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Feng Shui: Compass or Bagua?
Using the colorful Bagua, we can now look at the individual areas so that we can determine how we affect and are affected by the Chi that flows through these segmented surroundings.
I often get prospective clients looking for a new Feng Shui consultant who invariably tell me a story that goes something like one of these:
Three years ago, she told me that I need to buy a home that faces east, but now everything in my life is terrible. Do I really now need to change the direction of my front door?
I have been trying to calculate my direction with a compass, but I feel lost. Can you help?
My husband’s Gua Number is 3 and my Gua Number is 6. I was told that we have to sleep in opposite directions. Is this true?
I have studied every school of Feng Shui, including those that would be considered compass schools. While virtually all of the schools of Feng Shui will get you where you want to go, some are simply more practical for modern living.
As you see from the questions above, following Feng Shui compass schools can be confusing and ever-changing. For many, it is simply not practical to change the direction of their front door every year or sleep in a different direction than their spouse.
The school of Feng Shui that I concentrate on is called the Black Hat School of Feng Shui. Rather than focusing on the compass, this school puts the focus on the Bagua and how it overlays on a home to control the flow of energy.
While still quite comprehensive and based on the same traditional Feng Shui methods of the other schools, Black Hat Feng Shui is easy-to-follow and helps you attract and harness the energy around your home, regardless of the direction of your front door.
Follows these links for more information on the differing Schools of Feng Shui and for information on the Feng Shui Bagua.
Learn how Ms. Feng Shui can provide virtual Feng Shui consultations for your home or office.
Stairway to Failure: Use Feng Shui to Fix Front Doors that Open to Stairs
This is a common issue I see in many homes.
Forces at Work
Front doors should never immediately open to a stairway. It’s a common reason for financial failure. I always advise my home builder clients against them and my homeowner clients to remedy them.
Here is the problem as it relates to Feng Shui: the gravity force of Qi (pronounced “chi”) energy coming down the stairs is greater than the incoming Qi from the door.
This symbolizes the loss of income and wealth, but also impacts all aspects of Feng Shui. Whether you are the home builder or the homeowner, this is bad news.
Remember that the front door is always the Career & Life Path area of your home.
Feng Shui Cures
Now, I have solutions for home builders when I work with their designers.
But, what if you already own a home with such stairways or are seriously considering buying such a property where this is the only flaw? Certainly remodeling to move the stairs isn’t practical.
The cure is to hang a crystal or a wind chime from the ceiling halfway between the base of the stairs and the front door. The effect of this is to diffuse and spread the Qi as it comes down the stairs. You need to prevent it from rushing out the front door with the incoming energy along with it.
By the way, if there’s more than about twelve feet of distance between the door and stairs, the issue isn’t as severe. It doesn’t hurt to still remedy it, though.
Next Steps
Find out more about the Feng Shui consulting I provide for home builders and homeowners.
Have you noticed income problems in homes with a front door opening to the stairs? Leave your comments below.
For more help, contact me right now to inquire about a Feng Shui Space Clearing or a Virtual Feng Shui Consultation.
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Designing Homes the Feng Shui Way
As a Feng Shui consultant to several home builders, I always take an interest in seeing what others say about Feng Shui as it pertains to homes.
The Times of India has an article with some very basic elements talking about how homes should be built, including the following (with my comments):
Main Door: The main door should be larger than any other door in the house and its directional position is important. I would like to add that the house should be designed in such a way that the front door can be used the most regularly as the main entryway. For a healthy Career & Life Path Area of your home, be sure to use your front door!
Kitchen: The article points out that there needs to be a balancing act between the various elements found in a kitchen (metal from utensils, fire from the stove, water from the sink, etc.). Placement is important so that these items work in a creative cycle for energy rather than a destructive cycle. See some of my tips for the kitchen here and here.
Master Bedroom: Though the article largely discusses furniture here, it correctly points out that the location of the master bedroom is very important, though it does not elaborate. While having the master bedroom in the Love & Relationship Corner, I would contend that it is most important that no part of this room extends outside of the home as defined by the front door.
Toilets: The article correctly points out that toilets only relatively recently made their way indoors. It is widely believed in Feng Shui that toilets will suck the Feng Shui energy, or Chi, right out of your home. Getting rid of the toilet just isn’t practical in modern society, but make sure not to have them in dangerous places and use some tricks to slow the drain.
Next Steps
Find out more about the Feng Shui consulting I provide for home builders and home renovation projects.
What Feng Shui problems do you typically see in modern homes? Leave your comments below.
For more help, contact me right now to inquire about a Feng Shui Space Clearing or a Virtual Feng Shui Consultation.
Be sure to register for my email newsletter or like me on Facebook to stay up-to-date with my latest posts.
Adding Value and Comfort to Homes Through Landscape Feng Shui
Here is a very interesting article on how Feng Shui landscaping can add value and comfort to your home from Australia’s DesignBuild Source.
When I provide Feng Shui consulting to home builders, landscaping is one of the most integral aspects of my work.
It is amazing how much energy can be harnessed or deflected by the use of Feng Shui when designing the hardscaping and softscaping.
And often, a little goes a long way, not only in harnessing Chi, but in simply improving the aesthetics and harmony of a property.
Learn how Ms. Feng Shui can provide Feng Shui consulting for your home or development project.
Contact me right now to inquire about a Virtual Feng Shui Consultation.
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Avis, Kristen (2013, May 8). Adding Value and Comfort to Homes Through Landscape Feng Shui. DesignBuild Source. Retrieved from designbuildsource.com.au/
Orange County Register Article on Home Builders and Feng Shui
The Orange County Register today published a story by Jeff Collins in their print and online editions talking about Feng Shui and its role in home building.
Ms. Feng Shui was used as a primary source for the article, as I am consulting with KB Home and Olson Homes on how to design future residential developments with Feng Shui principles in mind.
Read more on the story titled “Builders on board with feng shui.” Be sure to also check out their graphic, “Western builders use an Asian art.”
If you are a home builder or a prospective new home buyer, take a look at my recent projects and learn more about how I can help you create better spaces for your future residents.
Here is the complete article:
Ms. Feng Shui walks into a model home in Irvine and glances around the room.
“You want the front door to be solid, not glass,” she says, eyeing the position and color of the door, examining the stairs, checking out the bathroom and inspecting the picture frames.
A window in the front door, “it’s like a hole in your mouth,” she says.
Front doors should be blue (for water) or black (representing career). And it should never be in alignment with the back door because “all the energy goes out the back.”
Stairs should turn sideways to the front, also to keep the home’s energy from rushing outside. A home’s energy, or chi, should linger.
“A home should be a place where you recharge,” she says. “It should be restful.”
Ms. Feng Shui — a.k.a., Hyun Jung “Jessie” Kim of Lake Forest – doesn’t just advise homeowners. Lately, she’s been hired by KB Home to advise its designers on two upcoming developments, Sage at Portola Springs and Garden Hill at Portola Springs.
And major homebuilders like KB Home, Standard Pacific and Lennar have been lining up for years to hire feng shui consultants like Kim.
You generally don’t see it mentioned in marketing materials, but a significant number of newly built homes in Orange County and in California have been feng shuied.
It’s a housing market trend that’s gone on for years under the radar, industry and feng shui professionals say.
KB Home’s Ironwood development in Portola Springs: Feng shuied. Standard Pacific’s Castillian at Blackstone in Brea? Yep, that too.
Olson Homes’ Solano Walk, a new development in Fountain Valley, has been feng shuied up the yin-yang.
“I’ve been working with (homebuilders) for two dozen years,” said feng shui consultant Angi MA Wong of Palos Verdes, who claims to have worked for more than 100 commercial and home developers and recently trained sales people at the Brightwater project in Huntington Beach.
“I’ve seen the wave come and go,” Wong said. “Now, yoga and feng shui have become part of the mainstream.”
Fung shui consultants advise home designers and architects on street layouts, home alignment, floor plans, landscaping and interior designs.
They help builders use addresses buyers see as lucky numbers while avoiding unlucky numbers like four – which in Cantonese sounds like the word “death.”
It started as a way to meet the needs of a growing number of Asian homebuyers. But as feng shui went increasingly mainstream, builders began incorporating its centuries-old principles into their designs more and more.
While there are more than two dozen different schools of feng shui, the practice boils down to using design to achieve harmony within a home or work space.
Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home’s Southern California division, said his company began looking into feng shui after getting “some simple requests” from its customers, asking if the company could change an address or the color of a front door.
The company responded by inviting feng shui experts to look at its plans and suggest improvements.
“It certainly seemed like it didn’t hurt, and it didn’t irritate any demographic,” he said.
Not only did it not hurt, Ruffner believes it improved the company’s home designs.
“How you construct the environment you live in can impact how your life turns out,” said Ruffner, a Newport Beach native and feng shui convert. “Since we started doing it, we definitely are getting good feedback from our buyers.”
And not just Asian buyers, he added. In the past three years alone, KB Homes has built 3,000 to 4,000 homes that incorporate feng shui into their design in some way.
Jeffrey Lake, Standard Pacific Homes’ national director of architecture, says feng shui is just one element of good design. Feng shui principles are incorporated into Standard Pacific projects “at the very beginning” of a development’s design, he said.
“It’s just the principles, the guiding principles, and sometimes that will connect with good design of a home,” Lake said.
Olson Communities President Bill Holford said feng shui design principles “make sense across the board.” Holford said the Seal Beach-based Olson Co. already was using feng shui when he joined the firm 10 years ago.
“I think a lot of buyers, regardless of background, look at feng shui as a principle of design,” he said.
Many of feng shui’s values are common sense.
For example, both Wong and Kim noted that it’s bad feng shui to place homes at the top of a T intersection, with car lights flooding into a home’s front windows. But that’s just plain bad from any standpoint.
Other things are not so obvious.
Kim explained that the sink and the stove top in the kitchen can’t be aligned because water and fire shouldn’t be together.
Also, you don’t want family pictures framed in metal in the family area of the home because metal cuts wood.
“That’s considered the destructive cycle,” she explained.
Ceiling fans above beds are bad because they deflect energy away from you, she said.
Feng shui devotees like the number eight in an address – or numbers that add up to eight – because the word for eight sounds like “wealth” in Chinese and is good for money.
If a home has an unlucky address, the address can be “changed” by adding a hidden number or painting an invisible number on the wall using clear paint or the same color paint.
If an address can’t be changed, Wong advises builders to put a less popular model on that lot, saving the most popular models for lots with favorable addresses. It’s likely the lot with the unpopular address will sell to a non-Asian buyer “who doesn’t know it’s a bad number,” she said.
“Some people subscribe to it. Some people discount it,” said Holford of the Olson Co. “But we chose to incorporate it in the design of our communities. … I think it’s a design element and principle that’s becoming utilized throughout (by) a lot of different builders.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7734 or jcollins@ocregister.com
For individual help, contact me right now to inquire about a Feng Shui Space Clearing or a Virtual Feng Shui Consultation.
Be sure to register for my email newsletter or like me on Facebook to stay up-to-date with my latest posts.
Collins, Jeff (2012, May 20). Builders on board with feng shui. The Orange County Register. Retrieved from www.ocregister.com
Feng Shui Health: Live Life Without Sickness
Do you feel a little out of balance or even simply run-down?
Do you wish you had better health to allow you to get more out of life?
Use Feng Shui to get your health back on track.
I just posted detailed Feng Shui information on the area of the Bagua responsible for Health.
If you want to find out more about the secret to a vibrant life, read up on the Feng Shui Health area.
For more help, contact me right now to inquire about a Feng Shui Space Clearing or a Virtual Feng Shui Consultation.
Be sure to register for my email newsletter or like me on Facebook to stay up-to-date with my latest posts.
