How to support your relationships with Feng Shui
Today, June 28, 2017 is my 9th wedding anniversary with my dear husband Nathan. We have been married 9 years, together 15. Meeting him--and now raising our family together--is the best thing that ever happened to me.
It’s fitting that our anniversary falls in this month of June where our focus lies squarely on Love & Relationships.
On this memorable day, I want to share with you the Relationship Gua (Area) of our space. The home that we purchased 4 years ago, has inherently good Feng Shui built into the Relationship area, which happens to be in our kitchen.
My relationship with my husband has always been rock solid, which was new for me, having experienced my share of rocky relationships before that. Our temperaments meld in a way that makes our life together easy, fun, passionate. I won’t claim that it is our kitchen that makes our relationship solid, but since we all attract exactly what we put out into the world, it makes sense that we would find a home with favorable Feng Shui in the Relationship area.
I’ll walk you through what I mean exactly when I say the space has inherently good Feng Shui built into the Relationship area. That way you take a look at your space to see if it is fully supporting your relationship.
We bought this 1963 home from the family who built it and raised their children here. The wife, Rose, had recently moved into an assisted living facility; her husband had passed nearly 15 years earlier. In talking with the neighbors, the comment I most remember was that the couple had been “so in love.”
Because of my background in Feng Shui, I am especially interested in the experiences of the people who lived in a space before me. There is something called ‘predecessor energy’ which refers to who lived in the space before and what kind of trajectory their life took. In other words... Were they successful? Did they thrive? Were they happy and in good health? This information can tell you a lot about the energy of the home and the effects it had on the previous occupants. It can also help inform the changes you make to the space, so that it can better support you in your life.
This is a two way street. A person comes in with a certain kind of energy (and when they move, they leave some of this behind). The home itself has a particular energy--built in supports or built in stressors--which will come to have an impact on the occupants over the course of time.
Many of you have heard me talk about the home I grew up in and the inherently poor Feng Shui that was built into that space, and the unmistakably negative predecessor energy. This was how the ancient tradition of Feng Shui originally caught my attention. It explained to me the downward spiral my family life took over the course of the decade we lived in that house.
Because of my life experiences and my knowledge of Feng Shui, I was incredibly picky when we were looking for a home of our own. Not picky in the sense that I was looking for flawless spaces--the price range we were shooting for meant that we would probably buy a home that needed fixing up, which was okay with us. I was picky in the sense that I wanted a home that had inherently good Feng Shui already built into as many spaces as possible.
For today, I focus on the Relationship area.
Here is the relationship area of my home. It is the back right third of any home (from where you stand at the front door). In my home, this happens to be my kitchen. It is not modern or updated, but it DOES have good Feng Shui!
Check out this post if you need a refresher on how or why to place the Bagua Map over your floor plan so YOU can determine where YOUR Relationship area is.
You can see in the floorplan below that our kitchen extends past the rest of the home, which means we actually have an extra portion to our Relationship area. (This can be helpful if what is in that extra part reflects what you want in your relationship, or unhelpful if it is a particularly cluttered or stagnant space.)
The relationship area is governed by the Earth element. This is solid, stable energy that is open and receptive (fertile ground for planting).
In my last blog post I shared with you the qualities associated with the Relationship Gua: the colors, elements, textures, everything you can use to intentionally build support into that area of your life. Check it out for a refresher.
Earth tones are the colors that are inherently supportive in this area, as well as fiery tones: any shade of brown from a handsome light camel to chocolate, deep orange and yellow, peach, reds.
You can see that my kitchen--the fantastic time capsule from the 60’s that it is--is awash in the perfect color for this area: peach. We actually call the color of the formica countertops ‘salmon,’ and though they are not my favorite part of our home, they are perfect for the Feng Shui! It makes me think back to the home when we bought it, and how nearly every color present in the home was some form of Rose. :) The natural wood color of the cupboards brings in more earth energy.
The wall color we chose is the color that wraps around from the living room, where the greys of metal energy are best used. While this color isn’t great for the Relationship area (it drains the earth energy), the amount of wall space and the amount of earth energy already present makes the choice insignificant.
When we bought the home, the kitchen had just a doorway into the space and was quite isolated from the rest of the home. In our initial remodel, we took the walls down to half to open the space up to the dining room and living room (you can catch the view from the kitchen island behind my Sadie helper). This shift integrated the kitchen--and the relationship area--with the surrounding areas of our home.
The full walls separating the kitchen from the living & dining room when we bought the house - pre remodel.
Half walls now open the kitchen to the dining room & beyond.
You’ll notice that the stove top is on the central island, which means when we cook at it, we have a view not only of the front door itself, but also of the entire rest of the house. It is not super common to find a cook stove on an island (it’s cheaper to build the exhaust system into a wall) but it is my favorite place for it, primarily because it puts you in command of your space.
If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know what it means to be in command, but for those of you who are new to me or Feng Shui, the Command Position is something that you want to achieve at your bed, your couch, your desk, your stove. It means that from where you sit/stand you can see the doorway into the space and you are not in the path of the door. Your intuition will tell you this as well: you don’t want to have your back to the doorway, or you’ll be unable to relax, constantly wondering (consciously or not) what is happening behind you.
This is quite important at your stove, and one of the hardest places to achieve command, since the stove isn’t something you can just move around. When you are cooking, whatever energy you are feeling in your body, goes straight into your food. When you are in command, it is much easier to be relaxed, present and enjoying the process.
We made this feature even more supportive by taking the walls down to half so that you can see the front door from where you cook, not just the doorway into the kitchen itself.
To top it all off, the kitchen has views of our entire backyard - something every mom dreams of - a clear connection to the outside world.
I am happy to share with you the Relationship area in my home, so you can see, that even in a space that wants desperately to be updated, the Feng Shui can support you in your relationship. You don’t have to have the perfect home, for the space to be fully functional and supportive, to simplify important areas of your life - which is oh so much better than “perfect.
Feng Shui is powerful when it is used intentionally. When you know why you are choosing the colors you choose--when you know they are inherently supportive--then every time you look at the space, you are reminded of all the support that constantly surrounds you, that will hold your relationship in trust.
On this momentous day in my life, I wish for you all of the support you deserve in your loving relationships.
And if you find that lacking, or feel your home is not supporting you in your life, be in touch. I am so thankful that I do what I do and I can help people just like you create spaces that provide a firm foundation in life.
Also, if you’re in the market for a new home, that is the best time to work with me! The work we do together, to ensure the space you find supports you in all aspects of life, is work that will reverberate in your existence for decades to come.
Here’s to supportive spaces this year and for many to come,
:) Tenaya
