Beginning Feng Shui

[Tashakittie]

Feng Shui has taken over my conscious mind as of late, as my home is in need of some serious decluttering. I've not gotten a book yet, and I've been trying to figure stuff out on my own using the bagua. One thing I'm stuck on is how to figure my house out b/c it is a two story- the entryway into the house, and the first floor layout is entirely different than that of the second floor. Does the bagua apply to each room separately, or is everything zoned accordingly to the 9 sectors?

[zoebird]

it applies as follows:

whole house from the footprint and overall shapes;

house floor by floor individually (so those being different doesn't matter); and

each room individually.

You can even so specific spaces, such as your desk space, your furnishings in a given room, etc, using the bagua.

But, i recommend this:

start by decluttering;

then do a space/energetic cleansing;

then do the furniture/ornament placements.

if you do the ornament/etc placing first, it won't have that much of an effect. but if you cleanse the space and then do the ornaments/placing, you'll be in good shape.

if you don't yet have time to declutter, use the bagua as a "decoder ring" for what is going on in you, your house, and your family. if you do it by house footprint, then by floor, then by room, you can see how certain areas of your life are affected. That is to say, if the relationship corner in every room, every floor, and over the whole house is cluttered, or has broken objects, or oddly shaped, or what have you, this might also be why there are relationship problems in your life. (not saying this is the case, just saying that it can 'show' you things).

then, by going through the process of decluttering, cleansing, and then bringing in the remedial fixes, you'll really see things soar.

[doubledutch]

i agree, i would start with ferocious decluttering, but i do think it can help to know how the baguas apply to your house while you're decluttering, because i really like to have the purpose of each room defined so i know what belongs there and what doesn't. and sometimes that helps me realize that i really do want something (because i now have a use/space for it) which i otherwise would have gotten rid of. and vice versa. i might get rid of something because it really doesn't belong in that space anymore and there is no room for it anywhere else in the house.

i like to map it out based on the compass, not based on where the entrance to the house or each room is. when you do it that way, south is fame / reputation / red / fire and north is career / black / water. if you know those points then you can figure out the rest of your house (or each room) based on that. i'd apply the map to the main floor footprint and then to the upstairs layout separately (so big hunks don't get cut off). if things are an odd shape, imo you can decide whether you want to make the map larger and have some baguas outdoors, or try to keep the map the same size as most of the house and let some areas of the house fall outside the map (that's my preference). you can apply the map to your entire property, also, and when you do that, you can 'recapture' the sliced off parts of the house that way, especially if they have their own exterior door.

i really love feng shui. i've obsessed about it a lot with my permanent home (and office), but someone completely failed to apply it to the place i'm temporarily staying. i'm totally going to do that now.

[doubledutch]

oh, fwiw . . . my house has a nearly square main floor and it's really easy to apply the map that way. the upstairs is a finished attic, so it's long and narrow (because of the roof sloping down on the sides). upstairs, i consider it to just have three baguas down the center of the map and the others just don't exist up there.

otoh, we have a front porch (open, exterior) and back porch (enclosed, part of the house) on the main floor. they protrude outside the map so i just don't even consider them. i consider them part of the larger property map even though the back porch is inside the house.

[Tashakittie]

You are both wonderful! Many thanks! I've already started to feel better with the intention and purpose of the process. My home is a townhouse, and its rectangular both top and bottom. We have an outdoor patio in the back, with about 100 sq feet of yard that belongs to us, on a huge lawn. In the front, we have a small porch with a small yard. The compass idea is interesting, as it is completely opposite to the bagua for my home b/c, the bagua has our fame sector in the direct north, and the career sector in the direct south. being that everything is squared and rectangular makes this easy to think about in visual terms.
When I first started, I realized that my Wealth section was basically a junk and clutter pile, with a painting of a dormant tree in it. Go figure the financial issues! I'm going to get a Ganesha in it, as well as maybe a dragon painting. The tree painting has been replaced with two more vibrant watercolor pictures.

[doubledutch]

sweet! i guess actual money is also a good thing to have there. for me, that is just a change jar, and some chinese currency from a friend living in beijing.

my main floor has two rows of three rooms each - which means the central baguas are divided by walls, with half on this side, half on that. it makes things complicated.

you could keep your house mapped out the way you've done it, if flip-flopping it makes less sense. for me, using the compass was appealing just because room function lines up fairly well with the meaning of the bagua. if it works better the way you've mapped it, keep it! i didn't realize you had already figured it out.

[zoebird]

i prefer to use the compass, too, but find that the bagua from the entrance is quick and accessible. so it's a good "quick and dirty way."

i also did the directionality necessary for our family using our birthdays and then determining the compass points that would serve us best, and i always make sure our front door faces due north or due south. both of our last houses were due south (as is this one), and that brings our family a lot of prosperity.

but, it's just how ever you want to do it.