Q&A Sunday: Feng Shui and Morning Rituals

Anjie Cho June 28, 2020

I would like my home to feel more like a sacred space, especially now that I’m spending more time there. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for your question! One thing that really helps me incorporate more sacredness into my day is ritual. Ritual has been really important to me, even when I was little. I’ve always felt very connected to the ritual aspect of feng shui, and it really helps me feel connected to my home.

How do we bring more ritual into our lives using feng shui? There are a lot of ways to approach this, but a great way to start is to look at what happens when you first get up in the morning, and to create a morning ritual that really supports you.

I’ve been reading The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron, and I really love what she says about ritual. She writes, “Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana.” How can you join vision and practicality in your home? How can you join heaven and earth? In feng shui, heaven is the ceiling and earth is the floor. Earth is always there to ground you, and heaven represents guiding principles, spaciousness, and openness.

For instance, I wake up to an alarm clock that emulates sunrise and sounds like birds chirping, and then I do my beauty rituals. Your ritual could be preparing a cup of tea or coffee, or making your bed. Whatever your chosen ritual, having that daily structure in your home gives you a sense of sacredness in your daily life. Feng shui is mindfulness for your home. It’s about paying attention to all the details in your environment, and noticing how your space affects you and how you affect your space. When we’re aware of this, we start to see that we’re not separate from our environment.

Morning rituals can look different for each person. If you’re not sure what to incorporate into your ritual, I would suggest looking at which of the five elements is most supportive for you. You can take my quiz here to find that out. For me, water is really nourishing, so part of my morning ritual is going to the East River and sitting in meditation by the water. Other ways to connect to the water element in the morning are to take a shower, drink a big glass of water, or listen to water sounds when you first get out of bed.

If wood is really nourishing for you, you could make sure one of the first things you see when you wake up is connected to the wood element, like a houseplant or something green or blue. If you’re fed by fire, you could sit in a room with a lot of sunlight first thing in the morning, or turn on the stove to make a cup of tea. To connect to earth in the morning, make sure the first thing you see when you wake up is brown, or sleep in earthy colored sheets. If metal is most supportive for you, try sleeping in a white room or in white sheets, so that’s what you see in the morning.

Thanks again for your question, I hope that helps!

by Anjie Cho

Thanks for reading our "Q&A Sunday". We will be answering questions submitted by our readers. Click here to submit any Feng Shui questions!

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui check out the Mindful Design Feng Shui certification program. Laura Morris and I launched our program in September 2018. To get on the list about it, sign up at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com.

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Q&A Sunday: Hanging a Feng Shui Crystal Ball

Anjie Cho June 14, 2020

Is it ok to hang a feng shui crystal from a ceiling fan?

First, let’s talk a bit about feng shui crystals. Feng shui faceted crystal balls are used often in feng shui to adjust the energy of a space. It’s preferable to have a leaded crystal ball. There are a few different reasons you might want to use a feng shui crystal; one of the most common is when your bed, desk, or stove is not in command position, and is instead directly aligned with the door. If this is the case, you want to hang the crystal at a length where it is aligned with the top of the door but not hitting the door. It’s important to use a red string or ribbon to hang it as well, because red is the most auspicious color in feng shui. There are some exceptions to this, and if you’re working with a feng shui consultant, they might advise on a different color depending on what you would like to work on.

You also want to make sure to clean and refresh your crystal ball periodically. When you put anything in your home, especially a feng shui adjustment, it’s important to take care of it. If you neglect a feng shui object, or anything in your home, it starts to physically collect dust and attract more stagnant, stuck energy.

In terms of hanging a feng shui crystal from a ceiling fan, that’s ok as long as it is fastened securely and won’t fall off. You don’t want to hang it from the part of the fan that’s rotating because that would be unstable. If your crystal falls, that means it has taken on some energy and was doing its job. If this happens, you need to do a better job of hanging it next time. This usually means using a higher quality string or fastening device, or a higher quality crystal if the crystal itself breaks.

If you have more specific questions about how or where to use feng shui crystal balls, I would recommend working with a consultant who can look at your space and the whole layout of your home.

by Anjie Cho

Thanks for reading our "Q&A Sunday". We will be answering questions submitted by our readers. Click here to submit any Feng Shui questions!

Dive deeper into feng shui to transform your life!

Mindful Design is a new way to learn feng shui. Create sacred spaces that support, and nourish.

Visit us at mindfuldesignschool.com

Q&A Sunday: How to Become a Helpful Person

Anjie Cho June 7, 2020

How can I become a more helpful person?

There’s an area of the bagua that has to do specifically with helpful people and benefactors, and it’s one that doesn’t get talked about as much. It’s called qian, and it’s related to the metal element. Metal governs our mouth, our voice, and our communication. There are a lot of ways you can interpret this, but something that stands out for me right now is that sometimes the best way to communicate is to do less talking and more listening.

Something that I have been thinking about recently is this quote from my root guru, Chögyam Trungpa: “The answer is the question.” Sometimes we need to take a break from talking and instead take the time to listen and receive what those around us are saying.

The benefactors area is about both giving and receiving help. The way to attract helpful people to you is to become a helpful person. And because it’s related to the metal element, it’s about learning to communicate, both in how we speak and how we listen.

This area of the bagua is also related to assistance from the heavens. If you feel like you need assistance, look at what is going on in the helpful people area of your home. Is it cluttered? Are there a lot of things there? How can you bring more clarity to this area? Since this is a metal area, you can add metal items to this area, like a metal singing bowl. The sound and vibration of metal instruments can cut through a lot of the confusion and can be a way to communicate to the world that you are available to help or that you need help.

At its core, feng shui is not really about moving furniture around in your home to attract a partner or more wealth into your life. Those are residual benefits that come from practicing feng shui, but it’s really about starting to recognize that you are not separate from your environment. On a superficial level, you affect your environment and your environment affects you. Once you understand this, you can see that you are not separate from your environment. Then, you also start to understand that you are not separate from the people around you. This concept of interdependence is at the core of feng shui, as well as many other philosophies.

Another nuance of the helpful people area is that it is directly across from the abundance area, which means they are intimately connected and work in tandem with each other. When you start to become a helpful person, you receive more. When you have more and you’re feeling abundant, you can share more and become a more helpful person. I hope that all of you can find a way to become a helpful person, take action, and offer some of your abundance and prosperity to those that need help. Since we’re all connected, we all will benefit.

by Anjie Cho