Spiritual Balance

7 Ways to Bring Harmony into your Home and Life with Feng Shui

Michelle Cromer July 19, 2021 Leave a Comment

Harmony and Feng Shui I recently was asked a question about how to bring harmony and balance into the home.

If you take a moment and think about both harmony and balance, they are actually very different. If you are striving to have balance in your life, then by the definition, you will have to ease up on something or give it up to bring your life in balance. In the end, you might not be fulfilled by having to give something up that brought you some pleasure in life.

Granted, if what you had to give up was causing you or those around you pain, then it’s understandable.

While many of us say that we want to have balance in life, do we really want to have something always pulling on us? This leads us to harmony.

Life is full of challenges and we face them every day in our marriages, our friendships, and in our professional lives. Learning to work through these challenges and not letting them overwhelm us by accepting and understanding them and by working through them and eventually embracing them, we can have a more fulfilling life.

At the same time, embracing the good things that come to you in life and taking advantage of these moments will make life that much more enjoyable.

Here are 7 ways to bring harmony into your home and life:

Clear the entryway: If there is a space in your home that must be free of clutter it is your front door. If you block the chi it can lead to blocked opportunities.
Create harmony in the five elements: The five elements are – earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. Bring harmony to each room means having these five elements in each room.
Bring in plants: Plants are an easy way to bring nature into your home and bring harmony to any space.
Lighting: Well-lit spaces promote harmony. Natural light is best, but any well-lit home will promote positive chi.
Your bedroom: We spend more time in this room than in any of the other rooms in our homes. It is important to have a headboard for your bed to ensure your relationships are supported.
Pair up: Paired objects are believed to promote good harmony, fortune, and happiness.
Go outside on a daily basis: Nature heals us, and our health relies on our harmony with the elements. When we live in harmony with the earth, both the earth and its species thrive.

Good feng shui means being in harmony with nature, your environment, and your mind and soul.

Have any Feng Shui questions? Feel free to contact me at michelle@michellecromer.com and sign up for your Power Color or visit me on Facebook at Michelle Cromer Feng Shui.

Balancing Yin and Yang Through Foods

Michelle Cromer May 31, 2021 Leave a Comment

The ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang may sound obscure and difficult to understand for many of us living in the West. Yet when we understand a few basics about the yin and yang nature of foods we can achieve balance, which will help us with weight loss and cutting cravings.

“Yin and yang” is an ancient Chinese theory based on the perspective of continuous change and balance. For thousands of years, this theory has been integral to Chinese culture dating back to 700 B.C.E. The theory is that all things in the universe have an opposing force, and though they are opposing, they are very interconnected.

Everything contains yin and yang; they cannot exist without the other because they are never separate. For example: above and below; left and right; fire and water; energy and matter; and day and night form a yin and yang pair; day is yang and yin is night. Day looks different from night, yet it is impossible to have one without the other. Both create a totality, a complete whole.

According to this philosophy, good health is a state where opposing energies of yin and yang are balanced in the body. Each food has its own yin and yang force and can be said to be an energy in itself that influences the mind toward more expansive or contractive tendencies. Eating too much of either yin or yang foods can upset the body balance or help with the body balance. A person that is quick to anger has too much yang energy and can balance this disposition with yin foods such as green tea. The nature of yin is relaxing and cooling.

Sometimes when eating very yin food, we may crave some yang foods to balance. Wine, which is yin, balances cheese, which is yang. Beer, which is yin, balances salty pretzels, which are yang. Alcohol, which is yin, balances meat, which is yang. If a diet is too far to one side, it may stimulate cravings of foods from the other extreme in an attempt to achieve some balance. If one extreme yang food is eliminated from the diet, oftentimes it is best to eliminate an extreme yin food to maintain balance. So, if we give up beer, we may maintain the balance better if we also give up pretzels.

We already know how to make this yin and yang balance by eating certain foods instinctively. When the weather is cold, we naturally crave some nice and warm comfort food such as soup or stew. While on a hot and humid day, a chilled drink or cold salad would be our natural choice.

Sugar, alcohol, and caffeine are on the extreme yin end of the spectrum, which has a strong effect on our bodies. Salt, eggs, cheese, and meat are on the opposite end, categorized as extreme yang foods. When eating these extreme foods, our body naturally tries to make a balance by eating the opposite foods, which are also called cravings.

The best strategy is to eat a balanced daily diet, namely whole grains and vegetables that are grown locally and are in season, and other plant-based whole foods, as much as possible, instead of seesawing between strong or extreme yin or yang foods such as meat and sugar.

This philosophy is not just about nutrients and counting calories. And this unique approach, practiced for many centuries in East Asia, has helped many thousands of people improve their health, and even recover from difficult health conditions. So I encourage you to use this yin and yang perspective in your daily food choice to achieve your health and equilibrium.

When our yin and yang energies are balanced, we feel good not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually.

Common yin foods include:

soy products, such as tofu and soybean sprouts
certain meats, such as crab and duck
fruit, such as watermelon and star fruit
vegetables, such as watercress, cucumbers, carrots, and cabbage
cold drinks and water

Common yang foods include:

foods that are high in fat, protein, calories, and sodium
certain meats, such as chicken, pork, and beef
warm spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger
eggs, glutinous rice, sesame oil, bamboo, and mushrooms

Have any Feng Shui questions? Feel free to contact me at michelle@michellecromer.com and sign up for your Power Color or visit me on Facebook at Michelle Cromer Feng Shui.

Michelle Cromer March 14, 2020 Leave a Comment

Most of my life has been spent divided from my spiritual self, until one day, feeling hollow and adrift, I began my spiritual search. My search began obsessively, expensively, and I treated this sacred event like I was going after a new client. Like most of us, I was used to immediate answers in our fast-paced world of eating and running and instant computer search engine information. I calculated this spiritual search would take me less than six months.

Almost three years later I had trekked Tibet, run from rabid dogs in Kathmandu, had an audience with a Curandera in Peru who spit in my hair three times, had a vision quest with a Native American Indian in Sedona, saw dead people in Lily Dale, NY, had my palms interpreted by a former nun in Chicago, had life-altering visions with a shaman in Mexico. I had a past life regression, my aura tuned, my chakras aligned, my spirit guides channeled, my Kundalini awakened. I prayed in churches, temples, cathedrals, mosques, Mayan festivals, and l always, always on rickety buses, especially in India.

I made my spiritual quest my absolute focus and in doing so, ignored my friends, family, and husband, and almost lost my marriage. I was completely obsessed and spun out of spiritual control.

In a society engaged toward overindulgence, it can be difficult to attain balance in our spiritual lives – let alone the rest of our lives. An unbalanced spiritual life has the potential to spread disharmony into the remaining areas of our lives, no matter how governed they might be.

Just as our health and well-being hinge upon balanced nutritional habits, our spiritual patterns must be in balance to boost complete harmony through every area of our lives. Harmony is about finding our sweet spot and being okay with it. Anyone who has ever achieved true harmony can attest to how incredible it feels. One feels on purpose. Time stops. Brilliance surfaces. One thrives. Maintaining harmony is the guide for helping us make choices that will bring the highest levels of fulfillment.

How do spiritual practices get unbalanced? When we spend either insufficient or immoderate time involved in spiritual quests as I did.

Today I find spiritual balance attainable when I follow some simple suggestions.

Be content to be on a journey. One of the reasons people get swept off by their spiritual practices is because they experience an imperative motive to “arrive there” – the place where they will find content and sated spiritually. An authentic spiritual seeker will not arrive anywhere. The point is to enlist in a lifelong process of development and growth. Keeping this in mind may help us feel better about decompressing because there is nothing to rush towards – we are already at that place, smack-dab in the middle of the formula, which is precisely where we want to be.

Spiritual knowledge solely is not sufficient. As beneficial as it can feel to at last be engaged in our spiritual self, we also need to fortify and systematically reinforce the other connections in our lives.

Maintain spiritual balance by spending time with the ones we love, and build friendships outside of our spiritual circle. Don’t worry if your friends and family don’t share the same spiritual beliefs, most of mine don’t and we still manage to have zany and meaningful times.

Less is more. Instead of trying to absorb heavy quantities of spiritual knowledge in a brief time period, make it a target, to begin with, bite-sized pieces.

Relish spiritual wisdom and insights like they were made up of pieces of delicious chocolate. Allow them to hang around on the tongue (in our mind and spirit). Take your time absorbing them. Just like consuming a meal, we will savor the knowledge we acquire much more whenever time is spent absorbing it instead of gobbling it down so quickly that it cannot be tasted or enjoyed.

The longer we continue on a spiritual path, the more at ease and balanced we will become. Try something different this year and keep the balance between the spiritual self and the rest of our life.

Have any Feng Shui questions? Feel free to contact me at michelle@michellecromer.com and sign up for your Power Color. Visit me on Facebook at Michelle Cromer Feng Shui.

Autumn Equinox a Time for Beginnings

Michelle Cromer September 2, 2018 Leave a Comment

I love the fall – chilly weather, cashmere sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, my birthday, bugs have returned to hell where they belong and we have the fall equinox! The fall equinox September 22, 2018, has been celebrated since the time of the Egyptians who built the great Sphinx to point towards the sun on this special day. While many of us have moved away from celebrating this time like our ancestors, it is an important time of balance. During this time of equal parts of sun and moon, we are being asked to find the balance happening in our exterior world, and also what is occurring within ourselves. Knowing that the duality of light and dark exists in us, the equinox calls us to discover a balance between the two. After the great light of summer, we must learn to welcome the depth and the mystery of fall.

The autumnal equinox is the time when the sun makes its golden path across the equator from North to South, and it is this occurrence that causes our day and our night to be equal. The word equinox comes from the Latin, aequi, meaning “equal,” and nox meaning “night.”

At the spring equinox, we were asked to plant seeds, both literally and figuratively, for what we want to reap in the autumn. Now is the time to contemplate and see if we have tended those seeds. Are we able to reap what we have sown with bounty and fruitfulness? Or have we neglected those seeds and are we now looking at how we can make amends?

Although it can be disappointing if we realize the latter is true, equinox makes it easy for us to once again plant the seeds of desire so that they may flourish in the coming months. Because the equinox isn’t only about balance, but also about endings that have to occur to make way for new beginnings. This is actually a wonderful time to start something new, whether it’s a job, educational pursuit, creative endeavor, project or even a relationship. During the coming months we will have long nights and quiet moments with which to nurture these new beginnings so that, come spring, they can bloom radiantly.

While many often see spring as a time of new beginnings, there is something even more extraordinary about starting something new in the fall. It is during this season and the coming winter that we have more time to concentrate and give our hearts to whatever we want to see grow and strengthen over the coming months. I find that there is beauty in new beginnings that start quietly under the darkness of colder months.

So while we are all searching for that balance in our own lives, know that it is never too late to plant new seeds. Because life is a circle, and nothing can truly grow unless it first dies. This doesn’t mean complete and utter endings, but embracing the evolution of change within our hearts, our lives and us. It’s letting go of old ways of thinking and living. It’s reassessing the way in which we look at life so that we can feel free to take on new approaches that would better serve our highest self and the life that we want.
Nothing stays the same forever, what comes next is often times better than we can possibly imagine.

Celebrate the equinox by heading out to the desert or out into the woods for a warming bonfire. I am traveling to Mount Shasta, California with my friends Laurel and Tim. We are using this equinox as the opening of a portal to the next stage of our lives. Join us as we raise a glass, build a fire, write a list of all that we have been blessed with, burn words we would like to let go of, and finally, cleanse with hot Epsom salt baths, a grounding earth element which has a strong quality of cohesion. At this sacred celestial time connect the dark and light; the yin and the yang; the masculine and feminine, because if we allow it, life can truly begin all over again in the fall.

Discovering the Hero Within

Michelle Cromer March 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Free-Photos / Pixabay

“Every time you are willing to say, “yes” to everything on your path, you express the hero inside of you.” Joseph Campbell

Most of my childhood was spent listening to my Irish uncles telling powerful myths of ancient gods and ageless heroes; of men of magic and women of bravery. I was terrified of some gods, in love with courageous warriors, fearful of monstrous Cyclops, and I always dreamed of being a heroine of great beauty and mystery.

Myths and Stories are the oldest schools for humankind. Genuine stories offer a living school where the only entry requirements are an active imagination, some capacity to feel one’s own feelings and the willingness to approach the world as a place of mystery and revelation.

Myths are not a part of the past, but a way to see universal truths playing out in the present. Myths are the inside story that makes meaning of the outside world. People feel more whole when listening to a story and feel most lost when out of touch with their own story.

When I think back to the myths told to me of the hero’s journey, I realize now that the accomplishments of the heroes took place in the outer world. But as the story of our world becomes less clear, as we all find ourselves living in a cosmic turn, it is the unfolding of the inner life of the soul that provides the best way to proceed. In order to move forward in a deep and meaningful way, we must find the hero within each of us. Somewhere deep inside each of us lives the soul of a hero. It’s not something we bring to the world, rather something that brings us to the world. We must discover the hero within because we are all heroes of our own myths.

We discover the hero within by doing the inner work of determining what meaning and purpose this world holds for us, and for the future that awaits us. We can learn to see with more clarity how we each have a unique role to play; how we each have our own way to make a difference in the lives of others. It is up to us to give our own life the meaning and vitality we need to make it through and to be of service to others.

We need a path that allows us to bear the trials of living, the ordeals of our present time and circumstance, and the suffering inherent to life’s harsh realities. Discovering the hero within means waking up to the realization that the necessary conditions are being created for us to recognize our unique place in the universe, the particular gifts that we have to bring forth, and to serve a purpose greater than ourselves. Now is the time to help sustain and revitalize the world around us.

We need to learn how to tolerate dynamic tension if we are to embark on a worthwhile inner adventure. As we develop and grow, we cross points of no return. Once we cross over to new experiences of conscious awakening, and once we’ve committed ourselves to a path of awareness, we will no longer be the same. Our old identity begins to shed its skin. We come across threshold guardians – daemons that block the way, attempting to ward us off. They are like the gargoyles entrenched above archways and entrances to shrines and cathedrals. These guardians are manifestations of our deepest fears. They also guard the way to our deepest longings. We cannot go on a genuine, soulful adventure without bringing along your authentic doubts and fears, as well as our strongest desires and longings – for, without them, it would not be a hero’s journey.

But the one simple truth of discovering the hero within is just to be ourselves – that’s the real job of a hero.

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