The Dark Side of Feng Shui

Guest User July 14, 2021

The title of this post is a little misleading, because there isn’t really a dark side of feng shui! However, I was recently reminded about the importance of looking at your darker side. I pulled the sorcerer card from one of my favorite decks, the Mystical Shaman Oracle Deck. It’s from Four Winds School, where I studied shamanic healing. This card is about looking at your darker side, and how you may be harming yourself, or maybe setting yourself up to feel as if there’s not enough in the world.

In reality, the world is an abundant place. The universe is abundant and it wants to support you. One of the ways that I have a poverty mentality is that I start to worry about not having enough time. I often try to multitask and do two things at once. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. The world is an abundant space, and I don’t need to try to fill it up.

How does this reflect in our feng shui? Most obviously, we clutter up our homes. If there’s an empty space in a client’s home, they often ask what they should put there. Sometimes, space is all you need. Are there areas of your home, life, or schedule where you’re always trying to fill up space? How can you feel more abundant by being more spacious?

I invite you to do this with your home, and to also do it in tandem with your internal environment. One way I’m going to work with this is to let go of nine things a day for a certain period of time to create more spaciousness in my home. I’m also going to work on saying no and letting go of schedule obligations. I can also be more generous to myself by not trying to multitask, and by doing things I love just for the sake of doing them.

Does this resonate with you? If so, I invite you to also take a look at your dark side, and see how you can be more spacious!

by Anjie Cho

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

How to Work with a Bathroom in the Wealth Corner

Guest User June 16, 2021

If you stand in the doorway of your home looking in, the far left corner will typically be related to Xun position, also called the wealth area or the abundance area of the feng shui bagua map. People often get very worried if there’s a bathroom in this area, because it can mean a drain on your resources, or a drain on your wealth and prosperity.

I also want you to keep in mind that this area is not just about money. It’s also about abundance in all areas of your life, as well as how you value yourself, so it is important to notice if there’s a bathroom in that area of your home.

If you do have a bathroom in the wealth area, the first thing you want to do is make sure your bagua is laid correctly. If you’re not sure, I encourage you to join one of Mindful Design’s Practical Feng Shui workshops. We have one almost every month, and when you join you get a quick feng shui reading, and we lay the bagua map on your home so you can see if you’ve done it correctly. Especially if you have an unusually shaped home, we recommend working with a trained practitioner who can lay the bagua accurately. In Practical Feng Shui, you can also ask a feng shui question and you’ll see eight other floor plans, so you learn a lot about how to lay the bagua map.

If your bathroom is indeed in the wealth position of your home, there are a couple of simple fixes you can do. The easiest is to put a mirror on the outside of the door, which energetically erases the bathroom from that area of your home. You can also put a plant in the bathroom to uplift the energy of the space. Ideally, a real plant is best. If you don’t have any natural light in your bathroom, you can also include artwork of green plants.

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: Bathroom in the Wealth Area

Guest User May 2, 2021

Do you have any advice for a bathroom in the wealth area? Is that bad?

The way that I approach and teach feng shui is to not label things as good or bad. That’s the easy way of looking at the world: this is good and that is bad, or I am right and they are wrong. When you look at the world this way, you’re creating separation.

A bathroom in the wealth area isn’t the most desirable, but I wouldn’t call it bad. In fact, I encourage you to not use the word “bad” in general. You have to have a bathroom somewhere, and you have to work with what you have. Often, we’re attracted to feng shui that may be challenging. This isn’t necessarily negative, because with the greatest challenges come the greatest rewards. We’ve all been through challenging times, and there is so much beauty that can come from them. For instance, you might reach out to people or ask for help. You could create connections, or start to see others with more compassion as you realize the kinds of things that people go through.

Another thing to note is that most people lay the bagua incorrectly, so without looking at your floor plan, I can’t tell if your bathroom is actually in the wealth area or not. If you want some help figuring this out, you may want to check out Mindful Design’s free bagua kit or our Practical Feng Shui course.

If you do have a bathroom in the wealth area, called Xun, the first thing I would ask is whether you have any problems with wealth. If not, this isn’t something you need to worry about. If you do, there are ways that you can correct this. One way is to put a plant in your bathroom to activate and uplift the qi in this part of your home. You can also work with a feng shui consultant to look at what you can do for your specific situation.

by Anjie Cho