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Light and Love

Sister Bridget

Feng Shui Tips for Your Dining Room
by Stephanie Roberts

In ancient cultures, "breaking bread" together, whether as a family or with strangers, was a honored way to build community. More recently, potluck dinners, pancake breakfasts, and company picnics have continued this tradition. We haven’t done so well at maintaining this important ritual in our homes, however.

Today, the dining room is often one of the most neglected rooms in the house; either it is a formal space that is rarely used, or it has been taken over for use as a home office or projects space. Busy schedules and multiple-careers can make it almost impossible for families to share dinner together on a regular basis. From a feng shui perspective, we are missing out on an important and once-sacred aspect of life. Paying attention to the feng shui of your dining space can help to remedy that.

A cramped dining room can create a feeling of pressure in family relationships and interfere with good digestion. Too much heavy, dark, old furniture – especially when it is squeezed into too small a space – also creates a heavy, dark feeling and blocks the flow of chi. Boxes and bags of clutter have a similar effect. The older the clutter, the more stuck the energy will feel. De-cluttering your dining room is an important first step in improving the feng shui of this space.

The dining room is an exception to the feng shui guideline of aiming to leave some open space in the center of every room. Here the dining table itself should occupy the center position, with equal space on all sides (if possible), and plenty of room for each person to sit down at and get up from the table.

The flow of energy through the dining room should be gentle but not stagnant. It’s good to have two doors to the dining room to allow chi to circulate, but if doorways on opposite walls are directly in line with each other chi will move straight through the room too quickly. A faceted crystal ball or crystal chandelier over the center of the dining table will help to balance chi in the room, and also helps people with eating disorders embrace healthier habits.

A mirror is also helpful for improving chi flow in the dining room. Make sure that the mirror reflects something attractive: a nice piece of furniture, a view out a window, or painting or other artwork. A mirror that reflects what’s on the table visually doubles your food, and symbolically doubles your money. Keep in mind, though, that if your dining table is covered with clutter or unfinished projects the mirror will doubling the mess and workload.

If your family is managing to dine together but the conversations tend to focus on the past rather than sharing current issues, try clearing all old objects from the dining room. Boxes of old papers and photographs especially will contribute to holding the energy of this room in the past. Getting rid of them will encourage your family to open up about what’s happening in their lives right now. If you want to keep a few ancestral treasures or portraits in the dining room, place them together in the Family sector of the room rather than distributing them throughout the space.

EATING IN PEACE

The dining room should be a calm and peaceful place. Warm, soothing earth tones such as soft yellow, peach, and beige are good colors for this room. Curtains soften the cutting chi of mini-blinds, and a thick rug or carpet adds a soothing texture that helps to absorb sound and keeps the atmosphere of this room tranquil. If you don’t have a formal dining room, do what you can to make the area where you have your meals as separate and quiet as possible.

Lighting is an important element in creating a good dining atmosphere. Use candles, lower wattage bulbs, or a dimmer switch to bring the energy level down a little, especially at the end of a hectic day.

If your evening meals often feel rushed or if time pressures from the day carry over into the dinner hour, try removing all clocks and calendars from the dining room and reposition those in other rooms so they can’t be seen from the table. This will help you slow down and enjoy a calmer dining experience.

At least once a week turn off the TV and allow yourself to enjoy the process of physical nourishment without any distractions other than conversation with your family. Good manners dictate turning your cell phone off when you dine at a restaurant; why not apply this rule at home, too? Treating the dinner hour as a special time for relaxation and nurturing is a good feng shui practice, and will help both your mood and your digestion.

Your beautiful table linens and good silverware should be used from time to time, so you can enjoy them in the present instead of always waiting for some future date. Plan a special sit-down-together dinner with your partner or family one night a month (or more often, if you can). Making this a regular event reinforces how special your loved ones are to you. Using a tablecloth, rather than individual placemats, encourages closeness among family members.

Take a moment before beginning the meal to give thanks for the abundance on your table and for the family and friends who are sharing the meal with you. Saying grace before the meal – in whatever form you choose – fills the dining room with the energy of love and appreciation.

Excerpted from “The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui” by Stephanie Roberts (Alpha Books, 2004)

Copyright © 2004 Stephanie Roberts

Great Tips for your kitchen! Hope you all are doing well!

Light and Love

Sister Bridget

Feng Shui for the Heart of Your Home
by Stephanie Roberts

The kitchen is sometimes called "the heart of the home," and with good reason; in ancient cultures the hearth was a sacred place representing the life-giving sustenance of Earth’s bounty. Feng shui recognizes the kitchen as one of the most important rooms in the house because it is where we connect with the energies that nourish us physically (food), financially (money), and emotionally (family). It reminds us to see the kitchen not just as where we put the groceries away and dish up dinner, but also as a place where we receive blessings and express gratitude for the gifts of life, health, and prosperity.

The kitchen should be bright and sunny in feeling, evoking the warmth of the sun and hearth. Reds and earth tones are good here, while green accents add wood energy to feed the stove’s fire, and touches of purple help to support prosperity. Dark, cramped kitchens can be transformed with warm white or pale yellow paint, brighter light fixtures, and cheerful accessories that bring reds and yellows into the room. A kitchen with lots of black and chrome appliances and fixtures will benefit from touches of green, purple, and red to support health and prosperity.

When you come home from the store and put your groceries away, think about the health and vitality these foods will bring to you and your family. As you reach for a snack or prepare a meal, take a moment to focus on how fortunate you are to have this nourishment at your fingertips. Visualize your kitchen always filled with nature’s bounty, and say a quiet "thank you" for the food that sustains you and your family. This moment of awareness and gratitude will help to keep the chi of your kitchen supportive and strong.

One easy way to improve the chi of the kitchen is to make sure that everything involved in food preparation and serving is attractive and pleasant to work with. If you are cooking with pots that you don’t like, eating from dishes that you do not love, or using paper towels for napkins because the good ones are put away in the back of a closet, each seemingly minor incident is detracting from your ability to enjoy and benefit from your meals.

Get rid of the stuff you never use, start using the things you love, and fill your kitchen with accessories that you really enjoy. This is feng shui in action, and it’s a wonderful way to transform the energy of your kitchen so you can receive the support and comfort that the heart of your home should provide.

Feng shui reminds us that in order to prosper, we need to be healthy. The feng shui of your kitchen – especially the stove – can have a big influence on your financial situation, even if you rarely or never cook.

In feng shui, the stove is your "wealth generator." It is the most important symbolic factor in your ability to prosper financially, so make sure it works the way it should. Any problems with the stove can indicate problems with money or limitations to your ability to bring home a good income. A burner that doesn’t heat could be a sign of fruitless effort, and an oven that runs too hot could be burning up your money. Dirt and grime are also signs of negative energy, so be sure to keep your stovetop and oven clean.

One easy way to activate money chi is to use your stovetop at least once a day, rather than always relying on the microwave to boil water for tea or heat up a cup of soup. Vary which burner you use, so that all are used regularly. If you don’t use your stove, or use the same one burner all the time, symbolically you are limiting your ability to benefit from financial resources.

When the stovetop is not in use, put all pots and pans away. Unused pots stored on top of the stove can squash prosperity chi, especially when they cover the rear left burner; if you visualize the ba gua over the stovetop, with career in the center front, the rear left burner is in the Wealth position.

To support prosperity, place something that symbolizes wealth or abundance in the Wealth area of your kitchen [the back left corner of the room if you are standing in the doorway], such as a basket or bowl of fresh fruit. Purple and green grapes are especially good abundance symbols for the wealth area.

Another good feng shui tactic is to keep kitchen canisters and other containers more than half-full as much as possible. Every time you see these containers, your subconscious mind will register plenty rather than the implied lack created by an almost empty jar. Get in the habit of restocking your food supplies before you run low, and you will fill your kitchen with the energy of abundance.

Excerpted from “The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui” by Stephanie Roberts (Alpha Books, 2004) 

Copyright © 2004 Stephanie Roberts

Here we are! Finally at some Feng Shui tips to help us help ourselves. Hope you all are doing well!

Light and Love

Sister Bridget

Feng Shui Money Tips
by Stephanie Roberts

Do you know where your financial "power spots" are? The contemporary methods of feng shui associate prosperity issues with the back left corner of any space. Stand at your front door facing into the house; your wealth area is at the back of the house on the left-hand side. There’s also a wealth area within each room: facing in from the doorway, it’s the corner area in the back of the room on the left-hand side. Where are the wealth areas within your office, living room, kitchen, and bedroom? Now that you’ve identified your money power spots, here are some quick and easy ways to apply feng shui to these spaces:

1. Clear out any clutter from these important areas. Clutter is a sign of stagnant energy, and clutter in your money power spots can clog up your cash flow. Getting rid of clutter is one of the most powerful ways to shift the energy of your power spots into high gear.

2. Fix things that are broken. Anything that doesn’t work as it should is a sign of something wrong in the area of your life that corresponds to that part of your space. Examine each of your money power spots to look for anything that needs repair. It’s time to do something about that loose doorknob, non-working light switch, stuck file drawer, or clock that doesn’t keep correct time, to name just a few possible examples. Remove items like these from your power spots or fix them so they work properly.

3. Enhance your power spots with symbols of prosperity, such as a bowl of coins (add your loose change to it every day), a "lucky bamboo" plant, or anything that symbolizes success and prosperity to you. There are lots of Chinese luck symbols available, but you don’t have to use them unless you want to. A picture of your dream house, or a model of that luxury car you long for, is an effective money symbol because it has personal meaning for you.

4. Accent your money areas with the colors green and purple. Green symbolizes vitality and growth, and purple is the color of wealth. Place a bowl of green and purple grapes (real or artificial) in the wealth area of your kitchen, to symbolize abundance filling your home. If you use real grapes, it’s okay to eat them, just add more from time to time so the grapes remain fresh and the bowl is always more than half full.

5. Pay attention to how you handle money every day. Do you keep paper money neatly sorted in your wallet or money clip, or is it jammed in there any old way, or crumpled up at the bottom of your pocket? Clean the clutter out of your purse and wallet, and start handling your money as though you value it.

6. If you neglect your money, it will neglect you, so be sure to balance your checkbook regularly and pay your bills on time. Put your checkbook in an attractive cover (choose green, purple, red, blue, or black) and keep it in the wealth area of your desk – that’s the rear left corner again — or in the wealth area of your office.

7. Live generously. Money is a form of energy, and it needs to flow through your life, not just into it. Hoarding and scrimping work against more coming in, while giving generously within your means makes space for even greater abundance. If you don’t yet have ample money to share, give as generously as you can of your time, energy, compassion, and appreciation.

8. Take a few moments every evening to think about all the good things that happened to you today and to express your gratitude for what you have received. Small things count, too, so it’s okay if there’s little of the spectacular on your list most of the time. It’s not what happened that’s important; it’s getting in the habit of focusing on the positive side of things every day that matters. The more you notice, appreciate, and express gratitude for blessings received, no matter how small, the more good things will come your way, including money.

A true experience of prosperity is determined not by how much money you have, but by how well you notice and enjoy what is already present in your life. The formal name for the wealth area is "fortunate blessings" – as you de-clutter, repair, and accessorize your money power spots keep this broader meaning in mind. When you celebrate being rich in friends and family, or rich with laughter, or the richness of your spiritual life, or even being rich in air and sunshine if nothing else seems to be going well for you today, material blessings will come to you more readily as well.

Copyright © 2005 Stephanie Roberts