Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life

by Karen Rauch Carter

  | A Family Only Jerry Springer Could Love |

  There’s one in every family—the black sheep, the oddball, the total embarrassment—the family member that thrives on stirring up the rest of the family. Let’s say for now it’s Uncle Ned. He is driving you nuts. His idea of fun is tormenting everyone with his sick humor and sarcastic snotty comebacks to everything said. Your personal opinion of him is that he single-handedly robs you of any real quality of life. You definitely don’t have loving thoughts of him often. The thought of applying feng shui to your Family area appeals to you, but then you fear you may accidentally bump Ned off because of your less than pure thoughts of him. Although life with Ned sucks, you don’t need the guilt trip.

  Don’t worry. If your intentions are in the right place, you cannot hurt anyone. The universe understands intentions and doesn’t make mistakes. Enhancing the feng shui energies in the Family gua can make one of the following three things happen in an Uncle Ned situation:

  1. The person with whom you are out of harmony suddenly or slowly changes, and eventually stops bugging you. (Ned shuts up.)

  2. You change. (Ned keeps dishing out his weird antics, but miraculously, he no longer gets under your skin.)

  3. The situation of imbalance is removed from your life for as long as needed. (Ned suddenly decides to take a trip around the world for a year.)

  If you intend to find better balance in your family and you leave the specific outcome up to the universe, the situation will resolve itself in the best way possible.

  | Family Ties |

  Family members possess some of the strongest loyalty possible. Loyalty binds very tightly. The Family gua is associated with the virtue of loyalty. Whether you seek loyalty from your parents, coworkers, roommates, or friends, loyal people are awesome to have around. It’s just nice sometimes to have someone else go to bat for you for a change. The mafia and the Kennedy family are two great examples of such family loyalty. You know you’re in a sacred circle if you are a member of either one of these clans. Having roots in loyal ancestry can be very beneficial throughout life. Strong roots stabilize your foundation. Strong roots help the family tree grow. Roots, trees—is it any wonder that wood is the element for this gua?

  | Family Heirlooms |

  Sometimes inheriting or receiving stuff is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Let’s talk about the physical stuff first. I don’t care how much money it is worth, or how long it has been in the family; if you’ve been given something that you either don’t love or can’t use, it’s dragging you down. This type of clutter (the type that has either a sentimental memory or a guilt trip attached to it) is so hard to give up, but giving it up is necessary for you to remain steadfast in your intention to stay clear about family issues. Try to find a new home for the possessions (a museum, a charity, another family member, a friend). When my grandfather died, my mother asked if there was anything I wanted from his house. I replied, “A flour sifter.” It was all I could think of that I needed at the time, and I had specific fond memories of baking with my long-since-deceased grandmother. Anything else (except cash) would have been clutter for me.

  And if you receive a gift that you don’t like or can’t use, don’t buy into the guilt of having to display it in your home. Consider it an energy sucker. Don’t keep guilt trips around—who needs ’em? Not you! I remember specifically saying to my mother right before she and Dad were going off to vacation in Germany, “Whatever you do, don’t bring me back a Hummel.” Dusting little German porcelain figures on shelves is not my idea of a good time—I don’t care how much the little buggers appreciate in value.

  Use it or lose it.

  Now it’s time to bring up the nonphysical stuff that gets passed down the lineage—stuff like a sense of lack, or a sense of shame, or buying into a disease that “runs in the family.” Because they are invisible, inheritances like these are harder to detect, but they are as debilitating as the physical clutter. Many people who have grown up in hard times pass on the legacy that the world is a hard place to live or that you have to work real hard just to get by. Some do this subconsciously; others spread these tales “for your own good.” Spending the time to sift through the mental clutter you have been handed is probably one of the most cathartic processes you could do in your life. A great way to start the process is to enhance your Family gua (for ancestry), the Skills and Knowledge area (for the wisdom to know what to do), and the Fame gua (for the courage to press forward in tough conditions). Piggybacking this with professional help might also be a good idea if you’ve been dealt a big hand.

  Just because someone is dishing it out doesn’t mean you have to take it.

  | The Choice Is Yours—Make It a Good One |

  If you have your Skills and Knowledge area cranked up and still find yourself making poor choices, enhance the Family gua of the home. Being taken care of is what this gua is all about. If you are taken care of, you come from a more powerful place in life, and are thereby able to make clearer decisions. On the other hand, if you are worrying about paying rent and feel as if you are drifting and have no stable foundation in life, your decision making will reflect that.

  Claire was unemployed for a number of months. She got so freaked out by it, she started thinking about every dime she spent. Instead of making calls to get work, she started to just read the paper and mail résumés. Instead of going to the monthly network lunch, she ate lunch at home alone. Instead of buying the power suit, she lived in her sweats, saving her nice clothes for when she got a job.

  Claire is coming from a place of fear. She is missing opportunities, which only enhances her chances of remaining unemployed. Remember, when you enhance your home with feng shui, you place your order with the universe. You must believe the universe took your order and is working on it. By putting all her available energy into saving her money and sparing her clothes, Claire was giving those concerns the power, instead of empowering her feng shui order. Energy follows thought. Her energy was very busy conserving money, and not out job hunting.

  | Healing Old Wounds |

  If you have enhanced your home properly and waited with full faith, but find something is still missing in your life, come on back to the Family section. There may be stuck ch’i from a childhood trauma still affecting you (though you are not even aware of it). Sit quietly in this part of your home, meditate, or simply ask for healing. If you want to know what that something missing is all about, ask for it to be revealed to you. But I have found that knowing is not necessary to receive healing.

  Here are two clearing rituals, the first for clearing the distant past, the second for more recent events:

  1. Get three new pieces of red paper and a brand-new black-ink pen. Write all the things to be cleared on the red papers. If you think there is something in the past that you may have blocked out of your memory, write that it be released as well, even though your consciousness won’t let you remember it. At noon or midnight, burn the papers and ask that these things be released from your energy. Give thanks.

  2. Each night before you go to sleep, review your day for any events that happened that you view as negative. If there is something that either you wish didn’t happen or wish you could change, play it again in your mind and mentally change the outcome to something positive. The quicker you change it, the less time it has to impact you energetically.

  Stay in the present. Don’t drag the energy from the past along with you anymore. Release it by forgiving.

  | Claim Your Space |

  Even though the little munchkins don’t usually pay any rent, it is important that kids have a space of their own. Whether it be a whole room or a small area of a room that is theirs and theirs alone, it is important that each member of the home have a sense of space and boundaries.

  If a family member appears to be ungrounded (showing signs of drifting apart or making bad decisions), place rounded rocks in each of the corners of the house or in each of the bagua areas. Rocks placed in the center of a
room (perhaps under a bed) work as well.

  A good feng shui practitioner always asks each child (or any tenant who did not specifically request the presence of the feng shui consultant) if it is OK to enter their room or space.

  If you are living with someone who does not share your taste, you may be living with items in your home that you hate (that old sad clown painting that your in-laws gave you, or your roommate’s bulldogs-playing-poker picture hung over the toilet). This may be draining you of much-needed positive energy. Review these items with all family members or roommates, discuss your feelings candidly, and see if it is OK that they be removed from the house. If others are too attached to them and want them to remain, try to designate a specific space where they can display the things they love—hopefully a space that you live in or walk by most infrequently.

  Love it or lose it.

  | Hang Up Your Hang-Ups About Sex |

  If your parents ever sat you down for the talk, you know how awkward it can get when family members and the sex topic cross paths. But for better or worse, most of your ideas, thoughts, and hang-ups about sex came from the family you grew up with, whether the talk actually ever took place or not. When you think about it, you should probably cut your parents some slack. After all, they got most of their hang-ups from their parents. (Big tip—avoid mental pictures now.)

  The people who raised you have either consciously or subconsciously filled your mind with many values, including those regarding sex, just as their forebears filled theirs. Hang-ups could come from religious ideals, sociocultural ideas, or simply a bad translation of someone truly trying to pass down good information. So, if there is a hang-up in your sex life, a good place to start to repair or treat this problem is the Family area of the home. Because you were raised a particular way, with certain thoughts about sex ingrained deeply within you, it may be hard to review such information objectively. But if you do suspect you have been misinformed, place an item (go back to power tools) in the Family area with the specific intention of allowing yourself to distinguish between the truths and untruths you have been told about sex. Ask that you have the courage to change (enhance Fame and Reputation for this courage) so that you can live life fully, lovingly, and hang-up free. Here is a sample affirmation: “I live my life free from any untruths regarding sex. I fully forgive anyone who has misinformed me.”

  | Ward, I’m Worried About the Beaver |

  Since the Children and Family guas are directly opposite, they affect each other greatly. If you have specific challenges with your children and you’ve got every power tool imaginable in the Children and Creativity area, try adding to the Family zone. A traditional cure for increasing family strength and getting children connected back in with the family is to buy a new plant for each child and one plant for the parents together. Place these plants in the Family area of the master bedroom. Tie one red ribbon around all the plants and sleep nine nights with them that way. After that time, take nine pinches of dirt from the plant representing the parents and place them in each of the kids’ plants. Then place each child’s plant in the Children section of their room or space. This is one of those traditional cures that is very symbolic and ritualistic but is found to work quite well.

  FIGURE 41

  Also, since the Family gua is about solid foundation and the Creativity and Children gua is about freedom, add to your Creativity if you feel too set in your ways.

  Happy Feet

  * * *

  Since the foot is the body part associated with the Family section of the home, it would be wise to enhance this area if there are any health concerns related to either of those little doggies. Ladies, still stuffing your toes into pointy pumps? (“Ouch!”—for fashion as well as health.) Give them a breather by massaging this area.

  The Four Corners of the Earth

  * * *

  The number that best describes the Family gua is 4. Four is stable and secure, whole and united—as a family should be.

  Immediate Action Items for Family

  * * *

  1. Remove all guns from this area.

  2. Mend or repair anything that needs it.

  3. Add enhancements as necessary.

  | Family in Summary |

  Power Tools: wood, green, plants, rectangular or columnar objects, water, black, undulating forms.

  Hazardous Materials: metal, white, round stuff, “Charlie Brown” trees.

  Opposite Gua: Children and Creativity

  Body Part: foot

  Associated Number: 4

  chapter 10

  * * *

  Just for the Health of It—Health

  Give the center, or Health area, of your home a feng shui workout and you’ll see

  more optimal health

  a sense of balance in life

  betterment in life situations that you couldn’t fit into any other area of the home’s bagua

  I use this area of the home to enhance health concerns because it is the epitome of balance—complete yin and yang energies. If your physical body is in balance, you can go about achieving everything you set out to do, giving it your all. I have heard this area of the home described as the place where everything and nothing happens.

  The only way feng shui could possibly not work is if you (that is, your physical, mental, and spiritual energies) are so out of whack you override its forces by draining the energy away from it. If you get no results from feng shui, the only space left to look at that may be affecting the outcome is inside yourself. The Health part of the home deals with just that. And by the way, unless you are a Helen Keller or a Christopher Reeve, whose physical challenges are an inspiration to many and appear to be an integral aspect of their life path, there is no reason to have anything less than optimal health.

  Health location in bagua.

  FIGURE 42

  Where is the center, and do I have to measure to find it? No measuring necessary. All of the bagua areas subtly blend into one another just like the colors of the rainbow. There’s no need for exact measurements anywhere. (See Figure 42.) And the center of the bagua is even less exact than the other guas. It reaches out and touches each of the other eight areas of the home. So declare that your center, or Health gua, is somewhere in or near the middle of the home and decorate it accordingly. Choose a table against a wall to display your feng shui symbols if there is nothing but thin air in the exact center. It will be close enough to this gua to cause the ch’i to change. The only place not recommended for placing your health accoutrements is near the Career area of a home or room, because earth dams water.

  Here are the best and worst things for health in feng shui—speak.

  Power Tools for Health

  * * *

  Earth Earth is the element for the center. The element can be introduced to a space quite simply by adding a healthy plant in a pot made of earth material and color. As long as it is not a tree (remember, wood uproots earth) almost any plant will do. Try to choose a plant that says “healthy and happy” to you. If you must use a silk plant because of light restrictions, place nine tablespoons of real soil into the pot to make it “real” in a feng shui way.

  By the way, for all you slobs out there trying to take a shortcut, dirty stuff does not count as an earth element.

  Things Made of Earth There are many beautiful items made from earthen materials that can be intentionally placed for health and balance. China and ceramics, clay tiles, clay pots, brick, and natural stone flooring can make beautiful reminders of health. The flooring in my home is square and bagua-shaped terra-cotta tiles—how perfect is that?

  Fruit A bowl of fresh fruit can do wonders for your health whether you eat it or not. It symbolizes many things—good luck, prosperity, hospitality, and health. So place it in the center space of your home and invite health into your life.

  Funny Stuff Laughter is a great cure for health, so place anything that cracks you up here. Laughter is truly the best medicine. Videos of funny movies, comedy acts, or bloop
ers; photos of yourself or friends taken in fun moments; those too-good-to-throw-away greeting cards; gag gifts—all work here. Even if it’s not a total knee-slapper, if it brings a smile to your face, it fits. Simple things like a hummingbird ornament, a child’s picture, or an old love letter are just a few items in this little-smile category.

  Giving someone a reason to laugh is one of the greatest gifts you can give. And the strange thing is, it’s usually free and priceless at the same time.

  Yellow, Gold, and Other Earth Tones The colors of earth are the colors for this space. The banana in the fruit bowl and the dirt in the plant pot can do the trick for keeping you healthy. I take yellow flowers to my friends when they need a little umph in the health department.

  Squares The square is the shape for this area. Square-tile floors, square tables, and square dancing are all effective in this area. (Actually, I just made up the part about square dancing, but I don’t think it would hurt!)