Q&A Sunday: Broken Feng Shui Objects

Guest User October 24, 2021

What should I do if a feng shui object breaks?

Have you ever hung a feng shui crystal only to have it fall and break? People often get worried when a feng shui object breaks, but I generally say that it’s not a bad thing. This means that the energy is moving through the object you’ve placed, and that the adjustment is working.

If you do place a feng shui object in your home and it breaks, I would recommend you do it again, but try something a little stronger or better quality this time. If it was a feng shui crystal ball, for example, maybe you need to hang it from a stronger string or with a more secure tack. If the crystal itself is broken, it’s best to get a new one.

If a feng shui object fell and broke, or if you received it broken, you can still reuse it for another purpose if you’d like. Not everything in your home needs to serve a feng shui purpose. If you do want to use something as a feng shui object, though, intentionally select something new to bring into the space.

The reason you want to bring in something new for a feng shui adjustment is because you want to bring in fresh qi. Be mindful of what you select. Choosing a damaged object or one that is in disrepair for a feng shui adjustment isn’t a great idea because that’s not the type of energy you want to bring in. It’s also not ideal to use a secondhand item as a feng shui object, because that isn’t really bringing in new energy. If you do choose to use a secondhand item, be sure to clear it.

Many times I’ve done consultations where I suggest adding a plant to a particular area, and people ask if they can use a plant that they already have. Usually, I recommend they get a new plant instead, so that they’re bringing new energy into the space. If you just have more of the same, you’re not really shifting the qi.

by Anjie Cho

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

Feng Shui and Sadness

Guest User October 20, 2021

We’re moving into autumn now in the northern hemisphere, which is related to the element of metal. Autumn is also related to death and things dying away as well; think about how trees shed their leaves at this time of year. While I was hesitant to talk about this on the blog, I think it’s important to recognize that not everything is all about joy and happiness and making lots of money. There are really so many aspects to feng shui practice and philosophy, and also to dharma. I also study meditation and Buddhism, and feng shui and spirituality are very interconnected.

Sadness is a part of life too, and it’s important to find a balance between yin and yang. This is something I’ve been working with personally. I think during this global pandemic we’ve all been hoping for things to stay the same or go back to how they were, and there’s an aspect of sadness to it.

I’ve been reading a lot by Chögyam Trungpa recently, who is the teacher of my dharma teachers. One of the things he wrote is a really wonderful book called Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Something that’s been resonating with me a lot is connecting to tenderness and sadness, which I think a lot of people don’t like to talk about. In this book, Chögyam Trungpa asks us: “How much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?” I would add to that: “How much have you connected with your home, your family, and all of the people in your life?” Feng shui is really about beginning to look at those details in your environment and your home, and seeing how you and your home are connected.

That’s also what the practice of meditation is about. It’s about connecting with yourself and spending time with yourself. When you do this, you may start to see that your home is empty, or that your heart is empty. With this feeling of autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s also a poignancy and a crispness in the air. We’re starting to say goodbye to summer and to the year, and there’s a feeling of endings. Just like we talk about people entering the autumn of their lives, there is also an autumn to every moment, every year, and every joy that we feel. There’s always a cycle of endings and beginnings, and we have to recognize that our lives go through transitions.

I could talk about how you could bring more joy into your home, but really I think the best way to start to do that is to include the experience of sadness and things falling away in your home as well. That might mean recognizing that it’s time to let go of a plant that isn’t doing well, trim some leaves that are no longer healthy, or change the summer bedding to the warmer bedding. We can begin to realize that things are always shifting around us, and what really leads to true joy is knowing that joy is connected to tenderness and sadness. We can see all these cycles happen in the environment around us, and then we can begin to work with them and have compassion for them in our daily lives, our spaces, and our interactions with other people. We begin to see that we’re interconnected and interdependent with our homes, our environments, the people in our lives, and all living beings.

Instead of looking at feng shui as a way to always try to make things happier, I hope that you include these feelings of sadness that may come up as part of your feng shui experience. Know that happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin, like yin and yang. I would encourage you to look at the details in your home as a metaphor for how things are going in your life, and to recognize and accept what is coming up.

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: Feng Shui, Color, and the Bagua Map

Guest User October 17, 2021

I’d love to learn more about using color in feng shui.

This is a popular topic! Laura and I actually just recorded a whole podcast episode about feng shui and color. I’ll share a few ideas about this here, and if you want to dive deeper, I would encourage you to check out the episode.

One way to approach feng shui and color is to look at how colors relate to the bagua map. The bagua map, in case you aren’t familiar, is a kind of energetic map that feng shui practitioners lay over a space. It has eight areas around a center.

Something that I noticed recently is the connection between the center of a flower and the center of the bagua. The bagua is a mandala, just like a flower can be. The center of the bagua, called the Tai qi, is yellow, which is often true for the center of flowers as well. In feng shui, yellow represents the earth element. Earth is connected to stability and feeling grounded, and the center of the bagua affects all of the areas that surround it.

One of the most popular areas of the bagua is the purple area, or the abundance area. It’s called Xun position in Chinese. In addition to abundance, it’s related to the eldest daughter and your feelings of wealth and prosperity, which go beyond financial wealth. It’s also about having a feeling of abundance, a feeling of enough. It’s the opposite of a poverty mentality. Xun is also deeply related to self-esteem and self-worth.

Purple is also the combination of red, which is the fire element, and blue, which is the wood element. (There’s a misconception that blue is the water element, but it actually represents wood in BTB feng shui.) Purple brings together the kindness, flexibility and growth of wood with the inspiration, passion, and protection of fire. This makes purple a wonderful color to work with in your home, if these ideas resonate with you. Some easy ways to incorporate purple into your home are through small decor accents, like a throw pillow or blanket.

Sometimes people think that you need to paint a whole room the color that corresponds to the feng shui bagua map. The way that I teach my students at Mindful Design Feng Shui School is to realize that you don’t want to activate every single area of the bagua map. Not only is it unnecessary, but the I Ching, which is one of the foundations of feng shui, teaches that there’s no such thing as perfection. Everything is always in transition and always moving. If you try to make everything perfect, the only place to go from there is down, so aiming for perfection will actually work against you. Painting your walls according to the bagua map is also not the most skillful way to work with this tool, and it probably won’t work very well from a design perspective.

Another way to work with feng shui and color is to make your own art and explore different shades of a color. If you want to work with purple, for example, it’s really fun to get a watercolor palette and create purple with red (fire) and blue (wood), and see how these work together. Make it a fun, exploratory activity, and see how that correlates with your feelings of abundance. Once you’ve made some purple art, you might want to place it in the abundance area of your bedroom.

I hope that helps you as you’re thinking about feng shui and color, and if you want to learn more, be sure to listen to the podcast!

by Anjie Cho