While Feng Shui can be terribly complicated, its basic practice is not. It simply seeks to draw positive energy towards you and encourage it to flow around you. This positive energy, or chi, helps you live a better life and simply feel better while you are doing it. Energy is flowing around you all the time, so why not draw only positive energy into your world?

Creating Pathways

If you realize that energy is an organic thing that is moving all of the time, they you will begin to understand the importance of its flow. As you design your spaces, you will want to reorient anything that creates an interruption to the flow. For example, if you have a piece of furniture blocking a pathway around your room, try moving it out of the way, or removing it from the room and see if that simple change makes the flow of the room feel better. This is the essence of Feng Shui.

The Mouth of Chi

Since the strongest energy enters your home through the front door, or the mouth of chi, you want this space in your home always to be open and inviting. To picture how energy will behave as it enters your home, picture water cascading through your open doors, and notice if it flows freely throughout your living spaces. Look for places where the water flow would be blocked causing water to pool and become stagnant. Then simply rearrange the furniture in that portion of your room to remove the blockage, and your room will have a better flow to it already.

Cleaning Out Clutter

One of the biggest positive energy killers in Feng Shui is clutter. Clutter interrupts the flow of positive energy in a room, causing it to splinter and become chaotic. Not only does this not create harmony, but it actually creates chaos. Look for places in the room where you have unnecessary things lying around. Look for any pieces of furniture that are not adding to the function of the room, and remove them. Do not just remove them from the room, remove them from your life by discarding them or giving them away. If your television is just sitting out in the room, while it is a functioning part of the room, it contributes to the clutter of a room. For this reason, keep it in a cabinet or armoire when it is not in use so that your room will feel peaceful.

When you make a trip to the wall art store, choose wall decorations that creates a serene feeling in your home; a few well placed pieces with impact are better than a lot of unrelated small pieces of wall art.

Designing in Circles

In Feng Shui everything moves in a circular motion, so corners and harsh angles simply interrupt anything flowing through your room. Try to round out harsh edges, and arrange your furniture in circular patterns. Place furniture where it faces the entryway to welcome visitors as well as positive energy to your space. By arranging your furniture in circular patterns, you are allowing people to move freely around your room without running into any obstructions, and already your space is more harmonious.

Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of arranging your surroundings to attract positive energy to you. Then once you attract the positive energy, or chi, you want to keep it flowing around you so that it will bring with it the elements harmony and prosperity to your home. In Feng Shui there are five elements, and each element has a set of colors connected to it.

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Water Colors

The water element is most often associated with a person’s profession, and its main colors are blue and black. By adding pictures or waterscapes and fish wall sculpture to your wall, you can not only bring in the colors of water to your room’s design, but you can also bring in the element of water. You may also wish to include a small water fountain on a tabletop to introduce the actual element of flowing water. The elements of water do best when situated in the north part of the room.

Fire Colors

Not surprisingly the fire element is synonymous with red, and it relates to reputation and fame. The fire element brings lucky energy as it relates to fame and recognition. Being a very passionate color, red is vibrant and energetic, and it is easy to overpower a space with red if you are not careful. Remember that you can use small amounts of red to great effect, and you can also use paler shades of red as well. Using muted colors still pulls the positive energy into your space while keeping it from being overpowering. The fire element is best put in the southern area of a room or home and you can introduce the actual element of fire by mounting a candle in candle sconces on the wall.

Earth Colors

As an element, the earth is placed in the northeast or southwest areas of a space, and its colors are light yellow and light brown. The earth element denotes nourishment, growth and stability, and it offers protection for your relationships. By using terracotta tile or sparkling crystals, you can bring the earth elements into any space.

Wood Colors

The wood element brings with it health, healing and vitality, and its colors are brown and green, the colors of the forest. The wood element helps you to attract abundance, and it is also associated with prosperity and wealth. Bringing plants into your space is a really good way of including the wood element into your design plan, and it should always be located east and southeast in your room. Adding an organic element can also be accomplished by adding wooden furniture to your room or even by adding furniture with wooden accents.

Metal Colors

Metal should always be placed in the northern area of a home or room, and with it comes clarity. The metal element is represented by colors like gray, white or real metallic finishes, and it denotes things that are creative and precise. Using a metallic wind chime and is a lovely to bring clarity to your home, or decorating with a beautiful wrought iron wall hanging not only creates a focal wall, but it allows creative energy to flow as well.

Feng Shui Colors Work in Any Design

While Feng Shui uses very specific colors in very deliberate ways, you can also use the basic ideas of the colors to build yourself a beautiful room. By keeping your room uncluttered, and arranging your furniture in a welcoming flow, you can incorporate Feng Shui element colors and create harmony in your home.

You need to do more than hang Asian style metal wall candle sconces from the wall art store, if you want to reap the benefits of Feng Shui. If you are not sure how your house is situated with regard to true north, you can take a compass reading to find out. The precise location is critical information if you wish to design your home to receive the optimal benefits of Feng Shui. So the first thing that you will want to do is to get an accurate reading. While there are many detailed instructions on how to get an accurate compass reading, you can simply take a basic reading by just following a few simple steps. Your goal is to find the location of true, magnetic north. This means that if you have a set of blueprints that show a geographic north, they may not necessarily match the true magnetic north reading.

Reading the Compass
To take your magnetic reading you can use a simple magnetic needle or you can use a digital magnetic compass. What is important is that the compass is magnetic. You cannot use a GPS to take this reading, because it will not render a magnetic reading, so again make sure that your compass is magnetic. Since you are taking a magnetic reading you also need to make sure that you are not around anything that will give you a false directional reading like belt buckles, watches or jewelry. Once you have a clear area in which to work stand with your back to your front door and hold your compass at waist level. Then record your first compass reading, take a few steps forward and take another reading. Do this a couple of more times, and then take your readings and average them. Use at least three numbers to calculate your average.

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Understanding the Reading
If you are not adept at reading a compass, you may need to get some guidance from a pro. If you are really not comfortable doing your own compass reading, then you can have someone with experience do the whole process for you. If you are comfortable taking the basic readings, then you can gather the information and pass it off to an expert to perform the calculations. Then once you have the results of the calculations, you will know the orientation of your home, and you are ready to determine where all of the specific Feng Shui areas of your home are located.

Easy Bagua Instructions
The bagua, which is frequently referred to as the “map of Feng Shui”, divides your home into nine separate areas, or guas. These are different areas in your home that correspond with different areas in your life. To use a bagua, stand at your front door and face into your home. Then align your map to match your position. Now you can refer to your bagua and easily determine which part of your home corresponds to various aspects of your life.

The Nine Areas of Living

There are nine life areas denoted on the bagua, and they travel through the front, center and back of your home. Again, standing in front of your house and facing it, if you begin on the right and travel front to back the areas are helpful people and travel, children and creativity and relationships. The center of your home front to back is represented by career, health which is always in the center of the home, and then fame and reputation. Then on the left from front to back you have knowledge, family and prosperity.

Starting a business is always has some level of risk involved in it, but you can help to mitigate that risk by adding some Feng Shui elements to your new business environment. You can begin impacting your new business even before you have selected your space; so if you are planning to use the tenets of Feng Shui to help your business be successful, you may want to use it from the very beginning.

Basic Pointers
As you are choosing your business location, there are some situations you should totally avoid. Try to find a good, central location that is highly visible for your location, and stay away from dead end alleyways and ‘no thruway’ types of roads. Also take care to stay away from churches or subway entrances. When you are deciding on a name for your business think positive, and stay away from anything that can be construed in a negative manner or in association with death or bad luck.

The Main Entrance
Once you have selected your location make your entrance as large as you reasonably can. You want your entrance to invite your customers inside and welcome positive energy, or chi. Make sure that once inside, your business floor plan flows effortlessly from one space to the next, which will allow the positive energy to flow through your business. It will also allow your customers to have a pleasant shopping experience, which is great for your business.

The Money Corner
One area where you want to pay particular attention is your wealth corner, which is always located in the southeast area of your space. Ideally you want this corner of your business to be at a diagonal from your entryway. Keeping this area free of clutter should be of top importance, and always keep this corner brightly lit and welcoming. This is an excellent place for the cash register, and you may want to accessorize it with other symbols of prosperity. Including a water fountain in this corner, even a small one, will help prosperity flow to your business. If you do include a water fountain in your design, then it is paramount that you properly maintain it to keep the water sparkling clean. Red is the color of prosperity, so include unique wall decor, such as a serene Asian fish wall art done in shades of red.

Reducing Clutter
As mentioned above clutter should be avoided above all. Clutter accumulates almost overnight, so you must be diligent in your quest to keep clutter at an absolute minimum. If there is something that you do not need, do not bother thinking about it, simply dispose of it or find someone who can use it. Clutter blocks the flow of positive energy and brings less positive energy your way. It will not only get in the way of your positive energy, but it will be in your way as well as you are trying to run your business efficiently. Clutter will cut you off at every turn, so get in the habit of keeping your business well organized and clean. Not only will your life be much easier, but your customers will appreciate it as well.