{NEW TIP SHEET!} How to shift your space to support your relationships

In this month of June, we put our focus on the Loving Relationship area of your life and of your home.

This is one of my favorite areas to focus on because when you are not in sync with your partner (or desire a partner and don’t have one), it has an immense impact on the rest of your life.

I love talking about relationships in relation to Feng Shui & Design because you can you easily shift things about your space to create the harmony you desire. In doing so, you will vastly improve the experience you have in your life as a whole (it's all interconnected). 

Check out the all new Tip Sheet at the bottom specifically designed to help you improve your loving relationships!

We all yearn for a relationship that feels supportive, loving, understanding, easy, passionate.

We ask a lot of this one specific relationship and it only sometimes is able to provide fully.

Much of the lack we feel in this area can come from some deficit or learning that needs to happen in our own self knowledge & wisdom (which is why that is the opposing area in the Bagua).

We bolster our own Self Knowledge--how comfortable we feel in our own skin--in order to improve our Relationships. To thrive with another, we must first be compassionate, patient and understanding of our own self. We have to let go of the self judgement that tends to course through our conscious and subconscious thought patterns (we are our own worst critic).

Once you come to love yourself fully, loving another becomes MUCH easier.

In Feng Shui, you can lay the Bagua Map down over your floorplan to discover what area of your home relates to your relationship and then... to create an intentional space in your home that reflects what you want in your relationship. It gives you a guideline for that specific space so you can intentionally infuse it with the qualities of the relationship you want.

The Relationship area (or Gua) of your home is the back right third of your home. If you are new to the Bagua Map--and how or why you might place it down over your space, check out this introductory blog post for explanation (where you will also have access to the pdf shown above).

If love and relationships is an area of struggle for you in your life, you will most likely find that this area of your home is currently a reflection of what you don’t want in a relationship (or of the struggles that you currently experience).

Here are some examples of the things you might see in the Relationship Gua of your home if you are struggling in your relationship:

• Cluttered or stagnant spaces: closets, surfaces, under beds
• Bathrooms that drain energy (toilets do this inherently, as the largest physical drain in your space)
• Images of single people in artwork, or single items of decor 
• ‘Metal’ energy dominating: whites, greys, pastels, smooth shiny surfaces, ovals. The metal element drains the earth energy you want present in your Relationship Gua (more on this later)
• ‘Wood’ energy dominating: greens, columns. Wood energy controls the earth energy you want present and can create a relationship that feels like one person dominates rather than a shared union.

The Relationship area of your home will affect your Relationship. But so will your bedroom…. (Occasionally your bedroom is in your relationship area, but not always.)

Bedrooms can create issues in relationships as well. Here are a few situations I typically see in bedrooms where a couple is struggling (or where a single person is desiring a relationship):

• Bedrooms that have beds set up ‘out of command’ (with the head of the bed on the same wall as the door or in the path of the doorway) 
• Bedrooms that contain work related items (books, laptops, desks, etc)
• Bedrooms where the focus is on anything other than sleep and intimacy (workout equipment, desks, laptops, etc)
• Bedrooms that have beams dividing the bed in two (this can create health problems as well).
• Bedrooms that are lacking balanced sides: each with a bedside table, lamp, etc

I go into this more in depth in my free mini-course, Feng Shui Made Easy--Take Command of Your Space. Check it out! (Feel free to share it with any friends who struggle in their space or relationship. This is foundational to living a happy, joyful existence.)

Your space is such a fantastic thing to shift in order to experience greater ease and joy in your relationships.

Today, I will outline for you the colors, elements, materials you DO want to incorporate into the Relationship area of your home, in order to provide the most supportive space for your relationships.

To begin…

There is an element associated with each Gua (life area).

EARTH

Is the element associated with the Love & Relationship area

Earth is stable, foundational, grounding. It is the realm of wisdom, knowledge, and strength. This is earth in its active form: as a necessary part of all growth.

The form that it takes in this Gua (area) relates to soft, fertile earth (to be planted), trust, openness, receptivity, mutual support, allowing others to support and nurture you.

Earth tones are the colors associated with the Earth element: brown, deep orange, earthy yellows, peach.

Use earth tones in the Love & Relationship area to activate energy or create momentum in that area of your life.

Not wild about the earth tones? You can also use shapes, images and objects that represent earth.

SHAPE:

The square--solid and regular--is associated with the earth element

IMAGES & OBJECTS: Utilize images or objects that reflect pairs to help draw-in or support a relationship (which is about two people).

Every element has a supporting element as well. When you feel like the Love & Relationship area of your life could use some added support, you can use both the element of that gua, and also the supporting element.

Fire is the element that supports earth. (Fire turns into ash, or earth.)

Feel free to use as much red, firey orange or yellow as well as anything triangular in the Love & Relationship area to help feed the earth energy. That being said, if your relationship is too fiery or argumentative, you want to reduce the fire energy in your bedroom or relationship area. Love is about passions and also stability.

In addition to helpful or supportive elements for particular areas of your home, there are also colors and elements to avoid.

Don’t worry about keeping all of this energy in your head! Sign up below to receive your free Tip Sheet: How to Support Your Relationships!

Metal energy DRAINS earth energy (we extract metal from earth). This means it is best to avoid the colors, images and shapes that represent METAL in your Love & Relationship area as they will drain the supportive energy you want to maintain.

AVOID: whites, greys, pastels, oval shapes, metal objects

Wood energy CONTROLS earth (think of roots breaking up dirt as a tree grows), and in general, should be avoided in order to allow your relationships to thrive.

AVOID: greens and representations of columns (like the trunks of trees) in the Relationship area.

The first step is to be clear on what kind of relationship you want and how exactly you will be supported. How does that relationship make you feel in your ideal world? Then begin to set up your space to intentionally reflect how you want to feel.

In all of these ways, you can shift your space to enhance your loving relationships. It may seem simplistic, but there is immense power in changing your space to change your life. When you have a space that reflects the relationship you want to have, every time you look at the space, walk through that space, think of that space, you will be reminded of your intentions, which will inherently begin to draw your desires closer to your reality.

Whatever your style, there are many ways to utilize the earth and fire elements and the colors and shapes associated in order to provide the passion and stability and ease you want in the Relationship area of your life.

Take a look at YOUR Love & Relationship area. Does the artwork reflect what you want in your relationship? How could the space better support the Relationship you desire? There are always opportunities for improvement. Play around with it, have fun! How can you incorporate the energies of earth and fire into the Love & Relationship area of your home?

You can rest easy knowing that I’ve boiled down the basic concepts for you in a Tip Sheet! Enter your email address below and I’ll send the pdf right to your inbox!

 Here’s to supportive spaces and supportive relationships.

:) Tenaya

P.S. When you hit a point where you’re stuck, not sure how to move forward (in any area of your life), that is the best time to get in touch with me. When you’re feeling stuck in your relationship or like your space isn’t supporting you in those endeavors--and you’re not sure what to do--reach out (tenaya@tpkfengshui.com). That is one of my favorite times to help people because there are so many concrete ways to shift the state of your specific Relationship area, in order to transform the way you feel supported in that aspect of your life. This is an area where I recommend you act before things get unbearable. At that point, it takes much longer to find the balance you're looking for.  

P.P.S. Next up, I’ll share with you what the Love & Relationship area of my home looks like. You’ll see first hand how a space can be designed to be inherently supportive of your relationship (without it costing you a dime).