Guidelines

Terah Kathryn Collins, author of the book "The Western Guide to Feng Shui" and founder of the Western School of Feng Shui, where I received my practitioner training, gives us these guidelines for using the three principles.

1. Live with what you love. This perfectly embodies the first principle of Everything is alive with Ch'i and talking to you. If you surround yourself with only things that you love, imagine what everything is saying — only good things! If our surroundings remind us of unhappy times in the past, they will keep us in the past. It's best to let those objects go and replace them with objects that you love.

2. Place comfort and safety first. Ideally our environments are places that make us feel comfortable and safe. Furniture placement can have an affect on whether we feel secure. When we place our beds, desks, and main pieces of furniture so that we have a view of the doorway, we are placing ourselves in the "power position" of the room. It's natural to feel more secure when we know that we won't be easily startled by someone coming up from behind us. Are the places where you spend the most amount of time comfortable — your bed and desk chair? If you're going to spend eight hours of the day there, shouldn't it be the epitame of comfort? Physical discomfort can lead to disruption in other areas of your life too. If you have to sit at a desk that gives you a stiff neck by the end of the day, how might that affect your home life later that evening? All things are connected.

3. Organize yourself. Nothing can stimulate the Ch'i quicker than decluttering an area. Since everything is interconnected, organizing an area will get the ch'i moving, which in turn stimulates the Ch'i in another area. Get the idea? By decluttering you are opening yourself up to a multitude of new experiences and opportunities to come into your life. Check out the bagua to see what area of your home that cluttered area was (is) in. Then watch to see what improvements you experience in that area of your life after the decluttering process. Great books to help with the decluttering process are : "Clear your clutter with Feng Shui" by Karen Kingston and "Organize from the Inside Out" by Julie Morgenstein.

4. Express yourself. When you express yourself in your home, you've truly made it your own. If you love gardening, healthy plants, landscape pictures, and books on gardening would help express your passion in your home. It's a great way to surround yourself with things that you love,

An environment that's comfortable and safe, filled with items that we love in an organized fashion, will delight our senses, nurture and support us, and have the power to enrich our lives.

The bagua is an exciting aspect of Feng Shui that is used to bring about desired changes. We can use our environment to help us make those changes. Located in every structure are areas particularly associated with different aspects of our lives. See Bagua for more details.