Feng Shui Tips to Stop Smoking and Children’s Bedroom Placement
Hi Karen,
I am experiencing a lot of difficulty with my intention to stop smoking. Recently, I returned home from a 2-week spa retreat, and during this time away I was able to curb my need to use cigarettes. However, upon returning home I’ve noticed my nicotine craving has returned, making it nearly impossible to keep up my good vacation behavior. I am wondering if feng shui could be used in my home to help me?
Dear Future Non-Smoker,
Absolutely! Feng shui can be very useful in your home to assist you with behavior modification and maintaining your focus to quit smoking.
First, facing your front door from the outside, look to the left side of your house and notice which rooms or areas occupy this space. These are “wood” areas, as referenced by the bagua grid. Specifically, find the middle sector of this side, and this will be your health and family area. Keep this area clean and clutter-free to support your health goals at this time. Bring in the wood element by placing some healthy plants here with soft, rounded leaves — nothing pointed or sharp.
The colors blue, green, aqua and teal blue also represent wood, as well as fabrics, anything made from plants, and things rectangular in shape. If your bedroom is in the health and family area of your house, enhance the healing potential of where you sleep by splurging on that coveted, stunning turquoise bedspread, and turn the simple act of making your bed each morning into a healing, visual affirmation. Freely make use of stripes, floral prints and paisley patterns — all are wood element signatures. Add a few rectangular throw pillows to your new ensemble for fun, another lovely way to support your intention to stop smoking.
A deeper level of feng shui influence affects us through subconscious cues from our environment. We tend to actualize what we perceive, so any tall, thin, tubular shapes that mimic a cigarette can be sabotaging our conscious intentions. In the health area, as well as throughout the house, notice where floor lamps, plants, artwork, freestanding sculpture or furniture might be echoing this unhelpful cue to trigger you into picking up a cigarette.
Furniture placement can also hold an energetic pattern that controls your behavior. If your refrigerator is the first thing you see in your home when you open the front door, this may explain why you feel the need to grab something to eat as soon as you enter. Much like an acupuncturist shifting energy in the body with the expert use of a tiny needle, moving furniture or décor around in a room can be helpful in shifting energetic patterns held in the space and allow you to initiate new perceptions and behaviors.
Move your favorite, well-worn armchair from its usual place beside the coffee table, where you gratefully collapse each night after work, reach for your cigarette case and proceed to light up, and you create a pattern interrupt. The new furniture placement shifts the room’s energy and allows the mind to proceed from a clean slate with new possibilities. Even smaller changes such as swapping out pillows on the sofa or filling the coffee table bowl with something new and inviting supports your process of transformation.
It is at the subtle, energetic level that shifts in reality and behavior occur, so give yourself a minimum of 21 days to reverse a behavior or change a habit. By making a few simple, mindful adjustments in your environment, you can start connecting with the ancient feng shui dance between the physical and energetic realms to turn your home into a beautiful abode of blessing.
Children’s Bedroom Placement
Dear Karen,
My family has recently purchased a new house, and we’re about ready to move in. I have three children, ages 3 to 12. The house has two floors and both my older children wish to have their bedrooms upstairs, above ours on the first floor. Does feng shui offer any advice on bedroom placement?
Dear Mom,
I am so glad you asked as feng shui offers many guidelines about bedroom placement for our precious children! Ideally a child is spending ten to twelve hours or more per day in rejuvenating sleep, so the bedroom environment accounts for a huge portion of their day.
If the childrens’ bedrooms are on the floor above the parents, this places them in a position of authority and control of the house. Encourage their selection of bedrooms on the first floor. If this is not possible, maintain your parental authority by placing a happy picture of you and your husband in their rooms. The image of both of you is a continual affirmation of your presence and oversight.
Desirable locations for children’s bedrooms include the front of the house, especially for older children, and in the bagua’s children area, which is located in the right, center area of the house, as viewed from outside the front door. Try to keep children’s bedrooms from the rear of the house. The back of a room or a house is considered the most powerful place, known as the command position, because it has the widest view. The potential for having your authority undermined is multiplied if children sleep both above and behind you in the house. If no other option is possible, hang a large mirror on the inside front wall of the house on the floor where the children sleep, and set the intention to pull their energy forward, bringing all relationships into balance.
Consider moving your child’s bedroom if unexplained physical or behavioral problems have surfaced or persist. For some children, the intense energies of fire or water could be a source of physical or emotional imbalance for them with a bedroom placed directly above or below a kitchen or bathroom. A child sleeping in a bed placed under a structural beam may find the continuous, strong, downward energy disturbing.
If a child’s room is larger than the master bedroom, try switching bedrooms. There is greater potential for out-of-control behavior with a child in the bigger sleeping space. If this is not possible, consider hanging a wind chime outside the child’s bedroom door. Wind chimes are a traditional feng shui method of adjusting chi or the flow of energy in a space. They can send out a message, disperse conflicting chi and awaken or readjust the energy in a space. Use anything that will send out a sound when the door is open or closed. It will serve as another reminder of their comings and goings under your watchful presence.
Karen Feldman is a certified feng shui practitioner and interior designer, and the owner since 1994 of Urban Eden, a full-service holistic interior design firm in Providence, RI. Karen helps her residential, commercial and corporate clients to co-create spaces that are beautiful, functional and in alignment with the best interests of their well being along with the planet’s. Contact Karen at urbaneden@cox.net or visit www.karenfeldmanurbaneden.com.
