Jewelry and Art in Everyday Life

Guest User August 4, 2021

Today I wanted to talk about different types of rituals that you can incorporate to bring more art into your everyday life. Did you know you can also apply feng shui principles to your body, in addition to your spaces? The core of feng shui is about looking at your qi, which is life force energy. Your energy is not separate from your space, other people, or the cosmos.

One way that I like to enhance my qi in my everyday life is through the jewelry that I select. Sometimes, I do this by wearing representations of animals that inspire me. For instance, I have a bee necklace that was given to me by my flower teacher. I didn’t wear it a lot at first, but later I felt very called to wear it. One of my healers actually told me that the wasp was an animal I could learn from at that time. Learning from an animal doesn’t always mean you have to read about it or listen to someone speak about it. You can also learn through wearing something that symbolizes that animal.

I also received a beautiful turtle bracelet a while ago. I love the turtle, because there’s a really beautiful story from Buddhism that talks about how precious each human life is, and I think sometimes we forget that. Wearing something like this on my wrist is a constant reminder of how precious our human lives are. I wear it intentionally on my right wrist, which is for giving. The left hand is for receiving. This Buddhist story is about how each human life is as precious and rare as a blind sea turtle swimming through the ocean. Once every hundred thousand years, the sea turtle comes up to the surface and happens to pop its head up through a yoke that’s floating in the middle of the ocean. That is how rare our human lives are. This also gives me a spiritual reminder to value every single person that I interact with, and to value all that I receive in my life.

Lastly, I also like to wear my jade bracelet. In feng shui and in Asian cultures, jade represents purity, long life, and good luck. It also has a weight to it, and it reminds me of my Asian lineage. The color is quite interesting too . It’s a light green, which is connected to the wood element in feng shui. Wood is about growth and vitality. My jade bracelet also has some white, which is the metal element, and metal brings in this idea of beauty and precision. This is something I’ve been working with recently: how can I start to see more beauty in all aspects of my life?

I hope this inspires you to bring more awareness to your personal feng shui, and to invite more beauty into your life through the things you intentionally put on your body.

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