Q&A Sunday: Driveways in Feng Shui

Anjie Cho February 3, 2019

We are buying new modular house and putting it on land we bought. The grading and landscape guy wants to put a circular drive in front and a carport to the side of the house that the master bedroom is on, which is the dragon side of house, (the carport would not be connected to house but sits at an angle, so there are no poison arrows toward the house). I’m ok with that, but he thinks a drive from the carport to the basement entrance should go around the back yard to the basement entrance. I’m not sure that’s good, or should the basement drive come off the circular drive in front of the house. If it comes off the front driveway, will too much water (energy) be flowing by the front of house? The house is facing north, with the left side higher than the right, as the basement entrance is on the south end.

Barbara L., Charlotte, NC

Hi Barbara,

Thank you for your thoughtful question! I will only be able to answer only half, as the other half is a bit more complicated and requires an in-depth consultation with a feng shui practitioner who can take a closer look at your floor plans and the layout of the land. I will be happy to discuss a few points you mentioned.

Congratulations on your new home and the land! For anyone who may be wondering what Barbara means by the “dragon side” of her home, in BTB feng shui, there are some directions we do look at in terms of house location. Imagine that you are the house sitting in an easy, comfortable armchair position with your back against the wall. To your right is the green dragon (if you are standing outside and facing the house from the outside, this would be the left side). On your left (as the house) is a white tiger. Behind you is a black tortoise, and in front of you is a red bird. These are the directions Barbara is referring to.

The part of this question I can speak to regards the circular driveway. If you have a circular driveway, it is ideal for the driveway to curve towards the house and hug or embrace the house. This will bring more wealth, abundance, good health, qi and opportunities. When the driveway curves away from the house, all this energy and opportunity moves away from you. So it’s great that you’re putting in your own driveway, and I would recommend ensuring that it curves toward the house rather than away from it, like in the drawing below.

Unfortunately, as I note in most of my posts, I practice BTB feng shui, which doesn’t consider cardinal directions, so I cannot comment on the house facing north, especially with the information I’m given. If you are very concerned about this, it would be helpful to find a feng shui consultant in your area with whom you resonate and who you trust and have them take a look at the lay of your land and your plans, to assess the energy there.

Thank you so much for your question!

by Anjie Cho

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Q&A Sunday: Laying the Bagua with a Garage

Anjie Cho January 27, 2019

My garage is attached to my house, and if include it, the prosperity, family and skills and knowledge areas are to the left of the front door. Do I have to include it, and if I do I feel like it will hinder the effectiveness of all other areas of the house. Without it my bedroom would lie in the prosperity area.

Judy M., Ukiah, CA

Dear Judy,

Thank you for writing in with your question for the Holistic Spaces blog.

Your garage is attached to the house, and you like the way the bagua is laid better when the garage is not attached. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work that way. If your garage is attached to the house and it’s under the same roof, it is part of the main bagua map. It’s not something that you can pick and choose, because how the bagua is laid is based on the perimeter of the house.

On the other hand, there is another concept that comes up: the concept of the ever-changing or floating bagua. You have many other bagua layouts besides the one just of the house. You also have a bagua on the whole property, and there’s also a bagua of each room. Sometimes people have more complicated layouts where they perhaps have secondary doors; for instance, they have an outer gate and an inner gate. The outer gate might be considered a yin door, and we have other blog posts about that if you’re interested. So while you can’t pick and choose how you’d like to lay the bagua, hopefully the knowledge that there are additional baguas gives you some relief.

There are different practitioners and different schools that lay the bagua differently, and there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. If you do find conflicts, I would recommend going with what school or teacher resonates with you. It’s also helpful to work with a consultant because they’ll be able to give you ways to work with your unique floor plan.

It would also be very helpful if you could take some time and email us with your floor plan, because I’m a little concerned that perhaps you may not have laid it correctly. What you want to do is lay the bagua so that your front door is aligned with the bottom of the bagua. Your front door would be either in Knowledge, Path in Life, or Benefactors.

I hope this helps, Judy, and I hope this helps other readers as well. Please feel free to email us at info@holisticspaces.com with your floor plan, and we’d love to do a follow-up.

by Anjie Cho

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Q&A Sunday: Disposing of Sacred Ritual Objects

Anjie Cho January 20, 2019

I had two ceramic small decorative fu dogs in my kitchen near main entrance. A worker in the house broke one, and I tried to fix it, but it is terribly ruined. How do I "dispose" of or store these so as not to bring bad luck?

Sarah B., Portland, OR

Dear Sarah,

Thank you so much for submitting your question about Fu Dogs to the Holistic Spaces blog. It’s quite interesting that this is the third question I’ve received about Fu Dogs--maybe I’ve received more, but this is the third one I’ve answered on Q&A Sundays. (You can read the other two articles here and here.) In BTB feng shui, I never learned about Fu Dogs from my teachers, and I really don’t know all that much about them, so in the other two cases I deferred to others who know more about them. I asked two of my mentors and a colleague who is more familiar with more traditional Chinese objects. What I do know is that Fu Dogs are mythical creatures believed to offer protection from evil spirits and harmful people. They are usually placed in pairs, one female and one male, at the front door or main gate of a home, temple, or business.

Since the Fu Dogs were in your main entrance, it sounds like you were using them as protectors, and because one was broken, it is correct that it’s time for you to let go of the Fu Dogs and bring something else in. Interestingly, when you’ve made a feng shui adjustment and something is damaged, it’s actually a positive sign that the adjustment is doing its job. In a sense, it absorbed some negative chi. For instance, say you put up a crystal and it falls and breaks. This is actually a sign that you should replace it with a higher quality (a.k.a. more expensive) version of the same item. If the string breaks, you want to get a stronger, higher quality string. If a crystal breaks, you would want to get a higher quality crystal. It did its job and was strong enough to hold back any negative chi for a while, but now you need to get something stronger. In this case, your small decorative Fu Dogs served their purpose in your kitchen, and now would be a good time to replace them with larger, higher quality, more expensive Fu Dogs in the same location.

To answer your question of how to store them so as not to bring bad luck, I would suggest that you dispose of them, because it’s not recommended that you use that one alone. (we have another blog post that addresses that). However, not everything needs to be a feng shui adjustment. If you love the one that you have and you have some sentimental connection to it, you can keep it in that sense and place that single one somewhere else.

If you do want to dispose of it, here’s a good way to do that, and this goes for a lot of feng shui ritual objects: you can store it on your altar or at your shrine wrapped in red cloth. That’s what I do with a lot of my feng shui ritual objects that are not in use, since that’s a sacred space and it keeps the object sacred.

If you’re going to dispose of both Fu Dogs, you can also wrap the intact Fu Dog and the remains of the broken Fu Dog in the red cloth, thank the Fu Dogs for the service that they provided, and then bury them or dispose of them in the trash. But I wouldn’t just throw them into the trash without any kind of ceremony, as in thanking them and wrapping them in a red cloth. It’s very similar in other disciplines--I practice Ikebana, flower arranging, and in the contemplative form, you wouldn’t dispose of all your cuttings into the trash directly. In Japan they actually have shrines for used needles and flower cuttings. When I do flower arranging, I wrap my cuttings in a piece of paper and then put it in the garbage, and I treat it as a sacred offering.

Another possibility is to donate the one Fu Dog that is intact, and it might end up in a secondhand store. Then another person would find themselves with the question of what to do with one Fu Dog like in our earlier Q&A. Even if you give away the Fu Dog, be sure to thank the object for supporting and protecting you, and you may want to keep it wrapped in a red cloth when you transport it or give it away.

Thank you so much for your question! This is a helpful topic, because my suggestions above are not just about how to dispose of Fu Dogs, but how to dispose of any kind of ritual objects.

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui check out the Mindful Design feng shui cerfication program. Laura Morris and I launched our program in September 2018. Check us out at www.mindfuldesignschool.com