7 Feng Shui Tips to Spring Clean For Abundance

Leave a Comment

7fenghuitips_springcleaning

Spring is here and it’s the perfect time to clean out our offices and homes! In the ancient practices of Feng Shui there is a reverence for remaining connected to nature and flowing with the seasons. While you do some spring-cleaning, you may want to think of ways to spend more time outside in the months to come, to really harness the energy and greatness of the seasonal switch.

Here are a seven Feng Shui inspired tips that can help you create the foundation for a season of real abundance:

  1. De-clutter: Clearing out the clutter in your home, office, car and any other space in your life is always a good idea. But in spring, focus your efforts on what you need to clear away in order to feel more active. Bring your workout gear front and center in your closet, along with brighter colors if you really want to embrace the rebirth of the season. Deep cleaning the whole kitchen–particularly the refrigerator–will somewhat strangely make you feel incredible. It’s a great prosperity Feng Shui tips too!
  2. Clean under things: We all have dust. That dust creates stagnation. Stagnation is the opposite of flow and circulation. Flow and circulation bring health and prosperity. Cleansing under things thoroughly–your sofa, your bed…even the oven and fridge–will open up any stagnant energy and get the flow going. This action will help you to open up stuck areas of your own life as well, so embrace it!
  3. Wash your windows: Another area of cleaning neglect for many. Washing the windows gives you a fresh perspective on life. While you’re at it, pop out your blinds if you have them and wash them in your tub. Toss curtains in the laundry or dry-clean them. You’ll be astonished by the difference this makes in your home, particularly if you open your windows often.
  4. Welcome new ideas: Look through the bookshelves and see if you can donate or gift some books to friends or a charity. This action will allow fresh ideas to come into your life this season.
  5. Practice cash shui: Polish the flow of your finances. Spring is the season of action, and you want to be sure that action doesn’t come at the expense of your prosperity. Beyond rooting through your files, think about a few ways to organize, invest or save money. A budget, a visit to your money manager, some accounting software or simply deciding to live using only cash to buy things (a very effective strategy for people who impulse buy with credit cards) can make this a wealthier spring.
  6. Eat lemons and greens: Spring is the season of wood energy, and in Traditional Chinese Medicine, that correlates with the element of wood, the organ of the liver and sour (like lemon) tastes. Eat lots of greens to generate more wood energy, feel cleaner inside and be more radiant in your whole life. And, of course, start the day with some hot water and lemon. These are two basic habits that are brilliant for spring, and great year-round as well!
  7. Make your life online a bit more Zen: Internet space is another “environment” in which we live, so it also deserves some spring cleansing. Most people engage in quite a bit of social media time, not to mention online banking, photo storage, work files, one or many email accounts and much more. Freshen up your online profiles pages: add some new pictures, color and personality. Go through your digital photos and organize them in a friendly fashion. Same for your emails and phone contacts.

And for every season, I like to set a seasonal intention. Whether it’s growing an herb garden, mastering Easter egg artistry or perfecting my golf swing, these personal, seasonal wishes make every season more fun to look forward to. And it’s a great way to signal the changes in your life throughout the year!

Is It Possible to Love Two People at Once?

Leave a Comment

FengShuiLove

Houses talk to me. Yes I have both oars in the water and I’m playing with a full deck. The houses that I Feng Shui end up communicating with me. It’s sort of like being a “house whisperer.” Some houses become quite chatty and others get downright nasty.

Last month in Scottsdale I met a house that was a real screamer.

Everything, it seemed, was grouped into “three’s.” Three pillows on the couch; three paintings over the fireplace; three cookie jars in the kitchen; three candles on the table etc.

When I asked the owner if she was in a triangle relationship she looked at me like I was a carnival side-show freak but finally admitted she was in love with two people at the same time.

I reminded her of a few examples in literature; The Phantom of the Opera, Wuthering Heights, and who could ever forget Sex in the City when Carrie Bradshaw was in love with Big and Aidan (I never did figure out who to root for in that one). Books and movies feature love triangles because lots of us can relate to having feelings for two different people at the same time. But is it actually possible to love two people at once?

“The answer is a resounding yes,” says Debra Silverman, a psychotherapist for over 35 years in Boulder, Colorado. “Of course we can love two people at the same time. Love is not jealous, humans are.”

I agree and here’s my stab: humans will always push boundaries, explore, and devise new ways to connect with each other emotionally and sexually. And because we are complex beings it is possible that two people can appeal to us as we grow and develop. Naturally we might be drawn to people who complement different aspects of who we are.

It’s possible to love two people at once because you can love them in different ways. Each relationship between two people is absolutely unique. There’s no way to love anyone the same. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out in you.

Physical touch is not required because we fall in love with their courage, intelligence, passion, sincerity and the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit. They remind us of every good day we’ve ever had. Every summer spent in grass. Every sunrise. Every sunset. They feel like home. And when they speak, it’s like someone slowing plucking the stings of a guitar, a sadly beautiful song, all their own.

Relationships are always a spiritual practice because love has a part to play in the destiny of every soul. There is a path at the heart of each love connection; each has its own karmic blueprint. God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time.

To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years.

Love is measured in its effects, how it transformed you, not how long it lasted. Sometimes the longest connections yield very little growth, while the briefest of encounters have the ability to change your life.

Real connections never die; they may go to a secret place, stay there warm and all curled up. They can be buried or ignored or walked away from but never broken. If you’ve deeply resonated with another person, the connection remains despite any distance, time, situation, lack of presence, or circumstance. Real connections live on because they live inside of us.

But this concept may or may not be the raison d’etre for all couples. When I asked my husband he said, “Sure, you can love two people at the same time, anything is possible.” His response makes me think… I may want to listen to my own house.

[Tweet “Is It Possible to Love Two People at Once?”]

Welcome 2016 with Good Feng Shui!

Leave a Comment

redfiremonkeyHappy 2016! This year already feels magical to me and I am busy planting seeds for the future.

As you know, Feng Shui is about energy – its flow – or lack of it and its reflection in the quality of your life. Since everything is energy, that means your home and office are composed of endless energy fields. This is the perfect time to undergo a thorough cleaning and to clear 2015, physically and mentally.

Here are a five of easy things to do to kick off 2016:

  1. Clear Your Clutter for Good Feng Shui – repurpose anything that does not bring you joy. This helps the energy flow through out your home. And if something is broken, get rid of it. Broken items cut the “chi” or energy in our space.
  2. Bring in Light and Air – open the windows – even if it’s cold- to help bring in the fresh air of 2016. Allow as much natural light in your home as possible. Bring in plants to help purify the air.
  3. Be mindful of the Feng Shui “trinity” – your bedroom, your bathroom and your kitchen are deeply connected to your health. Make sure these rooms are free of clutter and have the five elements represented – air, water, earth, wood and metal.
  4. Bring more love into your life – make sure your bedroom is free of photos of your family and has an abundance of photos of you and your partner. No work allowed in the bedroom! Have two nightstands, one on each side of the bed and have a headboard in order to maintain a supportive relationship.
  5. Create a Strong Front Door -It doesn’t need to be red but the area needs to be free of clutter and clean. You must use your front door daily in order to honor the “mouth of the dragon.”

Just Do You

Leave a Comment

 

“A new you can still emerge from the old you.” Bamigboye Olurotimi

As we round the last corner and 2016 begins to come into focus many of you might be thinking about making new years resolutions and changing. I have a suggestion for 2016 – just do you.

The earliest recorded festivities in honor of New Year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. The Babylonians marked the occasion with a massive religious festival and made promises to their gods at the start of each year. Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake, Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future, and to whom the Romans made promises to at the beginning of each year.

Millennia’s later we are collectively still making the same empty promises to change. But in every moment of every day, we’re changing and evolving and growing. In every moment, we’re reconstructing our identity. We’re not defined by our decisions from two years ago. We’re not even defined by our decisions from two minutes ago. We’re defined by whom we choose to be in this very moment. We have this myth of identity — that who we are is the summation of a lot of choices we made in the past. That we’ve got a map for the life we’re supposed to lead, and we’ve got to stick to it. But that’s assuming that we’re all static beings, and that’s not how people work. We’ll never be “figured out.” Over the course of our lives, we’ll constantly be transforming into a more and more authentic version of ourselves.

Each of us is rare. Being unique is the spirit that already resides in us, the inner intention, primary style and way of being that makes us true individuals regardless, of the pressure to conform to temporary social patterns and contemporary cultural fashions. At the individual level, each person is here to give something that is not just unusual, not only exceptional, but that is distinctive and divine.

This year I hope you find moments of peace and your inner uniqueness for life aspires you to do meaningful work and discover genuine purpose. That you have the courage to undertake the seemingly impossible tasks of transforming culture and helping to heal the world. Not because the world can be saved or redeemed in a hurry, but because it is the impossibility of the great problems and projects of life that awakens the sleeping uniqueness within and changes work from a simple job to a life-long, life-enhancing project. And that serves the dignity and nobility of one’s soul as well as the well-being of one’s community. I hope you experience good health, that you are kissed by fortune, treated kindly by fate, that you jump high, and fall slowly, and that all your landings are gentle. But mostly I hope that you are encouraged to recognize and embrace your inner and exceptional uniqueness.

Piano Playing As a Spiritual Practice

Leave a Comment

 

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~ Wassily Kandinsky

I don’t think I can say, yet, that I play the piano, but I’ve been meeting with one everyday for almost a year, just late at night, or first thing in the morning. I’ve been learning to follow its notes up and down the scales and I’ve been going through the short pieces in several exercise books. It’s not long before the left and right hand are asked to work at different rhythms and to make surprising steps and rests. And it’s not clear where to look. If I look too closely at the notes, everything slows down and I’ve lost the meter. If I watch one hand too intently, the other one wanders off. So I try to look on from afar, dispassionately, just enough to discern the patterns on the sheet and the shapes that my fingers make as they nearly strike the correct notes. Using this method, I have managed to get through the first few pieces in my piano books. I’ve played them hundreds of times now, inscribing little minuet memories into my muscles. I try to get out of the way so that they can take over while I listen along. Of course I can hear it when something goes wrong but it’s been interesting to find that the wrong note feels wrong to the finger as well.

When my fingers have woven together a passing musical likeness, I move on to the next piece. Immediately the baroque threads get tangled up. Notes ring out in strange clusters and at such a glacial pace that it reminds me a bit of nails on a chalkboard. Over and over, I retrace my steps, trying to find the path out of this woeful, accidental modernism. At the rate I am going there is little hope that I will ever become a very good pianist but this doesn’t bother me. It’s fun to be a beginner, every day, unsure of when and how the music will come.

Something I didn’t expect from the relationship I have with my piano is that outer music is leading to inner music in me. Playing the piano is turning into a spiritual practice.

Like any spiritual practice I have the help of a guru, my teacher Sebastian Estrada. And like any spiritual practice piano playing requires discipline. After hours and hours of practice I’ve reached a moment when the motion of my fingers across the keyboard is actually pleasurable, regardless of the sound. And then something else happens: there’s the sense that the music is playing me, rather than me playing the music.

Professional musicians must have this sense all the time, the very best concert performers becoming translucent to the music that they play. Perhaps this explains how they play large chunks of music, involving possibly millions of notes, by memory. It’s not that they memorize it bar by bar. Rather, they know the music so well that the notes could not go in any other place.

Is that a spiritual experience? Perhaps in this sense: musicians give themselves, via the discipline, to a communication that is far greater than themselves. The source of the music lies elsewhere – in the mind of the composer. But nonetheless, without the discipline and skill of the musician, the music could not be realized, could not be incarnated.

Piano playing takes you out of yourself too. Therein lies much of its satisfaction. And there’s one final aspect to it as a spiritual practice that occurred to me. It has to do with love.

Love is like playing a piano. First you must learn how to play by the rules, and then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. The same could be said for finding God.

Michelle Cromer