Using the Elements to Design a Balanced Space
Learning which element you personally harness the most so that you can design your space intentionally is a great tool to create harmony in your home. This helps you decide if you need to tamper or enhance a certain element, in order to balance your mental, emotional, physical body.
Feng Shui is rooted in three basic principles, the Bagua, the elements and Yin and Yang. The concept of living in harmony and flow, is achieved by understanding how our living spaces influence our personal energy. It also helps us understand how we gravitate to certain homes and features. If you haven’t already, take our Element Quiz to understand what element are you most prominent in and how to apply it to your space.
Decorating with the elements invites the energy of attention and intention into your home and life. It transforms every object in your home into something meaningful, creating your very own sacred space. Everything in nature is made up of five elements: earth, water, fire, metal and wood. You are surrounded by these elements inside and outside of your home. Ultimately, you would use them all in balance to create harmony in your home. While enhancing the specific element that matches your personality most, while tamping the one that is least compatible to you. This can definitely change throughout your life depending on your current goals and challenges, you can take a look at your space and see how it mirrors your current reality.
For example, you can be born under the Fire element according to the Chinese birth chart, but adopt a more wood or earth element after starting a business or becoming a parent. For that reason, we are using a quiz that helps you check in with how you think and feel NOW, because this can change depending on what life challenges you are going through. This is why Feng Shui is the art of consciously living.
After taking the quiz, check in with your home, and see how this aligns with you. The second step is to look at the area of your life you would like to enhance, and then check in with your home. Head over to the gua that corresponds to that area, and see if there is a lack of that element or an overabundance and set an intention. For example, if you want to attract a loving relationship, you want to focus on your bedroom and your Love & Relationship gua with the intention to welcome into your life a relationship that is (fill in your details).
ESTABLISH HARMONY & FLOW
There are three steps to establishing flow and harmony in your space.
- Remove anything you don’t use, that is broken, cluttered or that you notice is directly in conflict with the element of the space. For example, if you have a big red rug in your money corner you might want to move it out of that room, as red represents Fire and it burns or consumes Wood.
- Next, Rearrange anything you see that needs to change. For example, if you notice your bed is positioned facing the door, and you have the space to rearrange it where the door does not directly face the bed, you will benefit from doing this. Beds aligned with the door create too much chi energy and it disrupts your sleep.
- Last, you want to be Energize. With your intention in mind, head over to our shop and use the art of intentionally living to create your sacred space.
Head over to the Bagua Map to learn how to apply this knowledge to your home decor. To learn more in depth about how to use the elements in your home decor, we suggest reading Decorating with the Five Elements of Feng Shui by Tisha Morris.
UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTRUCTIVE & DESTRUCTIVE CYCLES OF THE ELEMENTS
The elements in nature work in three cycles, creative, controlling and disruptive. These elements either support each other’s growth, control or decrease it. In the art of Feng Shui, all cycles are constructive, depending on the client’s needs and the nature of each space.
In the Creative Cycle, clockwise on this diagram, each element nourishes, or creates, the next one in the cycle:
- Water feeds Wood.
- Wood fuels Fire.
- Fire, when it turns to ash, creates Earth.
- Earth, as it condenses over time, produces to Metal.
- Metal enhances the life-giving properties of Water.
In the Controlling Cycle, across this diagram, each element controls, or tames, the next one in the cycle:
- Wood controls Earth — by breaking it up as roots take hold and break through the surface.
- Earth controls Water — by damming it, keeping it between its banks, and muddying it.
- Water controls Fire
- Fire controls Metal — by melting it.
- Metal controls Wood — by cutting it with its sharp edges.
In the Disruptive Cycle, across this diagram, each element destroys, the next one in the cycle:
- Fire destroys metal.
- Metal cuts wood.
- Wood weakens earth.
- Earth absorbs water.
- Water destroys fire.
Understanding how the elements build or control each other helps us to design with intention, by selecting home decor, color pallets and textiles with a purpose for each space. Sometimes all it takes to shift the energy in a space is acknowledging how the elements are working together or against each other, and rearranging them within the home. Head over to our blog and explore each one.
