Understanding Feng Shui for the Home – Part II

Continuation from Understanding Feng Shui for the Home Part I

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that Feng Shui for the home is based on relationships.  Relationships between you and your environment, including the location, topography, weather patterns, neighborhood, neighbors and your family.  What we have the most control over is our home environment.  So how can we use feng shui as a tool to help us create prosperity for ourselves and our loved ones?  Let’s look at it from a family perspective and the relationships between those who live within the same house.

We all strive to have a happy, healthy and loving family.  Regardless of what life throws at you, we all want to have support and love.  What can we do to have better relationships between family members?

From a form school perspective, you need to arrange your furniture in a natural way that encourages the family to communicate and interact.  This is feng shui by design.

Let’s start with the dining room.  First, let’s talk about the dining table.  Do you have a dining table? Do you actually use it? Or is it full of paperwork and knick knacks that there is very little room to eat?  If it’s full of clutter, clear the table and use it for it’s main purpose – to sit down and eat.   Make sure the table seats the whole family.  Look for comfortable chairs that allow you to linger at the table together, so you spend the time talking.   Some of the modern chairs are visually pleasing with clean lines and lovely colors, but are too hard for my liking.  The seats are tiny and after ten minutes I have to get off the chair.  From an interior design perspective they are beautiful, but from a feng shui perspective, it doesn’t work.  Those chairs don’t encourage time together with the family.  This is the difference between interior design and feng shui design.

The second point for  better family relations is to take the time to sit down at the dinner table and eat meals together.   Family meals allow for a natural opportunity to communicate.  If your teenage children find excuses not to join you for dinner, cook their favorite meal.  They’re sure to be home! In contrast, when everyone is eating at separate times and in separate places, there is no chance for interaction.  Many times a lack of communication leads to misunderstandings.

In our home, food is a big deal.  The boys know they will get a better meal at home than if they went out.  So, even though during their late teenage years when they hung out with their friends, we felt comfort in knowing that we had dinner time with them.  Nowadays, when they come home for during their school breaks, they look forward to home cooked meals.  It has become part of our family tradition.

Now let’s move on to the living room.  How should you arrange your living room?   Are the seats close enough to have an intimate conversation?  Are they placed against the walls of the room, far apart?  When there is a large distance between seating, it’s difficult to converse.  The separation becomes tangible because the energy between the people in the room feels disconnected.  To be engaged in conversation, you need to be close.  Bring the furniture closer together whereby it’s easier to look into the person’s eye and see their reactions.  Your energies can now interact more easily.

Sometimes, when space is limited, there is only one sofa in the home and it faces the TV.  In this setting, you purposely want to interact with the TV.  That’s not a problem because it’s fulfilling it’s purpose.  However, if you need to communicate more with your children or spouse, make sure you have a separate arrangement and space where you can sit down together to have a good talk.

How about the bedroom?  Do you and your spouse sleep on separate beds or one big bed?  How does this affect your relationship?  What about your children?  Do they share a bedroom with a  sibling or two?   How does this affect their relationship with one another?  Think about how you interact with those you share a room with.  I grew up with many siblings and am blessed with four sisters and two brothers.  Growing up, us sisters always shared rooms.  Because we had bunk beds, we didn’t spend a lot of time in our rooms. Instead, we often sat around the kitchen or dining table sharing our experiences.  Our bedrooms were mainly for sleeping.  Re-assess how you want to use your bedroom.  Also, consider the locations of the bedroom and how you allocate the rooms.  If your children are young, you might want to consider keeping them closer to you rather than on a separate floor.  Temporarily making a study into a bedroom may work too.  Use space for your current needs and be flexible and remember you make the rules in your home.

Feng shui is about designing spaces that are natural, where people come together without effort.  These spaces make you feel good and allows for warmth and better communication.  Good design made for comfortable interaction is good feng shui and interior design will compliment the layout.

Our environment does affect us.  The forms in a space does affect us.  By using common sense, we all can arrange our homes with good feng shui.  Homes that work for our own needs, circumstances, and our own lifestyle is what we are all aiming for.

Understanding Feng Shui for the Home Part I.

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