Q&A Sunday: What Do Doors Represent in Feng Shui?

Guest User December 6, 2020

What do doors represent in feng shui?

In feng shui, doors represent the mouth of people in the home. Squeaky, stuck, or problematic doors may represent challenges in communication. This is especially true for the entry door, as this sets the mood for your experience of the home. The main door of the home sets the tone for your whole life experience, in a way. Your front door is how you connect to the world.

If you have a squeaky or crying door, it sets the tone for negativity every time you walk into your home. We’re conditioned to zone out and not notice a lot of what’s happening in our home, including what our door sounds like, but take a moment to pay attention to your front door. If it squeaks or gets stuck, this can represent blocks or difficulties in communication, so it’s a good idea to make sure everything is working properly and make any necessary repairs.

Finally, make sure you can open all the doors a full 90 degrees or more - this means no clutter behind the doors. I used to see that a lot: people often have so much stuff that they start hanging lots of things on the backs of doors until they can’t open all the way. Doors govern how qi comes into your space . If they can’t open fully, you’re cutting off some of the energy that could otherwise enter your space. That means that you’re only allowing in a small percentage of possible opportunities into your life. Think about it: if you have to modify the way you walk into the room, you’re not creating free and easy movement for you or for the energy in your home.

If you do have clutter behind your doors, though, don’t beat yourself up over it. There might be a reason you weren’t yet ready to receive all the opportunities. Maybe you were in preparation. Now that you know, you can decide for yourself if you would like to open up room for more opportunities to come in simply by removing anything that may be preventing you from opening your door all the way.

by Anjie Cho

Thanks for reading our "Q&A Sunday". If you have personal questions, we encourage you to check out Practical Feng Shui or hire one of Anjie's Grads.

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

Q&A Sunday: Inviting Wealth with Feng Shui

Guest User November 29, 2020

How can I create more wealth?

Feng shui practitioners talk about this a lot, because it’s a very common question. However, looking at wealth in a superficial way is more of a fast food approach to feng shui, and it’s really much deeper. To feel true abundance, we need to move out of a poverty mindset and realize that there’s really nothing that you can lose. When we start to worry and grasp tightly to things that are impermanent, we don’t feel abundant.

There’s an area of the feng shui bagua map that’s related to wealth and abundance. It’s the purple area, and it’s called xun. This area is related to yin wood, which is like a big tree. If you think about a big tree in nature, it’s very giving and abundant. If you’ve ever had a tree on your property that bears fruit, you often have so much to share, because there's more fruit than one person or one family could ever consume or enjoy. It encourages generosity, and reminds us that it doesn’t really benefit us to hoard. When you realize that there’s nothing you can lose, you can really cultivate generosity and abundance.

There’s a Buddhist practice that you can try to cultivate generosity. Take an item in your home, and see how it feels to move it from one hand to the other. How does it feel to give? How does it feel to receive?

You can also go bigger, and think about what you can let go of. It doesn’t have to be money. To tie it back to feng shui, are there things in your home that you can let go of, and offer to someone else? Can you offer help? Words of kindness? Joy? How can you become more generous and create opportunities for generosity?

Another interesting way to be generous is to give people an opportunity to ask for help. You can ask someone to lend you an ear or to get you milk for your tea, and give them the opportunity to be generous. Even if they say no, it’s still an act of generosity. You’re being generous by giving someone the opportunity to be generous to you. Or, maybe you are giving them the opportunity to be generous to themselves by saying no.

There are so many really unique and interesting ways to cultivate generosity. Whether it’s moving something from one hand to the other, letting go of an item you’re holding onto tightly, or offering a bit of your time to someone else, I encourage you to explore this area of the feng shui bagua map. How can you be giving, like a big tree? Mother nature is always giving. How can you be in that flow?

by Anjie Cho

Thanks for reading our "Q&A Sunday". If you have personal questions, we encourage you to check out Practical Feng Shui or hire one of Anjie's Grads.

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

Q&A Sunday: What Is Feng Shui?

Guest User November 22, 2020

What is feng shui?

Since we’re spending so much time at home lately, there’s been a lot of interest in feng shui. Because of this, I wanted to take the time to share a bit more about what exactly feng shui is.

Feng shui is an Asian modality, and like other practices that come from Asia, it’s really a lifelong practice. In the western medical world, people say: “See one, do one, teach one.” This isn’t really how it works in feng shui or in other Asian modalities. You can certainly do that, but it won’t get you very far, and approaching feng shui like that is really appropriating it. It’s important to recognize that feng shui is a really deep practice from Asia, and to respect the way that it was meant to be cultivated.

That said, there are so many cultures, and most have some way of looking at how to organize their living spaces in order to invite more harmony in the home. You can look back at your own personal cultural heritage and ask your parents or cultural elders to learn more about what your ancestors and elders did to make their homes more harmonious. I’m inspired by some of my students who are incorporating their own cultural practices into their feng shui studies.

The words “feng shui” translate to “wind” and “water.” The way I look at it is that we as humans are a part of nature, and we rely on the elements of wind and water to survive. We need our breath as well as hydration to live and to thrive. Without wind and water, there is no life. At its core, feng shui is about bringing life to a space. It’s more than just knowing where to put the TV or what color to paint the door. That’s really a superficial way of looking at feng shui. I challenge you to dive in a little bit deeper, and if feng shui is something you’re interested in, work with a practitioner who can really help and support you.

It’s also really helpful just to acknowledge that your home is something that supports you, and recognize that you can transform it to be a place of harmony and support rather than a place that drains you. Feng shui is really about how to be in harmony with your home, your environment, and all the things outside of you, because they’re really not outside of you.

My personal definition of feng shui is mindfulness for spaces. It’s about paying attention to all the details of your environment and recognizing that you are interconnected and interdependent with the world around you. That opens you up to feel true compassion, since you know you’re not separate from everything around you, from helpful people and beautiful spaces to challenging people and draining spaces. Feng shui gives us the tools to slow down and create a home that supports and nurtures us. The world around us is beautiful, and a little bit of mindfulness can really help us appreciate all the beauty in our homes and in our lives.

by Anjie Cho