Pets are considered as good Feng Shui but just having pets at home is not everything, allowing them to live in an natural environment, maintaining them and keeping them happy is the key to good Feng Shui. Having fishes in an aquarium which has murky or green water, smelling badly, fishes which look tired are extremely bad Feng Shui and are symbols of sickness and stagnation in a space.

According to Feng Shui, cosmic breath or ch'i energy permeates the atmosphere, the earth and all living things. Feng Shui Master's seek to channel and enhance environmental energy or ch'i to improve human energy and thus increase happiness, wealth and prosperity.

— If you’re feeling agitated during the holidays, try rethinking your decorating scheme. All the holiday “fire” — bright lights, red decorations, fireplaces — can be too much for some people. If that’s the case, McWilliams recommends bringing a “water” element into your decoration. Think blue lights, a mirror over the fireplace, cut glass arrangements, glassy or reflective balls on the tree.

— Adding natural elements to your decorating can also be calming. Besides a live tree, McWilliams suggests pine cones, holly, fresh fruit bowls and arrangements, strung popcorn and cranberries, paper loop links or origami.

— If the holidays cause you to reflect on painful times in your past, buying some new decorations can help you start looking forward.

-statesman.com

-Pat Heydlauff

Stress comes wrapped in many shapes, sizes and packages during the Holiday season. People in our country celebrate as many as three or four holidays during this time of the year. And, each one comes with its own distinct set of stressors that can by far overshadow your potential for joy.

For some, the biggest stressor is just having too much to do in the time allotted. It becomes a balancing act of caring for a family and holding down a full time job while trying to shop, prepare extra meals, and make travel plans if needed. Also in the mix are decorating the home, wrapping, baking and tending to the needs of family members, friends, even a boss.

For others, the major stressor is financial. It is very easy to over spend, over consume and charge-it. With the thousands of electronic toys, tools and gadgets that are available today there is a tendency to get everyone the very latest thing. Unfortunately, many of these items are much more expensive than the average budget can handle.

And, for some, fear and anxiety sets in just thinking about whether they will be totally alone during the holidays. The thought of being forgotten, alone, unloved and unwanted is a major stressor for the elderly – and not so elderly – living far from family and friends or are unable to travel.

Feng Shui is all about creating balance in your life so you can live a healthy, prosperous and abundant life filled with peace and joy. Use some of the following stress relieving suggestions to help create balance and find more peace and joy in this hectic time of the year.

Plan Ahead - The best way to limit or control stress is to plan ahead. If the holidays are a really big stress issue for you, in the future, plan months ahead not just days and weeks. You only need two simple tools to plan ahead, a pad of paper and a pen or pencil.

-americanchronicle.com

For the bedroom, Yang colors such as red, orange and bright yellows are simply not good for you since the too-active colors will keep you up, or give you with listless, unrefreshing sleep! Try to incorporate relaxing and subtle colors instead. Dragon images are also not a good idea for the bedroom.

Wooden overhead beams on ceilings in the home are very inauspicious, especially if you sleep below them! If removing them is not an option, hang auspicious items such as a faceted crystal above you. This will 'soften' the negative Qi and make it safe for you.

Don't install any water features (aquariums, fountains and the like) in bedrooms! This is considered very unlucky. Spiky plants such as cacti in sleeping areas are also a Feng Shui no-no. On second thought, keep cacti and bonsai plants away from your home interior or office entirely!

The little dots in the center of each thick part, acknowledge that nothing is "all black or all white." There is a little bit of the opposite or polarity in everything, in the same way that men have some female hormones and women have some male hormones.

The black yin part is often associated with environments that are dark, cold, damp, closed in, small, narrow, still and quiet.

The white yang part of the Tai Chi symbol is associated with light, heat, dryness, openess, large, wide, movement and sound.

Just as a mountain is still (yin) and the ocean moves (yang), any environment can be categorized as basically yin or yang and when it gets extreme, it can throw a place out of balance.

As an example, we need wind and water movement as essential aspects of nature, but when the wind and water get extreme we can have hurricanes and tsunamis causing a lot of damage.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a dark space, but if a person lived in a chronically dark space they would get depressed. So the essence of the Tai Chi symbol is the essence of feng shui--to create and maintain balance of these two forces. Within the scope of feng shui, where the same environment can affect people differently, we also have to consider the function of the space.

The value we place on defining a space as yin or yang also has to do with what kinds of activities take place there and what may be appropriate for one location is not for another. As an example, if a residence is situated on a busy street, we can categorize that as "too yang." There is too much energy whipping by the house. It can cause arguments and discord in the house. But if that same structure was a store on a busy street, it can create more foot traffic, visibility, and therefore business. So all the exposure is not "too yang" for a business.

Yin-Yang theory can also be applied to colors, shapes of furniture pieces, even types of sound. As an example, water which makes a delicate tinkling sound compared to a raging river, which would be too "yang" to be relaxing.

In feng shui theory, all environments can be described as "yin" or "yang." Yang aspects are lively, bright, airy, cheerful and warm. But "yin" aspects include still, dark, cluttered, stuffy, cold, or damp. Houses that have several of these yin aspects on a chronic basis are more likely to attract or harbor spirits inside.

There are also exterior cir*****stances which can attract a ghost to a house. This includes a house that is within view of a cemetary. There is a Chinese slang term, where a cemetary is called a "night club," because at night the cemetary gets very lively.

Even bright, cheery, brand new houses can harbor a ghost if they happen to have been built on top of old burial sites or battlefields. As an example, the Chumash Indians spent a lot of time in many areas of Southern California. I have been to a number of homes throughout Southern California where the presence of a Chumash Indian spirit seemed likely. One client even told me that after everyone went upstairs to go to bed each night, she'd smell the smoke of a "peace pipe" from downstairs wafting its way upstairs!

Houses that were built right into a mountainside can also be considered too yin. And sometimes a house will attract a ghost simply because a past occupant may be very attached to the property even though they have died. One client of mine, who lives in the Mt. Washington area of Los Angeles, had an interaction with a ghost on her property shortly after the 1994 earthquake. When she described the physical appearance of the ghost to a long-time neighbor, the neighbor confirmed that it was the man who had built the house many years previous. Perhaps he was just checking on the status of the house.

Is there a remedy to eliminate a ghost? By eliminating all the yin characteristics of a house, sometimes the ghost will leave of its own accord.

Sometimes it takes a willful, meditative dialogue with the spirit before it departs. And there are also some special feng shui remedies which involve opening up a certain door in the house. This is based on a little-known calculation derived from the age of the house and its compass orientation.

Most homes have two main doors. One that was built originally by the architect (front door) and the other, which could be a kitchen, garage or side door, that is more preferred by the occupants due, for example, to the convenience of its location.

Feng Shui and the Proper Use of Colors
I receive lots of inquiries regarding what colors to choose for certain rooms based on feng shui principles. People often try to figure out on their own the correct colors for an area based on what they are reading in popular books.
 
There are three common mistakes that are being made:
 
Some people are choosing colors based on their own personal “Gua” or Trigram. As an example, a person born in 1961 is the CHEN trigram, which is associated with the Wood element and the color green. To paint your bedroom green because of this could easily be a mistake and not cater to the inherent energies of the room.
 
Some books outline the inherent elements (and colors) associated with a particular direction and readers think that those are the appropriate colors. As an example, the south direction is associated with fire and people think it is correct to make the south room in the house red! This is wrong about 80% of the time.
 
The third common mistake is regarding the arbitrary color assignments given to different sections of the house based on the New Age Bagua Map (Black Hat School of feng shui.) I have to remind students and clients continually that the Bagua Map (with the Wealth corner and the Marriage corner) was invented less than thirty years ago and has very little to do with traditional feng shui. The Black Hat school recommends certain colors for those 8 imaginary life stations, based partly on western color psychology (i.e.pink in the Marriage corner) and partly on a misinterpretation of the “later-heaven sequence” of the Lo-shu grid.
 

I have found an interesting coincidence with some of the better neighborhoods I have visited and the better feng shui houses that exist there.  I am speaking of the 4 major house types which are determined by their precise compass orientation.

Here is one example: In the Pico/Robertson area of Los Angeles, there is a neighborhood south of Pico Blvd. called "Beverlywood Adjacent" and it includes many homes that were built between 1924-1943.  Those which are on the east side of Robertson Blvd. and face east or west are often the house types that are called "Reversed."  This implies a house type that is more prone to money and health struggles. (Right next to a lot of gang activity as well.) This neighborhood has never been considered as prestigous as the neighborhood on the West side of Robertson Blvd.  Many of these houses have identical floor plans and were built in the same period, but the difference in street alignment on either side of Robertson, makes them dramatically different house types.  If you measure the compass degree on the East side of Robertson, the homes are aligned pretty much exactly dead-on east (90 degrees) or West (270 degrees.)

Then you go a few blocks West of Robertson and the street alignment is a little different, where the east facing houses do so at about 75-80 degrees and West at about 255-260 degrees.  These house types are considered inherently good for money and people.  So this 15 degree shift may look almost imperceptible on the Thomas Map Guide, but it creates two very different house types, consistent with the general affluence of the neighborhoods they are in.

Another predictable area is the San Fernando Valley, which is mostly laid out on a North-South (345-165 degrees), East-West (70-250 degrees) grid.  Many of these homes were built in the 1950's and are also classified as "Reversed."

But when you get up into the hilly areas, with winding roads, particularly south of Ventura Blvd., the same 50's homes will face any number of directions, and often end up being better feng shui homes than the ones in the flat lands.  Again, this has nothing to do with the size of the homes.  It is the compass alignment combined with their construction age.

Another subtle shift takes place between Culver City streets in a Northeast-Southwest alignment, verses the slightly different alignment on Santa Monica streets in better neighborhoods.

In the fall of 1999, I visited a new 80-home development near Claremont at the request of the concerned builder.  The Asian buyers were only buying the South-facing houses. I knew that some of this had to do with cultural superstition that South is a lucky direction.  In this case, there was some truth to the situation, because new homes which face south are some of the best feng shui houses being built in the current time frame.
 

-fengshuinews.com