If your mate isn’t as frisky as you would like him or her to be, place red under the bed, perhaps a red scarf or cloth under the mattress. Red is an energy activator. I know of a woman who placed the red under her husband’s side only because she thought he needed to catch up with her sexual appetite. To her amazement, after about one month she found herself removing it because he was now more frisky than she!
You don’t have any of these things lying around to create your sex den? Shame on you! Well, then cut them out of magazines and make a montage in the area. Or place the pictures in a secret box in the space. Now, since this is merely a physical thing you are looking for, I would spice up the Health area as well. Go to the center of the home or room and place something that appeals to both your physical health and pleasure, such as facial mud (remember, the element in this area is earth). Or maybe burn some long, hot, dripping flesh-toned candles (fire makes earth). Are you starting to see the possibilities?
And finally, since you need help from another person to achieve your goal of sex, you may want to spice up your Helpful People area. You can be as extravagant as you want. A simple solution is to write, “I have awesome sex easily available to me,” on a paper placed in the area. The bagua color for the Helpful People area is silver or gray, so place the paper in a silver box if you have one. An extravagant way is having a chrome or silver sculpture of fornicating couples in the area. A cheap way is to use aluminum foil around the paper request. Go with what appeals to your lifestyle and budget.
Try to appease each of the senses when you are creating your love den. Here are some quick ideas:
smell—scented candles or lotions, fresh flowers (no deodorizers from a can)
touch—velvet, silk, tassels, leather, feathers (no rough, dry hands allowed)
sound—music, ocean waves, thunderstorm, crackling fire (no sports on TV)
sight—soft lighting, sexy undergarments (no piles of laundry or pictures of Mom)
taste—chocolate, whipped cream, champagne, strawberries (vacuum yesterday’s cookie crumbs off the bed, please)
Our karmic makeup is designed so that we come to this earth to serve and love ourselves as well as others. Please be clear that if you choose sex for sex’s sake, choose it for the sheer joy of the physical pleasure or your ability to please another physically, not because of power, control, dominance, or self-confidence issues. These conditions may cause you to create additional karma to be resolved at another time.
| The Revolving Door to My Bedroom |
Where you sleep has a lot of impact on your personal energy. It can affect your health, mental attitude, and love life as much as anything. Remember, even if the bedroom is not in the Relationship gua, it still may affect relationships. Things to look for around your bed:
Doors If a door is in a direct line with your bed (see Figure 19) you may be experiencing health problems in the area of your body that is closest to the door. If it is at the foot of your bed, your feet may stink or you may have weak ankles or shin splints. If the door hits the middle of the bed on one side, perhaps you may be experiencing problems with organs on that side (as you lie on your back in bed), or the person that sleeps on that side may have health problems there. Move your bed out of this alignment. If there is no alternative location and the door is at the foot of the bed, try placing a trunk at the foot of the bed and placing a mirror of some kind inside it facing toward the door to reflect it away from the bed. Another alternative would be to place red items in the trunk to slow the flow. No trunk?
Door in direct line with bed.
FIGURE 19
Cure for when head of bed is against a wall with a door along it.
FIGURE 20
How about a red bench or chair? No furniture? Tape a red ribbon across the bottom of the bed frame.
Also, try not to place the head of your bed against the wall that has the door along it—you don’t want someone startling you as you sleep. If this is the only location you have, place a shiny object or mirror in a location that reflects the door to you while in bed (see Figure 20).
Windows Do not place the head of your bed under a window. Who needs Romeo scaring the PJs off you in the middle of the night when he comes a-tapping? If there is no alternative, place a red item (or a symbol—like a little toy Doberman pinscher) on the sill to protect you. Wooden shutters may also be helpful.
Beams Wherever a visible beam cuts across your bed, it severs that part of your body. I’m talking about structural beams here, not light or laser beams. Serious health issues can arise. If it runs between you and your partner’s side of the bed, you will have to expend most of your energy overcoming that beam, which is dividing you from your partner (see Figure 21). If beams are inevitable, place a mirror on your nightstands facing up to lighten the load of the beams over you. Another, more decorative cure would be to take a piece of fabric at least as big as the bed and tack it to the ceiling directly over the bed in a billowy, upholstered look (maybe with ornaments or tassels at tack points). Then, when you look up while lying in your bed, you will see a romantic, luxurious fabric not unlike a canopy bed cover, rather than the arrow-slinging beams (see Figure 22). One final cure is to draw arrows on the sides of the beams, pointing up. Weird, huh? “Beam me up, Scotty!”
Cure for beams that cut across bed.
FIGURE 21
Another cure for beams that cut across bed.
FIGURE 22
Ceilings Try not to locate your bed under a sloping ceiling. Wherever the ceiling lowers, your energy gets smashed (see Figure 23). For example, if the ceiling slopes down toward the head of your bed, you may experience such ailments as headaches, forgetfulness, and sinus conditions. Again, place mirrors facing up somewhere in this location (under or on a night stand, and so forth) if it is your only option for bed placement.
Protruding Corners (Creating Arrow Ch’i) If your bedroom has a corner protruding into it, try to avoid having it point at your bed. Use one of the cures stated in the last chapter, like placing a plant at the corner; or try to visually erase it by hanging a mobile or crystal in front of the corner.
Mirrors If you sit up in your bed and see your reflection in a mirror in front of you, try to block it out. Those full-length sliding mirrored closet doors can give you the willies at night. Hang curtains that can be pulled across the doors at night, or try using a folding screen.
The part of the bed (head, side, or foot) that is under a sloped ceiling is the part of the body that gets squished by negative ch’i.
FIGURE 23
If you have mirrors on the ceiling, get out of the seventies.
Elements What’s the bed made of? Perhaps the main element making the bed is playing against your favor. So, let’s play the element “rock, paper, scissors” game.
A wooden bed is OK just about everywhere except in the middle of the room, where the wood would uproot the earth section. (Add yellow and green if that is your only option.) Do not put a metal bed in the Family section of the room, as metal cuts wood. It is best in the Creativity section. Get that water bed out of the Fame section. It’s best in the Family section, where water feeds wood.
Remember, the bagua of a room is found just as the bagua of the entire house is—by aligning the Skills and Knowledge, Career, and Helpful People guas up with the wall that the door is on.
| What Good Could Come of This? |
I had a client, Meranda, who called me to feng shui her home before her husband, Rob, returned from the hospital. The doctors were treating him for a broken hip and intestinal problems (yes, he had the bathroom door ch’i plowing into him in his hip area of the bed). While in the hospital, Rob started becoming delusional and paranoid. Eventually, they wanted to keep him, not because of his original problems but because of his new mental condition.
I worked on the home with all my might, and miraculously, Rob turned a corner and was released. Rob made recovery headway that astounded the doctors. They told him to keep up whatever he was doing.
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Almost fully recovered, he decided to run an errand. While driving, he was involved in what was, at first, an extremely minor fender bender, in which his head jerked and tapped the window. From all accounts, the accident looked like no big deal, but it put Rob into a health-compromising tailspin in which his seemingly minor maladies quickly took his life. (In hindsight, Meranda thinks that Rob was supposed to pass in the hospital, and due to the feng shui, she got some extra time with him.)
But that’s not where the story ends. During the year after Rob died, Meranda slowly cleared out Rob’s things and started making small changes to the home. After about one year, she decided to rearrange the bedroom and buy a new mattress. While moving the armoire, she found Rob’s wallet—one of his last personal effects still at home. She had misplaced it a year earlier. But now, she was finally able to let it go. Symbolically and energetically, she closed one door, which allowed another to open. With the exception of a few pieces of furniture, the bedroom (and the ch’i) was now totally different than when Rob was alive.
Then Meranda, who was Catholic by upbringing (Rob was Jewish), decided to look into converting to Judaism. She and Rob had discussed converting when he was alive, but he thought it was not necessary. One day, while in temple, she started conversing with a gentleman from London who was in town visiting a friend. They quickly found out they were in the same boat with regard to having lost their spouses. The British gentleman asked if he could see her again before he left town.
“The only reason I agreed was because I knew he was flying back to London soon. It was safe. I had not a thought of dating in my mind,” Meranda confessed. They became almost inseparable during his remaining time in the States and have been in contact over the phone quite often ever since.
Although his entire family and his successful business are in London, he recently purchased a condo near her home in the States. “We’ve decided to just see what happens,” Meranda said. She ended our conversation with, “I’m happier than I ever thought I could be.”
The morals of the story are:
1. When it’s your time to go, it’s your time (give or take a little with feng shui, perhaps).
2. Be on the lookout for opportunities. If the British gent hadn’t been British (just a visitor), Meranda said, she would have turned him down, cutting herself off from the universal flow. She would have passed up her chance for happiness without even knowing it.
3. If you think feng shui has stopped working for you because something dreadful has happened, think again. Even though you cannot possibly see anything good from such a tragic event, trust that the universe can.
Love is an energy. Energy is a living thing. Therefore, to live fully we all need to give love and receive love. And if you have taken the time to feng shui your Relationship corner, it is no longer just a corner. It is a shrine to amour. Now every time you look over there, you’ll think loving thoughts. And since thoughts are also energy and very much related to the energy of love, when you think loving thoughts, loving things will naturally begin to happen in your life.
| “Come In—May I Take Your Clothes?” |
While we’re on the subject of beds, when you walk in the front door, make sure that you do not see the bed first. If you are in a studio apartment or dorm room, place an object that catches your eye upon entering, to distract the first look from your bed. Try placing a folding screen between the bed and the rest of the apartment during the day, or make it look like a couch, with accessories like pillows and end tables. If you have to pass through your bedroom to get to other parts of the house, like the bathroom, apply the same cure to take your eye to another object rather than the bed. From a great piece of art to a glittery jar full of colorful hair scrunchies, use your imagination to make it work for you. Blocking the bed from first view not only helps avoid inviting too much sexual energy into one’s life; it also helps if you sleep too much—so, sleepaholics take note as well.
| I’ll Never Trust Again |
If the ashes are still smoldering from your last relationship and you feel you would rather walk into a lava pit than get into a new one, listen up. It just sounds like that ol’ trust button is stuck and needs a little lube job. Trusting another with your heart is risky business. It’s like a roller-coaster ride without a safety belt—at a minimum, you’ll have bruises. But love is about trusting, and without love and trust, the ride of life somehow seems meaningless. Oh sure, you could be telling yourself, “Hey, who needs to be kicked around? Not me. I’ll be fine reading feng shui books and doing crossword puzzles the rest of my life.”
FIGURE 24
If you go around looking for the worst in everyone, trust me, you’ll find it. It’s amazing how powerful your attitude and perception are when dealing with your life experiences. Take me for example. I call myself a “Hyatt camper.” My idea of roughing it is no room service. But other people simply love to sleep in their clothes on the ground, dig a hole for a toilet, and wash their dishes in a stream. Different perceptions at work. So, where do we go from here?
Let’s work on the perception. Get your Relationship corner in order—a junky one attracts junky relationships. Start off by making a place to nurture yourself. Often, when you don’t trust others, you actually don’t trust yourself. Allow yourself time to grow into the feeling of trusting your decisions. Perhaps an affirmation about trust is in order. Change that broken record in your mind that says something like “Nobody really cares about me” to “I experience love wherever I am.”
Make sure the Skills and Knowledge corner is addressed. It’s the opposite gua from Relationships and Love (see Figure 24). Place a reminder of trust in this area as well, to counterbalance the energy throughout. Perhaps write an affirmation like “I trust myself and the universe to make the best decisions for my highest good” or “I no longer need and now release the experience that has created lack of trust,” and place it in the corner.
Now, let’s go to the Fame and Reputation wall and do a little something extra there. This area of the bagua is associated with courage, which may be just the thing needed to get started on this process. A pink candle is the easy answer for this cure, since fire is the element for this gua and pink is the color for the Relationship gua next to it. Get one of those seven-day candles to light if you need a jump start.
The Organ Trail
* * *
Follow the trail of logic with this one: The relationship area is associated with all organs of the body. Heart/relationship, get it? So, if there’s a problem with the ol’ ticker or any other nonmusical organ, enhance this area to make it better. (Of course, continue seeing your doctors.)
It Takes Two to Tango
* * *
The number 2 holds the essence for relationships, for obvious reasons. If you live in a 2 house, you probably find yourself quite in sync with your mate, spouse, or partner. You’ll also have little need to depend on outsiders for anything (which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it).
The challenging address to live at for relationships is—as you’ve probably guessed—number 1. Be vigilant with your enhancements if you want a relationship and live in a 1 home.
Immediate Action Items for Relationships and Love
* * *
1. Remove withering or dead stuff.
1. Review your bed and bedroom for arrow ch’i and other feng shui faux pas.
2. Add enhancements as necessary.
| Relationships and Love in Summary |
Power Tools: mirrors, candles, hot tub, fresh flowers, pink, red, undergarments, sensual sounds, symbols that mean love to you, equality.
Hazardous Materials: negative images, “unfriendly” stuff, “frigid” stuff, “single” stuff, games, uncleanliness, storage, distractions.
Opposite Gua: Skills and Knowledge
Body Part: all major organs of the body
Associated Number: 2
chapter 5
* * *
Express Yourself—Creativ
ity and Children
Being imaginative with your stuff in the Creativity and Children area of the home can result in life changes. You can
become able to conceive and bear children
find fulfillment and gratification with a hobby or job have better, more creative ideas for every situation
get unstuck in a project
improve your relationship with your children
become more comfortable showing the childlike side of your personality
make “something out of nothing”
create efficiency in a company
deter the aging process
It’s time to get creative. Are you ready? This chapter can be a lot of fun because the more imaginative you get with your cures, the more activated the gua gets, which in turn allows you to be more creative, and so on and so on.
Why are Children and Creativity lumped into one area of the house? you ask. The reason is that children are the embodiment of creation. They are the epitome of creatively transforming energy and intention into matter. But don’t think that having kids is solely what this area of your home is about. This spot in your home can help you with personal creativity in your work, hobby, decision making, fashion, relaxation, and self-cultivation, as well as in your relationships with your family, friends, and, of course, lovers. And come on, who couldn’t use a little creativity in their love life?
Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life Page 8