What do you do if the space you live in just does not conform to the requirements of feng shui? Are you doomed to be haunted by "bad feng shui" ??? Fear not! If you can't remodel or move (some books actually suggest those things!), then you have to find cures for your situation.


What ?

In feng shui, cures are used to both remedy the unsavoury aspects of an environment and enhance the beneficial aspects that are already present. There are quite a few different cures to use, depending upon the life area to be affected and the degree of change sought.


Types of Cures

Cures range from the simple to the complex. At one end you have the easier techniques of moving furniture and using colors. At the other end you have the more involved cleansing and meditation cures. One thing to always remember when attempting a cure is that intention has to be a part of it. This does not mean that you intend to cure a problem. This means that, as you are performing the cure, you visualize how you want it to affect the life area you are dealing with. For example, if you are attempting a cure in the career area, you should be thinking about how you want your career to advance…are you looking for a promotion, a raise, or a new job entirely? Visualize the desired results in as much detail as you can.

Furniture

Perhaps the most basic cure, which even non-feng shui practitioners know about, is the rearranging of furniture. Unfortunately, this is the cure that tends to make most "outsiders" think that feng shui is just a home decorating technique. When it comes to rearranging your furniture, the word to remember is "flow" … it is all about the natural flow of energy through the room.

One of the easiest ways to check the energy flow in a room is to walk around. Can you move freely and naturally around the various pieces of furniture? Or do things get in your way and make it difficult to move around? If you are unable to move freely about the room, how is chi supposed to? Try to enhance the natural flow of the room by moving small pieces of furniture around first. Maybe a side table could go next to a chair instead of the sofa. Maybe a plant could be moved to a corner. Maybe something needs to be moved out of the room altogether. If moving the small things doesn't help as much as you would like, then move the larger pieces of furniture. Change the position of your sofa, recliner, or entertainment unit. Pull pieces away from the wall or push them against it. Do whatever you feel you need to do to create a comfortable setting where energy can properly flow.

Different rooms require different rules for the arrangement of furniture, mainly because the types of furniture will be different. In the living room, for example, the sofa should always face the main entrance to the room. This creates a feeling of ease and greater comfort comes from knowing who may be entering the room. In the bedroom, the bed should never be in line with the doorway because the energy will cut across the bed and can potentially cause problems to the area of the body it cuts across.

Color

As discussed on the previous page, color is a very important aspect of feng shui practice. And using it as a cure is as simple as placing the right color in the right location. For example, if you want to boost your love-life, put something pink in the marriage corner. It could be anything from a pink candle, to some flowers, to painting the entire wall pink. The amount and intensity of the color can be used to dictate the amount of change you are hoping for.

Elements

Placing objects representing the elements in their proper position, or in a position relative to the creative and destructive cycles, can affect chi. You can enhance an element in order to allow it a stronger presence where necessary, but you can also soften the effects of a particular element if it is too strong in a given area.

Each element has a corresponding shape that can be used in place of the actual element or its color. For example, to enhance the reputation area, you can place a triagular-shaped object there instead of painting the area red. These are the elements and their corresponding life areas, colors, and shapes:

Wood - Family - Green - Rectangle
Fire - Fame - Red - Triangle
Metal - Children - White - Circle
Water - Career - Black - Wavy

If you cannot place anything evoking the correct element in its life area, you can also use the creator/destroyer element for that area. For example, Metal cuts Wood and Water creates Wood, so shapes or colors corresponding to Metal or Water can be used in place of those for Wood.




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