The Outside of Your Home Can Create a Feng Shui Enhancement

Did you know that the outside of your home is as important as the inside in helping you create positive Feng Shui energy?  In this hectic world, I have learned the importance of having a space that is calm and healing – your garden can be just that space. The recent rains, with following sunshine, have blessed my garden with lush leaves and a multitude of beautiful flowers, an intoxicating fragrance and an explosion of color. It’s important to have an outlet where the brain can breathe, and your garden can be this natural outlet. 

When my mother passed away years ago, a friend gave me a beautiful statue of a cherub. I placed it in the front of my house in my Knowledge and Self Cultivation area and keep it surrounded with flowers. Right now, a multitude of red tulips bless the space, and help escort nourishing Ch’i to my front door. Being at my entrance they help nourish me with beauty, and positive memories each time I return home. 

There are so many things you can do to enhance your home’s outer space, whether you have a garden, a patio or beautiful pots and vases at home you can use the power of plants, flowers, fountains, and garden art to enhance your life. Some suggestions are:

Sow flower seeds to attract bees and beautiful birds, plant a vegetable garden, pull weeds, clean, organize and refresh your yard, or patio. If you have children, you can teach them gardening skills and love for nature. Cut your own beautiful fresh flowers and arrange them in stunning floral art, then take pictures of your beautiful arrangements, or just enjoy your garden by strolling through it, taking a nap, meditating or sitting on a favorite bench. Inhale the fragrance and breathe the stress away. 

                               

Feng Shui, which has been practiced for over 3,000 years in China, is the enhancement of health, prosperity, and happiness through a connection with your environment. Your vitality, resources, and loving connections flourish and grow best in harmonious environments. Flowers, with their various shapes and colors, represent all of the five Feng Shui Elements. When in balance, these five elements help to calm and energize you at the same time.                                        

If your home is considered the "heart" of your property, the garden is considered the "aura". Your garden is your personal passport into nature. Whether you plant a flower or vegetable garden, the beauty in your outdoor environment attracts vibrant Ch’i into your home. 

Basic Feng Shui principles can help you nurture and strengthen your energy and yourself in all aspects of your life. You can surround yourself with flowers in your home or use some of these suggestions for creating a Bagua in your garden. 

Gardens and the Bagua:

The Feng Shui  Bagua (Ba-gua) Map, is represented  as a grid of nine sectors.  The Bagua comes from the Chinese philosophy, “The I Ching,” and literally means “eight trigrams”, with the center for grounding and centering.  Each sector of the Bagua is represented by one of the elements, which can be associated by the shapes and colors of plants and garden art.    

Apply the Bagua map on your landscape footprint, using the driveway as the entrance. This may not be in the same direction as your front door. Depending on where your driveway is you will be entering your property from Knowledge, Career or Helpful People.  Enhancing the entrance to your home and garden with healthy plants, water features, greeters and curving walkways is one of the most important things you can do to invite energizing Ch’i to your life.  Gardens should take on the qualities of the Bagua area they reside in. Here are some examples of using the Bagua to enhance your garden:

Enhancements in Career Area

• Soft colorful plants, reds are particularly auspicious, water features such as 360-degree bubbling fountains or with water flowing toward the house, pots in shiny dark colors, wind chimes, and curved paths or asymmetrical lines

                                                  

Enhancements in Knowledge and Self Cultivation Area

•  Colors of blues, greens, wooden benches, symbols of mountains or large rocks, statues representing spiritual guides, healthy plants with rounded soft leaves, gazing balls, and items that create a quiet meditative feeling
  
                                           

Enhancements in Health/Family/Friends Area

• An abundance of healthy flowers in any color with upright growth (blooming flowers represent perfect health), sitting areas for entertainment, symbols of family, vegetable gardens, herbs, orchard

Enhancements in Wealth Area

•  Plants in the purple color spectrum, fountains or waterfalls flowing toward the home, flags or whirligigs

Enhancements in Fame Area

• Plants in colors red, up lighting or twinkle lights, BBQs, fire pits, garden art representing suns, stars, triangles and sculptures of people or animals
  
                                          

Enhancements in Love and Marriage Area

• Pairs of items depicting romance, including bistro tables with two chairs, two lounge chairs, loveseat or sculptures in pairs (avoid single or lonely items), plants in colors of reds, pinks and white
                                           

Enhancements in Children and Creativity Area

• Items in metal and plants in colors of white and pastels, whimsical garden art, children’s playground or personal garden, workbench, garden bench, fairies, butterflies, nature spirit
  
                                  
  
  

Enhancements in Helpful People and Travel Area

• Garden art representing spiritual guides, or desired travel locations (We have a colorful pole with signs pointing to all the places we’ve traveled), birds, sundials
• Items in metal and white plants 

Enhancements in Center Area

•  Houses usually occupy the center of the landscape Bagua, but if they don't this is an auspicious area for ceramics, plants in the color yellow, earth tones, rectangle shapes, patios, bricks/pavers, table and chairs

Because the home and garden are so connected, Feng Shui practitioners usually recommend enhancements for both.  

1) Make the entry beautiful and clutter free

2) Place water features in the Career and Wealth areas 

3) Remove dead plants quickly

4) Balance the Yin/Yang of your garden with opposites (short/tall plants, hot/soft colors, etc.)

5) Keep all systems working (i.e. watering, lighting – nothing should be broken)

                                      

Remember that the outside of your home also reflects your personal energy.  Enhance it to help you relieve stress and help you create a peaceful welcoming  space.    

Nurture Your Feng Shui by Bringing Nature into Your Home

Winter storms have brought much needed water to our environment, but the rains are keeping us inside. I’m looking at my beautiful garden, and although I can’t be outside enjoying it, I can still glean the nurturing benefits of nature by bringing nature into my home. 

One of the Feng Shui principles is that “Everything is Alive”; everything in your home is alive and either nurturing or draining you. The Feng Shui masters first looked at nature for harmonious spaces, therefore bringing a bit of nature into your home can help to uplift the energy, thereby nurturing you. Healthy plants and fresh flowers are an instant way of creating a beautiful, harmonious space. 

In Feng Shui, plants connect us to nature, bringing freshness and vitality to the home. They create calming feelings, enhance the flow of energy, and can help purify the air. 

Choosing green, vibrant plants with round, soft leaves is recommended. It’s useful to consider what plants will thrive best in your lighting conditions, and to choose ones you can easily care for.

                                

In contrast, plants with spiky or pointed leaves, such as cacti, are believed to have sharp energy, which can drain positivity from the room.

Tips for bringing nature indoors:

• Add a plant to a bare room to bring grounding energy 

• Use artificial plants if you don't have a green thumb or enough lighting

                               

Plants recommended in Feng Shui: 

• Jade plant: Symbolizes good luck and abundance

• Money tree: A good luck charm that's said to attract wealth and abundance

• Pothos: Brings wealth and prosperity

• Peace lily: Symbolizes prosperity, peace, and purity

• Chinese money plant: Believed to bring prosperity and good luck

• Citrus tree: Known to bring good luck and fortune

• Snake plant: Associated with positivity, protection, and purity

• Lucky bamboo: Brings prosperity and good luck

• Flowers of any kind: Are the greatest Ch’i enhancers, symbolizing good health

                                                   

I loved taking flower design classes. Every week I created, brought home, and displayed beautiful arrangements.  The feeling evoked by these arrangements was pure joy as I was continuously nourished by their beauty and combination of Feng Shui elements.  

Bring nature inside your home and surround yourself with its healing energy.  You will love the results! 

                                              

Establish a Morning Practice for Better Inner Feng Shui

After a restless night’s sleep, I used to wake us, pick up my phone, check email, react to social media, watch the news and busily set off on my day already feeling stressed. That was the old me. After taking a course to discover my inner journey, I learned the importance of a “Morning Practice” to set me up for a successful, calm, restorative day, and a better night's sleep.  This practice, which is closely linked to Inner Feng Shui, opens you up to inner wisdom and is a channel for creativity. Inner Feng Shui helps to calm you, bring you inner peace and strengthens your immune system by lightening your behavior load. 

          

A Morning Practice need only take 15-20 minutes a day.

I set myself up by leaving a glass of water, a journal, and  some meditation music by my bedside. 

                                        

I begin by lying or sitting up in my dark room, sipping my water, and listening to music for meditation for around ten minutes. I practice breathing and close my active mind to the chatter. I just stay in my calm space.

I then turn on a light, pick up my journal and write five things I’m grateful for. This could be something small like my warm bed, or listening to my husband getting me coffee, or something big like the success of my book. 

                                          

I complete my journal entry by writing an intention for the day. After a quick stretch, I now feel set up for thriving.

Whatever you do, make it consistent and repetitive.

Other choices for morning practice could be:

Stretching and/or yoga

A longer meditation

Dancing to your favorite music

Sitting in silence

Lighting candles and creating your quiet space

Pulling a Tarot or Medicine card

Coloring

                                              

Creating a healthy morning practice is good Inner Feng Shui, which  nourishes you. Therefore, as you enter this transformation begin small; choose one behavior you want to change and write it down as a positive affirmation, for example, if you are always late the affirmation would say, “I make sure to leave enough extra time when I go somewhere to ensure I am on time.” Write the affirmation as your intent for the day as part of your morning practice.  Focus on that behavior, elicit the help of friends and reward yourself for small accomplishments.

As you let go of the stress you may feel when waking up,  fill yourself with behaviors that help transform you:

1) Show gratitude 

2) Meditate 

3) Breathe deeply 

4) Listen to music 

5) Laugh It Off

6) Exercise

7) Spend time with friends – even if it’s only by socially distancing video or phone chats

8) Help others

Take time to create a nourishing morning practice,  rejuvenate your system and watch opportunities come your way

Blessings