Q&A Sunday: Feng Shui, Color, and the Bagua Map

Guest User October 17, 2021

I’d love to learn more about using color in feng shui.

This is a popular topic! Laura and I actually just recorded a whole podcast episode about feng shui and color. I’ll share a few ideas about this here, and if you want to dive deeper, I would encourage you to check out the episode.

One way to approach feng shui and color is to look at how colors relate to the bagua map. The bagua map, in case you aren’t familiar, is a kind of energetic map that feng shui practitioners lay over a space. It has eight areas around a center.

Something that I noticed recently is the connection between the center of a flower and the center of the bagua. The bagua is a mandala, just like a flower can be. The center of the bagua, called the Tai qi, is yellow, which is often true for the center of flowers as well. In feng shui, yellow represents the earth element. Earth is connected to stability and feeling grounded, and the center of the bagua affects all of the areas that surround it.

One of the most popular areas of the bagua is the purple area, or the abundance area. It’s called Xun position in Chinese. In addition to abundance, it’s related to the eldest daughter and your feelings of wealth and prosperity, which go beyond financial wealth. It’s also about having a feeling of abundance, a feeling of enough. It’s the opposite of a poverty mentality. Xun is also deeply related to self-esteem and self-worth.

Purple is also the combination of red, which is the fire element, and blue, which is the wood element. (There’s a misconception that blue is the water element, but it actually represents wood in BTB feng shui.) Purple brings together the kindness, flexibility and growth of wood with the inspiration, passion, and protection of fire. This makes purple a wonderful color to work with in your home, if these ideas resonate with you. Some easy ways to incorporate purple into your home are through small decor accents, like a throw pillow or blanket.

Sometimes people think that you need to paint a whole room the color that corresponds to the feng shui bagua map. The way that I teach my students at Mindful Design Feng Shui School is to realize that you don’t want to activate every single area of the bagua map. Not only is it unnecessary, but the I Ching, which is one of the foundations of feng shui, teaches that there’s no such thing as perfection. Everything is always in transition and always moving. If you try to make everything perfect, the only place to go from there is down, so aiming for perfection will actually work against you. Painting your walls according to the bagua map is also not the most skillful way to work with this tool, and it probably won’t work very well from a design perspective.

Another way to work with feng shui and color is to make your own art and explore different shades of a color. If you want to work with purple, for example, it’s really fun to get a watercolor palette and create purple with red (fire) and blue (wood), and see how these work together. Make it a fun, exploratory activity, and see how that correlates with your feelings of abundance. Once you’ve made some purple art, you might want to place it in the abundance area of your bedroom.

I hope that helps you as you’re thinking about feng shui and color, and if you want to learn more, be sure to listen to the podcast!

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

Q&A Sunday: Making Life Easier with Feng Shui

Guest User October 10, 2021

I noticed on your podcast that you said, “Avoid creating difficulty for yourself that doesn’t need to be there.” What do you mean by that?

This is a really interesting topic! Feng shui isn’t just about adding a plant to a certain area or moving a chair or painting a wall a certain color. That’s part of it, but feng shui is really about looking at how you’ve set up your space so that it’s supportive. You want there to be a flow that is generous and full of ease.

Have you ever been to a home that feels challenging, where you hit your head, or you have to squeeze by a lot of stuff in a hallway? Maybe you can’t walk in the door easily, or it’s difficult to come in with your groceries. When a home has been designed or cared for in such a way that creates difficulty in the space, it creates difficulty in the inhabitants’ lives as well. How you move through a space is exactly how energy flows through a space. You want to be able to notice if you are creating difficulty for yourself that doesn’t need to be there.

Another way that people can create unnecessary difficulty for themselves is by getting into a “fear shui” mode, where they are really worried about having bad feng shui in their home. Sometimes, when I unpack this for people, I find that they have wired themselves to love drama, or to feel like they need drama in order to feel something. That can be reflected in their home as well.

One simple way to notice whether you’ve created difficulty for yourself that doesn’t need to be there is to look at how easy it is to get to your bed. Are there obstacles on the way to your bedroom? Do you have to push a bunch of things out of the way to get in bed? Sometimes, people have their bed in an odd position or a lot of equipment that physically gets in the way. That can indicate difficulties in your life, including challenges in intimate relationships. If you do notice anything in the way of your bed, see if there’s anything you can remove. Removing obstacles will make your life easier energetically as well as physically.

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

How to Feng Shui Your Work-From-Home Space

Guest User October 6, 2021

In feng shui, different parts of your home represent different parts of life. Your home office represents your career, and it can affect how successful you are in your career and how supported you feel.

The number one thing you want to do for your home office is to make sure you have a desk. I know a lot of people aren’t set up to have room for a desk in their work-from-home space, but it’s important to carve out an area as best you can. If you don’t have a stable, steady location where you can do your work, that reflects upon how stable and prosperous your career is, and how you show up in your career. If you can, have a dedicated desk. If this isn’t possible, create a dedicated space. If you have to do your work at your dining room table, for example, make it into a nice workspace while you are working there. When you’re done working at the end of the day, put your work things away and convert it back into a dining room table.

Whether it’s an actual desk or a workspace that you’ve carved out on your coffee table, you want to put yourself in command. That means that you want to be able to see the door to the space while you’re working. If your back is to the door, your stress levels are elevated and you can’t see what’s coming to you. The metaphor in your work life is that you can’t see opportunities or possible conflicts coming your way in your career.

You also want to have a solid, stable desk that is big enough for you to work on. A glass desk is not ideal, because things can fall through, and it’s also fragile. You also want to avoid a desk that is lopsided, unstable, or too small. A tiny desk space represents a tiny space to receive opportunities and support, so you want to have a desk that’s appropriately sized for what you want to achieve. It’s also practical to make sure that your desk can accommodate your needs, to avoid creating unnecessary obstacles for yourself. If you think you may need to buy a new desk, keep in mind that this is the foundation of your career!

In setting up your desk, make sure you also have a supportive chair. In feng shui, we like to suggest that you have enough room behind you. Generally, that means at least three feet, so that you can receive support, and also have perspective and a backup plan. When you’re looking at chairs themselves, a chair with a high back is more supportive.

Lastly, one of my favorite decorative items to suggest for a home office is a desk blotter. They are generally rectangular or square in shape, which represents the earth element. A desk blotter creates some stability, and it’s a great addition to your work-from-home space, whether you have a permanent desk or not. If you’re working at your dining room table or coffee table, it helps to define a space for your work, and you can also roll it up and put it away when you’re not working.

by Anjie Cho