Q&A Sunday: The Water Element as a Precious Resource

Guest User July 25, 2021

Can you talk about how water is connected to wealth and abundance?

Water is one of the five elements, or five phases, that we use as a tool in feng shui. In addition to water, the five phases include earth, fire, wood, and metal. Water is the element related to wisdom and career, as well as wealth. Your wealth and prosperity is a resource like water, and it flows like water.

I talked recently on the podcast about how fixing a leak in your home is a way of recognizing that water is a precious resource. Even one drop of water is so precious and meaningful, and we can receive a lot of teachings from that. When we take the time to care for our home, and take care of things like leaks, we also begin to consider ourselves precious and valuable. Something as simple as acknowledging a leak in your home, rather than ignoring it, and taking the time and effort to fix it, is really a way of recognizing how precious water is. This also connects to valuing the wisdom of others and our own innate wisdom, since water is connected to wisdom.

Feng shui translates to wind and water. Feng is wind, and shui is water. These are the most important elements that we need as humans to thrive. We need our breath, which is wind, and we are made up of mostly water. We need these two things in order to thrive.

I encourage you to look at how you work with the water element in your life. It could be something as simple as fixing a leak. It could also be thanking the water that you consume. We need water so much, to cleanse and hydrate our bodies. The small gesture of thanking water and acknowledging its preciousness will trickle back to how you value your own preciousness.

by Anjie Cho

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

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