Take a look at your walls… how do they look? Do they fill you with inspiration and put a smile on your face every time you look at them, or do they just look plain, maybe even a little drab? If it’s the latter, wouldn’t it be nice if you could rejuvenate your life just by changing how your walls appear? Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art based around your living space strongly reflecting your life – the art of Feng Shui tries to strike a perfect balance between both and give you a sense of well-being. Historically, Feng Shui was used to orient spiritually important structures in an auspicious manner and it’s ultimately based on the principle that every object or structure holds an energy known as “chi”; you can use this energy to build wealth, luck, opportunity and calm into your household. Walls can often invade your living space, cause an energy blockage, and stop energy from flowing smoothly throughout your home. Thankfully, you don’t need to tear them down to achieve balance. Simple methods mixed with strategic colouring or wall art can carry or represent the energy loss and bring equilibrium back to your house.
Reading Your Bagua
The principles of Bagua are used in Feng Shui to analyse the energies in a man made structure – in this case, your living space. They help determine how to arrange your space and how to improve upon it. Bagua is essentially an energy map of your living space and relates different areas of space to different areas of your life.
(Source: http://www.studyholistics.com/article/fengshuihome/)
This chart relates to specific areas of your house with North at the bottom of the image (Black/Water) and South at the top (Red/Fire) and is based on the traditional school of bagua (there is a Western equivalent which doesn’t take your compass reading equivalent to your front door into account). You’ll either need a compass to map out this plan (or know which direction your house faces), and then you can map out which rooms or areas of your house relate to each part of your life (represented by a Feng Shui element and colour). We can take these principles and apply them to the walls in each room of the house. If you feel that specific parts of your life aren’t going as well as they could, then focus on those areas first and apply a cure.
Your Lucky Direction
Before we get started, you should determine your lucky feng shui direction – this will help you attract the energy that you are seeking by utilising the direction of your walls. The first step in doing this is to determine what your Kua number is. Here’s what you need to do;
- Check your year of birth with the Chinese calendar (The Chinese new year begins on a different day each year so your year of birth may differ from normal).
- If you are female;
- Add the last 2 numbers of your birth year from the Chinese calendar.
- If this doesn’t equal a single digit number, add the numbers again so that you reach a single digit.
- Add that digit to 5.
- Bring this value to a single digit again (if necessary) by adding the numbers. The sum of this is your Kua Number.
- If you are male, do the same as above but instead of adding the digit to 5; deduct your single digit number from 10.
For example, a male born in 1978 would be 7+8 = 15…. then 1+5 = 6. You would then do 10–6 to get your Kua number of 4. For a female born in the same year, you would do 5+6=11 and then add those digits 1+1 to get a Kua number of 2.
If your Kua number is 1,3,4 or 9 then you fall into the East Facing Group.
If your Kua number if 2,5,6,7 or 8 then you fall into the West Facing Group.
Health (Yellow/Earth)
Although each area has a specific colour, you don’t need to go and repaint each room to match (that could create more stress than it removes!), however you should focus on making each room/area applicable to the Bagua element on which it falls, in some way. The yellow area for most people will be the hallway, as it naturally lies in the middle of your house. It is also the most important area and is defined as the Ying/Yang centre point. If you are looking to improve your health then a bright inspiring picture on your wall (perhaps yellow flowers), facing in your lucky direction should help here.
Career (Black/Water)
Black is quite an oppressive colour, so an option here could be to have an inspiring water scene on the wall. Again, have the image facing in your lucky direction (if at all possible – it’s not an issue if you can’t). A landscape scene of a peaceful river or an eye catching waterfall scene could work wonders here and provide the cure to your career issues.
Family (Green/Wood)
You can knock down two birds with one stone with this one. Most people will have access to a woodland area near-by. Likewise if you also have access to your family and a camera then get down to the woods, set your camera up on a tripod and capture a fantastic scene of your family in a beautiful woodland setting. There are a range of online services where you can affordably have a large canvas print created from your photo.This ticks off the wood, green (as long as it’s not winter!) and family points nicely and if you face the image in your lucky direction then it could bring extra assistance to help improve your family life.
Fame & Reputation (Red/Fire)
If you have an open fire in this area of your house, then you’re already half way there. If not, then an image of fire can be quite dramatic on your wall. Take this as an example;
I think the image says it all here, and provides inspiration in itself.
Throughout the House
Continue this theme of applying a colour, picture or feature representing each Feng Shui element throughout your house and in the appropriate place. Do this upstairs and downstairs (it’s best to do it to the rooms you spend the most time in), and you can transform your living space and the associated energies that flow through your home. Try and match colours where possible; either through use of wall colour, or through use of wall art and images. If you haven’t got your own pictures to print, either take some (you could use a service such as http://printstagr.am/) or use google image search to find inspiration online. As you improve each wall in your home, applying the principles of Bagua, you’ll soon notice a nicer, and hopefully more prosperous environment.
As a final note, remember to focus on the areas you consider most important (or neglected in your life) to begin with. After which you can slowly work your way round to less significant areas as and when you have time.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
License: Creative Commons image source
Shelly is a lover of using art and artistic styles to improve homes. She has an open mind to life improving techniques and methods and is firmly committed to taking a holistic view of everything and applies this to all her methodologies.
