Spirit Almanac: Your Guide To Celebrating January's Mystical Holidays

featured this week on MindBodyGreen by Emma Loewe

image credit: Chloé Bulpin / mbg creative

image credit: Chloé Bulpin / mbg creative

We all know to mark our calendars for Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, National Avocado Day, and those other occasions people celebrate in big, bold, beautiful ways. But what about the lesser-acknowledged spiritual, astrological events that roll around every year? Consider our Spirit Almanac series your own personal guide to the divine.

This month, we’re unpacking the mystical magic of January with sound healing, gemstone rituals, and some pretty powerful New Year’s cleansing.

January 28, Chinese New Year

Today signals the first day of the traditional Chinese calendar—one that was marked by the lunar and solar phases. Traditionally a day to honor household and heavenly deities, the occasion is still a vibrant celebration of life and new beginnings. Here, feng shui expert Anjie Cho speaks about the animal tied to 2017 and shares how to harness its auspicious energy.

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The Essentials That Belong In Every Minimalist Home

featured this week on MindBodyGreen by Emma Loewe

We’re putting out a “5 Days to Minimalism” series to help you clear clutter from your life really, really quickly. Day 5 is all about adopting a minimalist mindset throughout your home.

Sit back and envision a room that's flooded with natural light and simply curated with a few statement furniture pieces and accessories sprinkled here and there. Can you feel your heart rate slow down a few notches?

Kitchen

How to clear it out

Here, architect and feng shui expert Anjie Cho shares her top tips for crafting a clean kitchen:

1. Clear off all surfaces. The more things that are on the counter and visible, the more cluttered your kitchen will look and feel. If possible, put things away behind cabinet doors. If you have glass doors, you can paint the backside of the glass or add a frosted film, so you don't see the additional busyness inside the cabinets. I like to give myself a limit of one to three things that I love and use on a daily basis on the counter and one item on the stove.

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Why Pink Makeup Makes You Believe Everything Is More Rosy

featured this week in MindBodyGreen by Kayla Jacobs

Pink is usually a color associated with spring and it’s not hard to understand why; candied shades are far easier to get on board with when they go hand in hand with a season’s vibrant days. Bold fuchsias, petal pinks and soft lilacs; pink makeup calls to mind the prettiest of flower-filled gardens and provides a welcome antidote to winter's dark nails—lessons in beauty psychology don't get any better.

As a color, its ability to stir up emotions, gender bias and feminine connotations are legendary. "The power of pink lies in its combination of passionate red and the purity of white," says Feng Shui expert Anjie Cho. "In Feng Shui, pink is a color that creates romantic and rosy emotions. This is especially important in colder, light-scarce months, when we need the bright clarity of white with the warmth and positivity of fiery red."

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