The Spiritual Feng Shui newsletter Issue 10 October 2007 Light Up Your Life … Literally! Bringing Light to Cave Dwellers Also: Feng Shui Tip Inspirational Quotes Dear Friend, Welcome to The Spiritual Feng Shui newsletter for October 2007; it is good to have your company once again! This month we talk about using light in your home – one of the most basic parts of any Feng Shui practice. Adding light can be a little problematic for people who live in apartments, or even in larger houses (with ‘room-locked’ areas), so we explore how to use light in windowless areas. We also have inspirational quotes and Feng Shui tips, as usual. May peace and harmony reign for you in October. 0x Feature Article: Light Up My Life - Bring spiritual, physical, and emotional light into your home 0x Q&A: Light for the Cavemen - If your home is a bit of a cave, how do you introduce light? 0x Feng Shui Tip – Ornamental Feng Shui 0x Inspirational Quotes Enjoy! Mike Z. Wang Author of The Spiritual Feng Shui Thespiritualfengshui.com Unit 616, 220 Lake Promenade, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, m8w1a9 Feature Article: Light Up My Life Light is so much a part of the language of all of our minds… we use it as a metaphor for all that is good, positive, wholesome, and informed. Think of the word ‘enlightened’ – one of the highest compliments you can pay someone is to say their very selves have become like light! We talk about lighting up somebody’s life … and also having an inner light, shining through, and lighting up a room when you walk into it. So it is not surprising that light is an essential part of any Feng Shui practice! At a spiritual level, and at an impersonal scientific level, light is energy. So, light is Chi! There is a simple test you can do to assess light Chi in your home – go through each room of your house turning on the lights, and then walk around the perimeter of the room as much as you can. You’ll probably notice that wherever the light doesn’t touch, there is dust, cobwebs, and rubbish or forgotten items. The solution is not only to get the vacuum cleaner or the garbage bag – (although they will definitely be needed at some stage!) – but also to get more light! Feng Shui is not picky about the source of Chi, and artificial lights will do as well as natural light in most cases. Add lamps – they are a lovely, decorative way to bring light into neglected corners of your house. You can also incorporate the lamp’s design into your Feng Shui objectives – for example, if you are adding a lamp to your work area, choosing one which is colored blue, black or purple can help you be more productive and profitable. If you are adding lamps to your bedroom area, which is intimately (no pun intended!) connected to your love-life, pink symbolizes affection, and red symbolizes passion and energy. Candles are an alternative way to bring light to corners, and they have their own Feng Shui benefits – smell is an integral part of your Feng Shui practice, and scented candles introduce a gorgeous subtle smell as well as a soft and gentle light to an area. They are a great option in your bedroom … as long as you don’t fall asleep with them still burning! Try reading by them at night, and dousing them just before you go to sleep. Make sure they are not in a place where curtains or loose fabric can either be blown, or fall onto them, though. Natural light is also important in your home – it gives you a daily dose of Vitamin D, and has that je ne sais quoi that an electric light bulb doesn’t bring. Plus it is free! Open your curtains during the day –you can add lace curtains if your home is visible to the street. If the weather is decent, you can open your windows along with them, and let in some fresh air, which is also great for Chi flow in your home. Just as with all things in Feng Shui, there has to be a balance – having a house filled with light in every corner will not only make your electricity bill explode, but will not create any space for rest and relaxation. This is especially important in your bedroom, where you need to get a good night’s sleep to function properly the next day. Even if you only have time for 6 hours of sleep, you can make up for the occasional lack of quantity with good sleep quality – and for that you need a dark room! Turn off your bedroom lights during the day and check where the ambient light comes from. If there is excessive light coming from behind the curtains, you could either buy block-out curtains, add another layer of curtaining, or add pelmets above your curtain rails (which, by the way, are great for energy efficiency!). If light is coming in from under the door, use a long, thin beanbag to put at the bottom of the door at night. This could have the added benefit of getting you better quality sleep, by keeping your wandering children out of your bedroom at night! If you must go to sleep where here is a lot of ambient light, bring your Feng Shui much closer to your body, by using an eye mask. Light is one of the most basic elements of Feng Shui, usually one of the easiest to add… and also one of the most fun effects to play with! Enjoy how adding light to your home can make you feel freer, more energetic and less burdened. Q&A: I live in a small apartment with exactly one window! Or I live in a large house where much of the area does not include windows. How can I best incorporate light into my Feng Shui practice? While you may not have as much natural light available as other houses do, don’t worry, be happy! In Feng Shui there is always a solution. The first one is to make use of what natural light you do have. Place easily opened curtains over your window, and you could add hooks or loops at the side to make it easier to open the curtains (and therefore more likely that you will do it!). If you are in a position to do so, change the curtains for blinds – you have more control over the light flow and direction, and it is easier to open and close them. Make it a part of your morning routine to open the curtains when you wake up, to help you remember not to just automatically turn on every light in the house! When you do open your curtains, look at the weather outside. If it is suitable, make the most of your window/s by opening them up to the fresh air while you are at it. However, just as a silk plant or flowers brings some of the same energy to a room that real plants or flowers do, artificial light brings much the same Chi that natural light does. Use lamps in darker rooms – get the tall, standing variety if you don’t have much available table or bench space. If you own your home, you could add wall sconces (which are, incidentally, doing well in the home fashion stakes at the moment!). Another option is to hang lead lights from the roof, placing colorful and inspiring lamp shades over the top of them. You simply need to use an extension cord to place your lead light wherever you like, and add a cup hook to the ceiling for it to hang from. Make sure you clip the cord down along its length, and run it up the wall in a corner (rather than on the flat of the wall) if possible, to make it less noticeable. If it is natural light that you are craving, candles are also natural light sources! Not only that, but they bring fire energy to a room, one of the five components of Chi. Just to add to their virtues, scented candles also enhance a room’s Chi. You could also incorporate your candle as a light source within an oil burner/diffuser – you have a much greater range of scents to add when you can choose from all of the essential oils, as well as the scents that candles come in. For example, try myrtle, bay laurel, marjoram and eucalyptus as a blend to enhance health and well being. If you’d like to encourage success in your career, try sandalwood with just a hint of jasmine added. Frankincense and clary sage together are great for enhancing your love life and personal relationships. Above all, don’t forget that the light the candle brings enhances whichever room you place it in! If your home is light-poor, it can be an easy trap to fall into to use either the television screen or the computer screen as a light source. They do emit light, sure – but they also bring their own distractions and interfering energy. If you are not directly using these items, turn them off, and don’t leave them on standby at night-time. These tips should make adding light to your home both easy, and fun! Feng Shui Tip: Ornamental Feng Shui Feng Shui is not all about lucky coins and the Chinese characters for health and happiness! It is about the basic components of energy – and a fun way to bring energy into your home is using ornamentation like sun catchers and wind chimes. Try before you buy with wind chimes – make sure you won’t mind hearing the sound constantly on a windy day. Sound is an integral part of Feng Shui, but it is only positive if you find it pleasant! If you have bought a sun catcher, place it near a window to both catch the light (of course!) and help diffuse and balance the Chi coming from the window. Choose colors that reflect your Feng Shui goals – green for fertility and health, pink for affection and friendship, blue for insight and wisdom, and red for passion and romantic love. Inspirational Quotes: Firelight will not let you read fine stories, but it's warm and you won't see the dust on the floor. ~Irish Proverb One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. ~Michael Cibenko When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves. ~David Orr