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integrating spirituality and green design to find beauty in simplicity and balance. we design harmonious living and work spaces that resonates with clients from both the inside and out.
Anjie Cho integrates beauty, spirituality and green design. She creates and enhances balance and harmony by designing spaces with an understanding of sustainability and informed by the ancient practice of feng shui. Her focus is to create a nurturing and supportive environment for each of her clients, at whatever level they feel comfortable.
Photo by LOTUSWEI
Anjie Cho was featured on the Awaken and Align podcast
In this episode of the Awaken and Align podcast, I share my story of how I got into feng shui, my consultation process, the benefits of silence, feng shui tips for attracting a partner, and more.
If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com
Photo and design by Anjie Cho Architect PLLC
If you’re new to feng shui, getting started can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. If it feels like a lot, remember that you don’t need to do the feng shui of your whole home right away! I always recommend starting with your bedroom. Your bedroom is a great place to begin, because it represents you, and it’s the most personal, private part of your home.
One of the first things I look at in a bedroom is the position of the bed. Ideally, your bed should be in the command position, which means that you can see the main entryway to the bedroom when you’re sitting up against the headboard. A lot of times, people don’t have their bed in command, which often corresponds with poor sleep and increased anxiety. It’s a good idea for everyone to have their bed in command if possible, because it helps you feel more at ease and more in control of your life. If you can’t put your bed in a position where you can see the door, you can add a mirror to correct this. The mirror should be located so that you can see the reflection of the door from your bed.
You also want to avoid having your feet pointing directly at the door if possible. If you can move your bed to offset it from the door, that is the best thing to do. However, if you have a smaller bedroom and aren’t able to position your bed in this way, you can correct the flow of qi fairly simply by placing a feng shui crystal halfway between the foot of your bed and the door to your bedroom. To learn more about feng shui crystal balls and how to hang them, check out this episode of the Holistic Spaces Podcast.
The next thing to look at is your headboard. It’s important to have a solid headboard that’s securely attached to your bed. A headboard offers support, and it helps you to feel more grounded and secure. You can think of it like a mountain behind you, providing a solid backing. In BTB feng shui, which is the school of feng shui that I practice and teach, we are not especially concerned with what the headboard looks like, although you do want to look for something that feels sturdy and solid. Generally, I’d recommend something either upholstered or wood. So many people, especially young people, tend to forgo a headboard, but it’s really important when it comes to creating stability in your life and in your romantic relationship.
The last tip I’ll share is to take a look at your window treatments. Often, when I have a client who is having trouble sleeping, they don’t have very good window treatments. Sometimes, they don’t have any window treatments at all. I would recommend you look for good-quality curtains or blinds with a blackout capability. One reason feng shui practitioners talk a lot about window treatments and lighting is that they really affect the yin and yang of a room. Yin is restful, quiet, dark, and cool, which is the perfect environment for sleep. By adding blackout blinds or curtains, you’re bringing in yin energy to support restful nights. In the morning, you want to be able to open your window treatments and let in the bright, yang energy of sunlight as you begin your day.
If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com
Recently I was chatting with Katie Hess of LotusWei about feng shui and flowers. We realized there were so many fun tips that we could share with you, so we hopped on an Instagram Live for a fun chat on how to bring in more love, connection & community through flowers & feng shui. You can watch our conversation here!
Right now, many of us are really craving community and authentic connection with the people in our lives. Feng shui and flower essences can both be helpful tools for cultivating these qualities, and they work really beautifully in tandem. Together, they help us focus on both our inner worlds and our sacred spaces. Here are a few of our favorite ways to use feng shui and flowers to invite more love, connection, and community.
One thing that’s always relevant to creating deeper relationships is communication. If you can’t communicate well, it’s hard to make connections or ask for help and support. In feng shui, communication is related to the metal element and the doors in your home. Your front door, as well as other doors inside your home, represent your mouth. How you treat your doorways can offer clues about how you communicate. Many people have clutter behind their doors that prevents the door from opening a full 90 degrees. This is equivalent to someone mumbling, or speaking without fully opening their mouth. It also blocks your ability to receive connections, because you’re only allowing a small portion of qi (life force energy) to come in. If one of your doors can’t open fully at the moment, try clearing out whatever is behind it to welcome more energy and connections to flow your way.
One flower essence that pairs well with opening up your doors is cannonball, a gorgeous flower that grows on trees in southeast Asia. This flower increases our ability to hold space for others, be more vulnerable, and get in touch with our own vulnerability. Cannonball is one of the flowers in LOTUSWEI’s Open Heart blend, which also helps us to be more curious and engaged.
Stone fruit flowers like bonsai plum and nectarine are also really great for feeling supported. They can help you to feel like you are surrounded by love and friendships, instead of feeling like you are under attack or that something bad is going to happen.
When it comes to friendships, one area to look at from a feng shui perspective is your dining room table. Many people who tend to have shallow friendships or who have trouble holding onto friendships have their dining table right by the front door. This often correlates with people coming and going frequently in your life. Also, if you keep friends in the most public part of your home, closest to the door, that doesn’t encourage vulnerability and intimacy. If you would like to cultivate deeper friendships and your dining table is near the front door, try bringing it further into your home. If you can’t do that, you can use a mirror to reflect your dining table and bring it back into your home energetically. You may also want to pay attention to how many chairs you have. If you only have one chair and you are wanting to build a community around you, try making space for the people you want to invite in by adding more chairs.
Jade vine is a flower essence that can help us to really connect and engage with people, especially people we wouldn’t normally connect with, and in unexpected ways. It helps us feel protected, which can be especially helpful for introverts who can sometimes feel drained after spending time with others. Jade vine gives us a sense of protective strength within ourselves that allows us to deeply, intimately engage with the people around us.
In feng shui, we use a tool called the bagua map, which is a mandala laid over a home. It has different areas that correspond to different areas of life.
One of these areas is called Kun, and it’s connected to love and partnership, as well as the mother element, all internal organs, the color pink, and yin earth. It’s also about healing yourself and your feminine side, and being soft and receptive. To find this area in your bedroom, stand in your bedroom doorway looking in and find the far right corner. Notice what you have in this area. Is there a prickly cactus plant? A pile of dirty clothes? Take a moment to notice what is in this corner of your bedroom. Think about what that symbolizes to you, and what you can learn from that.
If you do want to cultivate more softness, the flowers in LOTUSWEI’s Infinite Love (Hong Kong orchid, wild hawkweed, fireweed, and pink magnolia) can be really supportive. To use this in tandem with feng shui, you may want to spray the Infinite Love mist in the love and partnerships area of your bedroom, with the intention of clarifying that area.
Another part of the feng shui bagua that can be related to love is Xun, which represents abundance and prosperity. It’s also connected to your self-worth. If you don’t feel worthy of receiving love, or you are stingy when it comes to giving love, this might be an area that you want to work on. Xun is the far left corner when you are standing in your bedroom doorway looking in. Once you’ve located this area, you can also notice what you see there and what that means to you.
If you want to deepen your sense of self-worth, you might want to work with LOTUSWEI’s Fierce Compassion blend, which includes rhododendron, hollyhock, and rose. You can spray the mist in the abundance area of your home, or you can bring in a painting or photograph of one of these flowers. Another way to work with flowers is to create your own artwork. If you’d like, you can display it in your home, and the act of drawing imagery is a healing practice in itself.
We encourage you to work with the flowers and feng shui principles that feel most resonant to you, and we hope this helps you start to cultivate more love, connection, and community in your life!
Katie Hess is a flower alchemist, author of Flowerevolution and founder of LOTUSWEI, one of the world’s leading floral apothecaries. With her signature elixirs featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times and the LA Times, her flower-powered community is thriving in over 15 countries.
Follow Katie on Instagram: @iamkatiehess
Visit Katie’s Website: lotuswei.com
If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com
