Timing is EVERYTHING: Light and Color Activate Health in our Bodies

Blue light tells our bodies to "Wake Up!" The Blue TV and Computer light at night is wreaking hormonal havoc on our bodies.

You may have heard about Circadian Rhythms, the cycles of life driven by the sun’s rising and setting and the amount of light and darkness in our days.

What you might not know is that light is color and color is light.  The colors of light, at specific times of the day, activate our bodies to respond in different ways.  Mix up the colors and the rhythm and you would be challenging your body’s ability to regulate itself through sleep and hormonal cycles.  Some recent studies have actually shown decreased human growth due to overexposure to the ‘wrong’ color light at the ‘wrong’ time of day.

Researchers have discovered that blue wavelength light, which is most available in the morning, has a way of signaling the pineal gland to stop producing Melatonin, the sleep hormone.  No melatonin, you lie awake unable to sleep and you body is unable to regenerate itself as efficiently and you are deprived of the all-important REM sleep needed for a healthy mind, body and soul.  The answer, turn off the TV and the computer in the early evening or at least an hour before bedtime.  You’ll have better sleep and perhaps more cuddling with your significant other.

Wall Color

Color is actually Light, and each color is its own frequency that speaks to our bodies unlocking different responses in our physiology.  The color around us, either on our walls or reflected to us from the greenery outside, or from the TV or computer screen,  speaks directly to our bodies rearranging our ability to be healthy, happy and wealthy.   Feng Shui has known this and .

Here’s the bottom line:  the colors of our spaces influence us:  our moods, our associative memory and our phyisology.  Feng Shui has been telling us this for thousands of years, the Egyptians for thousands of years before that and now researchers are proving it with scientific accuracy.   To paraphrase T.S.Elliot, its as though  our explorations have led us back to the place where we started and we know it as if for the first time.  (full quote here.)

A Better night time color scheme: warm, soft "flesh tones" and sunset colors. Prior to sleep: full darkness allows our bodies to regenerate and reach REM sleep.

Excerpt and link:

Research Team Shows Skin Stem Cells Run By Circadian Clock

(PhysOrg.com) — Most everyone has heard of the circadian rhythm or the internal clock that people have that tells them when to do things, such as go to sleep. In fact, researchers have actually located where this “clock” resides in the human brain. It’s in the suprachiasmatic nuclei, a pair of distinct groups of cells located in the hypothalamus. So, that would seem the end of it right, except it’s not; new research by a group in Spain has found that individual stem cells in skin have their own circadian clock of sorts that tells the skin when to do certain thing, like regenerate. The team led by Peggy Janich and Salvador Aznar Benitah, has published the results of their study in Nature.

2012 — Year of Water Dragon and 6 Metal Energy

A Year of Change, Direct Communication,  Deep Emotion and (It’s up to you:) Positive Outcomes

Don't be fooled: The Year of the Water Dragon can show you what lies beneath the surface, require direct communication and bring up a lot of emotion. Respond don't React. Take a breath and time to step back to see if things aren't initially larger than life.

We tend to look at the many “New Year’s Days” as a turning point toward a fresh start.  It is true, there are unseen but felt forces influencing us:  ‘We can feel a change a-comin’.”   If you are apt to look to the weather forecast for any given day, you know that things change.   Just like a weather forecast, the cyclical predictions of what we can expect in a new year can help us prepare for our dance with the Cosmic energies in which we live.  Prediction, however, is not finality–it is a optional outcome which we can choose to change by our action, attention or intention.

2012, according to the Chinese, will have similar energy to the last YEAR OF THE DRAGON: 2000.   The energies differ according to the 60-year cycle in that 2000 was a Metal Dragon and 2012 is a Water Dragon.

What that means is that 2012 will be a little gentler than Y2K but both years will have the overall experience of allowing things to appear larger than life.

3 NEW YEARs

• December 31 marks the end of the Gregorian Calendar year, and co-incidentally, the time when the “New Year Star” Sirius is at its pinnacle above the Earth’s Horizon.  Celebrate this New Beginning with visions of what you’d like to experience in 2012.
• January 23, 2012 marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year.  This date marks the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice and heralds the Spring Festival also known as Chinese New Year.  The 2-week festival takes advantage of the New Moon energy and the rushing force of Spring germinating deep under the soil.  Clean your home, clear the clutter, invite prosperity into your home with warm celebration with friends and family.
• February 4, marks another shift in energy from a Nine Star Ki perspective, shifting the energies from one ‘song’ to another.  Some years are like music to our souls, and those very same years could be the music that makes us cringe.  We all experience and use the energies differently.

Nine Star Ki 2012

2011 was a 7 Metal Year which means for most of us, it was a time we were focused on how things ‘looked’ and how we socialized and took time for ourselves.  It was a year that allowed us to challenge our own enjoyment of life.  It may have helped us evaluate how we have used our resources and how we plan to use them in the future.

2012 is a 6 Metal Year.  In a 6 Metal year we can reap great harvest afforded to us by our efforts and ability to be accountable, interested in community and global affairs.  It is the energy of Father, benevolent, dutiful, honorable and conditionally supportive.  The last 6 Metal year was in 2003…look back to review that year for yourself: what were the themes in your life in 2003?  Did you experience new beginnings?  Were you releasing what didn’t serve you?  Perhaps you were confronted with how well you were able to account for your involvement in the details of your life, your finances and community involvement?  Did you encounter a Mentor or become a Benefactor?   2012 will be similar in its tune but a bit softer.

Year of the Water Dragon

According to the Chinese Animal Horoscopes, we can have similar experiences every 12 years of a 60-year-cycle.  2011, the Year of the Metal Rabbit, was expected to be a year of soft diplomacy and harmony but also one of confusion as the home-loving, playful, diplomatic Rabbit was challenged by the directness and accountability of the ‘element’ Metal.  Many endings occurred based on our ability to address the issues or not.  You may have found yourself dealing with things that you had pushed under the carpet but could no longer ignore.

In 2012 we find ourselves in a ‘Water Dragon’ year.  In the East, Dragon energy is associated with benevolent life force, a force propelling change and disruption, but not always for an unwanted outcome.  Dragon energy, when properly harnessed creates new life and growth and spring like qualities.   Negative Dragon energies are arrogance, aggressiveness, & violence.  Water signifies what is deep, flowing, emotional and spiritual.  In 2012, things can seem ‘larger than life’ and ‘blown out of proportion.’  (The last Dragon year we experienced was Y2K, a predicted event that did not materialize.  However, I have to say again, that prediction is not finality, but an opportunity to make changes—had we not made necessary changes, Y2K might have been a disastrous event.)

Planning Ahead

How can you make necessary changes in these last few weeks of Rabbit energy to allow the change in your life to be beneficial?

• Be clear, honest and ruthless with the questions you ask yourself and be proud that you are asking them.   “Am I on target with my heart’s desires?”  ”Is there anything that I am living with that I need to release? (emotions, perceptions, expectations included)
• It’s all good, release the ballast and plan your next glorious adventurous year.  What is on your Bucket List? (The list of things you want to do before you ‘kick the bucket’.)
• Check out Miracles, by Stuart Wilde for a beautifully short version of how to’s for creating your own life’s miracles.
• You don’t have to do it alone:  be sure to get professional advice if you have made less than the best decisions in the past and know you need to make plans that include your own best interest.  When you thrive, all those around you benefit.
• Tend now to your own Water issues and energies:
• Check your home’s plumbing,
• Check ‘Water under Earth’ — keep an eye on gutter drains, etc.
• Check your car’s engine,
• Make sure your front door and all the doors to your home and office work perfectly.
• Tend carefully to your body and emotions:
• Support your kidneys and suprarenal glands (adrenals), bladder, reproductive organs, blood, spleen with plenty of rest, balanced work/life, pure water, limited alcohol and coffee
• Allow emotions to be named and released.  Validate your ‘feelings’ if even to yourself.  Check out The Emotion Code, by Bradley Nelson.  I have experienced personally how emotions get stuffed into our cells and not released until we have the maturity or support to deal with the little and major traumas of life.  This works.
• be sure that your career  is aligned with your true Life’s Purpose.

2012 is sure to be a powerful year, one in which we could easily discover the depths of love for ourselves, our families and friends and our world.  Be well and contact me if you would like help to make your life even more fun.

The Power and Purpose of Winter

Feng Shui = Body, Mind, Spirit and Space:
Tips for Using Winter’s Magic

What do Winter, receiving love and wisdom, your front door, water, your career, your kidneys, your sexiness, reproductive capability, your ears and your ability to live a life truly aligned with your deepest soul’s purpose have in common?  

They all signal and determine just how much fun you are having in life and how well connected you are to your Heart’s desire.

Everything is connected.  In our Western modern world, we tend to look at parts to see how they fit together to make a whole.  We don’t often know of the underlying matrix of systems and cycles that actually compose, energize and activate the body.

Your Life Force Essence is depleted by being overworked, anxious, ‘multi-tasking’, “99 Lives” we all live.  Winter’s invitation to slow down  can received and our Life Force, the Well of Being, can be restored more easily during Winter’s long dark nights, allowing us to be fully prepared and eager to ride the crest of energy that will arrive in Spring.

Buried Treasure There is treasure buried deeply in winter.    For thousands of years, humans have used winter to go inside, repair, rest and mend and return to stillness, entering what Feng Shui calls a yin state of rest, reflection and spiritual connection.   In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, Winter cold drives the flowing water deep below the frozen surface of streams, lakes and rivers.

Living in cities, working in high-rise buildings, TV’s in every room, car and restaurant, everything in our modern world seems to be on high volume 24/7/365; non-stop activity is pace of life today and it is toxic to career and life fulfillment and creates in our bodies an environment where overthinking, mental chatter, anger and illness occupy the space where love, clarity, calm and happiness should be living.  Winter allows us  need to follow the subtle whisper of our body’s desire to slow down and go deep within.

Your own life’s purpose is like a deep, flowing river feeding your being.   Think about it: are you excited to get to work? If you answered anything from “no” to “duh” or “yeah, right” you are probably not living your “life’s purpose & true potential.”

Take some time this Winter to access this inner knowing and calling. These tips will help you find it, and  have the ‘heart’ and courage to make the simple changes to put you on the right path once again. Living your Life Purpose, you have a powerful impact on all life around you, work seems like play, relationships are rewarding and it’s like being ‘in love’ all the time.

Tips for Using Winter’s Power:

Mind:Our minds are products of the 21st Century; like monkeys,  they are constantly jumping and leaping from branch to banana, all the while exhausting our ability to restore our Spirit.  Meditation is one way to calm the mind but for many, meditation becomes more frustrating than following the trail of thing to thing to thing…but its benefits, even just trying, nets big results.

• First thing in the morning, grab a pen and paper and start writing, whatever comes to your mind, continue for 3 pages and then rip it up.  This little trick helps dump those pesky thoughts demanding attention. I also do this before I go to sleep and have wonderful restful sleep as a result.
• Breathe.  A few deep breaths will center your spirit and calm your mind.
• Look to the near left corner of your spaces–your desk, your home, your rooms.  Clear this space of clutter, and leave it quiet and empty with the feeling of being in a sacred library. This will help calm the mind and enhance Wisdom & Self-Knowledge.
• Remove clutter, visual clutter comes in the form of many things, even a lot of different colors in the same place, or magazines or CDs or books all together will cause visual clutter.  Pictures hung randomly (use a grid pattern to calm the mind and ease the spirit.  This allows soft flow of vision rather than focus jumping around).

Body:

In Winter, our bodies require different nutrition than in other season.  Cold and darkness drive us inside to seek inner warmth. The ability to listen clearly (ears) is heightened in the cold, silent months.  To keep your Life Force strong, incorporate Salty & Bitter foods into your diet, as they have a centering quality that drives the body’s energy deeper into the core, leaving the surface of the body cooler, and thereby we notice the cold less.  Use only pure Sea Salt and in moderation.  These foods also protecting the heart-mind balance by adding a few bitter foods as their energy ‘enters the heart’.

• Rest more and earlier.  Take advantage of the extra darkness.
• Winter asks us to store physical energy–in the form of a little extra weight.  It is important to maintain activity to keep the spine and joints flexible.
• Fluid movement activities like yoga, dance, chi gong, walking all help the body gently process its energy for restoration.
• Use a body brush to move lymph and stay healthy: starting at feet and then hands, brush toward your heart.   A loofa sponge or shower mitts will also help exfoliate the skin and move the lymph.

Good Foods Heal the Body, Mind & Spirit:  Paul Pitchford’s landmark book combines the wisdom of ancient AND modern sciences.  It’s one of the books I am devouring this winter (with some sea salt and maybe lettuce ).  Healing With Whole Foods, Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition    Bitter foods include:  lettuce (try this in a soup, it’s amazingly delicious), watercress, asparagus, alfalfa, rye, oats, as well as:

• Grains:  Amaranth, Corn
• Legumes:  Red Lentil
• Nuts/Seeds: Sunflower, Pistachio
• Vegetables: Beet, Dandelion Root, Okra, Red Bell Pepper, Scallion, Tomato
• Fruits: Cherry, Persimmon
• Cautions: Chocolate, Sugar, excess salt

Spirit:

Relationships are nourishment for the Spirit.  The quality of your relationships depends on how well you know yourself and how comfortable you are with exactly who you are.

All of this works together to bring you more in tune with your Intuition, Your Source and then available for a glorious relationship with another.   The primary relationship to get ‘right’ is the one with Self–”Know Thyself” and I say Love all of you.  Accept all the emotions that traverse your being, validate them and release them.   Check out this book for the connection between your emotions and your ability to heal:  Five Elements, Six Conditions

Winter is the perfect time for reconnecting to yourself and your Source, and for taking time to reconnect with those you love.

• Feed your own Spirit and those of the ones you love by Listening more deeply.  Look into the eyes and faces of those near you as you listen for the love or pain between the words.  This method of receiving someone allows you to be truly connected to the beauty of each soul, and the heroic human experience as we all search for the Love our Souls are capable of receiving and sharing.

• Receiving (and Listening) is an Art.  Receiving means being open, trusting, centered, vulnerable, fearless and flexible.  With these attributes you are more available to see the beauty in every situation, and every situation as a step closer to the wisdom and love you are wanting.    Even receiving that traffic delay as a gift–could it be the perfection of timing so that you are in the right place to miss a negative event or to make the perfect connection leading you to a fantastic experience.   Winter is associated with receiving.  It might take a bit of soul-searching but there’s a gift in everything, somewhere.

Space:    Feng Shui is a lot like ‘house psychology:’ your life and your home are a metaphorical match when seen through Feng Shui eyes.

Winter, water, North and your Front Door, or any door, reflect how you connect with the flow of your own life, your life’s purpose, your career and your ability to Receive.  (there it is again)

Your front door is of major importance as it serves many Feng Shui purposes: inviting vital life force to your home, life and career, it is a sentry with a watchful eye, announcing who you are, what is important to you and what guests can expect when you open the door.  Doors in general open us to opportunity and should be beautiful, work perfectly and open completely onto a beautiful view, inside and outside.

Your front door is known as the Mouth of Ch’i.  Do you use it daily?

Most of us don’t use our front doors daily, some don’t use them ever.  This is equivalent to going through life with your hand over your mouth and nose.  No fresh breath enters your body, and no freshness enters your life and your home if you don’t use your front door.   [Note:  your front door is the door with which your address is associated, not the back door or garage door you might use all the time.]

• Open your Front door daily
• Make certain it works perfectly and opens completely, nothing behind it.
• Make sure it opens onto a beautiful view (no powder room or view of the second floor or sleeping areas)
• Be sure it is beautiful, place a new welcome mat and seasonal flowers, but make sure that it looks wide and open to receive.  
• Make sure your house numbers are visible and either horizontally displayed or in an ascending layout.
• Add lighting…balanced is best.
• Be sure that you don’t have a ‘floating door’ one that doesn’t look attached to the walkway, porch or earth.  A “floating door” will unsettle and un-ground you and your opportunities.
• Make certain ALL your doors work perfectly and fully open.  You’ll have greater health, increased opportunities and a happier life flow and career.
• Check that your plumbing is working perfectly.

In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, Winter snow drives the flow of water even deeper than the surface of streams, lakes and rivers.  This is Nature’s way we need to follow the subtle whisper of our body’s desire to slow down and go deep within.  Take advantage of the benefits of Winter to deepen your ability to access your truth, receive insight, connect to your intuition and know your true, beautiful self.

Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday Part 4 Spirit

With just a little awareness and focus on what you really want, you can be breezy and elegant throughout your Holidays AND have more fun than you thought possible.

Part 4 of Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday

SPIRIT

• MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE:  Our spaces and events are more than just collections of people and things — there is a woven fabric of shimmering energy connecting everything, just beyond our eyesight.  Just thinking about it brings it alive, smiling into it turns on the light and amps up the happiness wherever you go.
• RITUAL or HABIT?  The things we do over and over become rituals.  Anything, including rituals of any sort, that are done without intention or awareness become only habits.  If your routines have allowed you to lose passion for life,  you can make a choice!  Change it up to keep the energy fresh, or reinvigorate your events with newness.  Color, new music, a scavenger hunt, can all reawaken the spirit, passion and purpose in your yearly gatherings or plans.
  

  Laugh

• LAUGH:  Children laugh an average of 200-400 times a day.  Laughter is one of the easiest and most economical ways to bring the Light into the season.  Usually the best way to prime yourself for laughter is to take yourself, and the holiday season, lightly.
• PAUSE:  Everywhere you go, take your own sacred self with you.  I connect to my Internal Guidance System or take my Sacred Self with me.  When I do this simple trick, I make better decisions, I see nuances and delight that was hidden, and I can feel the nourishment in the environment.
• ASK:  When you are in need of an answer, just stand still and ask.  I find that the answers always come, either they pop into my head, I get a thought bubble of where the misplaced item is, or someone will come by and answer the question for me.  Don’t hesitate to ask and act on the answers; your guidance and connection to your Source is hardwired into your body.  When you give up the stress for a minute, stand still and ask, let it go and watch as the answer comes.  It may take a little while, but trust and it usually comes quickly.
• REFLECT:  As each year comes to a close, take some private, personal time to slow down, look back and evaluate.  What worked?  What was fun?  Who was fun? Who wasn’t? Look back with gentle compassion; be soft, kind, truthful with yourself and clear.  Ask yourself some good questions:  What was I trying to accomplish this year and did I?  What did I do best this year?  How did I feel when I was true to myself?  What do I want to accomplish this year?   Here’s a trick I learned from one of my favorite people on the planet, Denise Linn:  Tell yourself the story about how wonderful  2012 was.  (That was not a typo: it’s a way of pre-programming success for your new year..)  –  Set your goals and tell the story backwards [in January I went on vacation, in February I got my dream job, in March I found the perfect new home, etc.] this one you can make up and I guarantee you, it works!

Part 1  Mind            Part 2  Body             Part 3  Spirit           Part 4  Space

Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday Part 3: Body Wisdom

With just a little awareness and focus on what you really want, you can be breezy and elegant throughout your Holidays AND have more fun than you thought possible.

Part 3 of Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday

BODY WISDOM

Access your own Power Center -- imagine yourself surrendering to the well of self-love within like a drop of water into a still pond.

• CENTER   Transport yourself to the one most powerful place on Earth for you — Your center.  Being aware of the space inside your core, whether it is your heart, your solar plexus or the the whole inside of your being, when you gather your awareness inside you, you become a balanced force for creating the happiness you seek.
• WIND   Breathe.  Our entire physiology changes with just one slow, full breathe.  The nutrients in our breathe help to rebalance our blood pH–a simple element which is vitally important for a healthy immune system.   and to prevent osteoporosis, not to mention mood.
• WATER   Drink more pure water…room temperature is best.  A glass of water prior to consuming alcohol, or intermittently while drinking helps avoid overindulgence and hangovers.  Before you go to bed, water and a few deep breaths often, will help your liver and your blood process the negative effects of alcohol.  Also, before you go to sleep (but after you’ve had food) a B complex vitamin will also help your body recover more quickly from Holiday partying.  I also take a few dandelion capsules; dandelion is a bitter herb that helps to support the liver and is a mild diuretic.*  (*Check with your health care practitioner before starting any health regimen.  This is not meant as a diagnosis, nor as a prescriptive but just an explanation of what I have learned works for me.)
• ENJOY  Food eaten consciously and with gratitude becomes nutrient…the simple process of enjoying, slowly savoring your hors d’oevres or dinner changes everything.  You’ll consume less and enjoy more.   I always take a moment to send thanks to everyone who came into contact with that food, from farmer to shipper to chef to server.  Food, furnishings, spaces are transformed by the thoughts and feelings of those who encounter them – this ancient ritual of ‘giving thanks’ or ‘saying grace’ is a powerful act to reset the energy around you.
• LISTEN & ACT  One sure-fire way to get out of balance is to override your body’s messages.  Begin to trust your intuition from the simplest to the most un-believable.  If you don’t ‘feel’ right about something, avoid it.  If you feel  like a 20-minute nap, or a quick walk is calling you–trust and act on it.  If you ‘just have a feeling’ about going somewhere, talking to someone, purchasing something, ACT on it.  At first you may not know ‘what could have been’ had you listened or not, but you’ll come to trust that Internal Guidance System.  Your own body has wisdom that when heeded will lead you to wonderful experiences.
  

  Listen to Your Own and Only Authority: Your Inner Guidance System

Part 1  Mind            Part 2  Body             Part 3  Spirit           Part 4  Space

Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday Part 2: Space: Design & Feng Shui Tips

Create a Focal Point and allow the rest of the room to support it and you.

If “harried and hurried” is not making you happy (sometimes it is a LOT of fun to be excited and moving fast), this list will give you a few ideas to add some joy, time and to your Holidays and life. 

Part 2 —  Space:  Design & Feng Shui Tips 

DESIGN Tips

• Choose a theme.  Experts design their holidays the way they design everything, for simplicity and focus.  Choose 3 colors and stay with it.  Pick up an accent color already in your home and add a bit of old world hominess, which is a beautiful theme this year:  Old School Christmas is helping us enjoy warmth of our spaces and each other. Limited color palette will create calm and serenity.   A few color schemes that you might like:  green-red-brown of nature and natural items hanging on the tree dried apple slices, fresh cranberries and popcorn on a string as garlands, large pine cones or bundles of cinnamon sticks tied with a ribbon, or green and red  and a touch of pure vibrant color like aquamarine…or try bronze instead of gold this year with indigo and white lights.  Lots of fun.

• Create a focal point.  This is a very important factor in design and Feng Shui (where your eye goes, energy goes).  Find one thing that you want to direct the attention toward and allow that to be the room’s HERO.  Everything else will be supporting characters.  If it’s the Tree, allow space around it so that it takes on a even more special role.
  

  Grouping like items and like colors creates a calm, peaceful decor.

• Grouping items gives coherence and calm.  Think about arranging your Christmas items in groups or themes: all the Santas together, displayed as if in an old-time Macy’s window, or all the Nutcrackers together or even all items of the same color or material.   Rather than scatter things about, but give them coherence and power in number.  Look for ways to turn a table or console into a beautiful honoring of what delights you.   When buying new items, buy three and group them.  It makes a statement of design, impact and importance.

• Don’t over ‘do’  if you have a lot of ornaments, consider having two trees: one in the entry or living room and one perhaps in the family room or a child’s bedroom or guest room, one with old ornaments and one with themed ornaments like those gathered from vacations around the world.  Organize the ornaments on each tree and even create a themed tree for each child, in their bedroom with their own favorites.

• Live with what YOU LOVE. Don’t be afraid to discard or give away ornaments or items you don’t like.  Only use decor that you love and makes you feel good. If something has a negative memory or is broken, depleting energy will surround it.  Give it away and allow for beauty to fill the void where negativity once existed.

• Engage All Senses.  Scent creates emotional responses and memories.  Simmer mulling spices on your stove, light a peppermint or evergreen candle, use clove or cinnamon ornaments or place potpourri in your linen closet and bathrooms.  The warmth of these scents actually triggers our bodies to respond with characteristic warmth.
  

  Engage the senses as with these beautiful Jo Malone candles, rich flowers and simple treasures.

• Use Your Feelings to Decorate     Whichever theme, color scheme or ornaments you choose, be sure to decorate with intention and purpose, thoughtfulness and joy.  The energy with which we do things permeates those items or spaces – it is true.  We are each powerful beyond measure and remember:  “any sufficiently advanced technology is initially indistinguishable from magic.”  You are magic – create it well.

FENG SHUI Tips:   

• Soften the surroundings:  
• Keep the knives out of sight and remove the carving knives from dinner table; this will help keep edginess and arguments to a minimum.
• A round or oval dining table gives the best energy for an enjoyable dinner.
• Soften a square or rectangular table with a dining cloth, a central medallion will bring focus and camaraderie.
• Don’t seat folks who normally conflict, directly across from each other.  Place them at an angle or on the same side (with a friendly person between them).
• Instead of lots of intense red this season, choose some Pink or even Navy accents.  Limiting the amount of red THIS holiday, will help to bring more calm and less stress, less emotion and fewer outbursts: opt for soft gold, glowing blues or rich greens.
• Add space :
• Allow for breathing room:  when adding your decor or any gifts, remove whatever else you can.  Patty Kraemer, of Kraemer Connect suggests:  “one thing in, and two things out!”  Clear all last year’s clutter, donate all you can’t or don’t use, leave some things empty and open.  This will bring freshness and more light into your entertaining.
• LIGHTEN IT UP!   Infuse light into the darkness of Winter.   This time of year celebrates our journey into deep, dark Winter taking the light of inspiration with us.  Even if you don’t decorate, bring out the candles and a few twinkles, or sit by a nice warm fire.  Soft, gentle light is most beneficial this season.
• Be prepared to LAUGH!  Do a little search for a favorite joke or two and be ready to shift into Holiday Spirit at a moments’ notice.  If they are particularly corny jokes, be ready to exit–stage right.
  

  LUKE, I Felt Your Presents

Here’s one of my favorite Holiday jokes:

Darth Vader breathing for a few moments….

–you know the sound, you have to make it–

“Luke, I know what you are getting for Christmas.”

[Luke is curious.  Make a quizzical face.]  

Add a few more Vader breaths and then…

The Punch Line:

“I Felt Your Presents”

Part 1  Mind            Part 2  Body             Part 3  Spirit           Part 4  Space

Simple Tips for a Delightful Holiday Part 1 of Mind / Body / Spirit / Space

With just a little awareness and focus on what you really want, you can be breezy and elegant throughout your Holidays AND have more fun than you thought possible.

If harried and hurried is not making you happy (sometimes it is a LOT of fun to be excited and moving fast), this list will give you a few ideas to add some joy, time and to your Holidays and life. 

MIND

1. PLANNING YOUR DAY:  Rather than stress about the to do list for tomorrow before bed, think about how you would LIKE the next day to begin, refreshed, happy and eager to enjoy life.  When you awaken, do it again:  at the beginning of the day (or any event) rewrite the script…see it going smoothly and visualize effortless enjoyment.  You can actually change your whole experience just by reprogramming your thought patterns.  You begin to draw to you the things that you need.  It seems magical, but “Any sufficiently advanced technology is initially indistinguishable from magic.”(anon)   Write the script for your day, see yourself beautiful, happy, receiving help and compliments, giving joy that is easily accepted–then, like a sweet smelling flower, hold the feelings.  You will be amazed.  I promise.

2. PRIORITIZE EVENTS AND EFFORTS:  Make a list of all potential holiday events and activities.  Which ones bring you most joy?  Most Peace?  Most return on your time and energy investment?  Saying “NO” to things is not going away from those you love or respect, it is an act of personal power.  You’ll have much more to give when you are fully centered, poised and present.  You will be giving yourself and the world a precious gift…You.

3. MAKING A LIST:  When you make your daily list: build in time slots for rest and for fun.  Think about the top 3 things that will either bring you most joy, make your life easiest or move you in the direction of either.  If you accomplish even one of them you can give yourself a High-Five. When scheduling your day, allow 15 minutes every 3-4 hours for unexpected things like phone calls, store jaunts, or just seeing a friend you didn’t expect.

4.  OUT-SOURCE & DELEGATE:  Your most precious resource is your time and feeling nature.  We don’t do well things we don’t like to do or things we don’t know how to do.  Decide where you want to spend you.  When you actually look at the amount of time you spend on a task, you may be surprised that your hourly rate is somewhere near 8 cents per hour…at least it’ll be less than minimum wage.  I decided to hire someone to put up my outdoor Christmas Lights and I directed the show.  I wanted to spend my Holidays at home–not in the hospital from a ladder fall.  I checked on the progress and then did what I like to do:  bake cookies and sip eggnog.  Decide what you really, really love to do, do that. And for goodness sake: delegate…once and for all and let it go.  You might be surprised how well things actually do go.
   

   Adding space to your schedule will allow for the Luxuries to Emerge

5. KEEP LUXURY TIME AND FUN ON YOUR PRIORITY LIST:  Every day schedule and do something that will enliven your Spirit.  (After all, it’s not called the “Rat Race of Christmas”…).   A warm cup of your favorite tea, saying NO to that extra load of laundry, looking for the morning star, smiling at yourself in the mirror.  Schedule some corn-y old fun: : I guarantee it will be those memories that make you smile.

Part 1  Mind            Part 2  Body             Part 3  Spirit           Part 4  Space

Light: Medicine for Today

LIGHT!  Medicine of The Future?  

       Circadian Lighting, Quality of Light and Quality of Life

 Light, seasonal, natural or artificial is a key factor in our ability to be healthy and effective whereas lack of proper light has been shown to lead to SAD, illness, growth and even addiction.*

Full-spectrum light is necessary for the proper functioning of the human body.  Mimicking sunlight’s complete spectrum, full-spectrum light helps our own bodies produce the proper chemicals for digestion, bone formation, blood pH, mood, and more.  The quality of light is just as important as the timing of light’s exposure.   Debrorah Burnette, ASID, CMG is an expert in Circadian Lighting and how to design spaces that benefit humans living and working within them.  I experienced Deborah’s talk in Nashville which was inspiring and meaty.

Light directs and dictates our behavior.  As light enters our retina, the packets of information head directly to our hypothalamus activating our hormone system, bypassing our conscious opinion of that color sending specific information to that motivates physiology and behavior.  For instance, red will increase blood pressure, promote heightened awareness, increase digestion.  Deborah has encountered recent studies from France that suggest the blue light from computer monitors and televistion and those in some automobile headlights (due mostly to the time of day)  negatively affect the hormones of growth and sleep regulation.

Books I recommend:

LIGHT:  Medicine of the Future by Jacob Liberman, O.D, Ph.D.

and also

All About Colour, by Janice Lindsay

and

Health and Light: The Extraordinary Study that Shows How Light Affects Your Health and Emotional Well Being, by Dr. John Nash Ott

           

Design tips for Your Natural State of Being

If your home, office or designs don’t anchor that ‘in love’ feeling, they are letting you down.

 

YOUR SPACES

When is the last time you were ‘in love’?  Remember that feeling? Everything went smoothly, nothing bothered you, you looked great, you felt great and wow, it was wonderful.

Can you imagine feeling that every day?  Or even for 10 minutes every day?

If your home, office or designs don’t anchor that ‘in love’ feeling, they are letting you down.

2 THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Change your outer world or change your inner world.

1. Outer world change ideas:   

• Clean your desk top, your wallet, your brief case or purse.
• Organize something…a drawer, etc.
• Give or throw way something you don’t need. Affirm:  I trust that what I need will be there when I need it and let it go.
• Look around and Love something.
• Take a deep breathe and drink some fresh water.
• Light a scented candle, spray some beautiful perfume in the air, open a grapefruit and smell the freshness.
• Open a window or door and let some fresh air in. 
• Order some fresh flowers and send them to yourself and place one in each room of your home.
• Place something yummy red in each area of your home.
• Analyze the Art in your spaces: is it happy? restful? what is the subject?
• Have an expert Feng Shui consultation for your home, office or project to determine which changes you can make to have the greatest impact on all areas of your life that you’d like to be even better.

2.  Inner world change ideas:  

• Smile.
• Look up toward the ceiling (looking upward activates positive hormones, elevates our being and relaxes our body).
• Let go of expectations, outcomes, old patterns and beliefs.
• Change the story.  We can release a lot of emotional clutter just by looking for the nugget of benefit in an old story we have been telling ourselves.  Refuse to be a victim, delete regret and think about how you want your day to really feel.
• Let Go:  Truly forgive and forget.  I love this saying: “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  Place your awareness deep in your own heart and life and ask yourself, “What do I want to do with my life? What is going to make me happy right now?”
• Remove all the things from your spaces (home, office, car, wallet, Facebook) that take your energy or feelings down instead of up.  I remember being a teenager and when girls would ‘break up’ with their boyfriends, they’d give everything back, gifts, rings, photos, everything.  Seemed odd to me at the time but this was precisely what allowed them to cut the ties and move on.  Kids.  Pretty smart.

We are living in certainly interesting times, and with a little expansion outside the box of our current patterns we can expand into a great new experience of life.  Come join me in the fun!

Trends Are Powerful — Trend Watch: the ‘Genuine’ Advantage and more

The New Luxury includes a focus on Being Fully Aware, Alive, and Tactile. The important factors: Inner Peace and Motivated Caring

Don’t look again for your ‘authentic’ self, or even ‘authentic’ ‘artisan’ pieces — according to icon Trend predictor, Faith Popcorn, “Being authentic is over. The new trait companies need to exude is to be genuine, not authentic. They need to get out of the past!”

The Genuine Advantage  Why do businesses, environments, movements even governments need to exude the new trait of being ‘genuine’?  Because more than ever, we are making purchases  and designing our lives in ways that align with our Values.  (see below) Today’s companies look carefully to trend forecasters to provide information about the subtle nature of us all.   This information will inform the next generation of products or services needed to assist (and sometimes define) the evolution of humankind.  Leading edge companies who felt a genuine need and filled it have been what marketers call “early riskers’ like Toms and Donna Karan’s Urban Zen are answering the call for genuinely responsive marketing, creating products that more than solve our problems but touch deep into our values for a better world and brighter future.   (Read about it here)

When designing products or interiors, it’s increasingly important that those designs ‘do no harm’ but even more  than that, they must truly create a healing impact throughout all phases of the product life.  There’s no going backward on this one.

Products need to do more than be colorful, sustainable and fun -- we are caring about each other in an unprecedented way.

Here are a few of the societal trends.  How many can you relate to?

*From FaithPopcorn.com

99 Lives* –  We are living high-speed, fast-change character lives stretched to the limit as Multi-tasking is a way of life and  the title ‘single-working-mom’ no longer inspires empathy.  All this is creating a kind of social schizophrenia.   Design Answer:  create products and designs that expand time, make life easier and more gentle, encourage focus and filter out insolent interruptions.

Lo-Cocooning
Cocooning is more about just staying home and being safe in our snuggly little  nest, its also about staying in the neighborhood, staying local.  How many days can I work at home?  Can I walk to the services I need? And just who is my neighbor?  Design Answer:  When designing, it is important to create spaces that allow home and work to be separate entities; track actual time spent working and be certain to create boundaries around play and rest.  Take time off and make it sacred.

Down-aging*
A need to enjoy more play, not only are baby boomers finding comfort in familiar pursuits and products of their youth, but even the younger generations are becoming nostalgic for a ‘simpler’ time, old school items and ways and a past that they never lived.  Design Answer:  Incorporate playful items in the design of each room or product–add tactility, movement and a surprise in unlikely places, like painting a smiley face inside the mailbox or trashcan lid, add bright color to the insides of dresser drawers…

Ego-nomics*
To offset a depersonalized society, consumers crave recognition of their individuality and creativity.  We are wanting products and designs that express exactly who we are, are customiz-able and that fit our quickly evolving lifestyle.  Design Answer:  This is a very important part of Feng Shui:  Express Yourself.  With sites like Etsy and Ponoko, we can express our personalized designs and sell them online easily.

The Girl Effect

THE GIRL EFFECT Architecture, automotive and industrial design are more created often by women who introduce soft curves, comfort and vibrant color . Designer Patricia Urquiola, Spanish born Designer works with BMW, H&M and B&B Italia as well as Mandarin Oriental Hotels and this as shown in her design of W Retreat & Spa – Vieques Island

Intuitive, flowing, integrated with all life — women–and the way they think and behave–are impacting business, causing a marketing shift away from a hierarchical model toward a relational, intuition-based one.  Both men and women are embracing both sides of our nature, masculine and feminine for something more than an androgenous outcome, a world that honors right and left brain, feeling and logic, and the intelligence of body wisdom.  Design Answer: Embrace the excitement of just being alive in your spaces.  The 2012/2013 Design Trends from Voice of Color speak to the need to be beautiful, fanciful and colorful.  One of the 4 basic trends, Beauty Queen, highlights a rich, elegant 21st Century take on Disco — Princess Diana meets John Travolta: fun, upscale and elegantly light-hearted. Boldly colorful this trends is elevated by its use of Lucite furnishings as in Madonna’s designs of office furniture for Versace.

Material Girl goes Transparent and still Sexy with Lucite furnishings, an important part of the Beauty Queen Design Trends

Grape Juice, Tutti Fruiti, Whirlpool, Candlelight Beige and Brandy Alexander are the rich and happy colors of the Voice of Color's BeautyQueen Design & Color Trend.

Privacy Please
Even our youth is understanding that there’s power in privacy.  Facebook and social media sparked the Age of the Overshare and many of the Millenials are deleting their pages, aware of how quickly media can have a negative impact on their lives.  These charms, worn by younger Millenials are a reminder that there is sacredness to their lives and power in the personal.

Icon Topling*
Many of our social institutions are being exposed for their ineffectiveness and/or heartless methods of doing business.  ”Corporation structures just give people and excuse to behave badly.”   As we see much of our established pillars of society crumble we have been driven to take more responsibility for what we can control and therefore the need to stay local has gotten greater and more fulfilling.

Astrologer Rick DiClemente explained this trend as it arose over 4 years ago — a stellar event that hadn’t occured since the American Revolution for Independence.  Check out StarSelf and the article on Pluto Enters Capricorn   I can’t wait for the release of Rick’s book on December 14, 2011  The Exquisite Zodiac

Small Indulgences*
Still wary about the recovery of our economic health, we allow ourselves to indulge in small, affordable luxuries and find ways to reward ourselves.  A Starbucks latte, with extra whip cream, a Leonidas Chocolate box, a scented candle, glass of champagne or long bath are examples of necessary pampering.  Give and get moments of happiness, a sunrise, the light through lace on a little girls headband, the wagging tail of a dog excited to see you…these small indulgences are more though out than the ‘impulse purchases’ at the counter and more rich and soul satisfying.  Look for them, they are all around you right now.

Pleasure Revenge*
There is a trend to ‘just do it’…anything as a pressure release valve.  This is being called the “I don’t care” trend, the “I’m going to stay out all night and do all the ‘bad’ things I want” trend — as a pressure release to the boundaries we face during the day.  You can see this in the advertisements for alcohol, cigars and cars–a no limits way .  Anything to push the envelop and explore a passionate, outrageous  side of ourselves.

“EN-GEN”*  Termed ‘En-Gen’ by Faith Popcorn, this trend speaks to a broadening of our individual fullness.  Men are accessing their creative and intunitive selves, women are stepping up to claim their passion and strength.  Filled with many statistics, here’s the BrainReserve report:  THE RISE OF EN-GEN

The Chicken or the Egg?  BOTH    The Chicken IS the Egg.    Our worlds, global, cultural and personal (outside of us) affect what is going on inside of us and determines our response to life.    Design, color and style design are always driven by humans:  our nature, our innovation and access to resources, natural or personal.  Want a peak at the colors that we will want to have around us?  Stay tuned.

More Metal Energy: Max Lamb’s Pewter Desk — Beauty before, during and after

The process of any endeavor becomes a part of the fabric of the end result.

From beginning to end, the process is almost magical to watch. I wish I were there.

Design used to be experienced as a sacred union of human, cosmos and creation.  Ancient cultures would select the most pure amoung them to be the architects, or those who were to determine the siting of the building or city or to set the keystone.   They knew viscerally that the emotions and experiences of the process would reverberate into the environment and the people for eons.  They knew that the interface of human, material, earth and time would create an opportunity for growth, happiness and health.

Today Artisan is Everything  Today we are hungry for the hand made craft of the artisan…why?   A major trend in the world of design is rise and focus on the need for a truly personal experience.  Artisan is everything.  We are looking to feel and share a connection with something greater than ourselves, a delight or surprise through the design or the product or the architecture.  We are asking the artist to be a conduit and share their 10,000 hours of repetitive exploration that results in mastery:  an alignment with genius.  We want a piece of the experience for ourselves, so that we can find a moment of alignment to the something greater than all of it put together.

This is what ‘good’ Feng Shui does for us: bypasses the brain to reach deep into our felt-sense and turn up the delight so that our very cells can hum along healing us from within.  When that happens we hit the ‘mother-lode’ of getting out of our own way and letting our bodies and spaces bring us joy.

The energy from nature, the energy of smiles and compatibility of shared experience is a part of this creation and I am very excited to share this with you.  Max Lamb’s Pewter Desk is a journey as beautiful as the creation itself.  This is truly a desk of Feng Shui’s Metal energy:  accurate, honed, unconditionally perfect, social, accountable, honorable, voice of celebration and creation.

Max Lamb's Pewter Desk: a "BEFORE" shot. Be sure to see the photo progression: http://maxlamb.org/126-pewter-desk/

Max Lamb designing the Pewter Desk. Watch the entire beautiful process: http://maxlamb.org/126-pewter-desk/

Metal Energy: Beautiful, exacting, honorable, community oriented: working together.

Evidence of the Artisan, beauty in the flaw, "Wabi Sabi" honor now.

From Max’s site:

“Pewter Desk

28th June 2011, Porthluney Cove, Caerhays, Cornwall.

My largest pewter casting to date! I returned to my favourite beach at Caerhays on the south coast of Cornwall to produce a solid pewter desk using the same primitive form of sand-casting I experimented with whilst studying at the RCA. The date of the casting was scheduled for the 28th June as high tide coincided with sunrise and I knew I needed at least 6 hours to carve the mould and cast the pewter before the water table began to rise again. At 4:30am I began carving the negative of the desk into the sand using no more than a kitchen knife and a metal rod and by 10:30 the mould was ready for casting. We melted 180kg of pewter (92% tin, 2% copper, 6% antimony) in 30 stainless steel saucepans on 30 gas camping stoves. Myself and five assistants (including my dad), wearing leather welding gauntlets and safety goggles, began pouring the molten pewter into the sand mould one saucepan at a time in quick succession until the liquid pewter reached the brim of the mould. The pewter took over an hour to cool and solidify before I could begin to dig away the sand and excavate the the pewter desk, and between five of us we easily managed to lift the finished desk out from the sand. The natural texture of the sand appears on the legs and underside whilst the smooth seemingly molten surface of the pewter remains on the top surface of the desk.

With  thanks to:

Richard Lamb, Gemma Holt, Laurence Symonds, Patrick Gottelier, Peter Doubleday and 10 students from Falmouth University 3D Design department.

Photography: Max Lamb, Gemma Holt and Peter Doubleday.

Private commission, unique.”

Smell Your Way to Good Health — Feng Shui Wisdom

Smell:  a Powerful Key

  Your Guide to Good Health & Good Design/Feng Shui

Smell is the sense associated with Metal and Autumn.  Breath is the indication that we are alive.  Our Lungs and skin are the organs that protect us an allow us to receive inspiration and energy to remain alive.  Our sense of smell is what gives us powerful information about whether things we encounter will support or deplete us.  It can even alert us to the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.  Smell is also vitally important to good Feng Shui; after all, everything is connected.

Elemental Smells  When I talk about Feng Shui ‘elements’ I am really talking about the dynamic direction and essence of energy.  The ‘elements’ of Feng Shui are also called “Transformations” due to the fact that all life is in constant motion, moving toward growth or death.

The ancients took notice of rhythms, cycles and connections: how things moved, how they felt, what resulted.  They saw resonance between shape and function, between position and energy and it is all based on observation and evidence. Today in design we have a term for that:  ”Evidence Based Design.” Yet the real power and wisdom is right inside your own body.

In Autumn, we experience what the ancients could classify as Metal. The energy of Metal is the most compressed, the completion of a cycle of creation that leads to the next cycle’s beginning.  We have harvested, sorted, accounted, detached from our creations and sent them on to their own new life in the world of commerce.  Metal energy is about interface with the environment and releasing what no longer serves our growth.

An animals’ sense of smell is highly developed because they use it all the time.  They glean myriad information from the many layers of smell.  Smell is one of the diagnostic tools for a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner (watch the movie The Last Emperor).

Our own keen sense of smell has been diminished due to many factors, not the least of which are strong synthetic and manufactured, non-natural substances.  I am not getting on the bandwagon saying they are all bad, but with so many and so many illnesses and deaths from ”side effects”  from what we are manufacturing, it is taking a toll on our bodies’ abilities to read our internal guidance system and heed the signs that would guide us to our best health–bar none!

In Feng Shui and Health, the sooner you notice an imbalance and the sooner you make a correction, the easier and healthier your life is. Energy is always moving, either growing or declining.  The sooner you make positive changes, the less pain and illness and disaster you encounter.

Healthy SPACE:

• Give it a smell test.  Go into all areas of your home or office and actually smell it.  If it smells dusty, moldy, or not fresh, do something about it: Clean it completely.  Using citrus scents, pine, french lavender (with a camphor note) will help reduce the causes of nasty smells, deter insects and create more healthy environments.
• Out with the bad air: In with the good!  Open the windows often.  Especially after a thunderstorm, when negative ions help to clear the air.
• Surround yourself with beautiful smells that lift your spirit.
• Use only natural, non-petroleum candles.  Beeswax is best. There have been some indications that too much soy in our diets and environments has a negative impact on our bodies. I’ll do more research on that but until then, I’ll be using Beeswax candles and aromatherapy for my scenting needs.
• After you’ve cleaned, add a moving water feature which actually helps to clean the air, by, you guessed it, adding negative ions to the space.  Still water doesn’t do this, only splashing and crashing water, even lightly splashing, moving water will work.
• Place the water feature flowing in toward the center of the home or office or in a 360 degree fashion.
• Make sure you clean it often with vinegar and water to keep mold and fungus from forming.
• I used to every quarter actually clean my water cooler dispenser but flushing it with vinegar and water–keeping the water we were drinking fresh.
• A fountain placed to the right side of a door as you enter through it can cause daydreaming and drowsiness.  Notice if that’s happening and move the water or the aquarium to the left side of the door (as you walk through the door).
• Read about Healthy Cleaning Products that are antibacterial, antifungal and anti-immune depleting.

Healthy MIND / BODY / SPIRIT

Well, it’s really all connected–for the “body” part:

• Aromatherapy:  Small scent molecules that are fat-soluable can cross the filter known as the Blood Brain Barrier.  Not all molecules can do that, but the ones that can directly influence our physiology almost immediately.  Essential Oils, the carefully distilled essence of a plant’s healing capabilities, have molecules small enough to pass the blood brain barrier.  Regardless of whether these substances are affecting physiology, they are powerful and not to be ignored.  Because something is natural, doesn’t mean it is all good, or all good for you.  It’s important to know that you probably can’t get much hurt by your rosemary or thyme, but how to use these oils for therapeutic issues is the realm of a professional who has studied the physiological affects of aromas and oils.  I personally recommend Jan Polansky of Personal Health Dynamics as an expert in Essential Oils.  Jan has a BS from CMU in Chemical Engineering, an MBA from CMU, is a Certified Naturopath along with a host of other education.  On top of all that, she is a very lovely person.
• Here is a site that will give you more information about the use and specifics of Essential Oils.  It’s not totally easy to gleen the information but it’s unlike sites that are more flippant with their approach.  Young Living Essential Oils
• www.naturalbloom.com lists a few recognized professional Aromatherapy organizations around the world.
• Emotional healing:  scents inspire and evoke emotion.  Grapefruit will lessen your desire to eat, vanilla is known to inspire earthy sensuality and also mental clarity.  True Rose Geranium will help to balance hormones, Lavender will deter insects as will Citronella (yep, it’s a natural scent).
• Alzheimer’s Test:  Loss of recognition of smells is a possible indication of Alzheimer’s Disease, according to Dr. Oz.  Here’sDr. Oz’s Alheimer’s Smell Test: a simple test you can take to determine if the part of the brain that stores memories and smells needs some attention.

Smell can be refined and regained, it takes focus and work so do your nose exercises!

Feng Shui Lesson of 5″ Heels — SCORE your home and Man Up

Beautiful! The signature Red sole of Christian Louboutin shoes. Whenever I put a High Priority (!) note on my emails, I always giggle that it's my high-heeled Christian Louboutin foot stomp foot print.

Seriously.  This gets filed in the ‘Everything Matters’ folder.  On a recent trip to DC, I encountered a sight that stopped me in my tracks.  (See the last photo this post).  Apparently, a whole bunch of loving and concerned men would be “Walking a Mile” in our shoes on October 1, 2011 in support of Heartly House.

I was moved to tears of appreciation for the discomfort that we sometimes endure to make a deal for some intangible result: safety, attention, enjoyment.   It’s not the deal making that’s bad by any means.  Wearing 5″ heels is fun, sitting in a really beautiful chair and realizing it hurts is time to move on.  It’s when we don’t realize that we are making an exchange of our life force or we allow ourselves to go numb to the loss of health, or are required to sit in uncomfortable chairs or spaces with no windows or fresh air for long periods of time, that we lose our connection to health, wealth and happiness.

Stomp! Putting my High Heeled Foot Down ala Christian Louboutin

When I teach courses in Feng Shui, I teach about the layers of energy.  Feng Shui is basic and practical or it wouldn’t have relevance to major Multi-national Corporations such as Donald Trump, Rupert Murdock, Citicorp, Disney and others.

The first layer that we need to address is the one I call SCORE™.   In order for a space to begin to have nourishing energy it has to be:  Safe, Comfortable, Organized, Refreshed & Express YOU.

#1  ! SAFE:  it has to BE safe, FEEL safe and be perceived as safe, to live and be your true self.  If you see broken steps leading to your front door, slippery sidewalks (or even a floor that looks slippery, like highly polished marble) our bodies are automatically on guard, we are tense and focused on staying upright, not falling where we can’t get up.

There are women who don’t feel safe in their homes (men too, but this post is about all this other stuff).  When we don’t feel safe to be who we are, express who we are, and love how we love, we give away our souls.

This caught my eye--first I saw the sign, then thought, "nice shoes" then saw the man attached to them and did a double take. It worked! "I'll Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" support for Heartly House. Visit Heartly House on Facebook for more people willing to MAN UP!

If you don’t feel safe in your home, it is time to realize that you deserve to.  Start where you can, make the spaces around you feel safe to you, look safe and then the outside will start to impact the inside and you’ll feel more nourished and powerful.   It will take some work, some decisions, but now is the time to do it…take care of YOU.

Visit and support Heartly House or support healthy, loving homes however you can…sometimes the cost is to PAY ATTENTION.

Can You Eat Your Cleaning Products? How to:

If you can’t eat them, they may be eating away at your health.

How to: 

Clean With Products You Can Eat

Many of our cleaning product not only kill germs but their are also sapping our immune systems leading to…well, don’t get me started on that one!

Nature provides simple, effective materials that clean and disinfect naturally, leaving your home clean and safe.   The negatives of ordinary household cleaners are many: harsh on our own systems proven to cause everything from mild irritation, to asthma, cancer and poisoning.

The best and time-honored solution is to just open up your cupboards–I use these simple and non-toxic items to handle all of my household cleaning.  You can also check out:  “The Baking Soda Book,” and can find it on Amazon for thousands of other ways to clean your home, car, office naturally and effectively.

LEMONS- Lemons are natural disinfectants because of their antibacterial properties and the scent is cleansing and invigorating.

Kitchen – Cut a lemon in half and use it to clean wooden chopping boards or to help remove stains from countertops. Let the lemon juice sit for a while, then wipe clean. Avoid marble and granite surfaces because the acid can be corrosive (Try club soda instead)
Laundry – Lemons are natural bleaching agents that can help brighten white linens and clothing. Add ½ cup lemon juice to the rinse cycle to brighten whites and give them a fresh citrus smell.SALT- Good old-fashioned table salt can be used as an abrasive cleaner.  Better yet, use Sea Salt for an extra ‘energy’ clearing.All-Purpose – Abrasive coarse salt can help remove stains, caked-on food or mildew on stovetops and in bathtubs, or anywhere scratching is not a concern. Mix baking soda with salt to whiten while scrubbing away grime.Kitchen – Salt works well on pots and pans with caked-on food. Soak pots and pans with 3 Tablespoons of salt in a couple inches of water. The mess should come off with ease. Scrubbing cast iron pans with salt cleans the pan without removing the seasoned finish.

Laundry — SeaSalt is a great energy purifier, I place a small handful into each of my laundry loads to shift the energy of our clothing and linens.

VINEGAR- Powerful and economical, distilled white vinegar is one of nature’s most versatile cleaners. Its odor can be overwhelming, but the smell dissipates as it dries. If you find the smell is too pungent, try adding lemon juice to neutralize it.  Of course, we now have another book by Vicky Lansky that I recommend:  Vinegar All-Purpose – In a reusable spray bottle, mix a solution of 1 part water to 1 part vinegar for an effective all-purpose cleaner that disinfects and deodorizes. Use this solution to clean countertops, sinks, appliances and floors, but avoid granite or marble because vinegar’s acid can damage them.Bathroom – The all-purpose vinegar cleaning solution above can remove soap scum and hard water stains, and clean tile grout. To remove mildew, directly apply pure white vinegar and let sit for a minimum of 30 minutes before rinsing with warm water.Conventional toilet bowl cleaners are among the most toxic cleaning products. To get a sparkling, odor-free toilet, pour 1 cup vinegar into the toilet and let it sit for several hours to help deodorize and kill germs. Use a toilet brush to easily remove toilet rings, and flush.Laundry – Many people have heightened sensitivities to the perfumes and chemicals in fabric softeners. Vinegar naturally breaks down laundry detergent, so adding ½ cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle will give you softer sheets, towels and clothes.

ESSENTIAL OILS:

LAVENDER – Use this as an anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-critter; especially French Lavender will deter insects from hanging around.  I keep a vial of Lavender near my stove and place it immediately on burns and avoid blistering and pain…don’t use on open skin.

EUCALYPTUS – I use to wipe down the inside of my front-loading washer. Mold and mildew grows between the bin and the seals and leave clothes with a moldy smell that is sometimes covered by heavily perfumed laundry detergents.  This mold decreases immunity and is the cause in many illness.  I also use a few drops of this on the toilet brush holder in my bathroom, just to keep it clean.

TEA TREE OIL- Australian tea tree oil (as many other natural ‘essential oils”) has antibacterial and antifungal properties of this ancient remedy are useful in the household.  It has a powerful odor, but the cleaning capability is worth it.  You can also use Eucalyptus Oil for a similar affect.

All-Purpose – In a reusable spray bottle, mix 15 drops of tea tree oil with 1 quart warm water for a multipurpose cleaner. For a more powerful antiseptic spray for areas that need specific attention – such as toilets – use 2 teaspoons of tea tree oil to 2 cups of water. The more potent mixture also works well on mold; just spray on the moldy area and don’t rinse. Although discoloration might not disappear, the mold will be killed.

Laundry – To disinfect heavily soiled laundry such as cloth diapers, add 1 teaspoon of tea tree oil to each load of laundry. This will help prevent bacterial and fungal infections.  Wipe the inside of front loaders with a soft cloth dowsed in either Tea Tree or Eucalyptus oil to remove the mold and mildew that accumulates.  Leave the door open between loads to allow the moisture to dissipate so as to not harbor growth of mold and mildew that gets translated into your clothing.  (don’t forget the soap dispenser area too.)

BAKING SODA- Baking soda absorb odors, but it can also dissolve dirt and grease in water. Like vinegar, baking soda has a wide variety of uses.  I love Vicky Lansky’s The Baking Soda Book

Use baking soda anywhere you need deodorizing action – especially in the refrigerator or cupboards. You can also control garbage-can odors by sprinkling baking soda in the bottom of the can and into each new garbage bag.

All-Purpose – To remove scuff marks from the floor, sprinkle with baking soda and wipe clean with a warm, damp cloth. You can also use this multipurpose cleaner to remove odors from carpet. Simply sprinkle baking soda on the floor, wait 10 minutes, and vacuum.When mixed with water, baking soda turns into a scouring paste you can use to remove substances from tubs, sinks, countertops and dishes. Mix 1 part with 3 parts baking soda to scrub away unwanted stains and messes.Kitchen -  As solution of distilled white vinegar and baking soda will soak off burnt-on food on your pots and even grill grates; soak for a few hours to loosen the food. Keep a box of baking soda close to your stove; it puts out grease fires.  Also, keep a bottle of lavender, in case you get any burns–apply immediately and often and you won’t blister.  (don’t use on open skin)

Look to the Book  

You don’t need this book but it’s amazing what a little baking soda and vinegar will do.  Clean, disinfect, deodorize and save the environment. No kidding.

I am a convert from a long time ago.  I have to give credit for this one to my mother.

Baking soda and white vinegar are amazing.  Here’s are a few stories:

I came home from vacation and found that the service station didn’t tighten the oil thingy on my car: one whole quart leaked onto my garage floor.  Clean up was amazingly easy:  I took a gallon jug of white vinegar and a 5 lb. box of Baking Soda to the garage and covered the area with vinegar, sprinkled baking soda let it ‘volcano’ like it did in 3rd grade science class.  I let it set and a little while later poured some more vinegar on the un-dissolved baking soda.  The next morning I used cool water and guess what, no grease, no stain and no harm to the environment!

Another awesome use: Mom put the grates from her grill into the utility tub, put baking soda and 1/2 gallon of vinegar in the tub and then enough water to cover the grate (didn’t need much).  The next morning all the crud just wiped off for a shiney new-looking grill grate.  It was great and easy.

I have used it to rid my carpets of yukky smells (sprinkle and leave it for a little while then vacuum up), to reclaim a pot that i burned–okay embedded–rice into (this took about one week of changing the vinegar/baking soda but I saved my favorite pan) and well, read the books.

Here is a website for another book; the website give a few tips as an example of what is in the book.

The Baking Soda Book UK

Smelling, Scenting and Designing — Unlocking the Vault

What Marketers Know-and our project will bring to light

Do you SMELL that?    You Did and It Worked!

Major corporations understand the impact of smell on their bottom line.  We will stay longer, spend more money, and be forever loyal to a product or a place if the smell can unlock memories, emotions, our wallets and wonderful experiences.  

Daisies lack a floral scent; they look beautiful but unlike a rose or gardenia or even the freshness of a spring or fall day, daisies don't offer the richer experience scent can bring to create a more perfect moment.

What does your laundry smell like?  What does your child smell like?  What does your retailer, school, or interior design smell like?  Do you know that smell is a key factor for motivating behavior?

We do it all the time:  smell gives us clues.  We know the smell of our mate, of crayons, of laundry, mold, sour milk, and other smells that inspire us or warn us. We were taught that mother animals will not retrieve its baby if they smell humans.  (A fallacy, by the way, moms smell us but the mothering instinct is stronger.)

Smell is an extremely powerful indicator and motivator, one that brings up a strong response,  immediately presenting us with memories, attraction or repulsion, information about how safe or enlightening something is.

Retailers & Manufacturers have been doing this forever

According to Tracy Pepe, Perfumer and Scent Designer and owner of Nose Knows Consulting: businesses, retailers, event planners are increasing their bottom line by incorporating scents to create a totally designed sensory experience, increase profit and customer loyalty.  Tracy works with many of the companies whose products fill your shelves, companies who know that one key to increasing their bottom line is by creating a scent that will increase profit and customer loyalty, and it works, we are hooked by the scent and the emotion it elicits in us.

Scenting designed spaces is more than lighting a candle in the stink (or darkness, if you wish).  It is science, marketing and psychology.  Done properly and with natural ingredients spaces and people are transformed. Because people’s emotions and memories are so closely associated with scent,  improperly designed scents and spaces can have a negative, even disastrous, effect.  (Feng Shui, it’s what I do.)

Tracy works with Event Planners and Chefs, Hosts and Hostesses, Wedding Planners:  anyone who would like to create a something that is so eloquent,  profound and enveloping the guests won’t forget the experience ever.  I promise you that…back to the project.

Michigan Avenue Research

Recently in Chicago for a presentation, we took some time to do research on Michigan Avenue:  the Miracle Mile of retailers, restaurants and leading edge design of everything you can think of.

Hanging out with and working with Tracy (and Jean Jennings of PPG Industries) is amazing. Besides being totally fun, it was research.  Ok, totally fun research.  We visited clothing stores, audio stores, restaurants, coffee and chocolate shops, even a few lingerie shops,famous for using scent to inspire a mood and desire — to purchase that is.  We talked about the Feng Shui of the cutting edge design of British Clothing Company  AllSaints Spitalfields, smelling the space, watching the colors and the layout.    I first saw AllSaints unique retail design in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.

Rows and rows of “old school’ sewing machines, machine parts and great clothing for Gen Y, Gen X and anyone else less than a size 10 with a sense of Industrial Prairie Style — very cool.  Can you imagine what this design smelled like?

 

What does Purple smell like? The Nose Really Knows

 

What Tracy can do is walk into a space and name the many ingredients used to scent it.  She is also amazing at matching a scent to a feeling and even a color.  Her work with major corporations, has given her the ability to create magic…retail magic.  Ask her to create relaxation, jazz, or darkness and she’s already working on which raw materials will create the beginning, middle, end and experience with scent.

As we visited Michigan Avenue’s LaPerla, Tracy chose to investigate the black bottle of scent. “This should have been in a different color bottle; what color do you think?”  She knew the color but was educating me, allowing me to make the connection, in a cross-sensory association of smell to color.  ”Purple,”  I said, “this smells round and purple.”

Scenting spaces and events is artful.  In Tracy’s Brampton, ON studio, one whole wall is filled with what she calls “Raw Materials.” The smaller the vial, the higher the price.  It takes 60 to 70 years to become a Master Perfumer, training the sense of smell to follow the ‘Notes’ and the “Accords” of smell, travel first with the “top note” through with the layers of scent.  Layer upon layer these molecules fill our noses, directly access our brains and create desire, experience, memories, loyalty and create profit for those who know how to use them and sell them to the rest of us.

Smell is one of our most important indicators and a strong motivator.  

Read more on my post about how our sense of smell can motivate, indicate health, non-health (take the  very important Alzheimer’s Test), signify agreement or harm.

Autumn: A time for Clarity and Action

Everything is interconnected.  Here are tips to help make the best use of Autumn for Mind, Body, Spirit and Space.

Autumn is a time for letting go, organizing and being accountable.  We get an extra boost in this the year of the 2011 Metal Rabbit, taking advantage of this energy will pay off huge rewards next year which promises to have high tumultuous energy.

Autumn is “a time of turning inward; a time to gather what is good, healthy, abundant and pure to our centers; a time to let go of what no longer serves us well and release what holds us back. It is a great time of year to check in with ourselves regarding forgiveness, boundaries, non-attachment, our purpose, letting go, transformation.

“It is a natural time to receive what is pure and sacred from the heavens while giving up the heaviness to the earth through the dance of embracing two polar-opposite energies – receiving and releasing. As we step onto the harvest field of this coming season, may we acknowledge the voices from our spirits that we find in our emotions and bodies. May we be inspired to reflect, cultivate discipline, and artistic expression; may we contract into our depths and expand into the purity of our beings; may we exercise the alchemy of transformation, by treasuring what is truly sacred in our lives and hearts.”  [from InnerFire.org]

A time of alchemy.    In some cultures, Autumn is associated with the Vulture, picking apart  and organizing (in the truest sense); transforming what has no life force and turning it into flight.  When we are burdened, we don’t have ‘lift off’.

When we hold onto things that no longer serve us, or when we have an excess of sadness, grief, or attachment (another form of not letting go) we are experiencing a Metal element imbalance.  That sadness and grief is associated with the proper functioning of our Lungs and Large Intestine (and skin) which are the organs associated with the Metal element and Autumn.  Those organs help us interface with the world, protect us and help us eliminate that which doesn’t serve us any longer.

If you want to experience more joy, happiness, abundance, use the energy of Autumn to boost your immune system, your clarity and your ability to create alchemy in your own life and in the lives of others, incorporate some of these tips into your daily life:

SPACE:  HOME or Office:

• Clear out the clutter and do a thorough cleaning, especially of the areas that are in the near right corner and the mid-right corner of your home or office.  The Bagua areas associated with Metal are Helpful People and the Children & Creativity areas.
• These two spaces are associated with Metal energy, both can be enhanced with objects made of metal, round or oval objects or art, white or grey/metal colors, but they have differences:
•  Helpful People:  place items in white or grey, photos of mentors or places you’d like to travel, increase wealth with a feng shui cure of 6 coins placed in this area.
• Children & Creativity: items in white or light pastels, photos of joy, creativity, children.
• Make sure your windows and mirrors are clean, allowing you an accurate reflection and absorption of clear images.
• Donate or sell everything that you haven’t touched in a year or that doesn’t make you very happy when you see it, even clothes, old files, old books, dried flowers, you name it:  let it go.
• Allow at least 1/4 of the space to be open and available, 1/4 of the book shelf, closet, filing cabinets.  This creates ease of flow and invites more goodness into your life.
• Be sure your metal objects work perfectly (scissors, knives are sharp, car is in order).  Because we create that which we see, Feng Shui recommends that you do not display knives or swords unless you want to create the energy of conflict or sharpness.
• Introducing nature into your home, surrounding yourself with autumn colors is another way to use the energy of the season to create support in your life. Autumn colors are actually a mixture of Earth energy (yellows) which support Metal energy and a mixture of Fire energy (Red and orange) which ‘controls’ metal energy.
• To create help in clearing and being more clear, cutting away the excess, you can use other metal elements, silver colors, the organization and associated with accounting and conditional support.

MIND / BODY / SPIRIT

• Breathe.   Often we don’t take a good belly breath of inspiration.  When you come to a traffic light or when you get up in the morning, or anytime throughout the day: breathe nice, slow, full breathe.  Do the “Breath of the Dragon”:  inhale and then on your exhale, pretend you are breathing out fire, make it audible and clear your lungs, pulling in your belly muscles.  Aim the invisible Fire at anything you want to delete in your life.  It’s fun!
• Detox your mind, body and spirit.  Check with your health care practitioner for ways to detoxify your large intestine, lungs and skin (for skin it can be as easy as using shower mitts or loofah, stroking from extremity toward your heart will help to invigorate the skin and lymph).
• See an acupuncturist for treatments to tonify the lungs and large intestine.
• Forgive and forget.  Write  on a piece of paper all the grievances you have for your entire life and those you are holding at fault.  Write it all.  Then wrinkle that paper up into a small ball and hold it in your hand tightly.  Carry it around with you–all day–all night.  Carry it as long as you can until you can literally throw it all away.  I heard of this exercise from a friend of mine and I think it exemplifies how crippled we become by carrying grievances, toward others and toward ourselves.  (See coupon below)
• Nutritional support for metal:  pungent foods  including onion, garlic, chive, turnip, ginger, radish, daikon root; dark leafy greens, such as kale, broccoli, chard, and spinach; golden, orange vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, yams; seaweeds and fiber; oats, rice, amaranth, quinoa.
• Avoid cold drafts, wear a fashionable scarf to protect your throat area, sing and speak clearly.

Rhythms and cycles of our planet life are an integral part of the functional of all dynamic systems.  In a cascading fashion, all things are connected.  In fact, Hippocrates recommended that all individuals who wished to study medicine first become fully aware of the seasonal changes and the coincidental changes within humans and animals. (N.E. Rosenthal, Seasons of the Mind New York, Bantam, 1989)

Take some time to notice your internal desires and you are half-way home to discovering what balance means for your unique life.

Yellow: The Hardest Color To Get Right!

Bright yellow brings attention and focus but beware: too much or too long is not a good idea.

Yellow   is the Happiest color on the planet but the hardest to get right.  It will turn you from joyful to cranky in a sudden moment, often without warning.  It also has probably the most literal references to how it affects us of any color:  ”yellow bellied” being one of them.

Caution:   Too much Yellow for too long can be similar to being around a ‘way-too-happy cheerleader’…you know the experience.  It can quickly turn us into crabby people, overstimulate digestion, make us overly detail oriented, or just send us rushing from the room.   It is associated with our Third Chakra center that governs our digestion and mental process, our will and determination, so if you just don’t have the ‘stomach’ for something you might need a little yellow to center yourself and get back on your feet.

The overall Feng Shui message of this kitchen is to help you loose weight! The light blue will deter eating, the black counters will dowse the fire of digestion...adding the 'sort-of' yellow accents bring warmth and comfort back to this kitchen.

Feng Shui:  Yellow is associated with Earth element in Feng Shui and as such is gathering, nourishing and the color that will help stimulate digestion and mental acuity.   Feng Shui is all about balance and harmony, and color is no different.  A little of bit of yellow in the center of your table can elevate spirits and increase enjoyment of food and company.   But remember: life is a dynamic, always changing ‘event’ so watch the dynamic flow and change it up once in a while.  (Pink will bring compassion and softness and also increase the perceived sweetness factor of food.)

Yellow is also associated, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, with the Spleen, Stomach and Pancreas, organs which allow us to be nurturing but overdone or out of balance cause craving for carbohydrate and sugar, make us overly detail oriented or overly interested in the details of another’s life, sappy, whiney, whimpy, without a spine.  It relates to how we begin to digest life:  breaking it down into the details ready for assimilation, enjoyment or elimination.  All of this in influenced by the color yellow.   Who knew?

Feng Shui is about balance between the tension held between extremes and color is a spice to be used consciously.  Monitor the rooms in which you have placed yellow and notice the behaviors you experience there and notice how you feel.

Design:  Yellow is a ‘warm’ color, meaning it can actually help us feel warmer, change the perceived temperature of a room, and mimic sunlight in dark, windowless rooms and hallways, or in rooms with a Northern exposure or orientation.   It will also seem to come toward you (Feng Shui’s “gathering” influence of Earth element).   A light shade of yellow will make the room seem warmer yet larger, cozier yet brighter.

Yellow is also the first color we see when we look at a design (a room or graphic).  It captures our attention.  If you are designing a room and want to send the ‘eye’ in a particular direction, to highlight or to divert away from an unpleasant view or one straight out the window, use a bit of bright yellow to attract attention.  You don’t need a lot, perhaps a yellow Gerbera daisy or a yellow frame, a citrine lantern (a crystal which will clear the space of negativity without having to be cleansed).

The yellow walls are nice but have an unbalanced feel with the white floor and white ceiling. Also painting the crown moulding the same color as the walls makes the room seem out of scale to tall and narrow. See next photo.

You don’t need a lot of yellow, just a yellow undertone in the paint will help bring a more full-spectrum, and therefore pleasant experience into the room.    Yellow is what is called a “self-compounding” color, meaning that one wall of yellow will bring a little sunshine into your room, two or five walls (the ceiling counts) will reverberate yellow resoundingly into the space, making the yellow much louder.  (Like the difference between having one child or one pet and having two or three–the effect increase exponentially.)

The yellow on the ceiling brings needed warmth and the crown moulding in white adds a much better scale to the room and the feel. Even though it's a LOT of yellow, it is needed to balance all that white, especially since the floor is lighter than found in natural landscape schemes.

Kids and Yellow:  Kids will usually choose the most ‘saturated’ colors on the paint display and many times parents will default to happy, joyful, clean colors for children’s spaces but think again!

Yellow is not recommended for spaces where we spend a lot of time and children are more easily influenced by their surroundings and colors.  A lot of time spent in a yellow room has been shown to elicit a ‘colicky’ response in babies.   (Colors impact our physiology and yellow is the frequency of our digestive energy center, the Solar Plexus energy vortex where nerves meet to fuel our digestion and connect our upper and lower energy centers, our motivation and will and our mental acuity.  Get it?  Solar=Sun=yellow)

Soft Yellow is a Great Color for Learning:

Pale version of yellow is great for mental accuracy and pale yellow can be very stimulating to thought processes and detail focus.

Below are some colors that offer a softness and a subtlety,  that will allow the space to emit an energy of mental clarity but not over-do it or make folks cranky because too much or too saturated a yellow will tend to over-stimulate our senses.

With learning, it is also very important to have windows, natural light, sun-tubes to allow natural day-light harvesting, or at the very least, artwork that replicates the ‘long-view’ to allow our bodies the opportunity to visualize and see further into possibilities and not get overly grounded or hyper-focused on details and miss the bigger picture.  Especially if this is in a Northern facing environment, with windows receiving the grey-er northern light, it will be important to have yellow as the undertone for the paint.

Some great learning colors:

Something like PPG Pittsburgh or Porter’s Soleil ATC 23 is very nice for learning, soft and yet happy.    All of these colors are ‘tints’ which means that they are primarily the hue mixed with white (their color number begins with 100 or 200 in the PPG System).  White will also add a bit of energy to the room, and from a Feng Shui perspective, white and pastels are Metal energy, which is great for mental acuity, conditional support and community endeavors.

Here are some others:

214-1 Satin Weave

111-2 Blonde Beauty

115-1 Combed Cotton

115-2 Soft Cream

114-1 Lotus Flower

114-2 Silk Sails

213-1 Candlewick

213-2 Crescent Moon

113-1 Moonshine

212.1 Cake Batter

212-2 Golden Fleece

112-1 Capri Cream

211-1 Clear Yellow

211-2 Bright Laughter

111-1 Sail Cloth

111-2 Blonde Beauty

111-3 Butter

Yellow is a happy antedote to dreary 

Orange: Social & Playful Energy

Orange is an energizing color that will help stimulate play and fun and activate spaces especially those darker spaces that need the happiness that sunlight can bring.

Orange has been called by Carlton Wagner, of the Wagner Color Institute, “The Great Declassifier.”   What that means is the orange allows us to feel comfortable no matter what our socio-economic status.  It allows friendliness and comfort and social interaction.

Orange is the most socially oriented color and associated with Fire and Earth Energy, being a mix of Red and Yellow, a mix of expansive lifeforce and the gathering, social and happy energy of Yellow.  Orange is also the vibrational color associated with our Second Chakra, the energy vortex within our bodies that regulate our sexuality, tribal associations and our ability to play.

If you are needing orange in your life, good for you!  Orange will help boost your social energy and also ground you just a bit, as the Earth aspect of yellow in Orange will pull you into nourishing relationships.

Caution for Orange: The Chinese call the pastel version of Orange Peach Blossom Love…the reason?  Peach is a color that can change your energy to attract a mate but the Caution is:  if you are married, stay away from peach, it can cause either mate to look outside the marriage for some extra-curricular fun.

 

 

 

Red: Energy, Fire & Activation

More than just a feeling, red will activate a space and those in it. Use it sparingly or in rooms you'll spend just a little bit of time.

Red   The energy of Red is exuberant, advancing and activating.  In Feng Shui Red is associated with fire, outward expansion,  networking, clarifying, and brilliant.  It is the color of Life Force in China and considered the luckiest color.   Other associations are  Wealth, Health, and Happiness, also with Summer, Fame and Reputation.   Red is used to activate spaces and therefore aspects of your life.

Red is the color associated with our physical body’s own connection to Life, besides being the color of oxygenated blood, it is associated with our electromagnetic system called Chakras.  Red is the color frequency of our Base Chakra, that energy vortex within our bodies at the base of our spine that keeps us connected to Life, the Planet, and helps us survive so we can Thrive…so you can probably see the association of Red with Life, appetite and movement.

[Our own electromagnetic field is made up of energy vortices called Chakras;  we have 8 major energy vortices that run along our spines at the junctures of our major neural plexi.  Each Chakra regulates certain energies in our lives...remember that everything is interconnected.]

When to use Red:   Use Red when you want increase activity, get things moving, increase passion, action or get noticed.

Use Caution though, Red is like a dash of tabasco, it can turn up the volume on your life.   For instance:  Red in a bedroom may increase passion butpassion also includes arguments and tension. (Try adding a bit of warm rich pink instead, and you don’t even have to see it, place a little pink color under your bed for some reconnection and romance.)

Red in a dining room can increase appetite and digestion, but if you or guests start to argue or feel hypertensive, it will be time to decrease the amount of red or move to another room for dessert.

There are two healthy ways to use red:  a small quantity of color or small quantity of time spent with the color.  Just a little in a room, or a lot in room you spend a little time, will serve you better.

More than just a feeling, red will activate a space and those in it. Use it sparingly or in rooms you'll spend just a little bit of time.

Wonder How Paint Colors Get Their Names?

Paint Color Names are  powerful energy!    Now, Paint Companies are seeing the connection between the association of the color name and our desire to have it in our spaces.   Marketing names of colors not only entice us to buy their paint, but from my standpoint:  it’s one more way to get beneficial Ch’i into your space.

Calabash (PPG 111-5) is a golden yellow and named after the Calabash Gourd. The Calabash, unrelated to PPG's naming of the color, is the Inspiration for Feng Shui's Wu Lou Health Symbol. The authentic Wu Lou is made of the gourd fruit plucked from trees, the flesh inside carefully removed and then dried. In ancient times, the Wu Lou was used to store water or medicines used during traveling and expeditions. Because of the Wu Lou’s role in keeping the travelers alive, it was given the name the “giver of life” and hence became a symbol of good health.

What’s in a name? Good energy and for another thing:  Marketing.  Marketers are aware of the emotion factor that draws us to brands and that we want to live with much more happiness in our lives.

The Feng Shui aspect:

Marketers are knowing that when we are drawn to a beautiful color, then discover the name we’ll often discard that choice.    I personally won’t sell a paint to a client that has a negative reference name.  For instance, Farrow & Ball has a color named Dead Salmon.  Great color, awful name.  I am told that in England, ‘dead’ refers to the matte finish of the particular color.   I still won’t suggest that color:  if we need THAT Particular shade, I will have it custom matched at the paint counter and name it  ”Client’s Custom Color,” and keep the formula for them.

Those names speak to us all the time, even when we are not aware of it, which we often forget but our body/mind/soul remembers everything.

[Our bodies process 400 billion bits of information per second but our minds are aware of only 2000 bits--we are digesting, metabolizing, standing or sitting, growing hair, processing information and all that occurs beneath our conscious awareness--but it is all accessible if we take a moment and focus--that's where the color name comes in:  the name is registered in your psyche and it speaks to you each time you come into the room.]

Who Names those Colors?

I was recently asked by PPG Pittsburgh to do some historical research with the man who was in charge of naming paint colors.  It was a very magical meeting as I saw this gentleman become engaged with the natural references to some of the colors he named.  For instance:  Walnut Grove was named “not so much just the color of the treees but the walnuts as they lay on the ground and break down color of the shells when they turn brown and fall off it stains the ground with that dark green  all the walnuts are still on the grass and wherever they are there’s this dark green color like that.”    Shark skin was named after a large Nurse Shark he encountered while scuba diving in Australia and more great stories that will be posted on the Voice of Color Site and will be accessible to everyone.   Jeff Meade, PPG Industries, was given the task to name the new paint colors for Voice of Color in 1987.  Many of the names were transferred from the previous Voice of Color Library but many were added.

“We had six months to name the colors and at first it was very fun, but after you use all the nuance names, it became difficult to find different names for colors that were very similar.  You could only name one color Ponytail, there was only one color you could name Coffee Rose (there actually IS a “Coffee Rose” and it’s beautiful) and we got to the end of the time limit for the project so names like Pegasus came from a stuffed animal my daughter had in her toybox.”

PPG Pittsburgh's Coffee Rose 536-5 is named after the actual flower: a Coffee Rose

New Names for a New Era

Things have evolved just recently, as Marketers are getting savvy to the fact that names have power to elicit emotion and they are trying to connect names with emotional experiences we want to have.   They are not making reference to the color, but to the experience we might want to feel when we use that color.

Names do make a difference:  Happy Trails, Weekend Getaway, or Sandy Beach, Bright Star, Himalayan Mist are names that specifically target our emotional need associated with color.   Weekend Getaway, by Valspar, sounds romantic and restful, what color would you imagine it to be?

Here’s today’s New York Times article describes just how Marketers are using to help them market paint, but if we look at the power of names to elevate our spirits, I think we can all win at this one!   “We Call it Brown, They Call it Weekend in the Country”

What color does YOUR soul need and what you you Name it?

What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG)–Feng Shui & Product allows a happy view of life

I just came across this product and I am very excited.  I haven’t used it yet, so if anyone does, please let me know what you think!

SticViews creates “clings” for just about anything with any photo you can uploaded or create.  I can’t wait to try this out.

Back to SticViews:

This busy energy outside the window, coupled by the brick wall will make the occupants of this apartment feel overwhelmed, too much going on and feel as if they are blocked from moving ahead in life. Not so good. Use the Mirror Cure  (below) and SticViews!

Wow! Where am I? It will be important to ask SticViews how translucent this treatment is. 

Note: The  furniture arrangement in this photo does not put the people in the “Power Position” which would help them feel secure and respond in a healthy manner to life.  Having your back against an opening makes us feel tense and depletes our energy.  A Feng Shui better idea is  to have two love seats facing each other and the window between them.

http://app.sticviews.com/yourImages.aspx

BEWARE:  from a FENG SHUI perspective, patching ugly doesn’t remove it’s influence on you.  If you have an ugly view, a nasty neighbor, unsightly “anything” needing repair, it’s best to clean it up, make it as pretty as you can and use the ‘mirror’ treatment.

Mirror Treatment:  Send the energy away by usins a mirror to reflect back the  issue/person/etc. You can place a mirror on the outside wall (or on the inside of your space–shiny side toward the offending issue/person–you’ll see the back of the mirror and can cover it with a piece of art).  The mirror can be small (1/4 inch round available at hobby shops like JoAnn Fabrics and Michaels) If you hang it inside your space (home or work cubicle) it  can be hidden from your view under a painting, at the baseboard (painted to match the color of the baseboard), behind a drapery or curtain–always facing shiny side toward the negative energy.  

IMPORTANT:  as you place the mirror, say in your head or outloud “good luck with that OVER THERE.”  If you don’t judge the person or the energy, it doesn’t collect around you any longer…we all have the ability and right to live our lives as we choose (even people who are bothering you have this right) and none of us knows the evolution of another or what is making them seem disagreeable.  This works.

Living Color: Color Therapy for the Soul, Mind and Body

Bottle #50: Pale Blue over Pale Blue Readiness to live life from now on in harmony with the greater whole. Helps you to come to that point within yourself to let the Divine Will be done.

I want to share with you a tool I use almost daily.  It is a scientific product with an amazing developmental history.  The important part, though, is that these products are Colors that Heal the Soul and Life.

Aura Soma is Color Therapy for the Soul.  107 little  bottles of layered colors, that when shaken blend together  and at rest separate into two equal segments of color each are called  an “Equilibrium”.  They speak to our intuitive self by  attracting our attention to them and thereby give us a message that will lead us   to a healing response.

The Color speaks to our intuition, somewhere between the acknowledgement of beauty and delight and somehow it’s always right.   Beyond the little fun link I offer here, a larger experience using these “Equilibriums” in the prescribed manner can (by shaking and applying directly to the affected energetic area of the body) will release blocks from our energy field–blocks to our fluid and pure energy flow, blocks which cause stress, tension, dis-ease, despair, malfunction and illness.

For the past 10 years whenever I have come to a block or impass in my life or need a little inspiration, I have used these “Equilibriums” and the essences and it works.

Try this:

• Go to this link and look at the bottles on the page.   Aura Soma 
• Notice which of the bottles draws your attention.
• Scroll over it and read the description on the left…was it accurately helpful?  I will bet it was.
• Ask that the essence of those colors, crystals, herbs and oils be infused into your day and your being.

I love this book for Color Inspiration:  Aura Soma Sourcebook.

 Aura Soma also makes a paint additive that I have used in my own home and artists can use in their paintings to continually emit beneficial and healing energies into spaces.  There is a noticeable difference.

This is a tiny glimpse into the clear, helpful power that Aura Soma offered me and might offer you too.  There are folks around the country who can introduce you to the products, the Self Discovery and Healing protocol and connect you with the power of these beautiful color energies.

If you’d like to experience these in person, go to the Aura Soma Website and find a consultant near you.

Why do I Crave Orange? (Or Any Other Color…)

One of my recent clients is drawn to orange and can’t explain it.

‘It’s like the color “orange” is a panacea, a drug of sorts making me feel better; I can’t explain it but I need it!’

First: no need to explain it, just go with it.

The room on the right gives a happy bit of social orange to this family. (The white activates the space even more, adds active YANG energy in a dark, cold YIN basement depending on the location). The room on the right might be too much orange for regular usage, but for a room in which you spend little time, it could be just what the Color Doctor ordered.

Color is a direct fulfillment of an emotional (and then biological) need.  Color is medicine.  Color is light and it’s not like the moth’s flame, you won’t get hurt.

BEWARE:  too much color for too long or in the ‘wrong’ place can have a detrimental affect.  Be attuned to your response and be read to change when you have had enough.The real world of nature isn’t digital–either on or off–it moves slowly.  Being aware of your needs and moving to fulfill them is a good thing.  If you are drawn to it, go to it.  When you are no longer drawn to it, change it.

The short version explaination of why she was drawn to Orange:

I looked at the relationship Nine Star Ki of her family.  I use this when I do Feng Shui for all my clients and it’s uncanny.  My client’s energy showed that she is not supported energtically of anyone else in her family, she offers the support to her husband and kids (She’s Tree and Earth Energy, her children and husband are Tree and Metal energy…Metal cuts Tree, Metal drains Earth.  Her Relationship energy is Earth and there’s no fire support in her family for her Earth so she gets exhausted supporting and being drained by her family relationships.)

Enter Feng Shui and the Power of Color!

We arranged her space to include much more Fire energy—Light, laughter, levity, red (she doesn’t like) but Orange! she loves.  The orange will support her energy and it is a welcome relief.  The Orange will also take the edge of the excess Tree (independent vibrant upward moving, lots of ideas and plans, vitally needs grounding of Earth) and support her OWN Earth energy so that she can aid her children to still be idealistic, visionary and independent but give them the grounding to have them choose one project to completion, focus on the details and be nourished by the gathering of family.

This type of analysis helps tremendously for two reasons,

1. we take the pressure off the people because they see this is something that is not their ‘fault’.  That’s a huge relief
2. we allow the environment to do the work, so they can focus on being wonderful versions of their tremendous energetics.

Awareness is a powerful thing.  Our homes, the shapes and colors we place around us influence behavior, can work for us or against us and using Feng Shui has for thousands of years proven to make life easier, more pleasant and more powerfully fulfilling.

Feng Shui Bedroom for Health? What NOT to do!

A wonderful, delightful client of mine showed me this room.  Pulled from the internet, and described as “a good Feng Shui Bedroom,” he asked me to help him re-create it for him.  It was a challenge because much of it is not ‘good’ Feng Shui for HEALTH as described here.  The nuances are subtle but so very important.

No judgement–as a Feng Shui Designer, I get paid to see the details and interpret how they influence life.  Analyzing spaces through true Feng Shui eyes is the best guarantee for beneficial environment–it takes real knowledge and awareness of how your spaces FEEL–really. The hardest part is seeing it all for what is really there.  Take a look:

Beware: Labeled on the Internet as a Good Feng Shui Bedroom for Health, many things in this bedroom are NOT conducive to Good Health and therefore NOT beneficial Feng Shui.

Let me show you:

Four things stand out  as NOT-SO-GOOD Bedroom Feng Shui for health:

The Colors, The Furnishings, The Bulkhead Treatment, The Bamboo Plants

#1 Color:  

My client is looking to engage more of nature into his home, adding this bright green will do that but it is likely to exhaust him because the energy of the room will be that of early spring and the sprouting plants pushing upward through the surface of the soil–we’ll have to make sure we watch if he’s not sleeping well as sleeping deeply is the first key to good health.

It’s true that Green is a very healing color; just the sign of green speaks to our hearts and nourishes us.  However, it is an active color, upward moving and independent.  Not the first choice for a bedroom where sleep is the main function or where a couple want to get closer together.   Used well it is a good color for independent retreat  and rejuvenation in a spa-like setting but be aware of how well you are sleeping.  The color shown here looks like a subtle version of green, but because lighting and photography change the color, we can’t be sure.  If you need to have a green bedroom, something muted will do well, such as PPG’s 407-3 White Clover or 308-3 St. Augustine or ATC-53 Bay of Fundy.  (I was just there by the way, so beautiful.)    Ben Moore’s 682 Warm Springs is nice and I always love Restoration Hardware’s Silver Sage.  But remember, it’s important to choose your paint color LAST–read why.

#2 Furniture:

#1 “Not Good” Health Thing:  This dresser and its placement looms over the bed, creating a large block that can eventually cause ill health.  Large and looming furniture in a bedroom does just that, imposes a block in our energy.  My priorities:

• Move the dresser out of the bedroom. Personally I recommend that there be no clothing in the bedroom but in closets or a spare bedroom be turned into a dressing room.  Clothing is of the outside world, and our clothing carries our experiences of the day.  I recommend all laundry go in the laundry room until it is returned clean to the closet, dressing room or drawers.  
• Replace the tall dresser near the bed with a low dresser.
• Do not use a mirror in your bedroom as a mirror will activate space and disrupt sleep.  If you want to test this, place a towel or scarf over your mirror and feel the space…it will feel quieter.
• I highly recommend that if you must have clothing stored in your bedroom,
• Only have clean and nicely folded and stored in your low dresser, well organized, socks paired, everything folded.  It takes some time, but the energy you put into your clothes will stay with you all day.  I know this for a fact.
• Nothing hung on the back of a door
• No jewelry showing (clean your jewelry as well, soak it in sea salt — if it won’t damage the finish or stones– or take it to a jeweler and have them clean it.  Baking soda will also help to clear the energy of jewelry)

The Side Tables

• Really look at them, they are ‘leaning’ against the wall, not stable on their own.  This fact would speak to your subconscious about the inability to stand firm on your own and lead you to lean or feel crippled.
• Sharp edges:  this is something that speaks to our bodies and sets us up to be tense; it’s so automatic that we don’t register it in our awareness until we focus on it.  Round the edges and soften them so that you aren’t being sniped by ‘flesh eating furniture”.

The headboard

This is really not so bad, it’s soft and it is supportive.  The color is earth, nourishing and supportive, but it too looms, but is a background, much like the support of having a mountain behind your back, a feeling of safety.  The squares bring an additional element of Earth but the headboard is a bit too high but the  many squares will give you a feeling of segmentation and disruption.

The location of the seams is not-so-good: the seam at your head would be infringing on your brain and the seam between the two people could serve to separate them, especially if there is a split box-spring beneath the mattress.  (cure for boxspring:  place a pink sheet between the box spring and the mattress.)

Feng Shui:  I’d recommend three or four horizontal rectangles rather than all the squares.

#3 The Bulkhead

A very big Feng Shui no-no, this sharp line of the white bulkhead draws itself right across the head of the sleepers.  This would cause headaches or illness along the line where it hits the people, perhaps sore throats, teeth issues, sinus issues.  How?  We are so powerful and our subconscious so strong that we can actually recreate what we see around us.  Try it:  think of a flower for a moment, then notice how many times today you notice a flower–we do this all the time, calling to our attention that which we focus on or ask for.   This shape is talking to your subconscious and the way the energy flows along this surface, it is a constant dripping of too much energy.  Too much or too little is optimal for health.

• One simple cure:  Paint the bulkhead ‘ceiling’ the same color as the wall and make the edge disappear.  Traditionally, Feng Shui would suggest hanging bamboo flutes with the mouthpiece to the bottom ‘blowing’ the energy upward.  This is not compatible with a lot of decor and is as I call it a “Feng Shui Bandaid” it will work but it shows everyone that you have a boo-boo.  You can also use upward facing lighting to “raise the energy” but it’s still there at night–the flutes would be a better idea.  There are other cures, and if you have an issue like this, comment here and I’ll help.

#4 PLANTS in the Bedroom

1. Feng Shui has recommended against live plants in the sleeping areas.  Here’s the scientific answer:  Plants emit Oxygen in the daytime, hooray, thank you very much.  Plants also go through the process of respiration and at night they take in Oxygen and emit CO2.   You might need a garden of plants to make this a real immediate emergency, however, when you are in an enclosed room with limited circulation and limited access to real natural air, this could have a long term negative influence.  Silk plants would solve this one issue, but then there’s this:

2. Plants are also ‘tree/wood’ energy, meaning the focus is on upward movement.  Sleep is a YIN event, the energy goes down and to the quiet, quite the opposite of the plant energy.  A little is happy and okay, but all these plants are sometimes just an excuse to call something ZEN or Feng Shui when in fact, it is not.

Because something is uncluttered and new-looking, doesn’t make it good Feng Shui.   Don’t mistake a design that looks ‘calm’, ‘clean’, and has a bamboo plant or a Buddha figure in it for a design that is Feng Shui.  (“Feng Shui” is a very hot search term:  and some know that calling something Feng Shui will bring it attention and perhaps sell the item).

No judgement–as a Feng Shui Designer, I get paid to see the details and interpret how they influence life.  Analyzing spaces through true Feng Shui eyes is the best guarantee for beneficial environment–it takes real knowledge and awareness of how your spaces FEEL–really. The hardest part is seeing it all for what is really there.

Feng Shui is Design that plays Visual Music to your soul

Our spaces should serve us, treat us, delight us, nourish us.  On a recent work trip to Las Vegas, I surprised my friends by saying “It was the most restful and rejuvenating trip!”  They gave me one of those scrunched-face looks that made me say “Seriously! It was!”

Now — here’s the thing — the thing about Feng Shui and Sacred Intentional Design:  you may look at

This is good Feng Shui: Can you see it? Can you feel it? The Primary Purpose is reconnect, rest, rejuvenate, enjoy. But YOU may not like this style so for you, so it's not so much good Feng Shui. But to FEEL this space, you'd pause, the larger, soulful part of you would hear it, if you stood in this space and closed your eyes -- you might not know why, but you would feel it.

the photos in the gallery linked here, or posted here and say — what? that’s not a big deal…is that her design style?  what is it?  what makes it good and/or sacred design?  That’s a big reason I don’t have many photos on my site…Feng Shui is about YOU, YOUR STYLE, your purposes and it has to be felt…the brain gets us only so far–it’s the difference between playing NOTES and playing music….ahhhhh!  One person’s good feng shui could be, well, not so much for another.

Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas 11th Floor Lobby

I stayed in the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, (photo gallery) and every detail was constructed to honor the momentous intersection of human and design.   I was honored  to be in this space–so struck by the tenderness I perceived with which this hotel was designed: I even teared up at the ritual whereby I was presented my room key.  The proportions, the finishes, even the smell, was one that touched a sacred chord for one reason:  it was designed that way.  Oh, the design!  Visual music, a feeling symphony, so well designed.  I wish you could hear the sigh in my voice.

It was like coming home, to the ‘real’ me.  ”Love me till I’m ME again.”-sort of thing.   What a feeling of pause and attention to the moment, of love and what fuel to do good work while there.

I came to discover that the spaces are even ‘scented’ by a dear friend of mine, Tracy Pepe,

"Close Your Eyes, Take a Breath and Smell Something--It could be incredible." Tracy Pepe

who’s firm, Nose Knows,  scents major corporations, events and hotels around the world.

[More about this amazing designed experience we are terming "Symphonic Space Perception" in next post -- different than synethesia which is a clinical diagnosis of crossed wires of sensory perception -- intriguing but in the nth degree is debilitating--what color is that music? what does that shape taste like? what do your designs smell like?]

Does your home do this for you?  Make you feel beloved?  In our homes it is a little more challenging because we have to put our own energy in on a regular basis and that’s a bit of an ‘expense’.  BUT!  we all need to have a sacred space in our homes that brings us this soul and spirit nourishment, a space like a favorite tree near a stream, where we don’t inventory the “to-do” list.

Feng Shui is awareness and INTENTION.  Learn the Feng Shui ‘notes’  (rules of placement) and then pause to make sure it “FEELS” right and when it does, your home will play music to your soul.

HOW?  Try this:  start with your flatware drawer.  Turn on some beautiful music you love.  Get into a zone of love, nourishment and gratitude.  Take everything out.  Gently clean it all, all the while thinking nourishment, love, precious, love, etc.  Place everything back with intention, place the

Spoons between knives and forks...softens the tension in the room...weird but true.

spoons between the knives and forks, place the sharp knives edge down, spend time, romance it, gently return only the flatware to the drawer and love it.

Next time you use those utensils, you will notice the food tastes better, or your family or guests will smile more, laugh a bit more.  It’s an art to take time to create a home that grows love in each moment, it takes intention, stillness, attention and love.  No rush, all in good time.  It makes a difference.  I have tons of stories that show how amazing we are.  You are.  You go!  Tenderness leads to joy and good design leads to healthy families, people and well, nations and beyond.

10 seconds to Engage the Power of Your Space

In just a moment you can engage the Magic in your spaces.

It’s right there, right at the edge of your skin, the power of nourishment is right next to you.

I was taught in childhood when crossing the road:  Stop, Look, & Listen and it works in life too.

Here are tips that you can do in 10 seconds to engage creativity, immune system support, efficiency, and the key to happiness in each moment unlocking the treasure all around you.

STOP

“Busy” and “multi-tasking” are good only for a short amount of time.  When  you remember to STOP, breathe-in, lift your chin, and on the exhale do something I recently learned in a Pilates class:  on the exhale, try to touch your belly button to your spine, and squeeze your buttocks.  This puts you right, smack in the middle of the moment and raises your own frequency to align with the goodness around you.  (This little move also supports your core energy, takes the pressure off your lower back and aligns the energy flow from foot to brain, connecting you right to the earth’s support.)

LOOK

1. UP:  it increases your ability to be inspired, shifts your hormones and allows you to stop wearing your shoulders as earrings.
2. IN FRONT OF YOU? RE-VIEW it to find the beauty in whatever is in front of you.  Or PUT something beautiful in front of you till you smile.   You can also do a 30 second clean up that will put you back in control, stack some papers, clear the desk, wipe the counter.
3. AROUND YOU?  We live in more than 3 dimensions, yet not many of us are aware of the spherical stage we walk through.  What is above, below, behind, to either side.  Becoming aware that all this is influencing you, you might want to make a shift from underneath a heavy beam, move your chair to a ‘powerful’ positiong where you can have your back protected and see the entire room and door, or take down any artwork that isn’t aligned with your goals.  [for instance, if you want to stay married and have a print of one solo person on a beach hanging above your bed, that's sending a message to your subconscious almost like an internet order--you'll get what you see around you.]  Is there something in your space that deeee-lights you?  If not, put something in front of you that is happy…do a web image search for smiling children…in 15 seconds you’ll be smiling too.

LISTEN

With your ears:  what sounds do you hear?  Listen for sounds of nature or happy music engage the part of us that is creative.  Get your own happy radio without the ads that can make you think you need everything they offer.  I use www.Pandora.com radio.  There’s a free version and a pay version ($3/mo) and both allows you to create your own radio station and be the DJ (it’s not hard).

With your eyes: similar to looking, this is more like seeing.  Listening with your eyes is actually like massaging the object of your gaze with your eyes.  See the beauty in front of you and it’s a happy “zoom in” that makes it all bigger right in front of you. (We often see the ‘what’s wrong’ but if you focus on what’s right, it grows, right in front of you.)

With your heart:  This one is your “Internal Guidance System.”  Different than emotions or feelings, listening with your heart might be weird and scary at first, it might even hurt a bit.  Be prepared to be honest with the feedback you get, but listening with your heart will always give you an accurate picture when you let your mind take a mini-vacation.

A conversation is ongoing between you and your environment–it’s creating your life.  Take a moment to breathe in the good, and stay posted here for more ways to RE-VIEW your spaces and know how to make simple changes to hire your spaces to work FOR you!

A few more things you can do to begin to dance the energy dance in your spaces:

• Ask for guidance (just ask in a soft quiet mind — pay attention to what you think next)
• Be prepared for the illogical
• Become a 3-D perceiver
• Lighten up—laugh
• Write it down–this helps make it real
• Place your hand on your heart and feel/listen
• Energy up or energy down?  When you think of something which is it?
• Use your brain AND your intuition
• Give yourself permission…
• Keep it to yourself–having ‘Silent Power’ builds your own sacred space
• Rarefy your vibration–clean water, fresh food made with love, organized spaces bring energy up
• Take care of you–when you are cared for by yourself, you build your power base and
• Ask NOBLE QUESTIONS

Noble Questions

Your subconscious takes you literally.  Ask a question and it will assume you know what you are talking about.   Take control and give it good things to look for…

Instead of questions like “Why does this always happen to me?” or “Why am I so [stupid, fat, always blah, blah, blah...]?”  SHIFT into  ”How can this be a good thing?”  -or- “How can I find more peace in this situation?”  -or- “Is there something funny here?”

One of my most amazing  teachers, Denise Linn, explains that you can make your mind work for you by giving it a positive and helpful question to answer… it’s working 24/7/365 to answer your questions anyway, so give it a positive task and it will fulfill that.

Try these questions and watch how your days and life changes:

• How can I live an even happier day?
• What is the best thing to say right now?
• What is the best road to take to___?
• Where is the best_________(you name it)!

Make it fun and you have a lot more to draw from and a lot more to offer, yourself and others!

The Key to your Success: Your Front Door

A welcoming and open doorway, this home would be more stable if the concrete stairs, wide and open to the front door, were stained a darker color, grounding the entry. Also, protection from additional landscaping and a bit more color to attract attention.

Your front door is the key to your career success and influences your health, wealth and happiness.

Called the “Mouth of Ch’i”, if you don’t use your front door daily, it’s like going through life with your hand over your nose and mouth–you are missing valuable nourishment into your life, your career and your health.  This doesn’t mean the door you normally use to enter your home, it is the door to which your address is tagged. Even if you use another entrance, you can gain valuable support by opening this door daily and making sure it puts forth the image you want to create.

It all matters and the Front Door speaks loudly about you but most importantly TO you, your career and happiness.

Every day Feng Shui for Fresh Start:

• Breathe in the Freshness:  As the “Mouth of Chi”, we must open this door every day, even if you don’t use it.
• First impressions are the only ones: Keep it beautiful.  Remove all clutter and make the path to the door and from the door as beautiful and welcoming as you possibly can. Make sure the door opens completely and onto a beautiful view—not one that leads your attention directly up the stairs to the private spaces, or to an open bathroom, or not outside again to the back of the house no matter how beautiful the view might be.  Slow and cull the precious energy—let the eye roam to a beautiful scene inside before traveling outside again.  Make sure the door is freshly painted or refinished and the hardware works perfectly.
• Greeters in place?  What we see as we approach a home sets up an expectation inside of us.  Place something at the entry, outside and inside the door that lets others (and you) know what is imporant to you and who you are.
• What do you see?   Stand inside your front door, open it and look out.  If a street or a neighbor’s driveway is pointing right at your door, that could signal an energy drain on you. Place something between the door and the offending object, perhaps a tree, a planter, a sculpture of some sort, or a fountain—flowing 360 degrees or toward the house.  The “Floating Doors” on this house will keep the energy, career and family ungrounded.  Paint the sill below the door a dark and grounding color to bring dreams to life, stability and harmony to the home.
  

  This home's "floating doors" will create instability and ungrounded dreams and prosperity. Painting the sill below the door a deep color will help to 'ground' the door and the energy of those who life here. Recently "Flamingo'd" this family has 'punked' by their neighbors, enjoying the lighter side of life.

• Ground your dreams: Make sure that the door looks solidly placed on the ground, that the lower door sill is darker and heavier than the door, giving it something to rest on. I often see siding that is placed below the door and left the light color of the house. That leaves the door looking like it is on the side of ship or floating in space. If this is the case, life for these people will be ungrounded, you will feel like you are on constantly shifting ground, in life and in your career.
• Beautiful pathways: Make sure the path to your doorway is obvious, safe, clear, well-marked, and large enough for two people to walk side-by-side. If you have painted wooden steps , use beautiful tread grips to bring a sense of safety and beauty to your home.
• Brightness brings good Ch’i: Bright things draw attention, which is a good thing to the front door in Feng Shui, inviting positive and loving attention to your life. Bright, eye-catching, well-maintained flowers, a beautiful door knocker, and fresh welcome mat will set the tone for freshness on the inside.
• The Power of Darkness: I am a fan of natural light and natural darkness.   Darkness helps regulate our hormones and sleep patterns, for ourselves and nature.  At night, there are no lights on around my home; I love to walk outside and see the blue/black velvet of the night and read the stars and the shadows of the trees. (I understand we can’t turn our city lights off, but I hope you all get to experience the richness of nature’s night darkness.)
• Deter harmful energy:  An ancient Chinese esoteria ‘cure’ to deflect harmful energy is the use of something called a Bagua mirror.  This is a very powerful cure because it is used with human intention and is a mirror which deflects energy back to its source.  If done improperly, it can amplify the negative effects, from rushing energy of oncoming traffic, depleting energy of a cemetery, or negative energy of a cranky neighbor.   If you do use a Bagua Mirror, be sure to send the energy off with love and allowing (we each have a right to live our lives the way we choose) and be sure to use the “Latter Heaven” version of the Bagua mirror.  Anything shiney or mirrored will also work, but doesn’t carry the quite the same weight as this symbolic cure with thousands of years of energy behind it.  Read here about Bagua mirrors and their placement. (coming soon)
• Numbers have special energy:   Numbers hold vibrational energy; One signals indivual, 2 signals partnership, 3 is creative and planning, etc. Your address will set the tone for how you interface with the world.Place your house numbers either on your door, above your door or to the side of your door. Read more about your house number here. (coming soon)

Everything in your home is a partner in what you are experiencing in life and you are in the driver’s seat.  Knowing what to focus on and what to change can save you years of struggle:  Are you ready for life to be beautiful?

Sell Your Home Quickly with Feng Shui

Let your home do the talking for you by using simple, practical feng shui to selling your home faster (decrease market time) and for more (increase profit)!

Outside: First impressions are critical.

It takes only three seconds for buyers to make a judgment about a home.  After that it’s a sales job. 

• Your front entrance is the “Mouth of Ch’i: be sure it’s welcoming, well-lighted and clear, night and day. 
• Address: Make sure that your house numbers are highly visible (on your home and your mailbox and either displayed in a horizontal or upward diagonal.  (House numbers in a descending diagonal indicate diminishing energy.)
• Make all entrances to your home inviting, organized and beautiful.
• Make sure doors, hardware and stoops are clean and freshly painted.
• Bright, eye-catching, well-maintained flowers at your front door set the tone for freshness on the inside. 
• Every door must open onto a beautiful view.  This will welcome the new owners and new opportunities into your life as well.
• Place something yellow or red near your front door, and make it fresh and healthy.  Remove all kitchy/personal items.
• Notice everything:  is the door handle working perfectly, the door bell obvious and beautiful, the new door mat?   Even sweeping the front entrance with a new broom will remove the past and make way for the future.

Inside and Outside

• Give it a thorough cleaning.  This is another way to remove your energy from the address.  
• Go “Martha Stewart”on your spaces:
  •  Make it fresh and look “magazine”-like. 
  • When in doubt: take it out.  Less is definitely more in this case.
  • Clear out all but the minimal amount of clothing, coats, shoes, pantry items that you need.  Rule of thumb:  leave 1/2 to 1/3 of each closet, drawer or cabinet empty and clean.
• Neutralize negative influences.
  • Remove all clutter, and ‘personal’ items,.
  • Repair and renew everything.  Make it fresh.
  • Remove all clutter and pack and store personal items in a self-storage unit or at best, out of sight.  Your Buyer wants be able to imagine themselves and their ‘stuff’ in this home.
  • Smells can turn off a potential sale or indicate problems to be dealt with: make sure all negative smells (mold, mildew, moth balls, pet and other offensive odors) are eliminated and replaced with fresh scents.  Use: Vanilla, citrus, fresh coffee or chocolate aromas are pretty universally warm and friendly.
  • Sounds: Play some restful music to set the tone or something that will attract the kind of buyer you want to attract, but play it as background and turn down the volume if you leave any large-screen TV’s on to give the space some life.
  • Plumbing signifies money flow: make sure everything works excellently.  Look even for evidence of water damage and repair it all.
  • Where your eye goes, energy goes: Keep your toilet lids down and help your buyer focus on something beautiful.
  • Make plans to be away during all showings; your buyer needs to feel the comfort and freedom to place themselves in this home.

Important Feng Shui Tip:  Notice what is in the furthest right-hand corner of the property and the home.  If it is something heavy and large, remove it if you can.  If it is a rock garden, place upward moving energy there:  a hollow metal wind chime, plants that extend upward, light that shines upward.  This will help to uproot the energy of your family.  If it is something small that you love, place it in storage for a while to give the home time to adjust to not having you there.

Feng Shui is practical and as well encompasses everything our thoughts and feelings can touch.  When we pay attention to things that normally escape our focus, we ourselves a special advantage. 

Before the sale even begins to take too long:  read more about the #1 Reason Most Homes don’t sell:  you’ll be glad you did.

Why You Should Choose Wall Color Last

It’s fun to think about changing your space quickly with a new coat of paint.  But if you rush to the store for a few gallons of glorious color before you consider these things, you will might wish you’d read this first.  

Paint is the most customized home décor product  you will be able to find on the market today!  Paint can be made to be any color.  That cannot be said of carpets, fabrics, flooring, tile, etc.   Those items are usually more expensive and less flexible than paint color, and the perfect paint color can bring all those differing pieces and colors together for a beautiful result.  But you have to get all the players together first, and then choose the paint color last!

It might seem like fun, but to save time and money, choose your paint color LAST! read on

We tend to look at our spaces as a collection of furniture and other items but Color Experts know to look at rooms as a collection of colors.  Everything has a color, every color, even all of the 9,000 or so different Whites you can choose has an undertone of color—something that gives it a unique signature that will work or not work in your room.  Here’s a quote from Heidi Cornelius, owner of The Color Gallery, in Antigo, Wisconsin  “all the colors are invited to the party, they just can fight with any other or try to change the others.”  Because they will, so you have to be careful about your color guest list. 

Consider these things when choosing wall color:

• The Light: Color isLight—think about it: at night do you see the beautiful colors that during the day are vibrant and alive? The color is still there, other animals see what emanates from objects but our eyes don’t see color when the light goes dim.  Color we see is based on the Light bouncing around.
  • Lighting changes during the day and colors will appear different in the morning light than they will in the evening glow of sunset or lamplight. 
  • Rooms with a Northern exposure will have different light and need different colors (add warmth with yellow undertones–but TEST them so they don’t turn green) than rooms with a Southern or Western facing windows (might need to balance the light with the wall color to cool it down).
  • Colors on items change differently under different lighting and depending on what they are next to.   “Substrates,” the base material onto which color is applied, hold and reflect colors differently, so things that match under curly fluorescent lighting might clash miserably under incandescent or even in a different room in your home, due to the sunlight of a Northern exposure or a Western facing room or even at different times of day.
• All of the other things in the room – even the view through windows and doors
  • Everything has a color: subtle undertones can fight with each other, for instance the orange of a oak floor will look “just wrong” if the beige you choose for the walls has a pink undertone.
  • Choose all the other items first because you are limited by the colors in fabrics, furnishings, hardwoods, and other items. 
  • Get them all together in the space they will be, in the lighting they will be in, and at the time of day you will be enjoying them.  Hold the pieces in the orientation they will be:  vertical if it’s a wall color or window treatment, horizontal if it’s a flooring piece or seating upholstery and hold them ALL together to see how the colors work together.
• The people and the purpose of the room
  • From a Feng Shui standpoint, these are the most important.  I consider the people, their specific Feng Shui energy and the Primary Purpose of the Room, whether sleeping, eating, resting, or connecting, all these purposes are enlivened by different colors.  For more on that, check out  my posts on Feng Shui Colors
  • What is your favourite colour? Can you live with it or a version of it? I guarantee it will make you happy!  Paint it somewhere, in a drawer you see every day, in your powder room, or closet (be careful about blue and green in a closet—it could make you look palid or ill—give it a pink undertone). Live with a little in a pillow or lamp and see how you just want to live with more.
  • What is the primary purpose of the room?  For instance in a kitchen:  why you might not want to use blue or black — dowses the fire of digestion.  Dining room? Why you might not want to use too much red–can cause arguments and hypertension–just a little goes a long way!  Bedrooms? What will blue or green do for your relationships–cool them off.  Flesh tones will warm and nourish you–all the way from palest yellow to deepest cocoa, rich burgundy or gold?  See Feng Shui Colors
• The mood you want to set
  • How can you calm a space with colors, make it more intimate just with color? Spaces can be calmed with pale colors or deep colors, so that doesn’t help.  Blue and greens are independent colors, they can be calming as in a spa setting but will not be the best for connecting with others—that’s why they are restful, they take us outside ourselves into the sky and forest for healing.   Colors that are ‘complex’ muted colors, not mixed with white –which invigorates a space—would be more calming.  The best way to calm spaces is to remove the visual clutter, too many colors, too much contrast will enliven a space. 
• Size and shape of the room:
  •  did you know color can change the perception to make an oddly shaped room seem more pleasant and balanced,  a low ceiling seem high,  make a small room feel larger and more cozy at the same time,  a long narrow hallways seem wider and more?  More about this in another post.
• Create whole-house harmony with color
  • A very important piece for a well-balanced life
  • Tip:  try the ‘fabric
    

    The colors of a fabric can help harmonize a home's color scheme.

    ’ test.  Many fabrics have lots of colors in their design.  You can use this to your benefit.  For instance this pillow has warm beige, beautiful restful aqua, rich magenta.  If you love these colors, consider changing it up in various rooms, one room will have the warm beige on its walls, another will have a variation of the soft aqua (a bit darker or lighter but one that the cushion will look great with), and another will have an accent of rich magenta on the walls.  Each room will be very different, but your whole space will work together.

Not to add pressure, but our homes and offices are our partners in creating our joyful life and when your spaces are beautiful, you don’t have to work so hard at being healthy, wealthy and happy.    That said, why not get it right?  Call a color expert to come to your home, or call me and I will be happy to help you as best I can!

8 Steps to Design Your Life

Live by design (not by default)  

Is everything in your life working perfectly?  By the end of this post, you will know exactly where to start and the steps to take to make it so!  I like to demystify the ancient science of Feng Shui and bring it home.   Here are the steps I recommend that all my clients begin with:

1.        Clear the clutter.  Clutter takes your energy down.  You will notice the benefits of energy moving more freely when you remove that negative energy.  The best way to do it is to just do it.  You can check out my Clear Your Clutter Challenge which helps you begin gently, builds confidence and skills that will last your whole lifetime.  Removing everything that you don’t love or use will have your home, office and your family glowing with bright free energy. 

 

2.        Get fresh:  Fresh air and lots of light are what bring good energy into your home and life.  Open the windows and push back the shades.  Plants and flowing water act as air purifiers, bring active chi and also enliven your spaces to provide you with good quality air.   You can also try ionic air purifiers and UV wands to freshen the energy in your home. (Check out the Window that unfolds to become a Balcony–Fresh Air!)

 

3.       Do a space clearing:  without this piece, it’s like living in dirty laundry.  Space clearing removes negative energy and introduces higher order energy into your spaces.  Especially when you move into a new home or office, but this should be done every day to start fresh and clear out the old.  (How to Do a Space Clearing) 

 

4.       Develop your awareness: 

a.       Begin to notice the energy flow around your home:  pay particular attention to the 4 most influential areas of you live in:  your bedroom, your bathroom, your kitchen and your office.

b.      Start to trust all your senses:  Your good Feng Shui will come from your own ability to read the world around you, truthfully interpret it and have the courage to act on it.  Building awareness comes from learning to read the input from our senses: the window onto the world.  If your eyes are the window to your soul, your senses are the window to the world.  Learn to read the information and to trust yourself is critical to success in life and in your own good Feng Shui.

                                                               i.      Sight: Notice where you eye goes:  where you eye goes, energy goes.  Follow your eye and notice where it goes.  Then really look at what is there.  Here is how I let my eyes talk to me.  What your eye sees, creates your reality.  This step is very important, Feng Shui Masters thousands of years ago watched what was happening, corroborated with other and then developed the science we are still using today. 

                                                             ii.      Smell:  Smells are a very important bit of information about the quality of life in your home, quickly eliminate foul smells and the underlying cause.  Then, learn how to use aromatherapy to bring more and fresh life force balance into your home and life. For instance, lavender is antiseptic and calming at the same time, vanilla is warm, sensual, relaxing and sexy, citrus is clearing, grapefruit will help you lose weight and so on…  Natural cleaning products are important to the life in your home because they clean without toxicity to life, they eliminate dirt, bacteria without harming the life around it.

                                                            iii.      Intuition:  I have found that Life speaks to me through thought, feeling and coincidence.  The messages are subtle at first.  Howard Gardener talks about the Genius Dip, we all had it at birth, it’s socialized out of us, that’s the reason it’s get back in touch with your intuition and begin to trust and act on it.  You will find you have your own direct line to the GodForce and the Power of Now.

                                                           iv.      Don’t rule out Taste, Touch and Hearing:   Feng Shui is all encompassing and all aspects of your life are interconnected and interrelated.  All your senses give you information, warnings and/or lead you to the next glorious opportunity.  Feng Shui is all encompassing, includes Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Herbs and more; a true Feng Shui Master can look at your body and tell you what your issues are as well as look at your home and do the same.    Begin to pay attention to what you taste, feel and hear.  Then ask yourself, what is this telling me? Listen and act to heed the message. 

 

5.       Discover your Feng Shui Elements and your Astrological makeup:  Knowing just the date of your birth, you can discover the energy that most supports you. 

a.       Nine Star Ki is the method I use to correlate space, time and Feng Shui as I have found it enormously accurate.  www.NineStarKi.com will give you free your Primary Feng Shui energy, the first of the three numbers/energies that comprise your Feng Shui energy.  Once you know these, you can use the other elements to create harmony and balance in yourself, your home and all your relationships.  [Click here to get your 3 numbers that will help you discover and then use the colors, shapes and placement of those to balance and invigorate your life.               ]

b.      Your Western Astrology:  Your Birth date, place and time, tells you another piece of the story.  Feng Shui used to include all this information but throughout dynasties and thousands of years, much of it was deleted or permitted to be used by only the ruling classes.  Luckily, Western Astrology still holds the keys.   I use this because it can tell me things about your situation and energy that Nine Star Ki doesn’t.  Feng Shui and Astrology is formula to help you get the most from your decorating.  Use this free Western Astrology birth chart to get a glimpse of what Astrology can tell you.  An expert Astrologer can help you make sense of energies that otherwise seem unfathomable.  For your free astrology birth chart and explanation go to http://alabe.com/freechart/

 

6.        Define the BaGua:  The BaGua is a map of the energy of your home and how it affects the aspects of your life.  You will know which area of your home (or apartment, office or desk) is associated with aspect of your life.  I first use the Western Form School application because it is generally the easiest and works.  [The other--the Compass method--works also but is a little more confusing.  Whichever you choose to use, stay with it. Mixing the two at first will confuse you. Later you will see that both can apply and add another dimension to your Feng Shui.]  Learn to use the Bagua grid –it only takes a few minutes but it is well worth it because it will show you how your home corresponds to the aspects of your life. 

 

7.       Use the Feng Shui Elements All things are comprised of energy but not all energy is the same.  Some is upward moving (wood) some is outward and brilliant (fire) some is gathering and nourishing (earth), other is accountable and mentally stimulating (metal) while other energy is flowing, deep, spiritual, thoughtful or bubbly (water).  There, you have just had your first lesson in Feng Shui element theory.  The Ancient Taoist Masters noticed that all energy could be categorized in these five ways; they also associated colors, shapes and emotions, compass directions, seasons, times of day and human body energy fields, organs and food.  There won’t be a test on all this but it’s true:  everything is interconnected.  Learn to use the elements to support you, your work, and your relationships.

 

8.       Be Happy: Feng Shui is an inner and outer science.  This may sometimes be the hardest piece to master but just by being happy, recognizing a thought for what it is and changing it to what you want to live is powerful Feng Shui.  Smiling and knowing that your positive focus is bringing all your goodness to you is working.  It is working and wondering just how your goodness will show up and delight you will bring more goodness and delight your way.     

 

Everything is always moving, changing and affecting everything around it.  You now know how to begin to use Feng Shui to make your life simple now!

Window unfolded Becomes a Balcony

Technology at its very best…can you believe this?    Bloomframe.com has developed this product for an apartment building in the Netherlands.

I hope you are smiling!

Bloomframe.com

Documentation Link

Happy New Year 2011 Feng Shui Energy

2011 – Happy Feng Shui New Year’s Motto:  Be Calm and Carry On

 Feb 3 Year of Rabbit, Feb 4 Nine Star Ki New Year 7 Metal

Home and Stability are at forefront this year.

Welcome to a year of home, family, kitchen and joy.  This year will be about style and compassion, creativity and organization, beauty and core values, all simultaneously.   

It’s the year to place things that you love into your environment.  Create a beautiful kitchen where you can eat and meet, create a studio where you finally fulfill that dream of creating marketable items.  [See www.etsy.com or www.ponoko.com  (websites that can  help manufacture and launch your products)]

This year is for deep rest and celebration AND organization and creativity.  Home and family, especially gathering areas like kitchen will seem much more important to us.  Yet just as a large and nourishing meal requires organization and creativity, it is important that we maintain a strong footing grounded in those attributes.  Also, an underlying energy tells us that things could burn out of control this year and it will be best this year to remain cool, calm and collected rather than fight fire with fire.

Feng Shui--Last longer than going to Paris to enjoy Chocolate at Laduree--Can't we do both?

Use this year well for reconnection to your core, your beauty, your enthusiasm and creative self, for next year is the year of Father energy—conditional support based on what we have accomplished.  We could be riding the Dragon, and we could find great expansion or find ourselves facing accountability for our sloth. 

Nine Star Ki — Better than Chocolate

I recently gave a workshop for a group and the host told me later: ”Amazing! You won’t believe it–they were all amazed that you so accurately described them and their lives of the last few years.”

Actually I just described the energy as it was according to Nine Star Ki—it is very accurate and helpful to know how your own energy, how to support yourself with color, shape and placement of items in your spaces.  

You can go to www.9starki.com learn the first of 3 energies affecting your feng shui, home and relationships.  For your own personal Feng Shui energy includes all three energies, that of your family and how to arrange your home, email me.  Fawn@fawnchang.com  Mention Feng Shui Energy in the subject bar please.

Back to 2011

Your Family, Your Home, Your Time and Meaningful Beauty at forefront in 2011

I have adapted these 5 statements from my mentors at www.9starki.com . 

1) I am making order out of chaos.
2) I am supporting organizations that are constructive.
3) I am joyfully creative.
4) I am lending a helping hand.
5) I am stopping and smelling  the roses.

A few General Feng Shui tips for this year: 

• Place something beautiful around you wherever you are. 
• Make your kitchen a beautiful, well organized place.  Bless your food. Stay happy while preparing.  Place something yellow in the center of the table to help nourish and bring happiness to your meals.
• Notice the quality of sound in your home and what those sounds are.  Bring joyful, peaceful and happy sounds to support you.  Sing more, use your voice.
• Take time each day to organize your day and your thoughts, write a list and choose the 1 thing in each category of home, love, career, community that you can do or work toward.
• Organize one drawer a day.  Check out my Clear Your Clutter program if you’d like to have a plan of your own or hire a professional organizer, or call the “Jurassic Junk” or “Got Junk” folks.  Having someone help you rid or recycle items helps take the pressure off so you can celebrate in style.

Better than Chocolate

Knowing your personal feng shui energy (and that of your family or coworkers) you can know exactly how this year will impact you and your future and learn how to arrange your spaces to make it easy to stay happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.   Connect with me to have your personal Feng Shui Report  at info@designandfengshui.com

Top 10 2011 Hotel Openings — Design Trends?

Because I travel North America talking about Hotel Design Trends, when I came across this article while reading a trade web, I was intrigued.  I don’t know if I agree with their choices, would you?

Here is  www.askmen.com ‘s ranking of the Top 10 Hotel Openings for 2011.  Take a look at the design see if you notice any interesting design and trends.

from  www.askmen.com

“No.10 St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel London, London, UK

The golden era of glamorous rail travel is long gone (at least for those who can’t quite afford the Orient Express), which is why London will welcome the return of Britain’s showiest railway hotel with open arms when it reopens in March. Formerly called the Midland Grand Hotel, no less than £150 million has been invested to return the original Victorian-Gothic structure to its former glory. A 10-year renovation has ensured that all the best bits have been kept and painstakingly retouched (such as Sir George Gilbert Scott’s cantilevered staircase), while shiny new additions, such as the 189 bedrooms in the extension at the back, are in keeping with the building’s original style. A 120-seat fine-dining restaurant will wrap things up nicely, no doubt flanked by the capital’s most chic commuters. 

No.9 W London, London, UK

As the most anticipated hotel opening in the UK this year, W London certainly has a lot to live up to — and if early media whisperings are to be believed, it will. Scheduled to open on February 14th in an attempt to capitalize on an already bled-dry holiday, this hotel is the W brand’s first opening in the UK and is well located on London’s tourist-filled Leicester Square where the Swiss Centre once stood. No less than £300 million has been pumped into the project by parent company Starwood, which has seemingly forgotten about the recession, allowing for 194 blingtastic rooms, a destination restaurant, a bar-club combo, a fully equipped spa, and an on-site store selling party frocks and whatnot. There’s even a 48-seat cinema should leaving the premises prove a little too strenuous for would-be guests. Expect the launch party to raise the roof (and more than a few eyebrows, with celebs getting up to no good inside).

No.8 Waldorf Astoria Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Bringing a big slab of New York-style hospitality to Germany this year is Waldorf Astoria Berlin, housed inside a 31-floor glass-fronted tower in the business district of Kurfürstendamm. Catering predominantly to the corporate crowd, Waldorf Astoria Berlin will boast 242 extremely well-appointed rooms as well as an on-site restaurant, bar and spa. The crowning glory of this new build, however, will be 1,000-square-meters of conference and meeting facilities, sure to lure hundreds of white-collar office workers through its doors once the ribbon has been cut on opening day. Waldorf Astoria’s signature no-nonsense approach to service will also ensure that the city’s notoriously discerning (read: picky) residents will be kept in the manner to which they’ve undoubtedly become accustomed. 

No.7 The Queen Victoria, Cape Town, South Africa

Having enjoyed good press and endured bad press last year, it’s good to see that Cape Town‘s public perception is once again tipping to the more positive side of things with the opening of a new boutique hotel in March. Called the Queen Victoria, this sumptuous new stay (housed in an existing building in the Victoria and Albert Waterfront) is small but perfectly formed, with just 35 rooms for weary guests to hunker down in. Murals of Queen Vic (who else?) abound inside, while plush furnishings, rich fabrics and a muted color palette of oyster, taupe, gray, silver, and burgundy link public spaces. The hotel’s most impressive feature, however, will be its grand entrance, characterized by a spectacular triple-volume atrium with a spiral staircase and glass elevator. Indeed, if this doesn’t get five stars, we don’t know what will.

No.6 W Paris-Opéra, Paris, France

While W Paris-Opéra isn’t due to open until the end of 2011, the buildup begins now. Found in the trendy Parisian district of Opéra, just minutes from the Garnier Opera House, the plush property will add 90 sumptuous rooms and suites to the capital’s already chic hotel scene. Housed inside an elegant 1870s Haussmann-era building, the hotel (the brand’s eighth in Europe) will be an all-encompassing destination station, with a restaurant, bar, fitness facility, spa, and lounge. As with all W properties, the W Paris Opéra will boast the brand’s signature Whatever/Whenever concierge service, providing guests with anything from a gourmet picnic in Jardin du Luxembourg to shopping excursions in the emporiums of Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

No.5 Ritz-Carlton Montreal, Montreal, Canada

In renovation since 2008, the Ritz-Carlton Montreal will finally reopen this autumn after a $150-million face-lift. The iconic stay, located at 1228 Sherbrooke Street West, will celebrate with a paparazzi-worthy opening to show off its revived facade, lobby, Palm Court, Grand Ballroom, and Ritz Garden – all of which have been restored to their former dazzling glory. The best bit, however, will be the 46 private residences that have been added to the property, all furnished to shades-on superstar standards. Having this as your home address would certainly be a talking point with the ladies.

No.4 Palazzo Versace Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Versace isn’t known for its understated aesthetic, but when the Italian brand comes into contact with Dubai — land of flash and trash — you can only imagine what would happen. In fact, you don’t need to imagine, as the Palazzo Versace showcases what would become of such a meeting. Following in the flamboyant footsteps of Versace’s sister outpost on Australia’s glossy Gold Coast, this £400-million wonder will be one of the United Arab Emirates’ most ridiculously over-the-top stays when it opens mid-2011. Inside will be 213 suites and 169 private residences, as well as a host of slick restaurants and bars, an on-site superspa, a ballroom, and a boutique for the not-so-subtle flogging of Versace wares. But the hotel will also feature its own “refrigerated” beach, plugged into a system of heat-absorbing pipes and wind blowers to keep beachgoers in barely there swimwear calm, cool and collected. The green scene clearly hasn’t caught on here.  

No.3 The Breakwater, Miami, USA

Although it rang in the New Year by opening on January 1st, the Breakwater’s launch will be remembered long after the streamers have been swept away and the champagne has been mopped up. Fulfilling its promise of “chic and sexy and unfiltered individuality,” the hotel boasts supersleek interiors by renowned designer Stephen B Jacobs, with decor that sets a more serene scene than the rock ‘n’ roll-inspired Clevelander next door (where TVs are chained to walls to avoid them being thrown out of windows). Think minimal furnishings and muted tones across 100 spacious rooms, with bright pops of color adding extra pizzazz. The rooftop lounge, obligatory at any Miami hotel worthy of its Art Deco facade, is the perfect place to kick back, with the deck flanked by daybeds during the afternoon and lit with candles by night. Date night, anyone?

No.2 Mondrian New York, New York, USA

Thank God there’s something else to focus on in February other than Valentine’s Day; opening in the most depressing month of the year is the Mondrian New York, the brand’s downtown debut. While details are being kept hush-hush, pics forwarded to us by in-the-know PRs (now unemployed, we imagine) reveal wonderfully trippy Alice in Wonderland-style interiors (courtesy of superstar designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz), particularly throughout the enchanted manicured gardens drenched with moody-blue lighting. Indeed, if you haven’t smoked anything suspicious prior to entering, you may want to in order to appreciate the head-spinning aesthetics. The theme carries through to 270 jaw-droppingly beautiful rooms as well as the destination restaurant to be headed up by none other than culinary genius Sam Talbot.

No.1 Shangri-La Paris, Paris, France

While current Paris gossip is largely centered on French Vogue’s new editor, we’re more concerned with the much-anticipated Mandarin Oriental Paris opening on Rue Saint-Honoré. When is another story, with the launch date having been pushed back countless times, but we do know that it will throw open its doors toward the latter part of 2011. With 138 rooms, a slew of restaurants, a spa, and an inner courtyard in which to smooch with your loved one, this hotel will have the city’s other hotels shaking in their designer-heeled boots – particularly Shangri-La Paris, which opened in December and has every intention of holding on to its press attention.”

I am compiling my own list of Top 10 Beautiful Hotels (shhh–my favorite hotels are the Mandarin Oriental Hotels anywhere in the world)…

What is on your list?

Color and Design Directions 2011/2012 from PPG Voice of Color

Get ready for a grown up attitude and one large dose of color, fantasy, organization, real beauty and innovation.  

Bloomy Chair by Patricia Urquiola signals beauty, form, function and enterprise, exactly what we are looking for in 2011

Color trends reflect who we are as a collective and where we are going; they reflect what’s going on inside of us as well as in our world. 

Some of us may not see ourselves at all in the new color and design trends; but rest assured, there’s a subtle scent that will find you whether you shop at Target or Neiman Marcus, some of this beauty and structure is wafting into your life, or you will want it soon.  In my post about the upcoming energy of 2011, you’ll see that these color and design trends help us each and all stay focused on what is really important.

We are different this year than last, more positive and victorious, yet we understand that true victory over adversity means we stay focused on what got us out of the mess and into the sunshine.

Design Directions Follow Emotional  Needs and Values

We are making choices based on what we value, regardless of our age, income or social status.  What we value now is deeper, richer and more a reflection of the beautiful humanity within each of us.  We are similar and we are different, and we are more aware of the need to take care of our own worlds, to make our individual homes reflect that nourishment we need and to live and let live, thrive and let thrive.  We are also looking for meaningful beauty, design and products tied to our core values for a richer, wiser planet.  The colors and design are a reflection of who we are and an illustration of our highest desires and ideals. 

Voice of Color's 2011 Harmony Trends Palettes

Some companies introduce one “color” of the year and hope that that one color will tell the whole story for everyone.  When PPG introduces colors to Homeowners, Architects and Designers, in context of a color palette, of trending designs, and of overall zeitgeist of the era.   Beyond that, Voice of Color doesn’t imagine these trends will appeal to everyone, and don’t feel that trends should never override your particular taste and style but embellish it.  

Take a look at what is being predicted to be the “color trends of the year” for interior architecture:

Because a trend is never about just one color but rather about all the colors in a room or space, The Voice of Color creates a signature five-color palette card that expresses the mood of each new palette and offers colors for paint, fabrics, flooring and accessories.

The four new “Wow Color Now” palettes in PPG Pittsburgh Paints’ The Voice of Color® program for 2011-2012 are:

INstinct

The soul of this palette is warm and authentic. It fuses the ancient, the mythological, the raw, and the primitive with a highly technical and minimalist modern-day aesthetic. A mix of ethnic

Vincent Wolfe's designs illustrate the warmth and organization of INstinct.

exoticism and modern urban sophistication, this style befits the grown-up taste of a true citizen of the world. This palette is the most muted and grounded, organic rather than adorned. It blends light and dark woods, burnished leather with raw utilitarian stitching, and deep browns and natural charcoal stones.

The palette is refined but essentially basic and showcases the colors of materials with rich earthy qualities—leather, minerals, wood, and fur—enabling their natural beauty, grain, and texture to emerge.

PPG Pittsburgh Paints colors include Dark as Night, Timber Beam, Angel Food, Almond Cream, and Rum Runner.

 

GLamour

This warm, pink-based red -- PPG Rum Runner -- brings life and love to spaces. A little or a lot, you decide.

With a focus on the “amour,” Glamour is mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and intricate. It’s déjà vu from a contemporary perspective; always intentional, never shy. Slightly theatrical, conjuring an atmosphere of a new-age Sleeping Beauty, Glamour’s take on pattern is bold and sharp, with plays on negative space to constantly surprise and delight.

The palette incorporates glorious neutrals inspired by the most sumptuous materials, and inspires thoughts of time-worn limestone, starkly modern crystal, magnificent black marble, the warmest gold and other color-infused metallics. PPG Pittsburgh Paints colors include Dark as Night, Timber Beam, Angel Food, Almond Cream, and Rum Runner.

NEW Bohemia

Quirky, fun, storied and colorful, "I drank what?" is the Gypsy-Jetsetter look of New Bohemia

Personality exudes from every inch of New Bohemia through a whimsical sense of design, a rebirth of craft, and the appearance of secondhand objects and other quirky and nostalgic elements. It’s a vintage aesthetic for a contemporary age, at once authentic, romantic, imaginative, and poetic— it positions the room as a discovery center or personal scrapbook. The style is gypset, fusing the ease and carefree lifestyle of a gypsy with the sophistication of the jet set.

With fantasy, fairytale, floral prints as an inspiration, color is innocently romantic and untamed. PPG Pittsburgh Paints colors include Red Cedar, Happy Trails, Hat Box Brown, Green Wave, and Aqua Fiesta.

UPcycle

UpCycle: Clean, nature colored, lots of wood and a rich blue signify grown-up sustainablity that no longer hurts but is fun.

The green movement grown up, UPcycle is about living simply with beautiful, useful, and sustainable objects. It is a philosophy steeped in the desire for clarity, function, and craftsmanship; it repudiates wastefulness and embraces the authentic, the meaningful, and the simply fun. Honest yet elegant, UPcycle is optimistic, clever, and proactive.

The palette is simple, honest, and upbeat, as the colors coordinate with wood, basic yarns, wool, cotton, untreated metals, and simply glazed ceramics in tone-on-tone. A color-blocking effect injects the dose of “up” into this color cycle and lights up pale wood tones. PPG Pittsburgh Paints colors include Brown Basket, Allspice, Gold Buff, Chalkware, and Adventure.



 

 

 

Pantone’s Color of the Year 2011

Pantone,  industry source for color matching and famous for their Pantone Matching System used worldwide for everything from graphics to signs to fashion, named their Color of Year for 2011:

 ”Honeysuckle, TCX 18-2120…a courageous color for a courageous new world.”   With the new “girl effect” highly influencing design and trends from architecture to automobiles to art to business, we could see pink more than ever.  In fact, PPG’s Automotive Group sees warm, rich India pink coming to auto finishes, as more women (and men) in India make an impact on the market place. 

“Honeysuckle emboldens us to face everyday troubles with verve and vigor. A dynamic reddish pink, Honeysuckle is encouraging and uplifting. It elevates our psyche beyond escape, instilling the confidence, courage and spirit to meet the exhaustive challenges that have become part of everyday life.”

Leatrice Eisman, President of Pantone recommends (but I don’t),  “Paint a wall in Honeysuckle for a dynamic burst of energy in the family room, kitchen or hallway.”  The reason I don’t recommend just slapping color around is because everything has an effect on your life.  As pink goes, you can’t get into too much negative affect, which is good, but if this color fights with other aspects of your home or your own energy somehow, you can know ahead of time (using color consultation or Feng Shui)  or pay attention to subtle changes and if you don’t like them, be ready and willing to change it.

She also says:

“Honeysuckle is upbeat and dynamic when used on large areas like the entry area of a house or an apartment. It is an appetite and conversation stimulant when used on the dining room walls. In the kitchen, it adds a fun touch on the table in placemats and other linens (patterned or solid), colored glassware, candles and small appliances. Honeysuckle is a great color to cover up shabby kitchen cabinets, or, if that’s too much of a color statement for you, try repainting knobs and drawer pulls. But be warned – once you try this arresting shade, it can become addictive.”

I think a home needs more consideration when being designed than this, but if you are looking for a way to pick yourself out of some doldrums, a shot in the arm of warm red with subtle blue undertones could help lift your spirits and make you feel a bit more compassionate toward yourself and sexy. 

What do you think about a room where Honeysuckle Pink makes a debut?

Quick Holiday Feng Shui

 

Quick Tips for A Delightful Holiday

What’s on YOUR list?

 

If you find that you are harried and hurried and not enjoying those feelings (sometimes being frantic it is a LOT of fun), this list will give you a few ideas to add some time and delete some scattered-ness from your life.

 

• PROGRAM EACH DAY:  At the beginning of the day (or any event) see it going smoothly and effortlessly.  When you re-script your day and see things working out the way you’d like them to, you begin to draw to you the things that you need.  It seems magical, but “Any sufficiently advanced technology is usually indistinguishable from magic.” (anon)   Write the script for your day, see yourself beautiful, happy, easily accepted and hold the feelings.  You will be amazed.  For more on that, see my post about Intentional Feng Shui; it works!
• PRIORITIZE EVENTS AND EFFORTS:  When considering Holiday events and activities but them through the test:  Which ones bring you most joy?  Most Peace?  Most return on your time and energy investment?  Saying “NO” to things is not going away from those you love or respect, it is an act of personal power.  Give yourself a day to respond to invitations and then be true to you and what you value most.  You’ll have much more to give when you are fully centered, poised and present.  You will be giving yourself and the world a precious gift…You. 
• OUTSOURCE:  Your most precious resource is your time and feeling nature.  When you actually look at the amount of time you spend on a task, you may be surprised that your hourly rate might be less than minimum wage.  Decide what you really, really love to do, do that and delegate…once and for all and let it go.  You might be surprised how well things actually do go.  (I let Whole Foods cook my Thanksgiving Dinner and it was fantastic; I got to cook just the dishes we really love and enjoy my family all day long.).
• GIVE LOVED ONES FUN JOBS:  A young mother at Starbucks was making my coffee and mentioned how frustrated she was with her young children bickering and fighting.  I told her they needed jobs to help direct all that extra energy and excitement.  She said, “I tell them to clean their rooms and do their chores,” and I interrupted:  “those aren’t fun jobs”…Here are some fun jobs to give kids and family members a sense of your joy in making this time of your special:  1) Ask them to decide how they want to decorate their rooms by drawing a picture of it for you.  (spends time drawing and gets them excited)…then tell them they’ll have to clean it up before they decorate so it looks just perfect!  2) Put out a few crayons and papers and ask them to draw their Santa’s list.  3) Engage them in your tasks:  ask them to make suggestions for the menu on Christmas Eve, or how they’d decorate, or whom they’d seat next to whom at Christmas Dinner, have them make place cards and see what happens–don’t forget to wink at them.  4) Ask them to put all the Christmas books and movies together in one place.  5) Ask them to go through their toy collection and put in a laundry basket everything that they don’t use so that they can donate it to charity.  6) Ask them to place all broken or parts of toys in a special box to make room for what Santa will bring them.   Kids (and adults) just want to be useful and kids’ currency is attention, they’ll do just about anything for attention–good or bad.  When they think they are contributing and getting your attention for helpful things they do, you’ll discover a side to Christmas you always knew would be there
• KEEP LUXURY TIME AND FUN ON YOUR PRIORITY LIST:  Every day schedule and do something that will enliven your Spirit.  (after all, it’s not called the “Rat Race of Christmas”…).   A warm cup of your favorite tea, a nap, saying NO to that extra load of laundry, looking for the morning star, smiling at yourself in the mirror.  Schedule some corn-y old fun: I guarantee you you’ll have memories that make you smile.  
• FENG SHUI TIPS:  
  ~ Keep the knives out of sight and remove the carving knives from dinner table; this will help keep arguments to a minimum.  
  ~ A round or oval dining table gives the best energy for an enjoyable dinner. 
  ~ Add something yellow or golden to the center of the table, place a beautiful saying underneath each chair (“I am healthy and happy, safe and loved.”)   
  ~ Limit the amount of red this holiday, focus on softness and gentle peace.  ~ Focus on you, your own place in the world and stepping up to be the best version of you.  There’s a lot of extra emotional fire energy flying around, opt for soft gold, glowing blues or rich greens.  I refer to Rick DiClemente’s Monthly Astro Report, which basically says: remove your blockages to your best self, get out and act on who you are and quell the terror inside you…be loving and be you.  Scroll down to your Sun Sign and to the daily  report and you’ll discover how you are being prodded to use the burst of revolution energy we are feeling lately. 
  ~  Allow for breathing room:  out with the old, in with the new (or newly loved and freshened).  When adding your decor or any gifts, remove whatever else you can.  Patty Kraemer, of Kraemer Connect suggests:  “one thing in, and two things out!”  Clear all last year’s clutter, donate all you can’t or don’t use, leave some things empty and open.  This will bring freshness and more light into your entertaining.
• WRITE YOUR WISH LIST:  Just because we are ‘grown-ups’ doesn’t mean the magic of Santa isn’t really there.  The metaphor of Santa is even more powerful as we understand that we always get what we are asking for.  There is no degree of difficulty for the Universal Life Force:  it can create a person as easily as a mountain, a planet and a Universe, so get on it and ask.  Make your list of what you want and put it away until next year…then check off all that you got!  I can be things, events, feelings, anything!    Be honest, don’t edit it, just ask! What would I love to do next year? What do I want to say at the end of  next year about how 2011 went for me?  What’s on your list?

 You are the expert in your life:  did you have fun?

 

Self-driving Cars May Save Lives

File this under Cool Stuff.  I haven’t yet seen this myself, but I will be looking for it.  In our modern world, we aren’t often vigilant about what’s around us, and these cars have a 360 degree programming that could save up to 1.2 million lives per year. 

According to a recent post by Sebastian Thrun, Distinguished Software Engineer from Google, these self-driving cars have already logged over 140,000 miles (225,000 km). 

Here are two articles about Google’s still experimental vehicle, the first is by Sebastian Thrun and the second posted on Scienceray.com:

“What we’re driving at  posted 10/09/2010 12:00:00 PM

“Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.

“So we have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves. Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.

“Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.

“To develop this technology, we gathered some of the very best engineers from the DARPA Challenges, a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. Government. Chris Urmson was the technical team leader of the CMU team that won the 2007 Urban Challenge. Mike Montemerlo was the software lead for the Stanford team that won the 2005 Grand Challenge. Also on the team is Anthony Levandowski, who built the world’s first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge, and who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside. The work of these and other engineers on the team is on display in the National Museum of American History.

“Safety has been our first priority in this project. Our cars are never unmanned. We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control. And we also have a trained software operator in the passenger seat to monitor the software. Any test begins by sending out a driver in a conventionally driven car to map the route and road conditions. By mapping features like lane markers and traffic signs, the software in the car becomes familiar with the environment and its characteristics in advance. And we’ve briefed local police on our work.

“According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.

“We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today. While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting.

Posted by Sebastian Thrun, Distinguished Software Engineer”

The following post can be found at http://scienceray.com/technology/googles-self-driving-car/ published by BluSphere.

“Self-propelled cars may sound like something from the future, but that is no longer true.

“Self-propelled cars may sound like something from the future, but that is no longer true. In October, Google revealed that they had actually developed technology for cars to drive entirely on their own.

“The cars are using video cameras, radar sensors and laser rangefinders to “see” traffic. They’ve also got a detailed map for navigating the streets. Google claims that the cars have already traveled more than 225,000 kilometers.

“LytLæs fonetiskGoogle’s self-propelled car is basically driven by a combination of a video camera on the car roof, GPS, WiFi, radar sensors and a laser rangefinder.
 
“The external apparatus records are then sent down to the car’s software, which processes data and gets the car to navigate the traffic such as San Francisco’s hilly streets and out on the town’s landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge.
 
“The route is planned in advance and cars drive up to the speed limit, which is pre-loaded in the car’s database before departure. The car’s driving style can be adjusted to suit individual requirements from “prudent” to “aggressive” where one of the differences is how the car takes initiatives in traffic.
“Google says to The New York Times that the driverless cars have only been exposed to a single accident which happened when a driver drove into the driverless car that didn’t move in front of a red light.
 
“Google’s ambitious project is done to increase safety on the streets where a total of 1.2 million people worldwide last year died in accidents.
 
“The man behind the self-propelled cars, the 43-year-old software professor “Sebastian Thrun” from Google, expects that the self-propelled cars are able to take away half of the number of accidents in traffic because the propelled cars (with their 360 degree viewing angle) are able to get more information and take better decisions than humans in the traffic. However, one shouldn’t expect to see any of these self-propelled cars on the streets in the coming future. Google admits that the “self-propelled car” is still at the “experimental stage”.
Read more: http://scienceray.com/technology/googles-self-driving-car/#ixzz15Ig8P6yt

Home “Selling” Colors

Selling a home? The idea is to make it feel fresh and it’s also important that the home you are selling no longer looks like it belongs to you.   It needs to look like a place where the new buyers can imagine seeing themselves and their favorite furnishings.  Think neutral, think beige.  You may be saying beige-smeige and yes it may be boring, but keep in mind your end goal is a sale.

A fresh coat of ‘real estate beige’ will actually help to create a clean slate of energy, allowing the new owner feel as though it’s fresh and new, just waiting for the new experiences to begin.

This soft subtle palette is perfect for selling a home. Notice how all the pieces work together to create a clean and generic feel.

There are many factors involved with making a sale, and Home Stagers know, you can add thousands, if not tens of thousands to your bottom line with a little effort and the right colors.

Colors are tied to dollars, demographics and education level.  Folks who are used to living with higher priced items and homes are used to deeper, more “complex” colors.  Use a bit darker colors to give the home a higher-priced feel.

Soft, muted tones rather than those that are termed “clean” (mixed with white) will appeal to the broadest audience regardless of the depth of the color and won’t make your existing furnishings look dirty (by contrast against the brighter white-based colors).

Beige:  For higher priced homes, you can deeper colors like PPG Pittsburgh & Porter’s Atmospheric Colloection’s ATC-49 Foggy Beach, or Pony Tail 315-4 or Golden Ecru 316-4, or Applesauce Cake 316-5 and be sure to paint your ceilings and trim at least 1/3 of the tint color of the wall color for an upgraded, decorated feel.  For homes in a lower price range, going lighter on the beige is a good idea, something like Morocco Sand or even 314-2 Heavy Cream.

Avoid grey. Try to stay away from grey tones when you are selling a home, unless they work well with your lighting (lots of sunshine and limited Northern exposure) and if they work well with what you won’t be changing out: carpeting, tiles, counters, etc.  Those greys can sometimes be interpreted as dirty and that would be a no go for a buyer.

The goal is to erase your presence, so it looks like a canvas that the new buyer can paint their new life into.  For more tips on selling your home, stay posted here.

Colors and Their Energies

Colors:  Very Fun and Very Important Stuff

Color is light refelcted back to us. That light is actually medicine to us.  More than mere Color Psychology, color and design influence and drive behaviour. 

Red   The energy of Red is exuberant, advancing and activating.  In Feng Shui Red is associated with fire, outward expansion,  networking, clarifying, and brilliant.  It is the color of Life Force in China and considered the luckiest color.   Other associations are  Wealth, Health, and Happiness, also with Summer, Fame and Reputation.   Red is used to activate spaces and therefore aspects of your life.    

Red is the color associated with our physical body’s own connection to Life, besides being the color of oxygenated blood, it is associated with our electromagnetic system called Chakras.  Red is the color frequency of our Base Chakra, that energy vortex within our bodies at the base of our spine that keeps us connected to Life, the Planet, and helps us survive so we can Thrive…so you can probably see the association of Red with Life, appetite and movement.

[Our own electromagnetic field is made up of energy vortices called Chakras;  we have 8 major energy vortices that run along our spines at the junctures of our major neural plexi.  Each Chakra regulates certain energies in our lives...remember that everything is interconnected.]  

When to use Red:   Use Red when you want increase activity, get things moving, increase passion, action or get noticed. 

Use Caution though, Red is like a dash of tabasco, it can turn up the volume on your life.   For instance:  Red in a bedroom may increase passion but passion also includes arguments and tension. (Try adding a bit of warm rich pink instead, and you don’t even have to see it, place a little pink color under your bed for some reconnection and romance.) 

Red in a dining room can increase appetite and digestion, but if you or guests start to argue or feel hypertensive, it will be time to decrease the amount of red or move to another room for dessert. 

There are two healthy ways to use red:  a small quantity of color or small quantity of time spent with the color.  Just a little in a room, or a lot in room you spend a little time, will serve you better. 

Orange  Orange is the most socially oriented color and associated with Fire and Earth Energy, being a mix of Red and Yellow, a mix of expansive lifeforce and the gathering, social and happy energy of Yellow.  Orange is also the vibrational color associated with our Second Chakra, the energy vortex within our bodies that regulate our sexuality, tribal associations and our ability to play. 

Caution for Orange: The Chinese call the pastel version of Orange Peach Blossom Love…the reason?  Peach is a color that can change your energy to attract a mate but the Caution is:  if you are married, stay away from peach, it can cause either mate to look outside the marriage for some extra-curricular fun.   

 

Yellow   The Happiest color on the planet, the color that will draw out attention first, stimulates digestion and in the pastel form is good for stimulating mental activity. 

 

Caution:  It is also the most difficult to get right, in just the right amount or just the right saturation.    Too much Yellow for too long can be similar to being around a ‘way-too-happy cheerleader’…you know the experience.  It can quickly turn us into crabby people, overstimulate digestion, make us too detail oriented, or just have us rushing from the room.   It is associated with our Third Chakra center that governs our digestion and mental process, our will and determination, so if you just don’t have the ‘stomach’ for something you might need a little yellow to center yourself and get back on your feet.

Green  The most healing color of the spectrum, Green is associated with Health and our Heart Chakra.  Thomas Jefferson painted the floor of his foyer in beautiful summer-grass green for that very reason, the healing nature of the color itself. 

In Feng Shui, Green is associated with Growth, with Health (inherited from our family’s eating, thinking and living habits) and is upward moving energy.  It stimulates independence and ideas, being akin to the energy of Spring shoots rising from the depth of Winter:  try to hold those little plants down and you’ll get the idea of Green’s rising energy. 

Caution:  If you want a warm and nourishing relationship, do not use green or light blue in your bedroom, as green and light blue are independent colors and may be seen as restful because it allows us to focus on ourselves and our relationship to nature. 

Blue  Light blue is the color of Vision and in Feng Shui the Color of Air and energy of Tree and not Water Energy(See Black).  The effect of blue is idealism, vision, trust, and is associated with the area of our homes that governs Abundance and Flow of Wealth called “Persistent wind”.   Very similar in effect to Green, it instills independence and idealistic thinking and its energy is upward moving.  Good for use in a bathroom, laundry room or even in bedrooms where someone might be too lethargic, overweight or need to have a boost toward independence.

Caution: Same energy as Green: If you want a warm and nourishing relationship, do not use green or light blue in your bedroom, as green and light blue are independent colors and may be seen as restful because it allows us to focus on ourselves and our relationship to nature. 

Brown, Tan and Beige  These colors are Earth energy colors and are grounding and nourishing colors.  Use these colors anywhere you want stability and warmth, but be certain to add other shapes and colors to balance tans and browns.

Caution:  An over abundance of Earth colors can cause weight gain, lethargy and depression.   Relieve that with a bit of light blue, light green to draw the energy upward, white will get the energy moving again. 

Black  Is associated with the Flow of Life, with Career and Journey, Spirituality and Emotion and is associated with Water energy.  In Chinese, the character for Water includes the character for ‘danger’ because going too deep into something can cause you to lose yourself, loose focus or forget there are other aspects to life to live.  Use black as an accent, or in place of Water energy that would remind you to flow with life and get in touch with your own Life’s Purpose.

Caution:  Be sure to balance black, especially if used in a kitchen, bath or bedroom.   In a kitchen, black will douse the fire of digestion, called Agni in Ayurveda unless held in check by the addition of some Fire energy (red or lots of light) or Wood energy (green or blue or plants).  Feng Shui says be careful about use of Black and too much Water energy in a bathroom, as it can actually increase the outflow abundance of the home and your life.   In a Bedroom, be sure to balance black you use as black sends us deep inside:  too deep could cause oversleeping, sleep hangovers or even emotional depression…if you have a hard time sleeping, introduce a little black into your room (reduce light to zero to sleep best).

White  White is associated with Metal energy:  purity, accountability, voice, harvest, mentors and travel.  In general it is movement and creativity.  White will make all things seem more intense, especially other colors in your home.   Too much white can be over stimulating and cause us to feel rigid…and has many different associations in various cultures, at the base of which is a pure, clean experience.  White is also the color of our Crown Chakra (energy vortex within our bodies) and one of our connections to our Spiritual Nature and one way Spiritual Life Force is distributed to our lower 6 Chakras and associated with Mentors, physical and spiritual, as well as travel and movement out into the world community.

Caution:   Don’t use White as your default color because you inherited a white house or are afraid to choose a color.  White should only be used with considered intention, as it will make everything seem more intense.  For instance, white holds all the vibrations of the spectrum, and unless your room has a tremendous amount of sunlight, you will be missing out on some very important color ‘medicine.’   Northern exposures especially need to have a bit of yellow added to the white, to round out the primarily grey or blue nature of the light coming into the room and into our lives.

If you have a question about a specific color, like purple, lavender, turquoise or pink, please leave a comment or send an email and I’ll be happy to help you use your colors to transform your life into one that you LOVE living every minute.

 

All my best,

Fawn

The Most Important Room in Your Life: Your Bedroom

 

Your Bedroom is the one room in your life that most affects your ability to be powerful, healthy, happy, and wealthy.

 

If this room is not perfectly lovely, restful and delicious, you are missing a great opportunity to live a joyous, juicy and rich life. 

This one room is where you spend most of your time, where your body needs to renew itself ,where you are most vulnerable, where you reconnect with yourself, Source and Significant Other and where you can have to biggest impact on your life.

Here are a few things that you can focus on to begin to correct the negatives and accentuate the positive. 

 

Note: Feng Shui means “wind water” but I always say it also means “it depends.”  Your home is a reflection of who you are and sometimes who we are is just fine the way it is.  If you are gloriously happy and healthy, don’t change a thing.  If you want something different, now is the time to see how Feng Shui can help you.

 

1. Clutter – clutter here will prevent good everything.  Remove everything that doesn’t make your heart calm and happy.  This is where it gets most challenging for us, but if you can be clear about only what it is that you need, you’ll actually sleep better, loose weight (if you want to) and have more time in your life.  See the Clutter Clearing Challenge (Week 1 Day 6) to learn just how to approach clearing this space and getting healthy.

 

2. What do you see when you enter the room?  this sets the tone for what you’ll experience.  Make sure it’s restful, beautiful and calming.

 

3. Power Position — Place your bed where you can see the door and the entire room.  Not under a window or between and window and door, and don’t have your feet pointing out the door.  If your bed must be next to a door, place something as a barrier between the door and your body, like a nightstand with a lamp. 

 

4.  Who’s with you and how do you honor that? Want to stay happily married or get married?  If you want an equal and joyful relationship, make sure both sides of the bed are equally accessible, have equally beautiful treatments and nightstands. 

 

5.  Photos and Artwork:  what is the subject of the art? Is it beautiful and restful?  Remove abstracts and photos with water.  (It depends:  if you have your electronics in your room or you are sleeping with your office, that might be your way of balancing energy…but it’s a stop gap measure that is not the best.]   Remove images with racing, rushing or fast moving energy.  Place images of what it is that you want to create in your life…romance, health, vacation, etc.

 

Here are a few more Feng Shui tips for your all around better life:

• Clear stuff from under your bed.
• Make the view of the bed and from the bed beautiful.
• Close the bathroom door and the bedroom door when you are sleeping.
• Remove the photos that are not restful and beautiful.
• Have only one (at most two) books per person in the room.
• Remove the laundry and hampers from the room.
• Cover, close or remove the TV, Computer, Exercise Eqt., Dog kennels, stored items, clothing (if you can) from your bedroom.
• Remove (or cover) the mirrors from your bedroom.  Mirrors activate and duplicate and are a very powerful Feng Shui ‘cure’; but they don’t belong in the bedroom.
• Make  your bed inviting and be sure you can get into bed without removing lots of pillows or things on your bed.  Simple is best for rest.
• Soft, non-patterned sheets are best for rest and rejuvenation.  Colors:  warm and rich “flesh-tones” will bring your closer to your romantic and grounded self; light green or blue are “cool” colors but will spark independence (not much romance).  Bright primary colors are a ‘please don’t’ because they will cause too much energy, for instance bright yellow has been shown to actually cause a colicky reaction in small children, making them cry a lot. [Stay posted for more Color information.]
• Smells?  Clearn, fresh scents are best.  For warmth and romance, try vanilla,  for rest and calm, use lavender.  Rose and Geranium are good for love and harmony (but only if you like them).
• Pillows?  Change your pillows (or clean them) frequently (at least once a year).  Use UV Wand to clear any allergens from your pillows in the meantime.
• Mattress:  if you are sleeping on the mattress from your old marriage, you are in trouble.  Change your mattress as often as you can.  If cost prohibits a swap right now, use the UV wand, and do a space clearing on it…then as soon as you can, buy a new mattress/box spring set.  Split box spring?  Danger for a happy marriage.  Cure?  Use a soft pink sheet over the box springs and under the mattress.  Place a heart-shaped rose quartz heart at heart level for both people (one each) underneath the mattress. 

These are just a few of the tips that you can use to begin to make your life healtheir and richer.  Remember this:  Feng Shui means “wind water” but it really means “it depends”.  Your home, your energy and your rooms are unique and unlike everyone elses in the world. 

What I write is a general overall good Feng Shui sense but there are usually circumstances that will change these recommendations. That’s the beauty of Feng Shui, it also means “Oh that’s easy, here’s how we can handle that…”

What’s wrong with that room?

First: It depends on who lives there, and there is a lot right with it but for a short answer: the floors look too slippery and bring in water energy that is not recommended in excess like this in a bedroom.

2) the ceiling fan creates disruption (sharp edges, shar chi, killing arrows, it can get scarier) it would be addressed in various ways,

3) there are more sharp arrows pointing down on the sleepers in the form of the tray ceiling which can cause discomfort and illness from the energy impact

4) art is of a single woman watching the bed–I am sure you can interpret that metaphor… Any questions or if you have similar issues, email me at fawn@fawnchang.com to arrange your own consultation.

Any questions?  Feel free to email fawn@fawnchang.com

Living in Earth’s Energy Grids

The Power of Place  

The Quality of Energy Impacts Our Lives

 

 

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” Frank Herbert

Before Benjamin Franklin performed his lightning experiment, the concept of electricity was unknown. Before Edison and the telephone or Marconi and the radio, or Marie Curie and the X-ray, no one understood that which we could not measure with instruments and control.  

 

While we know of the negative effects those x-rays had on Curie and how we’ve adapted to benefit from them, many of us are less ‘scientific’ about other energies and systems with which we live daily. 

 

Called by some “ley” lines, meridians or grids (even ‘Songlines’ by the Australian Aboriginal People) these electro-magnetic lines form a matrix around and through the planet and atomsphere.  The quality and energy of these lines is vitally important as living, working and sleeping on negatively ‘charged’ crossings has been documented to cause cancer, distortion and even death.  However, once the energy system [the smallest grid is approximately 2 x 2 meters] was addressed balance and health were restored to humans, animals and entire cities.  http://www.biogeometry.com/english/Research.php#Hemberg

 

Europe In the Know
On a flight from Calgary to Toronto recently, I had the pleasure of sitting next to an engineer from Switzerland who designs computer chips found in light-rail systems. It seems that Europeans are well aware of a science that I have been studying for quite some time called BioGeometry. Through the use of BioGeometry in design Europeans have been mitigating the negative effects of “Electrosmog” on their environments for years. 

 
The science of BioGeometry deals with the relationship between shape and energy. Essentially, everything in nature has shape and everything has energy and BioGeometry embraces the philosophy that certain shapes brings balance into energy fields. Energy, whether in our bodies, in our spaces, on our planet or just surrounding us, is always moving — from center to edge, back, around and through, from organ to organ through our bodies, from earth to sky, from place to place. That energy transmits frequencies that are amplified or minimized based on the quality of that energy and whether energy is flowing or stagnant.

Ancient and modern civilizations have cited their cities, monuments, roads, temples and themselves on Earth’s energy ‘power spots’: junctures of these energy meridians that, by the introduction of precisely engineered shapes of monuments or temples, would clear and amplify beneficial life energy into the population. This was similar to, for example, our modern day cell-phone towers with two major differences: the placement and frequency of the energy emitted. The process was sacred and although our spin on history may at times be inaccurate, it seems that as long as civilizations honored the frequency and flow of life on the planet, they remained prosperous, health and happy.*

As we continue to plop our roads, bridges, dams, cities, developments and homes upon the planet, we are mostly unaware of how to properly interface with the unseen energy matrix that feeds the planet and the negative effects that random placement is having on us, our health and our ecosystem. To look at it energetically, we are placing ourselves smack in the middle of rivers, lakes and streams of energy that are challenging our immune systems.

Back to Basics

With our need to return to basics and to trust the wisdom and intelligence of our bodies and our Earth, it is time to revisit and revamp our idea of place and placement.  Without relocating entire cities or even one tent, BioGeometry and Feng Shui offer opportunities to work with existing placement and manage and shift the energy frequencies around us with the introduction of shape, color and intentional design.  (Of course, sometimes just shifting -say your bed or chair-is the easiest answer but knowing where is the important piece.)

If you would like to know more about how to work in concert with the energy systems of the Earth and to shift the energy of your home or office toward health, harmony, wealth and happiness there are many options available. I am always here to help you as well.

BioGeometry
To learn more about BioGeometry and its effective use in Europe, go to www.BioGeometry.com    

Using Ancient methods of placement of shape, color and items, we are able to mitigate the negative impact of Earth’s stressed and polluted energies and clear those energies to flow cleanly through our lives. This science has the power to positively impact your lives, influence group dynamics and play a role in creating abundance. Contact me for a one-on-one consultation or with a group – with friends, co-workers or family.  I am delighted to assist you.

 

Feng Shui

Also known as “building biology,” this science addresses the effects of ‘sick building’ syndrome and its affect on those who live in these closed systems which drain human energy.  Go to http://buildingbiology.net    to find a practitioner near you.

 

BauBiology

BioDynamic Gardening
To make your garden grow and to have fresh organic, vegetables and herbs filled with glorious life force, investigate this type of organic farming and gardening system developed by Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s. Biodynamic farming takes into consideration both biological cycles and also “dynamic”-metaphysical [beyond physical]-aspects of the farm, with the intention of achieving balance between physical and non-physical realms.
Check out
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1980-01-01/Biodynamic-Gardening.aspx

To Do List — Chop Wood and Carry Water

Chop Wood Carry Water –Zen To-Do List

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning, I sat and prepared my ”To Do” list for today and what came out first was  “chop wood.”  Honestly.    (It starts out random and then I prioritize the list.)

 

Immediately, a Zen parable came to mind and I cheekily wrote on the next line:  “Carry Water.”  I smiled. 

 

 

Here’s the story:

 

A seeker asked his teacher:  “What do you do before enlightenment?”

Answer from the Sage:  “Chop Wood and Carry Water.”

Student:  “What do you do after enlightenment?”

Teacher:  “Chop Wood and Carry Water.’

 

I was never one to fully accept the banality of that answer and I learned why.  

There’s another way.  I am compelled, through my learning to add: 

 

After enlightenment? 

Chop Wood and Carry Water—And LOVE IT. 

 

That’s the difference: doing the same stuff but loving it changes you, changes the task, changes the world!  Love it, unabashedly.  Feeling your body, carrying water, chopping wood, driving, making dinner, phone calls, cleaning, selling, decorating, speaking, and Loving the moments, loving it! That’s the difference that will make the difference in your life.

 

I laughed because instant later I realized I had already taken a case of bottled water from my car into the house, HAH! Carried Water—check, done.  Did I love it?  Well, I didn’t hate it.  I’ll do it differently next time, in fact, right now, I’ll dial into that moment and Love it.  Send a bit of love back into the moment, into the water, appreciate the weight of it sloshing in the bottles, the dogs tripping me, the door needing to be opened.  Hah!  I love you all.

 

 

 

The other difference:

 

In earlier times, Chop Wood was done with a sharpened blade of some sort, hacking away with physical strength. 

 

Carry Water was a trip to the stream with a bucket or bowl. 

 

Carry Water is now filtered spring water in plastic, recyclable bottles.

 

Chop wood is now done with an electric chain saw.

 

I still love it.

 

 

 

 

 

What is on YOUR to-do list today?  How can you remember to do the mundane and banal things and bring new love to each “to-do” moment? 

 

Try this today:

From your To Do list, choose 1 thing that you can do to finish a past item, 1 thing that you can do to support your today, and 1 thing that you can do to support you in your future, your heart, or your relationship.  Then make the choice to feel what it feels like to LOVE the task, love the process, caress it, see it, hold it.  Finish it and let it go.  Thank it and check it off!

 

I am usually surprised at how much greater the results of my day become, how the return on my ‘investment’ is way over what I expected.

 

On to the rest of my to-do list!  I hope you love yours!

 

All my best,

 

Fawn

 

 

 

How to Stop Terrorism

How to Stop Terrorism

Do you remember where you were on 911?  Or remember how you felt when you heard of the recent attack in Mumbai on the Taj Hotel tourists? 

Why do I ask?

Because I have a secret for you.  A secret that is so painfully simple a solution to terrorism in our world that it could actually stop the clocks. But it’s not easy.

You see, terrorism isn’t just out there, isn’t just introduced with weapons or “foreign” looking and sounding people.  Terrorism lives inside of us…but how?

When I heard of 911, I was doing the pre-flight for another hour of flight instruction and got the news that we were grounded—then ‘hell broke loose.’   I got in my car and headed toward my children’s school.  In the days following the siege, as we tried to make sense of our new lives, I looked to see what was happening inside me to produce what I experienced on the outside. The question I asked:  How am I terrorizing myself?

Mumbai? I was numb.  I immediately made the mistake to associate the Taj Hotel in Mumbai with the Taj Mahal (which is in New Delhi) and (regardless of the detail accuracy, my intution asked me to question myself this: How am I numb to or assaulting the love I could be receiving? Do I honor love, am I receiving love? What is sacred in my life?  The questions opened the door for a dialogue I hadn’t considered, which was the point of healing a part of my own life and begin to stop terrorizing my own life.

What does this have to do with Feng Shui? 

Everything matters, even the smallest and seemingly insignificant detail:  your home is vital to peace in our world.

 Take a quiet and honest moment.  Ask yourself this deep and personal question:  How do I terrorize myself?  Where do I feel held and blocked and allow trauma and terror in my day and life?

Do you feel totally safe in your home, is everything working perfectly, can you express your opinions and fears, humor and beauty in complete abandon and support?  Do you love to come home? Does it reflect your joy and who you are?  Can you feel free to paint your walls any color you wish?  Do you terrorize yourself with rules, how-to’s, trend directives?  Where are you limiting your inner self? 

Recently a highly successful California developer sat next to me on an airplane and asked me:  “According to Feng Shui, where’s the best place to have sex?”—I couldn’t even answer him because when you have to have a rule like that, you are missing the point of life and love.

I am not the first to make this connection. 

If there be truth
In the heart, there will be
beauty in the character.

If there is beauty in the
Character, there will be
Harmony in the home.

If there is harmony in
the home, there will be
Order in the nation.

When there is order in
each nation, there will
be peace in the world.

(Ancient Chinese proverb)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You deserve to love yourself.

Here’s a passage sent to me by a dear friend, Kathy Graham.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  After you read it, I hope you are inspired to be nice to you:  feel happy, express yourself in your home kindly and clearly, listen deeply to those around you, forgive everything.   From Kathy:

“Sharing with you some words from the book, Telos, Volume 3 – Protocols of the Fifth Dimension, with thanks to Bunty Khanna for introducing me to this book:

“It is the allowing of self-compassion that moves you into the vibration of grace.  It is the fusion of the physical Earth with the etheric realms, of the merging of an awakened truth with the power of love that moves you into your mastery….

“When we speak of love, trust, faith, compassion, grace and gratitude, we do not speak of intellectual concepts.  Compassion is not an idea whose time has come.  Compassion is an energy that creates great oscillations in the fabric of your universe.  Grace is not a religious notion or promise, it is a palpable energy that can be witnessed and utilized in the world around you.  Faith and trust are not promises made or bargains to be kept.  They are the frequencies that power each breath that you take in the physical.  With each in-breath and out-breath your soul takes in the divine. Gratitude is not polite statements you are taught as children.  It is an energetic acknowledgment to the universe that you are in alignment with Source.  And love is not a romantic or religious exclamation.  Love is quite profoundly the energy that powers all of creation.” 

Mercury Retrograde: What it’s all about

RE:  The Miracle of Mercury Retrograde

Ready to review and renew?   Re-connect, re-establish, re-view:  “RE-” is the key for this month.  How good are you at ‘going with the flow’?  Watch these next few weeks and decide for yourself.

 

Mercury Retrograde is an astrological occurrence that I have followed for the last 20 years that is probably one of the most widely recognized and popularly dreaded astro occurrence.  

 

“Oh no, not Mercury Retrograde again…”

 I have found that the 3-4 times per year that the planet Mercury goes “retrograde’ can bring the re-turn of opportunities we think we may have missed, the re-turn of an old friend or re-connection to life’s purpose.  It’s all a matter of where you have set your ‘happiness meter’ as to how you will experience this weird phenomenon that lasts about 4 weeks.  [You may have noticed electronics doing weird things for the last few weeks, sometimes a strong planetary influence will amplify the effects…But not all Mercury Retrogrades are the same and this one has it’s own special flavor.  (check it out at www.Astrology.com)

 

All of this can be either good news or unpleasant experiences.  Personally, I have had more re-connection with old friends, lost articles, abandonded projects re-emerge, clients re-connect and more wonderful things happen during Mercury Retrograde. 

 

It seems like a time to loop back on all that we do, get clear about handling things that are hanging on preventing our movement forward and those things that love you come back to love you again.

 

What to notice:

• Missed communication:    re-state your understanding
• Missed appointments:   re-schedule or re-evaluate
• Electronics acting ‘weird’:  back-up your files, try to avoid buying a new electronic gadget, computer, phone, car, etc.  
• Phone tag & re-scheduling:  Relax, they are experiencing it too.

 

What to do:

• Re-lax, re-adjust, re-member peace
• Accept the gifts

 

What to know:

• Re-evaluate major purchases or electronics
• Re-evaluate contract signing (unless you want to redo it later, or re-gret signing)
• Re-lease old/negative ways of thinking, things that don’t serve you or make you happy.

 

 

For more information about what causes this rift and shift, visit http://www.astrologycom.com/mercret.html
 

Be gentle on yourself and those around you. 

Re-member: Just keep loving and

 

Row, Row, Row your boat,

Gently down the Stream,

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

Life is but a Dream.

 

Check out this video from Esther Hicks about The Stream in which we all live. 

 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTMx3LFCuPE&feature=related)

 

Put yourself in the Power Position

Put yourself in the

Power Position

You are the Master and Commander of your life.  With a little awareness, you can reclaim your rightful place in your own life without a mutiny.  

I call this the “Godfather” position.  When I watched the movie  The Godfather for the first time as a teenager, I was captivated and intrigued by the ceremony and care with which the “Wiseguys” set up a “sit down”.  The seating position of the Godfather Mobster was carefully chosen so that he was in command and safe.  A few years later, I discovered that was precisely what was described 5000 years ago in the ancient science of Feng Shui, I knew I was on to something powerful.  

Let’s see if you are in the power position:

Furthest in the room, with a full commanding view of the entire room and the entrance to the room, back to a wall (feeling protected, no one can sneak up on you) not in line of “fire” between two doors or a door and a window or two windows.  (The Godfather always had an emergency exit, but this is not something we’ll focus on here.)

The reason this is the first step is that when we feel safe and in control of our surroundings, we have seventy-five percent of the battle won.  Safety is the foundation for your ability to create your life and what A. Maslow calls the “Hierarchy of Human Needs” leading you to full self-actualization, meaning, living your highest joy creating your particular contribution to humanity in peace and love.  Sound too good to be true?  It’s your birthright and we need you to be wrapping your work in joy.

Place your desk or your chair so you can see the door, protect your back, and don’t be between two doors or windows. 

Not possible?  Here comes the mirror part of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of Feng Shui.

Place a mirror in front of you reflecting the space behind you.  A small mirror placed in this way will allow you to feel more in control.   Make sure that it is not reflecting a stack of work or a disgruntled co-worker: mirrors double what they reflect so be very careful when strategically placing your mirror.

 More Feng Shui Steps for Success:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy

Feng Shui Your Cubicle (or office, desk, car, etc.)

Hate your work?  Too tired to sleep?

Feng Shui Your Cubicle

(or Office, Desk or Car)

 

What if, with a few simple changes in your work environment, you could guarantee that you are more productive, more joyful, living your life’s purpose, healthier and wealthier?  Would you care? Would it be okay with you if things were easy and good things came to you?

There are two places that you spend nearly 2/3 of your life.  They are so powerful and affect you so directly that it can cause wealth or cause cancer.    You spend approximately 1/3 of your life in your bedroom and 1/3 of your day in your office (or at work).  Can you imagine sleeping so soundly and peacefully that when you awaken you are rested, healthy and excited to get out of bed each day. 

Imagine looking forward to being at work, surrounded by unconditional support, excitement, a ‘can do anything’ attitude that supports your life on purpose.  If you are not waking up joyful and excited to begin each day and head off to work, chances are your spaces aren’t supporting you and your passionate life. 

If you hate your work or are too tired to sleep, you are killing yourself and the answer to that problem may be simpler than you think.  Don’t worry about changing jobs or moving just now.  Make a few changes to your space and the solutions will present themselves, either you will begin to love your work, or ‘out of the blue’ another opportunity will come to you.  And before you can say “Bob’s your uncle,” you’ll begin to sleep better, deeper, feel healthier and more alive…if you are open to it.

Here are the steps:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy

The highest priority is to Be Happy.    That’s easier said than done and making simple shifts to your space can help get you to “happy” and completely change your life, if you let it.

Many businesses have regulations about how much “personal stuff” you can have in your cubicle.  Remember, it IS their business and they have contracted with you to help THEM.  It’s not necessarily a two-way street.  If you can realize that, you will once again own your power and ability to respond to yourself.   Employers need to maintain control and some use décor and let you know who’s running the ship.  Don’t fret.  You can still be in control of your life.

When you take a paycheck, you are making a deal: your time in exchange for an opportunity.  Once you get on board with that you can feel once again in control of your own life.  Compromising is okay as long as you are aware of when it’s too much and take steps to handle it.  If you feel like you are in slavery, you are giving up your will.  When you see that it is YOU who makes the choice to be in this job while you make plans for your next step, you own your own life once again.   Smile!

 

Office Feng Shui: Reduce Negative Influences

Office Feng Shui

Reduce negative influences

I’m talking about all of them.  From the garden variety nasty co-worker, the endless details that eat up your time and your soul, the boss who’s agenda is to make life miserable for everyone to the Feng Shui ‘poison arrows’, the electromagnetic draining that challenges your immune system, the endless barrage of mindless details separate you from Nature, your Spirit and your Soul.  Yik, I think I’ll go eat worms.

Physical negative influences:  here are a few big ones:

Clutter.  Clutter is one of our biggest drains on your vitality and profitability.  Your time, and how you spend it result in the product and the income you produce.  Begin right now to clear your clutter, organize your files.  If you find it difficult, ask for help.   Hire a professional organizer and you will save thousands of hours .  This includes emails:  turn off the email notification so that you can focus on one thing at a time and you’ll be more productive and happy.

Sharp desk corners, sharp wall edges:  these are called “sha ch’i” in Feng Shui and are likened to poison arrows shooting at you consistently.  Over time, they can cause physical illness and separation.  The colors and shapes around us actually create ‘shape caused waves’ for better or for worse and we can place these things in our environment to act as cancellations of the negative energy hitting us.   Place something between you and the sharp corner, soften it with plants, you can place artwork on either side of the corner, hang a tapestry or old-fashioned bell-pull over the corner.  Traditional Feng Shui cure for this is to hang a red ribbon down the corner or, depending on where the corner is located, hang round faceted crystal (small on a 9” red ribbon) from the ceiling between you and the corner. 

Fluorescent lighting will drain you.  Natural lighting will counteract this a bit, see my article on the negative effects of fluorescent lighting.   Art with scenes of nature will also help to counter balance this negative effect as will the color light blue.  Plants will help to mitigate the negatives, provide more oxygen in the room and add life but there is a caution:  make sure that the plants are always healthy and well cared for, no dried or dead plants. 

Negative emotional influences:

Deepak Chopra, MD, (one of my teachers) tells us that a toxic relationship is the most poisonous of all toxins in your environment.  Whether they are toxic clients, (How to Fire a Client) a boss, a partner or vendor, the relationships you have in business is energy that gets into your cells, your soul and your product.  The more quickly you handle this toxin, the more quickly you’ll open the space for healthy relationships to enter.

You needn’t initiate conflict to solve a problem. 

Intention

 Rather than a confrontation, you can solve a problem with intention.    Everything first begins on the energetic plane where thoughts are things.  Dr. Wayne Dyer reminds us that intention is the dynamic power of the universe.  At the start of your day set your intention to have a loving and peaceful day and that all negative and interfering influences will easily be directed away from you to their next highest good.   You can also use this phrase to diffuse an issue that you haven’t been able to solve, “I give this to the Light of God.  I fill myself and my space with the Love of God.” 

This won’t remove your responsibility to kindly and clearly set your boundaries and practically handle your job.  What it will do is allow you see the situation more clearly and have compassion for yourself and the other person.  The situation will resolve or disappear.  Is that okay with you?

Back it up with a physical cure:

Mirrors are very powerful items in Feng Shui.  With your intention, place a small flat or concave mirror facing away from you toward the offending person or thing.   As you place the mirror, use the phrase:  “Good luck with that Over There.”   (See the article on “What you send is What you get”).

More Feng Shui Steps for Success:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy

 

 

Bring in Healthy and Positive Ch’i

Bring in Healthy and Positive Ch’i

One quick way to bring in healing energy to your office or home, is to add some nature.  Nature is the ultimate healing machine.    It’s not easy to open a window and bring in the “outdoor open spaces” but you can still benefit from Nature’s bounty by adding beautiful natural scenes around you.  

Says Feng Shui:  a soft and gentle mountain range behind you, a wide and beautiful vista in front of you will bring healthy energy to your day.   However, don’t put the mountain in front of you or you might find you have a more difficult time of it, like having to scale a mountain every day.

If you can, put some healthy plants around you.  Silk plants are second best, plastic and dried arrangements are decaying ch’i—don’t use them.

Flowing water can help to sooth you, a clean and healthy fish tank or a fountain that is calming and flowing toward the center of the room, will have a positive effect on your health and profitability.  Make sure that the noise is not offensive to you or others around you.

As often as you can, take your breaks to get outside and/or meditate.  Even taking a moment to slowly breathe in, filling your belly with fresh air and breathe out, cleansing yourself of stress, tension and toxins, is a healthy alternative.   Any of this will provide a reconnection to bring you into alignment with your Life Force, re-ignite your creativity, help you focus and inspire your sacred work. 

Healthy energy in and around you will bring you success and happiness.  Nature shows us the power of the small to produce great wealth:  a thousand forests come from one little apple.  Your goodness is coming to you with each breath you take.

 

More Feng Shui Steps for Success:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy

“Hire the Heavens”: Invite Divine Assistance

“Hire the Heavens”
 Invite Divine Assistance

Here is a huge secret:  you have the ability to tap into the same energy that is working for the movers and shakers of your world, whomever that is.  Want to be a better musician?  Want to be a more savvy investor?  Would you like your own secretary,  time manager, a business manager, a mentor?

I first came across this information 10 years ago through Stuart Wilde.  In his book, Infinite Self, Stuart explains that the energy that inspired all the greatest people that ever walked the planet is still around and accessible in this moment.  The energy that inspired Solomon, Socrates, Aristotle, Einstein, Ben Franklin, The Pharoahs, you name it, is running through you now and it’s yours to claim for the asking.

Read Jean Slater’s book:  Hire the Heavens.  In it, Jean makes it easy to learn just how to tap into the resources you have waiting to serve you.  She tells you that you have an unlimited account to hire the best in the Universe, whatever and whoever you need to help you.  I have done this and it has made my life work in uncanny ways. 

For instance, I “hired” my committee and have meetings daily and weekly.  Do I sound certifiable?  Just listen:  on my heavenly Board of Directors I placed a time manager.  Since then, if accidently double book myself, if I have appointment slots open, if I need to meet a deadline, it always has resolved itself without my pushing or straining.  The double bookings?  One of them calls to reschedule at the last minute.   Doesn’t mean I can go brain dead about life, just that with awareness and request for Divine Assistance, things always work out.

I keep hearing stories about others using their “parking angels.”  I have been doing this for years and it really works.  The key:  calmly ask that you have a parking space exactly where you’d like it.  If it doesn’t work at first, don’t give up, just don’t forget to ask and soon you’ll be amazed.  I have also heard about “green light angels,”  “enough money Angels,”  the list goes on.  The point is, you have more support around you right now than you can imagine–so, get to imagining!

 

Here is an uncanny example:

One day in mid-May,  it was my turn to provide the snacks for my sons’ Varsity tennis match.  I gathered the items, packed them in the car and went to the field where I thought the match was.  As I pulled up, everything seemed just as I expected it and the Coach said, “Oh good, you got the email, I called but I had the wrong number and I was concerned that you wouldn’t have gotten the message that the match was at home and not away.”   All I could do was laugh!  In my  mind the match was ‘at home’ but it was originally scheduled as ‘away’ match.  I would have driven 40 miles out of my way, but my time manager was on it and rearranged the whole thing.  Dumb luck?  Oh sure.  But the point is:  it always works out like this now!  Try it!

 

More Feng Shui Steps for Success:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy

 

 

 

 

How to Be Happy

How to Be Happy

Want to ‘be happy’?  Well the trick is to find a way to feel happy.  If that made you nuts, just read on.  

If you have even one ear to the ground on the newest rumbling in the spiritual community, you will know that the key to manifesting whatever it is you want is to Be Happy.  

We are told that to wait for the outside to make us happy is to wait for a long, fruitless occupation.  Think about it, who would you rather be around, someone who is waiting for you to make them happy or someone who is just enjoying themselves, smiling and being “Happy.” 

Carol Tuttle, an amazing energy healer says we are living our lives backwards.  The current model is:  HAVE – DO – BE.   Explained:   “what do I HAVE to DO to BE happy, loved, healthy, wealthy, you fill in the blank. “ 

Carol says is that this is directly opposed to our birthright of freedom. 

We need to BE – DO – HAVE.     Be (happy, loved, healthy—feel it in all your cells) , then DO (what is put in front of us) and we will HAVE (whatever we want!)  That’s a universal guarantee. 

It’s the same as Jack Canfield (author of Success Principles and Chicken Soup for the Soul).  Jack tells of the power of acting “AS IF” you already have what it is that you say you are wanting.  His book, Success Principles, tells of a “Come as you Will Be” party where all the invitees prepared themselves to appear as they hoped they would in 5 years.   In five years time, nearly all of them had met those goals.

It’s the same as Esther Hick’s reminder that all we need to do is “let it in”…let in the goodness rather than acting like Ninja warriors fending off all the goodness the Universe is sending us.   Throwing Ninja stars of “but, can’t, shouldn’t” we can open our arms and breathe in the “of course,”  “I’m allowing it,” and if you can’t get to that then “just get off the subject all together” and think of something happy.

To help you Be Happy and act “As If”, set up your office and home to remind your subconscious of all that it is that you are creating.   Pictures and words, clarity and organization all put the feeling into your cells so that you become an attractor magnet for the situations you are wanting to live.

Can’t muster “Happy”?  Try Gratitude.  Then Appreciation. Then Love.

Feelings have frequencies and when you can hold a high frequency feeling, you are ‘vibrating’ at a level that will draw to you only good things.  To get to the highest frequency, which is love, may take some travel through feelings to get there. 

First try Gratitude.  Finding things to be thankful for will start to raise your frequency.  It may take a few minutes, but try it like this:  Well, the good news is:  then look for some good news.  It may be a simple as:  “The good news is I am still breathing.”  If even that’s not good news,  try a smile.  Then the good news will be “my face still works.”   When you find things to be grateful for, you begin to resonate the a much higher frequency of energy.  

It doesn’t mean that by being grateful you are giving in or giving up on yourself.  What it does mean is that you are now more powerful than you have been when you were hating.  You have risen to the level of self-determination and expansion.  It’s the grease that the Universe uses to move you to your next step.

Take it up a notch to appreciation and you’ll be at the highest frequency we can get to:  appreciation and love.  The frequency of love is a key that unlocks the treasure chest of what is available to you.   Just think of the most beautiful thing you can think of; try these:  a kitten,  a puppy,  a still night sky, aura borealis, the smell of fresh rain,  this song (Claire De Lune, by Debussy—my favorite).  Make it a habit to get to that space as often as you can and then while there, put your vision of your perfect life right in the middle of it.  You’ll be amazed because you’ll be meeting your heart’s desire in no time.

Each day you spend approximately 1/3 of it in your bedroom and 1/3 in your office.  Another 2 hours are spent in transit from place to place.  That leaves 5 to 6 hours to ‘do what you want to do’.  What if all 24 hours were spent renewing yourself and living the ‘doing what you want to do’?  Use a little Feng Shui wisdom and you will soon be enjoying your moments that stream into enjoying your days and enjoying your life.

 

More Feng Shui Steps for Success:

·        Put yourself in the power position.

·        Reduce negative influences

·        Bring in healthy and positive energy

·        Hire the Heavens: Invite Divine Assistance

·        Be happy