Celebrating the Chinese New Year with Feng Shui

The state of your home has a startlingly strong effect on your mental state. Though we can often begin to feel depressed and sluggish during the long winter months, just a few tweaks to the home can help give you the lift you need to make it to the warm weather. A few weeks ago, Newinhomes.com explored minimalism and the practice of reducing the excess clutter in the home in order to facilitate mental clarity. Now, for the Chinese New Year, it’s time to explore the basic principles of Feng Shui to understand how to arrange your remaining items within the home.

Though the term ‘Feng Shui’ often conjures images of carefully pruned gardens and is regularly confused with mysticism, the basic principles of Feng Shui strive to create balance and harmony in the home. The misinterpreted design practice refers to the ancient Asian art of placement, and is a holistic approach to moving beyond the superficial and enhancing the flow of energy in the built environments we inhabit. By improving the energy in your living environment, Feng Shui strives to maximize the positive potential in your life.

This year, the Chinese New Year is being celebrated on Thursday, February 19th, marking the beginning of spring in the Lunar calendar. Spring is a time of renewal and an opportunity to rejuvenate our living spaces as we embark on a new year. To prepare for spring, we’ve compiled a short list of simple ways to incorporate Feng Shui into the home.

Jag Nagra's home - via designsponge.com

1. Clear the clutter

Like minimalism, Feng Shui encourages practitioners to get rid of the junk that resides in your closets and drawers in order to facilitate a greater sense of calm. According to the principles of minimalism and Feng Shui, external spaces reflect our internal states, and a cluttered home is often symbolic of a chaotic lifestyle. By decluttering our living spaces, we simultaneously declutter our lives. Take some time to go through your home and recycle or donate items that are not truly adding value to your life. Target problematic areas like your junk drawer, the storage closet, or that vacuous space under the bed. Try to avoid storing clutter under the bed as this practice prevents energy from circulating in the bedroom, and also gives you an excuse to hold onto extra junk.

2. Brighten your home

A simple and quick way to practice Feng Shui in the home is to invest in proper lighting. Though February might mark the beginning of spring in the Chinese calendar, we still have a ways to go before we see the first flowers blooming. One way to get through these long winter nights is to ensure your rooms are properly lit. Use upward facing lights to enhance your energy until the nights get shorter and you can spend more time in the sunlight.

Inhabitat also recommends brightening the entry to your home. The front door and entry are the first thing you and your guests see when entering your living space. This part of the home should be bright and colourful so that it can lift your mood after a difficult or long day at work. Use a bright paint colour, such as a naturally soothing green, to replenish your energy when you walk through the door and make sure the area is clutter-free and well-lit. If there is enough natural sunlight, add some plants to help put you at ease as you walk out the door or return home.

3. Decorate with the 5 Feng Shui Elements

Feng Shui is primarily concerned with finding balance and divides the world into five basic elements - wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each element taps into a different mood, and you must find your own balance between the elements to create a space that is comfortable to you.

The first element - wood - supports growth, strength, and health in the home. It is fairly easy to incorporate wood in your home through furniture, house plants, and natural fabrics such as cotton. The fire element encourages creativity, inspiration, and boldness and is also easily achieved with the addition of candles. Burning candles is a great way to aid relaxation, while a beeswax candle can help purify the air in your home (which often gets quite stuffy during the winter months). The earth element is about grounding and stability, and can be harnessed by adding stone and earth tones to the living space. If that proves to be tricky or doesn’t gel with your decorating style, try placing your plants in terracotta pots to add a touch of earth to the space. Metal connects to our minds, affecting logic, mental clarity, and organization. To incorporate the metal element into your home, look for metal picture frames or use round shapes, such as a round mirror. Finally, the water element draws out wisdom and insightfulness. It may be unrealistic for you to install a fountain in your living space, so this element can be easily integrated into the home by adding mirrors, dark colour tones, and asymmetrical shapes. The key to utilizing these five elements in the home is to find a balance that suits your personality and facilitates your goals.

4. Pay attention to the “Trinity”

According to some practitioners of Feng Shui, the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom are considered to be the “trinity” and strongly influence your health and well-being. These three rooms are typically places where you both start and end your day, and are connected to sleep, nourishment, and cleanliness - three important aspects of your personal health. It is best to focus on these three spaces when beginning to align your house with the fundamentals of Feng Shui. Make sure these areas are clutter free, clean, well lit, and incorporate the five elements. Take it to the next level by getting rid of electronics (like the computer and TV) in the bedroom, use a dimmer switch to change lighting in the bathroom, and grow fresh herbs and plants in your kitchen.

5. Embrace the Command Position

In Feng Shui, the “Command Position” refers to the placement of furniture in a meaningful way that encourages you to take control of the living space and therefore your life. This tenet of Feng Shui recommends positioning your desk, bed, stove or other important and central pieces of furniture so that you face the door with your back facing the far wall. This taps into our brain’s fight or flight response, also known as the “acute stress response.” There are areas of the brain connected to primitive behaviours which trigger physiological responses. When we are positioned so that our backs are facing the entry, this acute stress response is triggered, affecting our mood and health. By positioning our furniture to complement our primitive responses, we reduce both mental and physical stress, and create a space for deeper relaxation and greater positive energy. From the Command Position you can see all opportunities and enemies, while also feeling safe and supported. The Command Position therefore has the potential to increase relaxation in the bedroom, happiness in the kitchen, and productivity in our workplaces.

Hopefully we have managed to debunk some of the mystery and mysticism that often surround the practice of Feng Shui, and introduced some ways that this design practice can be effectively incorporated into the home. Remember, you don’t have to be a Feng Shui master or completely redesign your living space to increase the positive energy in your home. Simply look for ways to reduce clutter, increase light, and position furniture to complement your mental response to a given space. If you’re interested in a more in-depth approach to Feng Shui, William Spear’s Feng Shui Made Easy is a great place to get started.