Three Feng Shui Design Ideas to Boost your Career
Feng shui is a practice that can be seamlessly integrated into the overall decorating and design of your home. You can add feng shui adjustments in creative ways by incorporating colours, shapes, and objects that activate specific energies and movement.
Your career path in life can also be impacted by feng shui. In fact, feng shui practitioners have many tools and techniques that focus on enhancing careers, boosting job prospects, and for finding direction, and getting clients on a clear path.
Here are 3 basic feng shui design ideas you can play with in your own home to add a little feng shui to your career:
- Make space for new things: Doing a review of your space once every few months to remove clutter such as old papers, broken, and redundant items. Old and unwanted items create blockages and stuck energy in your home. Energy should flow through the home like water in a river. Ridding your home of objects that block this flow of energy keeps the qi (energy) moving freely through out your space.
- Place a mirror in your entryway. Mirrors can do many magical things. They can expand and open a narrow space, reduce negative qi by absorbing it, or contained it. A well-placed mirror can reduce disruptive floor plan issues such as an entrance with a ‘brick wall’ effect, it creates space and allows qi to flow more smoothly.
- Add water energy to specific areas of your home. Through design elements, you can intentionally add the energy of water to specific areas of your home. You can choose how much or little you would like to add: a piece of art, a piece of sculpture, a vase.
What are the five elements:they are the basic elements of life: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. In the ancient practice of feng shui, we understand these elements to be more than actual flames, or dirt, or pieces of wood. These elements are universal energetic essences, each with their own characteristics and qualities. read more
The five elements can be represented in a space through colour, shape, or material. Here are some ways you can manifest the energy of water:
- The colour black or very dark blue (and gray)
- Undulating and wavy shapes and patterns
- A fountain or other container of water i.e. fish bowl
Paint: the velvety, soft black Baby Seal by Benjamin Moore
Matte black vases from William Sonoma
Artwork: Water Up Close and In Motion by Linda Vorderer
Pro tip: Finding your career area using the bagua
The five elements are a fundamental part of feng shui (The five elements are: water, wood, fire, earth, metal) and the element that is associated with career is water. Water represents your wisdom, the things that flow to you, and how you flow through life. You can activate the career area (Kan), by using the water element.
What is the bagua? The bagua is an energetic grid that feng shui practitioners use to map a space. Typically, the space being mapped is a house; it can also be a single room, or it can even be a whole plot of land. The bagua is a three-by-three grid with nine areas (called guas) in it. The center of the grid is the tai chi (unity/well-being) and then each of the eight surrounding areas relate to a different part of your life. read more
Laying the bagua: Find the main door to your home or better yet try starting with a room (see the example above); you will line the main door of the room with the red line. As you can see in the illustration, there are three areas along what we refer to as the Kan line, and the career area is in the center.
Laura Morris is the co-founder of Mindful Design Feng Shui School. She was the Feng Shui expert on the CBC’s popular lifestyle show Steven & Chris, and is also the author of Creating Change: 27 Feng Shui Design Projects to Boost the Energy in your Home. She previously served as the Board Chair of the International Feng Shui Guild.
