Feng Shui Decorating: More than Furniture Placement

Introducing Feng Shui:

You have probably heard of Feng Shui in many different contexts. Most often, Feng Shui is mentioned as a way to move your furniture around in order to achieve a sort of harmonious balance within the home.

Although the placement of your furniture is indeed a major aspect of making your home and other places more Feng Shui friendly, there is a lot more to this ancient practice. You may not have realized it, but Feng Shui is something that has been around for a very long time, and, although it is quite trendy nowadays, it has been in use by people for many, many years. As with many ancient practices, Feng Shui has experienced a rebirth within Western civilization as people continue to search for ways to strike a harmonious balance within their lives. Feng Shui is multifaceted and at times can be quite complex, but if you simply want to know the basics behind Feng Shui so that you can give it a try within your own home then it isnt too terribly difficult to start.

Brief History of Feng Shui:

The history of Feng Shui is actually quite fascinating. Similarly to many other traditions stemming from ancient Eastern philosophies, Feng Shui has experienced times during which it was considered obscure while also experiencing times during which it was considered quite vogue. You may be surprised to learn that not only has Feng Shui been around for a few years, but it has been around long before you, long before your parents, long before your parents parents, and long before the people ahead of them. The fact that Feng Shui keeps reemerging makes it all the more fascinating. Most Feng Shui historians claim that the practice has been around for thousands of years...over three thousand years by most accounts.

The fact that Feng Shui utilizes many complicated methods and theories is a high testament to the ancient Chinese culture that created Feng Shui. Since Feng Shui has been around for so long it is unlikely that the modern day Feng Shui is exactly as the original Feng Shui was, and in fact there are so many deviations from the original Feng Shui that several branches of Feng Shui exist. While one version of Feng Shui may claim that a certain color can accomplish certain goals, another version of Feng Shui may make a completely different claim. Whichever form of Feng Shui you decide to follow in your quest to have a more harmonious living space, you can rest assured that the principles youre following have been around much longer than you have, and have been tested by a wide variety of people long before you (or anyone you know) walked the Earth.

In the 1970s within the United States there was a surge of interest in ancient Chinese methods and thought, and one of the theories to get recognized and utilized was Feng Shui. Its popularity has grown throughout the years with a recent influx of interest in Feng Shui as the term becomes more popular and familiar within modern culture. Feng Shui has become so popular, as a matter of fact, that some People have essentially created their own forms of Feng Shui and turned it into either a religious idea or instead into a clever marketing ploy.

Feng Shui utilizes the five elements. When you are reading about Feng Shui you will probably come across these terms quite often: fire, earth, wood, water, and metal. Feng Shui principles state that each of these elements not only has a distinct effect on the surrounding environment, but also that you can utilize an appropriate element in order to get your desired results. Some elements are considered more "Chi-conducive" than others. Here is a brief explanation of what each element is used for within Feng Shui:

• Fire is utilized when you want to have more passion and energy. You arent supposed to overuse this element, however, because it can overtake everything around it if used too much. In Chinese, fire is referred to as Huo.

• Earth is utilized when you want to be more relaxed and have more patience. In Chinese, earth is referred to as Tu.

• Wood is utilized when you want to be more creative and allow your mind to work innovatively. It is also used when you want to become more popular and make more friends. In Chinese, wood is referred to as Mu.

• Water is utilized when you want to be clearer in your efforts to get your points across, either through written communications or verbal communications. In Chinese, water is referred to as Shui.

• Metal is utilized when you want to be more successful in your career, such as when the time comes to ask for a raise or promotion. In Chinese, metal is referred to as Jin.

Each element has a corresponding color or colors and also represents various stages within a human life. You may find that, depending on the Feng Shui school of thought that you follow, each element can mean something completely different and may have different corresponding colors and life stages.

Remember that there are many different forms of Feng Shui, so you should not be confused if you run across more than one explanation for the same thing. The best thing to do is to find the type of Feng Shui that works best for you and then stick with its principles.

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Feng Shui for Your House:

Everyone is looking for a way to make their homes more peaceful. Feng Shui is commonly used within living quarters, although it can also be used within various other contexts. If you have heard of Feng Shui before then it is quite likely that you heard of it in regard to making a home more peaceful and allowing harmonious energy to flow throughout the home. There is so much more to Feng Shui than the little blurbs you have undoubtedly heard (place your bed a certain way to sleep better, keep paint colors relatively calm, et cetera), but luckily it isnt too difficult to begin using Feng Shui within your home. Once you know the basics you can then decide if you want to continue on and get a little more intricate and complex with your Feng Shui tactics within your home and elsewhere.

Feng Shui Your Bedroom:

Here are the basic principles of making your bedroom Feng Shui friendly. There are specific guidelines that Feng Shui experts suggest when it comes to making sure your bedroom is as harmonious as possible:

• Your bed needs specific placement within the room. For most people, their bed is the centerpiece of the bedroom. According to Feng Shui principles, the bed should be accessible from both sides. That means that you shouldnt place your bed next to a wall, making it approachable only from one angle. You should also have two bedside tables, with one table on each side of the bed. This helps your energy flow as well as gives you a practical place to set things near your bed.

You arent supposed to have your bed directly in line with the bedroom door, according to Feng Shui, and you also need to concentrate on making your bed a welcome fixture beyond where it is placed within the room. Feng Shui experts stress the importance of having a comfortable bed and sheets that are luxurious and devoid of uncomfortable fibers and other materials.

• The air in your bedroom should be as clean and fresh as possible. Opening your windows is one thing, but getting an air filter in your room opens up a whole new can of Feng Shui worms. The placement of an air filter in your room can disturb the energy flow within the room, and there is even some debate as to whether air filters are even beneficial. For example, HEPA filters can collect mold and disburse it back into your room, and ionic air filters have been criticized for the ions sent out into the air to collect harmful particles.

The best thing you can do is to open up the windows in your bedroom and let lots of nice, fresh air into your room as often as possible. If you really feel as though you need an air filter, try to place it somewhere in the room where it will be effective, yet unobtrusive to the flow of the room. Look for an air filter that is not noisy or exceedingly large.

• Get rid of bulky and distracting devices. Plenty of people love to end their evenings by watching some television while in bed, but having a television in your bedroom is a big Feng Shui no-no. Not only do Feng Shui gurus urge people to get televisions out of the bedroom; other experts also suggest that items like this are best left out of the bedroom to ensure a better nights sleep. Youll be much less likely to miss out on sleep due to sitting in front of the TV late at night if you dont have such ready access to one, and you give your body a better chance of winding down when you arent staring at a television.

Many experts suggest you use your bed for two things - sleeping, and having sex - and avoiding activities such as reading or watching TV. Televisions arent the only offending items you can have in your bedroom. Exercise bikes and other equipment should be considered banned from the bedroom if you are attempting to make your bedroom as Feng Shui friendly as you possibly can.

• Use candles. Use common sense when you decide to add candles to your rooms décor. No matter how spiritual or balanced the glow of a candle makes you feel, you need to make sure that youre not placing candles right next to drapes or other flammable items.

You should also make sure that the candles you use arent incredibly scented to where they overwhelm the room, and you certainly dont want to invest in some candles that emit chemicals that are bad for your respiratory system. This means you should skip on the extremely cheap candles, which release some odd smoke and tacky smells. The flames may look nice and relaxing, but once you get a whiff of the smoke your coughing fit wont really help your quest to find peace and harmony in your bedroom. Its hard to feel at peace when you cant really breathe.

• Close the doors when you sleep. Nervous parents may find this a particularly difficult Feng Shui principle to follow because sometimes parents just want to be able to hear the kids breathing deeply in their sleep. Nonetheless, Feng Shui dictates that you close your bedroom door when you are sleeping, and also that you close any other doors that you may have in your bedroom. Close the door to your bathroom, close your closet doors, and close the door leading out to your adjoining balcony, if you have one.

You also want to avoid sleeping with your head facing any of these doors, although this can be a tough tip to follow if you have doors throughout your bedroom. Just make sure that if you actually have to sleep with your head facing a door that the door remains closed throughout the night.

If youre only doing one room, make it your bedroom. Since Feng Shui is all about finding a harmonious balance with your living environment, you should consider making your bedroom the most important room to achieve this balance. Even if your bedroom is used solely for sleeping - in other words, you dont really spend that much time at all in your bedroom other than the time you spend snoozing away on your bed - getting a good nights sleep is one of the most important aspects to keeping the rest of the balance in your life.

Unless you are one of the lucky few people who really dont need that much sleep at all in order to thrive and function well on a daily basis, most people will agree that if there is going to be one peaceful and balanced room in a house it should be the bedroom. So when you first start out with your Feng Shui exploration you may want to consider starting with the bedroom. Some people rearrange their bedrooms into a Feng Shui configuration with no intention of ever moving on to doing other rooms, but then afterward they have such a great experience with the new vibe in their bedroom that they move on to rearrange other rooms.

Really, you can Feng Shui your entire house if you get motivated enough. Start with the bedroom and see where it goes from there.
Be careful of what you decorate your bedroom with. You spend an awful lot of time in your bedroom, and even though a good portion of that time may be spent sleeping you still need to be mindful of what is adorning your bedroom walls. With regard to Feng Shui, you should make sure that your room is painted a color that you find relaxing yet enticing. Some Feng Shui experts suggest only using color tones in the bedroom that naturally occur on human skin, although you dont necessarily have to go out and try to find paint that matches your flesh tones exactly.

As far as any paintings or other artwork that you choose to hang on your bedroom walls, you should make sure that the art reflects where you want to go in life. In other words, an oil painting of a sad clown hanging above your bed is probably not the best choice for your Feng Shui-friendly bedroom, unless for some reason your goal in life is to be a sullen clown, of course.

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Bedrooms for Kids:

Now here is a room where you want harmonious energy.

• Pay attention to loud toys.
• Where is the crib or bed?
• Seasoned parents will laugh at this one: Keep the clutter to a minimum.
• Where are all the toys?
• What is the bedroom next to?

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How intricate do you want to get?

One of the great things about Feng Shui is that a good portion of the principles are not too complex. For example, certain colors attract certain things, and so you choose your colors accordingly based on your goals. There are other principles within Feng Shui that are quite intricate, however, and many people who use Feng Shui in their home never delve deep enough into the entire process to reach this level of intricacy.

Save the intricate Feng Shui principles until you have spent some time implementing some of the less complex principles and then go from there. You shouldnt purchase a huge and complex Feng Shui book that is hard for a layperson to follow if it is your first experience with Feng Shui. Start simple and see if you can embrace the general principles before you jump in full speed ahead with the more intricate principles of Feng Shui.

Feng Shui can be extremely complicated, or it can be delightfully simple. It all depends on how serious you want to be in your quest for positive "Chi" flow within your home. There are some people who spend countless hours and countless dollars in their quest to have a home that features the best energy flow as possible. On the other hand, there are other people who plop a Feng Shui fountain on their coffee table and never go any further.

Your level of involvement is probably dependent upon the success you derive from your efforts and also the level of effort you have to put forth in order to achieve success. While some people are more than willing to work hard and do the research necessary in order to get results, there are also many people who dont want to do anything that might not garner immediate results.

So how long will it take you before you can start noticing results from your Feng Shui efforts? Some changes you make might result in almost immediate results. Moving some things around within your bedroom, for example, might open up the energy flow and result in a much better nights sleep that very same night. Or it may just feel as though the whole house is a little more welcoming than it was before.

Other changes may not be noticed for some time; if you try to use Feng Shui to boost your recognition within your work, youre still probably not going to stroll into work the next day and find a promotion and a raise waiting for you. Feng Shui isnt magic.

If you do derive results from your use of Feng Shui then you can start to use it in different aspects of your life. If you dont derive any results from Feng Shui then you may want to try a different version of Feng Shui or simply decide that its not your cup of tea.

Either way, at least you can say youre testing out the latest trends.

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Great Reading, Enjoy discovering the Benefits of Feng Shui.

"The structures around you also emanate energy, ... and if these structures are placed in a harmonious fashion based on Feng Shui guidelines, you attract good energy, and therefore you attract good fortune and good luck." ~ Quote from Lillian Too