Stephanie Liang's Blog

Whether you’re looking to improve a dismal financial situation or increase an already steady cash flow, the tips and tricks that follow can help put a little more cushion in your wallet. [image error]

Mind Your Stove

A dirty stove can make it more difficult to make money. For a financial uplift, keep your stove free of dirt and grime. Don’t just clean the surfaces. Spring clean behind and around the stove every month to remove the cobwebs, both figuratively and literally!

Your stovetop burners symbolize the wealth-generating potential of your home. Don’t neglect a broken burner even if the other three work. It may just be taking an unnecessary toll on your bank account! Likewise, fix any broken knobs, switches, light fixtures and bulbs, clocks, timers—all parts of the stove should be in top notch working condition. And be sure to use all stovetop burners equally. It bodes well for your long-term financial prosperity.

Infuse Your Wealth Area with Life

[image error]

Since we’ve already been introduced to the Ba-Gua Map in our Feng Shui for Love post, let’s use it to identify the wealth area of your home.

Stand at your front door with the Knowledge/Career/Helpful People sections of the octagon facing you.
Assess where you are according to the Ba-Gua, either in the Knowledge, Career or Helpful People areas.
Once you’ve gotten your bearings, locate the wealth corner of your home, which will be in the far left corner.

Add some life to your wealth corner by purchasing a healthy new plant. Pay attention to lighting conditions. If your wealth corner receives an abundance of sunrays, decorate with a full sun plant. If your wealth corner is shady, purchase a shade-tolerant plant. Artificial plants work too.

Consider pots colored purple, red, green or gold to enliven your wealth sector even more. If your financial condition has been a bit “rocky,” fill the pot with stones in order to stabilize your finances.

Chime in Some Cash

Strategically place a wind chime in your wealth corner to call in some cash.

Water for Wealth

Free-flowing water is perhaps the most effective element with which to draw more wealth into your life. Placing a fish tank in your wealth area is just one idea.

You can also hang some artwork in your wealth corner. Decorate with paintings or photographs of running rivers and streams. Avoid violent depictions of stormy waters (which indicate turbulent finances) and artwork that depicts stagnant pools of water. You want that wealth constantly flowing into your life!

Money-making Objects

Everyone has his or her own idea of wealth. Get traditional with a feng shui cure like a Money Frog, Chinese Red Envelopes or Prosperity Coins...or decorate the wealth corner of your home with symbols of richness that speak to you. Perhaps it’s a beautiful antique jewelry box, or a citrine crystal known to stimulate abundance and prosperity.

Decorate with artwork of possessions that represent the type of wealth you desire—cars, beachfront properties, yachts…whatever speaks to you personally. You can even place your dream board in your wealth corner.

Every wealth corner deserves a decorative dish or vase to place money in on a daily basis. As you drop in some coins, visualize the money multiplying. Vases of purple, gold, green or red carry enhanced activating powers.

Let us know your favorite ways of activating wealth in your life in the comments below. And if you like what you've read, check out our book Feng Shui on a Dime, your choice of paperback or Kindle, on Amazon for more feng shui tips and tricks.  

[image error]

[image error]Without health, it is difficult to appreciate the fullness of other areas of your life. The good news is that we are powerful enough to influence energy in order to improve both our physical and mental health. Let’s deal with two rooms that can affect your health the most—the kitchen and the bedroom.

The Kitchen

Ideally, your kitchen should be located in the back half of the home. The placement of the kitchen is important in feng shui, but can be remedied with some simple cures. 

If your front door leads straight into your kitchen (a likely setup for apartment dwellers) you may be suffering from digestive problems, unexplained weight gain and eating disorders, such as binge eating. It’s easy to have food on the brain and hard to stay away from it when the first thing you see upon entering your home is the fridge.

Feng Shui Solution:

To help diffuse the intensity and to pull the energy away from the kitchen, hang a large mirror in the back of the house, directly in line with the stove.
Hang a wind chime or a faceted crystal ball prism over the stove, directly above the cook.

A kitchen located in the center of the home too intensely affects our chi. The kitchen contains an abundant amount of energy; there is a constant flow, as family members move in and out of the kitchen throughout the day. This intensity is stimulated further by the energy radiating from the stove and electrical appliances. 

The center of the home is connected to the heart and stomach, and such over-stimulating energy can adversely affect the digestive system and heart health, as well as contribute to emotional instability and moodiness. Symptoms such as high blood pressure, heartburn and constipation may develop.

 Feng Shui Solution:

To neutralize the energy of a central kitchen decorate with earth tones, which have a calming and grounding effect. Yellow is preferable, as the color aids digestion. A pair of yellow curtains or a wash of yellow on the walls will do the trick. Add a yellow potted vase or some yellow daisies for a simple and cheap cure that can have a dramatic effect on your health.
Using earth elements to help balance your health is also a worthwhile technique. Add stone and ceramic accessories to your kitchen, such as a ceramic cookie jar or a wall clock made of stone.

The Bedroom

Having tackled the kitchen—the area of the home most influential to overall health—let’s move to the master bedroom, where your body goes to rest, recuperate and rejuvenate.

Bedroom Panaceas for Overall Health

If you want to enhance your health, decorate with the color green, which fosters health, vitality, longevity, growth and rebirth.
If you suffer from mental and emotional imbalances, try decorating with blue, which promotes relaxation, calmness and inner peace.
Keep the air clean with an air purifier such as a Himalayan Salt Lamp. Open the windows on occasion to generate chi and help air circulate.
Remove all electronics. If you insist on having a TV in the bedroom, then keep it in an armoire or cabinet when you are not using it. The other option is to cover the TV with a decorative cloth when it is not on.
If you must have your home office in your bedroom, separate it from your sleeping space with a folding screen. You can also separate your bed from your desk by hanging curtains from the ceiling.

Feng Shui Tips for Restful Sleep

Optimal health begins with sound sleep. Here are some suggestions to ensure a good night’s rest:

Place dried lavender and chamomile herbs in a bowl next to your bed. Or diffuse essential oils in an aromatherapy diffuser. These botanicals have been used throughout the ages as natural sleep aids.
Add more plants to your bedroom to increase oxygen and help you relax.
Remove papers, bills and calendars (or keep them hidden behind a decorative screen in your bedroom’s designated office space) so that your day-to-day affairs don’t follow you into the bed and into your dreams.
Keep the night in with heavy drapery that shuts out the light.
Decorate with restful images to encourage sound sleep, such as scenes of nature and quiet interiors.

Let us know your favorite ways of activating health in your life in the comments below. Check our our book, Feng Shui on a Dime for more feng shui tips. 

Note: None of the feng shui cures in this blog post are intended to replace medical advice, or to diagnose, prescribe or treat any disease, condition, illness or injury. If you have, or suspect you have, a health ailment, it is imperative that you consult a licensed physician.

 

[image error]

[image error]
Want to bring in your soulmate relationship? Are you anxiously awaiting that marriage proposal? Or maybe you’re just looking for a bit more passion in your life? Let’s start by adding some feng shui for love to the marriage/love corner of your bedroom—on the Bagua map, that’s the upper right corner of your bedroom.

[image error] Adding Romance to Your Love Corner

Decorate this corner with symbols of romance, such as a painting of two lovers or an artistic representation of the word love. 

Decorate in twos, such as two red candles you can light each evening to ignite a bit more passion into your life. (Flameless candles are a great option!) 

Place a bowl of rose quartz crystals, or “love stones” in your love corner. Rose quartz crystals carry the vibration of unconditional love and can help call in a soulmate relationship and heal any love-related issues. You can also jazz up your love life by placing a bowl of rose quartz crystals in your bathroom, carrying the stones in your purse, placing a couple under your pillow, or wearing a rose quartz or jade heart pendant.

Try to incorporate red and pink, such as love-affirming quotes written in pink letters.

Setting an Intention

Intention accounts for much of feng shui’s effectiveness. Test it out yourself by setting a love intention in the relationship corner of your bedroom. All it takes is a white piece of paper, a keepsake box or envelope and a red pen (glossy pink or passionate purple inks will do the trick too).

Write a list of your ideal partner’s qualities. Is he a social butterfly or a homebody? Does she love to travel? Is he athletic, artsy or both? Don’t censor yourself or your expectations. Create your Mr. or Ms. Charming exactly as you’d like them!
Place the list in a decorative box or a red envelope along with either an image of two peonies, or two silk peonies. Peonies represent romance, prosperity and a happy marriage.
Assess your love life after 49 days. Hopefully you’ll be enjoying a surge of romance!

Adding Romance to the Relationship/Marriage Corner of Every Room

[image error]Once you’ve added some feng shui for love to the marriage area of your bedroom, you can further attract love by spicing up other relationship areas in your home. The relationship sector is located in the back right-hand corner of your home, or each individual room depending on what you are mapping. You can even activate the partnership corner of your desk! And it doesn’t have to be about romance; set the intention to nurture a happy, loving relationship with yourself.

MAKE ROOM FOR TWO

If you are single and looking to be part of a duo, employ the trick of twos and arrange the room as if two people already live there. Remove any photos/artwork of just one person (from every room). Decorate in even pairs. Instead of one throw pillow, decorate with two, four or six. Don’t have a single reading lamp on your side of the bed. Balance out the energy and add a reading lamp on his side of the bed, even if you haven’t met him yet.

The same rule of two applies to your office—use two paperweights instead of one, especially if placed at the relationship corner of your desk. Investing in an electric toothbrush? Buy a set of two, instead of just one. You get the picture. And hopefully the love life of your dreams! 

If you like what you’ve read, check out our book Feng Shui On A Dime available in print or Kindle on Amazon for more feng shui tips and tricks.

[image error]

[image error]East and West have comingled long enough now that many of us have heard of chi. According to traditional Chinese culture, chi is the life force that permeates, well…everything. This invisible energy runs through our bodies, our minds, our environments; it is the vibrational play of energy that swirls through our interactions with other people and our surroundings.

This concept of life force is a part of most ancient cultures. In India it’s known as prana, and in Japan ki. Native Americans refer to it as the Great Spirit, and it goes by 95 other names in 95 other cultures.

Feng shui is all about awakening, enlivening, and balancing this chi.

Our physical environment can stifle or stimulate our chi, thereby affecting every component of our lives. Feng shui helps to correct blocked chi, opening up a free flow of energy between our self and our universe. Think of feng shui as earth acupuncture. Stimulate the right point, and voila! You’ve just aligned the earth—with your chi—with your desire.

But is there any scientific basis for a belief in chi?

If we look through the lens of Western science, then no. Empirical effects and subjective experience aren’t enough to substantiate that which can’t be seen. But if we consider chi in light of physics and not chemistry, we can discover that there is indeed a unity behind all existence, and a never-ending exchange between external stimuli and internal reactions. 

Newton’s Third Law of Classical Mechanics states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And quantum mechanics has shown that objects can exert influence without making any direct contact.

Consider the continual interplay of energy between your body and the earth. The earth is electrically charged, and science has shown that when you connect with the earth—standing barefoot on grass let’s say—electrons pass from the ground, through the soles of your feet, and into your body. This technique, called grounding or earthing, has been shown to alleviate pain, improve sleep, calm inflammation, and elevate well-being.

Science has also shown that humans (and all of existence for that matter) actually radiate visible light. This light is 1000 times less intense than the light levels we can see with the naked eye, but some people swear they can see it. Auras sound familiar? Those in the science world refer to it as the biophoton field, and it’s been proven to process, store, and retrieve information that controls your biological processes.

Healing therapies that access the bioenergetic field—modalities like reiki, acupuncture, acupressure, and pranic healing—all attempt to activate and re-balance stifled chi. Perhaps you’ve had your own experience with amplifying chi in your life, either through healing touch or feng shui. We’d love to hear about it!

If you like what you’ve read and want more, you can buy our book Feng Shui On A Dime, and even read it on your favorite e-reader. 

[image error]