Most Important Feng Shui Tips for Your Home and Life

Crowded, small, and often poorly designed smaller spaces like city apartments can make it hard for residents to feel healthy, happy, and at home in them.

Heres where the ancient Chinese art of feng shui promises to help. Feng shui, which isnt a religion though its linked to Taoism, translates to wind and water. Its a practice that helps people align their energies with their surroundings.

If you create a balanced representation in your home, it can reflect how youre reacting to outside experiences. It becomes a metaphor for everything in life, explains Laura Cerrano, of Feng Shui Manhattan.

Sure, it might sound kind of... strange. But theres some science behind it. Over-crowded living spaces have been shown to have an effect on our health, acting as a stressor. And research shows that spaces and our environments play a huge role in how we feel and perform. This logic is kind of what feng shui is all about.

Many feng shui practitioners are adamant that adopting a few simple tips to carve the right environment can improve nearly every aspect of life whether its improving your health, finding love, or making more money.

Feng shui is a set of principles to help align ones living space with who they are and what they want. The practice has been around for thousands of years, but its not stodgy or outdated. In fact, its seen quite the Western resurgence in recent years, with thousands of trained feng shui consultants currently offering services across the country. Oddly enough, even Donald Trump reportedly hired a feng shui consultant back in 1995.

You want to change your life? A simple way to do that is to change your environment, Laura Cerrano notes. An expert, who considers feng shui both an art and a science, shes currently collaborating on a book with scientists and researchers in the hopes of demystifying how feng shui actually works.

Its somewhat complex, but at the same time it can be very simple, she says.

Feng shui helps you make the most of your living space by harmonizing its energy flow. Feng shui splits the world into five elements:

Working to balance these five elements properly in your home can help their corresponding traits to thrive in your life.

Chinese feng shui masters also devised a tool called a Bagua map that lays out various life areas, or stations, including health, wealth, marriage, and fame, to name a few. These areas correlate with various parts of a building or living space.

You can line up the Bagua map with your floor plan to help determine the optimal placement of colors, artwork, objects, and more. If theres a certain aspect of your life that feels off, adding different touches or reshuffling your possessions in the corresponding life area might help.

Balancing yin and yang energies is also part of feng shui, and generally speaking, an apartment feels best when its got them both. Yin is feminine energy, associated with:

Yang is masculine, denoting:

You can change the feeling of your space by playing with these energies.

Because everyones living space is different, theres no one-size-fits-all approach to feng shui. If you need to entirely revamp a cramped, run-down apartment, it might be best to take a class or hire a consultant. But if youre curious about experimenting, heres what you can do.

Laura Cerranos biggest all-purpose feng shui suggestion is to kill the clutter in every part of your apartment. No matter if you're a millionaire or if youre dealing with unemployment, the pitfall everyone falls into is clutter, she says. Clutter isnt just about aesthetics its been proven to be detrimental to your mind, to the neurons in your brain. It creates stress.

This doesnt come as too much of a surprise, seeing as how Marie Kondos book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, made waves in homes and with journalists all around.

If youre trying to find love, feng shui would ask you to follow moms old adage of acting as if.

Cerrano explains, Look around your apartment and ask yourself, Is this space being prepared for the next person to check in? If you only have one towel, your soul is living a single life. So instead of having one towel, have two towels. Even though that person hasnt arrived physically yet, act like they're there already.

When it comes to moving past a failed relationship, your first order of business is cutting the cord to your last one. We use the word energy cord, Cerrano says. If you have all this stuff from [a past relationship] scattered through your home, its energetically creating a cord to that person. When you're done with a relationship, its recommended that, at your own pace, you release the things that arent beneficial anymore.

For improving productivity and boosting money flow, Cerrano suggests adding one or two plants near your desk, home office, or work area. Its related to the element of wood, which connects to networking, expansion, growth, growing wealth, and opportunities. Also, have your business card on display on your desk.

For financial prosperity, she advises getting a desk-sized lucky cat or lucky frog figurine (Google it! she says).

Dont turn to feng shui expecting a miracle. You can't bring anyone back from the dead, Cerrano notes. But beyond that, stay open, even if youre not completely convinced. According to Cerrano, theres not much feng shui cant help you with. She even says its helped clients conceive children and get rid of cancer!

To find a good feng shui consultant in your region, try the International Feng Shui Guild's consultant directory, but keep in mind that not every qualified expert may be listed there. Try asking consultants whether they focus on residential or office spaces and don't forget to ask for references.

If people even skeptical ones are willing to participate and test out the suggestions, feng shui is able to do almost everything, she says. Weve seen some amazing transformations.

Laura Barcella is an author and freelance writer currently based in Brooklyn. Shes written for the New York Times, RollingStone.com, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, The Week, VanityFair.com, and many others.

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Most Important Feng Shui Tips for Your Home and Life