There's a lot more to feng shui than the basics of home decor. This ancient philosophy can provide you with a deeper understanding of yourself, help you to reduce stress, and allow you to manifest your deepest desires. Here's a beginner's guide to the principles of feng shui.
When we hear about feng shui, it often sounds like it's just a philosophy for… moving furniture. But there's so much more to it than where to put your couch. DailyOM spoke to feng shui experts to get the lowdown on all things feng shui, from its beginnings to today, and how to incorporate its principles into your own life.
The Origins of Feng Shui
Feng shui originated in China thousands of years ago and is rooted in Taoist philosophy. The words feng and shui translate to "wind" and "water," respectively, which, says Anjie Cho, co-founder of the Mindful Design Feng Shui School, author, and co-host of the Holistic Spaces podcast, sums up the philosophy behind the practice perfectly.
"The idea of feng shui is to connect and live in harmony with the natural world," she tells DailyOM. Feng shui accomplishes this by connecting heaven and earth, or the spiritual and the mundane — it uses our material world to manipulate that which is intangible: energy.
In more practical terms, feng shui involves using our physical surroundings to direct the flow of qi, or energy, in a space. And this can concern everything from our furniture to colors to the actual architectural features. "A house with low angled ceilings, sharp corners, a staircase that is directly pointed to the entry door are all different ways that the qi can [negatively] affect the occupants," Janice Sugita, an interior designer with expertise in feng shui, tells DailyOM.
Modern placement of elements in our homes, such as fire and water in our kitchens, certainly impact the application of feng shui today, Sugita says, but the philosophy behind feng shui hasn't changed since it originated 4,000-plus years ago.
Read on to see how to effectively apply the principles of feng shui to your home and work space.
Interested in learning more? Check out Feng Shui for Beginners
5 Principles of Feng Shui to Use in Your Own Life
1. Set Yourself up in the Commanding Position
Though feng shui can be a very complicated concept, the most impactful way to get started also happens to be the easiest: Utilize the Commanding Position.
According to Cho, the Commanding Position governs how you should situate yourself in a space. The rule of thumb here: When you're in your home at your bed, your desk, or your stove, you want to position yourself so that the door is within your field of vision without placing yourself directly in line with the door. This usually means being "kitty corner" to or diagonally opposite from the door. Situating yourself this way allows you to relax so you can best sleep, work, and cook.
"Your bed represents you, your desk represents career and your work, and your stove represents your resources and your finances as well as how you nourish yourself," Cho says, explaining the importance of these three locations in particular.
2. Placing the Bagua Map in Your Space
Once you've mastered the Commanding Position, it's a good time to consider the Bagua Map. Cho compares the Bagua Map to a mandala, with eight areas radiating from a center, or you can think of it as a grid with nine tiles. Each tile represents an area of your life, whether it's your romantic relationships, your career, your reputation, etc.
One example of a Bagua Map
Image: Courtesy of Hoku Krueger
The Bagua Areas
So, what are the Bagua Areas? From left to right, back to front, the areas are:
- Wealth
- Fame
- Love
- Family
- Health
- Children & Creativity
- Knowledge
- Career & Success
- Helpful People & Travel
Imagine the map is superimposed over the layout of your home. Each tile corresponds with whatever region of your home it happens to land on. Different schools of feng shui have their own ways of establishing the Bagua Map that vary in complexity — for example, in one school of feng shui that emphasizes astrology, the Bagua Map shifts each year.
In the school of thought that Cho practices, the Bagua Map is oriented based on the formal front door. In other words, the Career and Success Area, located at the bottom of the map, would be at the front of your home, and the Fame and Reputation Area, located at the top of the map, would be toward the back.
If you picture this in terms of a grid, health is in the center.
Cho notes that it's important to try not to focus on all of the Bagua Areas at once. Instead, choose one to three that you would like to work on and really concentrate on those. How? This is where we get to the practical, home decor side of feng shui.
3. Using the Elements to Boost a Bagua Area
Each of the nine Bagua Areas is associated with specific colors and objects that you can use to enhance or support that area. And these aesthetic features are linked to one of the five elements.
Feng shui utilizes the elements identified in Taoism: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. Each element is associated with a color, shape, season, and certain qualities.
- Element: Fire
"The fire element is about your recognition, your inspiration, and how people see you. It's the color red," Cho says. It can also manifest in objects like candles or light bulbs. Fire is associated with the fame Bagua Area, so to nurture that area of your home, you can add red elements and candles.
- Element: Earth
The earth element is how you're supported, your stability, and being grounded. It's associated with earthy colors like yellow, brown, and rusty oranges, and can manifest in earthy objects like a statue, a rock, or crystals.
- Element: Metal
"The metal element is your precision. It's how you communicate, as well as joy," Cho says. It can be found in white, gray, and metallic colors and can be represented in metallic objects like metal bells or wind chimes.
- Element: Water
Water is your career, your social network, and your wisdom. And, perhaps surprisingly, it's the color black. It can manifest as actual water, like a fountain.
- Element: Wood
Last is the wood element, "which is new beginnings, it's family, it's healing, and it's things starting new like springtime," Cho says. Its colors are green, blue, and teal. In the home, the wood element can be expressed in trees or live green plants.
But, as mentioned above, the earthly elements are only half of the equation of feng shui. The other half are the energies: yin and yang.
4. Finding Balance With the Yin and Yang Energies
According to Cho, balancing yin and yang is a key aspect of feng shui. "Yin and yang is a philosophical way of looking at the polarities or dualities in the world," Cho says. "But it's actually the ultimate nonbinary because one can't exist without the other."
Yin represents feminine energy and is associated with things like night and the color black, while yang reflects masculine energy and can be found in things like the sun and the color white.
As with the elements, each Bagua Area should emphasize either yin or yang energy, and the energy of a specific Bagua Area will impact how its elements should manifest.
For example, the wealth Bagua Area (located at the back left corner of your space) is yin wood, which might manifest in something like a tree, which has yin, or feminine energy, because it moves and grows slowly. On the other hand, the family Bagua Area (located in the middle and to the left) is yang wood, so it might be best represented by something like a sprout, which is more masculine and active, according to the feng shui philosophy.
5. Personalize Feng Shui With Astrology
Feng shui has deep connections to other Taoist philosophies, including astrology.
"Astrology is your destiny based on your birth," Sugita tells DailyOM. "Feng shui can allow you to change your destiny by the choices you make in how you live."
Cho describes several different systems of astrology that practitioners use in conjunction with feng shui, including the Four Pillars, the Eight Mansions, and Nine Star Ki. Together with feng shui, the different astrological modalities "can help a feng shui practitioner glean more information about what elemental qualities are inherent to that person in their natal chart, see maybe what elemental qualities would support that person in the home, and also use them to find balance with the other people living in the home," Cho says.
Feng Shui's Impact on Your Mental and Physical Health
Though one in-depth review of the effectiveness of feng shui found no concrete evidence of its benefits, studies suggest that the architecture of a space can influence our creativity, our ability to focus, how relaxed we are, and how social we are.
Cho believes that an adherence to feng shui principles may reduce stress. How? When we're not in the Commanding Position, our fight-or-flight mode is activated, providing us with a constant level of anxiety. By setting ourselves up in Command, we're able to sleep better and alleviate worries.
Outside of the Commanding Position, there are many ways in which our home can impact our mental and physical wellness. For example, according to Cho, having a lot of clutter near your front door is bad for your space energetically as well as making it literally difficult to enter your home.
"Not only is it creating a physical obstacle in your home, [but it's also] creating a mental obstacle, an emotional obstacle, and weighing down on you," she explains.
Cho describes a story about a student who had a bike hanging in his entryway. Every time he'd see the bike, he'd feel guilty about not using it enough, which negatively impacted his mental health.
The same can be said about keeping a treadmill or broken object in the living room. "It creates broken energy in your home and broken energy in your life," she says.
Your Physical Space Matters
As we spend more time indoors, finding a way to live in harmony with our spaces has become more important than ever. Decorating our home environment may seem to be a trivial, albeit fun, activity, but feng shui shows us that creating a space that supports us in every aspect of our lives can have profound impacts on our well-being.
"We spend all of our lives surrounded by space," Cho says. "You're born in a space, you grow up in a space, your dream is to own a space one day, you die in a space. Our spaces are with us."
