on to someone else who can use them.

If getting new bed linens feels like a lot for you, you can also repot your plants. The idea is to constantly look at the qi in your home, and make sure that you’re not letting your home, your life, or the energy fall stagnant. Dust is a huge indication from the phenomenal world that this part of your life is falling stagnant. If you have a shrine or altar that’s collecting dust, for example, what does that mean about your spiritual life? There might even be a whole room or closet in your home that hasn’t been touched in a while, that’s collecting dust and stagnant energy.

You deserve to have a nice home. You deserve to make improvements to your home that support you, whether that’s a big renovation or something as simple as changing your linens or repotting your plants. Making changes in your home shifts the qi, so I hope you are able to invite more prosperity by finding something you can change in your home!

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

Q&A Sunday: Bells, Chimes and Abundance

Anjie Cho October 20, 2019

Hi Anjie! I love your five elements series. In the post My Favorite Things: 5 Ways to Bring Metal into Your Home, you mention that you have a bell on your desk to promote abundance. Is this always the case with bells and chimes? If I'm looking to promote prosperity and wealth, is adding a bell to my Abundance area a good adjustment?

Cole P., Akron, OH

Hi Cole!

I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying the podcasts and blog posts! I'd be happy to elaborate on using bells as feng shui adjustments.

Bells and chimes are not necessarily related to abundance. Bells and chimes are metal element, but there is not a direct connection to abundance. I suggested bells and chimes for adding metal element, because they are that...the metal element!

However, the sound that bells and chimes make create vibrations that move out into the universe. Just like the butterfly theory. The butterfly effect reasons that small changes can result in big differences. In the same way, when you ring a bell or chime, it creates a sound and vibration to extend out into the world and let the universe know that you may want to attract more clients or wealth into your life. You can doubly reinforce that by doing this in the Abundance area of the bagua map.

But you could also do this in, for instance, the Benefactors area to attract more helpful people into your life and home. which actually in turn creates more abundance, though not necessarily monetary. :) Or you could ring a bell or chime in the Relationship area to attract a partner.

Overall, ringing a bell or chime does send out a message to the universe that you are opening your space to something new, but just adding these to your space, and not ringing them with intention, is not enough to attract prosperity and abundance.

If you're looking to increase your wealth, prosperity and abundance, take a look at some of the other posts on the blog for suggestions like adding citrine, activating the self-knowledge area of your space, adding plants and more. There are many ways to welcome abundance through feng shui!

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui check out the Mindful Design Feng Shui certification program. Laura Morris and I launched our program in September 2018. To get on the list about it, sign up at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com.