Q&A Sunday: My Favorite Feng Shui Crystals

Photo by DDP on Unsplash

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels

I’m curious about working with crystals, but not sure where to start. Do you have any favorites?

Thanks for your question! Crystals have been really popular lately, so I get a lot of questions about them. First, I’d recommend you read my post on following your intuition when choosing a crystal. It’s always beneficial to trust your intuition and choose the things that resonate with you the most, whether it’s colors, crystals, or healing modalities. 

To give you some inspiration, I do have some favorite crystals to work with! First, I want to point out that in feng shui we often recommend faceted crystal balls, which are actually made of glass, and not a naturally occurring crystal. I recommend getting a crystal ball like this instead of a cheap glass one, because they refract the light so much more beautifully than plain glass.

When it comes to naturally occurring crystals, one of my favorites is clear quartz. I’ve had the same piece of clear quartz for some time - it’s been in my refrigerator, as well as other places in my home, and I sometimes even take a bath with it. I like to connect clear quartz to the bagua area called Dui, related to children, completion, metal energy, and the color white. 

Clear quartz is a natural amplifier, and you can program it to amplify any positive intention that you have. For instance, your refrigerator represents your health and nutrition because it holds and cares for the food that you eat to nourish your body, so I like to program my clear quartz to amplify the nutrition of the food in my refrigerator. A great way to program your clear crystal is to first clear it with salt or sunlight, and then very humbly ask the crystal to receive your intention to increase the digestibility, nutritional quality, and life energy of the food in the refrigerator. It’s important to create some ceremony around this: meditate and calm your heart before you program your crystal, instead of rushing to fit it in between your everyday activities. 

I also love rose quartz, which has a gentle pink tone. Rose quartz is calm, soft, and soothing, with a really warm, feminine energy, and it cultivates healing and self love. It’s a great stone to work with if you want to soften your heart or heal your heart to invite in love and partnership. For us to invite a partner into our life, we have to actually heal our own hearts and heal ourselves first. When we feel whole is when we can really attract someone to us that’s going to be a partner in our life, rather than someone who we think is going to fill a hole where we feel empty. We need to learn to fill our own cup. 

Naturally, I associate rose quartz with the Kun area of the bagua, related to relationships, self love, partnership, marriage, the mother element, and the feminine principle. Kun is also connected to the earth element. 

One way to work with rose quartz is to place it on your nightstand, because your nightstand is very close to you and a private place. If you want to invite a partner into your life, place a pair of rose quartz crystals to represent your openness to work on healing yourself and caring for yourself, in order to invite a partner that you can also care for.

If you want to go deeper when it comes to inviting love and partnership with feng shui, I encourage you to check out Mindful Design’s Feng Shui Love Story course!

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: Broken Dishes in the Kitchen

Photo by DDP on Unsplash

Photo by DDP on Unsplash

I have a lot of broken dishes in my kitchen. They’re still usable, but some have big chips in them. Is that bad?

In feng shui, your kitchen represents your nourishment, how well you do in the world, and your resources, so it’s an important place to pay attention to. 

It’s also one of the most popular areas for people to work on in their homes. I do home renovations, and people spend a lot of time and money improving and updating their kitchens. We also spend a lot of time and energy cooking for ourselves and our families in the kitchen, and that translates to health and wellbeing. How we nourish ourselves also reflects on how well we can do in the world.

While I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily “bad” to have broken items in your home, it is certainly something to take note of. If you do have broken or chipped dishes or other items, that can represent some kind of broken energy, or difficulty and challenges. I invite you to repair or replace those items if you can, and I also understand that it’s not always possible to do this. You have to do the best you can with what you have, and because I’m not working with you directly, you have to be the judge and use your own intelligence and intuition to determine what is right for you. 

In general, though, if you have a kitchen full of broken things that are no longer serving you, what does that say about how you care for your health and your inner environment? As I’ve said before, your inner environment and your outer environment reflect each other. Are there any broken dishes you could let go of in your kitchen? 

If there’s an item in your kitchen that you absolutely love and cherish, find a way to repair it. One good example is the Japanese practice of Kintsugi, which is a way to use precious metal like gold to repair broken pottery. This makes it into something precious, rather than something damaged or fragile. Again, think about what your kitchen represents: we want to have a lot of strength and support when it comes to our health, rather than things being broken or in disrepair. 

I invite you to take a look at what you can let go of in your kitchen in terms of broken or damaged items, take the time to repair any items that you really love, and begin to open up more opportunities for health, support, resources, and strength. 

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: Kickstarting a New Beginning, Energetically and Spiritually

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

My family and I are moving into a new home, and I am looking to start it on the right path. Our current home, in my feeling, has not brought good energy, and life here has been a bit tough spiritually. I am looking to restart our life in the right direction for my children and for my husband and I. 

Yuliya O., Arlington, VA

Dear Yuliya:

Congratulations on your new home! And how wonderful that you want to restart on a positive path for your family. It was brave of you to leave a home that was not supportive energetically and spiritually. Working with my clients on their homes and work spaces, I know just how important it is to have environments that nurture and nourish you. It’s really quite essential. I want to share a quote I recently re-read that sums things up exactly! 

“Implicit in an understanding of the mind-body connection is an assumption that physical places that set the mind at ease can contribute to well-being, and those that trouble the emotions might foster illness”
— Esther Sternberg, Healing Spaces

This is really the first step, to realize the mind-body-space connection! I think that already by leaving your home you have embarked on a new beginning. So kudos!

In addition, I wanted to share some feng shui tips for creating a new path for your life, at any time. You don’t need to move into a new home to use these tips. There is an area of the feng shui bagua map called New Beginnings, which is also related to family and spring. I think this is a wonderful area to activate to kick start your fresh beginning. You can place a new green house plant or a water feature in this area of your entire home.

A green plant promotes growth and kindness and adds more positive life energy. A water feature adds water that feeds wood, because this area of the bagua is wood. Water feeds wood and allows it to flourish and grow. Another bonus is that this area is related to family, so by working with the New Beginnings area you can also support harmony in your family.

We also have a slew of posts you can check out that give other feng shui tips for moving into a new home!

There are so many ways, big and small, to build a fresh, positive start in a new home with feng shui, from the way you arrange your furniture to the colors you use in each room and more. As always, the intention behind your adjustments and choices will be the most important part, and since you're already making such a big change to seek a new start for your family, I'd say you're already on the right track!

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