The bathroom is often the one room that homeowners pay very little attention to concerning its design and décor. This is usually because the room is used for very limited reasons, but many don’t realize that it could be used for so much more. In fact, the tub provides the perfect place to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work, which many people fail to do on a regular basis. With a décor that’s a little more dramatic, people may be more willing to use this room as more of a sanctuary when they want to get away from it all. Here are some tips on how to transform the look of your bathroom, turning it into an area of the house you will actually enjoy using.

Start Out Slow
If you’re considering incorporating black and white into your bathroom, start out with something simple that will give you a taste of the look. For instance, a stark white wall adorned with a simple black-and-white print framed in solid black will give you an idea of what to expect. Although this décor isn’t for everyone, if you love bold and dramatic, you may find that it suits you perfectly.

How Color Affects Your Mood
Different colors have been proven to affect people’s moods. For many, white represents tranquility, whereas black radiates excitement and sophistication. The way that these two colors become a sort of blend of opposites results in some very exciting decorating!

The Floor Is Essential to the Overall Look
It’s common for people to ignore the floors when it comes to decorating their home. Yet flooring and rugs can completely transform the look of any room! In a black-and-white bathroom décor, bold designs are key. In terms of bathroom flooring, tile or marble is great to begin with. By using a mixture of black and white tiles, you can dramatically impact the look of the room. What will result is a look that’s bold and exciting, yet refined and tranquil at the same time. You might also consider a jet black throw rug over a snow-white floor.

Include Great Accessories
Accessories are the jewelry of any room, meaning they’re essential for completing the look. What helps pull a bathroom look together, making it complete, is the window and shower curtains. For this type of décor, go with a bold geometric or abstract pattern that incorporates black, white, and gray. Over the vanity, hang a dramatic mirror edged in black or silver. If you have a large bare wall in your bath, hang an intricately patterned mural or tapestry that fits with the décor.

Update Your Cabinets
If you want to update the look of your cabinets, they might benefit from a coat of either black or white paint. Top it off with a high gloss coat of polyurethane, and then add some contrast with knobs in the opposite color. Try to picture in your mind how fantastic this bathroom décor is going to look. You can be sure that this room will never be thought of as plain or dull again!

Above all, the bathroom needs to be a sanctuary where you can relax and unwind after a long, stressful day. Once you’ve filled up the tub, add scented bath oil, bubbles, or whatever you like. Once you light a few candles and pour a glass of wine, you’ll find yourself totally loving your surroundings.

About the Author…
For over 4 decades Leon Tuberman has helped people with their furniture and interior design needs. He is the owner and operator of popular furniture store in Los Angeles. They have a huge inventory of handcrafted American built solid oak furniture for your bedroom, home office and living room. Whether you’re looking for a wood tv stand for your living room or an oak bookshelf they have everything you need.

Let me tell a story. It is a short story about feng shui, ghosts and gods.

Feng Shui has always been associated some way or other with the supernatural and strange wise beings. We have the legend of Fu Xi who gave us the River Map. We also have Huang Shi Gong who taught, among other things, the Green Satchels to Zhang Liang. Huang Shi Gong was also said to have used Feng Shui to bury Liu Bang’s parents (it wasn’t called Fengshui then but Kan Yu). Liu Bang went on to found the Han Dynasty.

Huang Shi Gong was a sorcerer, a magician, a man who knows the Dao. Some say he is divine, a god. Nonetheless, such is the mystical side of Feng Shui. It is a zone where no science can reach nor decipher. At least not yet.

Our story now begins. It is a story I heard.

Old Master Wang was getting on in age and had taken a reprieve from all the Feng Shui requests. Looking for auspicious sites requires the energy of youth. Though still fit for his age, steep slopes are becoming a challenge. Three steps one stop, five steps one rest – that’s how it is. But this morning’s phone call had a certain urgency about it.

Madam Li had somehow found him out and wanted him urgently. Tried as he could, she would not be dissuaded. Old Master Wang is a gentleman and it would be unchivalrous to turn a request down, especially one that seemed urgent. So he agreed. Madam Li would be over within the hour to fetch him. “There goes my lazy morning,” he thought to himself.

Madam was five minutes early. In the car, she told him exactly what had happened. Apparently her father had passed on three months ago. Shortly after the funeral, her father appeared in her dream and said that he was not buried right. His grave had bad fengshui. He was uneasy and asked that she looked for another site. “The site is at Moon Village,” he told her. Moon Village is a neigbouring village about eighty kilometers away.

She had brush it aside then as she had not much faith in Feng Shui, being educated in the new ways. But strangely, her brother had the same dream too. The dead man told him that it had to be urgently carried out. Right away, if not, the family will suffer.

Now, it is not normal Chinese practice to re-entomb the dead so shortly after. A good time would be three years so the brother thought nothing more of it. That was until he suddenly suffered a huge loss in his export-import business. There was some war or something in the Middle East and his shipment was somehow hijacked or lost without trace. This poor man suffered a huge loss. Insurance would not pay.

The dead father had reappeared to him just a few days ago. By chance Madam Li had heard that Old Master Wang was familiar with Moon Village. That was why she identified him, believing he would be the right man for the job. They needed a reliable FengShui master good with identifying Xue, the dragon’s lair.

Now Old Master Wang was scratching his head. He had scoured quite a fair bit of the hills and plains of the Moon Village. There were potential plots with possibilities of good feng shui but how on earth (or the otherworld) did the dead man know that there is a good plot in Moon Village. Madam Li had received quite specified instructions on location and features and they were headed there now.

Now, at his point the story got a little technical, talking about Feng Shui formations and what not. To cut a long story short (I promised a short story) Old Master Wang eventually found the site. Hopefully that would please the dead man, ghost whatever. At one point he did have to go down on all fours though. It was not the perfect site but okay okay.

The story gets stranger. The old ghost came back to Madam Li and said that was the site he meant. Excitedly, she called Old Master Wang and told him the good news. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned that her third brother, who lived in another town, knew of a local temple where the resident god is famous for giving Feng Shui advice. Old Master Wang was amused. “Why not ask your third brother to check with the ‘Three Yellow God’ there?” he suggested in jest.

Old Master Wang thought that was the end of the matter. On the day of the re-entombment, the third brother had this story to tell. He had indeed gone to the temple for a second opinion. Without asking for further details other than the locality, the ‘Three Yellow God’ gave the exact description (that’s what the third brother said) of the site. Fortunately, the god also mentioned that the site was a super fantastic one but it had good fengshui. Said it was a ‘green dragon lair’.

Strange isn’t it that gods and ghosts know feng shui too? But there is still one interesting part to our story. On digging up the first grave, the undertakers discovered that there were other bone fragments under the coffin. Ah, the poor man had been buried over another dead soul. Now, that is terribly inauspicious. No wonder the dead father was so agitated and wanted to be moved out immediately.

-the end, for now-

Lai blogs on http://www.fengshui-insights.com

Just what is Feng Shui? The short answer is that it’s an ancient Chinese art and science that was developed some 3000 years ago to help people balance the energies in the places they lived. It’s pronounced Fung Shway and it translates to “Wind Water.” In Chinese culture, the elements play an important part in everyday life, as in wind and water that bring good harvests, which in turn bring good health and prosperity.

Feng Shui is based on Taoist philosophy, which puts a great deal of stock in living in harmony with nature, and states that land is alive and brimming with energy, or chi (pronounced chee). This in turn means that your home is alive and full of chi as well and needs to be arranged in such a way that the chi can be maximized.

How can you use this Chinese art in your spring cleaning? You’ll need to do some rearranging, but first, you’ll need a bagua (pronounced bah-gwah) map. This map includes the eight building blocks of life, according to the Chinese Taoist philosophy: health, love/marriage, wealth, career, wisdom/knowledge, reputation/fame, children/creativity and helpful people, plus the center area of chi.

To make a bagua map, look at the structure of your home. The ideal shape is a square or rectangle, but despair not if your home is L-shaped or U-shaped. On a large piece of paper, draw a map of your home, noting where doors and windows are. If your home is L-shaped or U-shaped, use dotted lines to fill out the square or rectangle. Now divide the square into nine parts, which will correspond to each of the nine bagua areas.

The baguas are determined by the location of the front door of your house, which is considered the baseline of your bagua map. As you look in the front door of your home, the area to your right is “helpful people.” The area to your left is “wisdom/knowledge,” and in between those two is your “career” bagua. The center three baguas, left to right, are “family,” “chi” and “children/creativity.” The upper left corner is “wealth,” upper middle is “fame/reputation” and the upper right is “marriage.” In other words, it looks like this:

Wealth/fame/marriage

Family/chi/children

Wisdom/career/helpful people

———-front door————

Once you’ve drawn out your bagua map, you are read to place symbolic objects in the corresponding areas to maximize the chi in those areas. For instance, in your wealth area, you can place a bowl of coins, or perhaps hang framed foreign currency. Experts also recommend hanging a round clear crystal on a red cord, which represents wealth. Hang wedding photos and place keepsakes from your wedding in your marriage area, and place pictures of your children in the children area. You get the idea. The center chi area should remain as uncluttered as possible.

Carolyn Cooper is a gifted Energy Intuitive and teacher of cutting-edge vibrational healing. Through inspiration and years of experience, Carolyn has created Calyco Healing, a unique energy-healing training course in which anyone can learn how to heal themselves and others. These trainings attract an international audience. Cooper also publishes an e-newsletter called “Living in the Flow” and was a contributing author of the book 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health. Visit her blog at http://www.calycohealing.com/blog.

The practical application of Feng Shui interior design in every room of your home can have an influence on helping with the creation of your wealth and abundance in terms of your prosperity. (By the way wealth and abundance is not just money it is wealth and abundance in every aspect of your life from friends, family and career).

However one room in particular can have a significant impact on your Feng Shui wealth. Surprisingly it is the bathroom and its Feng Shui interior design.

1. Location – The location of the bathroom in the house can have a major influence on your wealth and abundance. In terms of Feng Shui if you have a bathroom in the so called “wealth” corner of your home then you are likely to flush your money away unless you carry out some Feng Shui cures or remedies.

Just quickly the wealth corner of your home is the far left hand section of you home if you stand facing the front door. I have numerous clients over many years who have had financial problems until they applied these cures to their bathroom. The penny dropped for one client when I was explaining the concept and siad he now knew why he had gone bankrupt years before as he could clearly remember the layout of the home he was liviung in at the time.

The traditional cures to overcome that problem is to keep the door closed the toilet lid down, hang a small Feng Shui crystal in the window to draw in positive outside energy or chi and to hang a Feng Shui bagua mirror over the door. The concept is to seal in the flushing away energy and introduce positive chi with the crystal.

2. Feng Shui Interior Design – Decorate your bathroom so that it looks like a spa room in a luxurious hotel. Make it a place to go and relax, so that you can forget all the problems and hassles you are having in your day to day world. As I discuss at my books, use anything in the bathroom which makes you feel good. Trust your intuition. Always design in a way that lifts your spirits.

3. Clutter – in terms of Feng Shui wealth one of the best things you can do in any room is to remove anything which is cluttering up the energy of the space. You want energy to flow easily. So in the bathroom, don’t have all your half used cosmetic jars sitting on the vanity, remove the dirty laundry basket and make sure all the surfaces appear clean and are in good order. If things appear to be falling apart in any way this can affect how you feel about your wealth and abundance. The concept of clearing the clutter needs to be applied to all rooms to ensure a smooth flow of chi. It is not really about a short term messy appearance it is about things which have stayed in the same place for a long time, are covered in dust and which are stagnant.

Your Feng Shui Wealth can be significantly affected by your bathroom and these three tips give you some ideas of things to consider to make improvements to your wealth and abundance

George Birdsall wrote the best selling book Feng Shui – The Key Concepts in 1995 and has sold over 50,000 copies so far. He has recently released an eBook “Feng Shui Symbols – Ancient Secrets to finding Love and Wealth”- Ancient Secrets to finding Love and Wealth”. He writes a blog on planning your home improvement projects to save time and money at http://www.therenovationplan.com. He lives in Sydney Australia and loves organising anything in ways that Save Time and Money for himself and his clients. His business focuses around Project Management and Client Advisory Services to clients ranging from home owners to multinational corporations

Losing Sleep? Look to Feng Shui for sleep secrets. Feng Shui is beneficial for a lot of things, including how to get a good night’s rest each night. For the uninitiated, Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese principle that combines art and science to create a pleasing environment which is conducive to the positive flow of Chi, the energy of the universe. By regulating this Chi and keeping the flow positive, you can improve your time sleeping.

Sleeping Tip 1: Avoid sleeping with your head pointed towards the door to your bedroom. This is because when energy enters the room, if your head and body are in a direct line, it will bear the brunt of this wave of energy which can be subconsciously unnerving and can interrupt or even prevent sleep. Also avoid having your feet facing the door.

Sleeping Tip 2: Don’t position your bed right below a window. This can also be detrimental to your sleeping habits. The window presents a way for your positive Chi to escape. In addition, a window above your bed also invites bad Chi to enter your room. And since the bad Chi would be right above your head, you would experience most of the bad flow of Chi first before it disperses to the rest of your room.

Sleeping Tip 3: In terms of room decor, try and avoid water or any symbolism related to water in your bedroom. Yes, water is considered lucky and represents abundance in Feng Shui. But in your bedroom, it can actually have a detrimental effect on your sleep. Also avoid having pictures of water in your bedroom.

Sleeping Tip 4: Avoid sharp angled corners in your bed area. Architectural elements or pieces of furniture can have a harmful effect on your sleep. If any sharp angled corners or a sloping ceiling is pointed at the bed area, these are considered poison arrows in Feng Shui. Poison arrows produce bad Chi. By blocking the effects of these poison arrows, you can maintain a positive flow of Chi in the room and hopefully sleep better at night. Hanging silk plants or even pretty lighting can diffuse the effects of these sharp corners or angles.

Sleeping Tip 5: Get rid of photos and memorabilia of old flames. Any ties to past relationships can damage your current romantic life in your bedroom. This often leads to poor sleep. If you absolutely cannot part with certain memorabilia, move those items to another room.

Sleeping Tip 6: Clear the junk and declutter. Try cleansing your bedroom. Old, stale, and pent-up bad energy could be keeping you up at night. Decluttering and starting new is healing and purifying. You also might add aromatherapy techniques like adding scents. Lavender and vanilla are calming scents.

Any one technique many not bring about more sleep. But the combination of techniques should do the trick. For more sleep secrets including how to handle Feng Shui mirrors can be found at http://www.fengshuimirror.com.

A water fountain is a bomb of pleasure which when bursts out makes you elated. It rejuvenates your mind and soothes your soul. Beyond the work of art, interior wall fountains are gorgeous, soothing and bring much happiness. The purpose of this article is to make you feel just how lucky you are if you own a fabulous and fanciful fountain.

The fast moving factor of time never allows anyone to enjoy nature leisurely. Nature is the wonder which the blind can see and a deaf can hear. This is the truth that triumphs. One of such nature’s beauty are the waterfalls. But is it truly possible to spend hours and hours beside them to enjoy it’s calmness and the babbling brooks in our daily schedule? No……definitely not. So what can be done to bridge this gap?

Indoor fountains stand as the only way to fill this gap that ends your quest towards nature. They reduces the space between you and nature and make you feel to be in an eco-friendly atmosphere amidst of all sorts of urbanization. They are the perfect medicines that gives you loads and loads of relaxation. When coming to the topic of interior decoration it is the art of putting right things in the right place accomplished with an artistic touch. Indoor fountains are one of the renowned examples that adds glory to your home.

On superstitious grounds, water is considered to be one of the reflections of god. According to Feng Shui which is the art of interior design states that the right composition of colors and properties will ensure harmony in your living place. This Feng Shui too remarks that water is one of the basic things that fetches blessings to your sweet home. Some people who may argue with the decorative option will be surely convinced for this sentimental side.

There are also scientific reasons to boast about fountains since the water from the indoor fountains purifies the air and cleanses the surroundings. These are not blind beliefs because to be more specific the negative ions expelled from the water attracts and pick out the dirt and impure particles which is oppositely polarized thereby leaving the environment neat and tidy. They also enhance the moisture content in air which improves your skin tone and make wrinkles to vanish. The water fountain is a wonderful thing that stands itself as a symbol of beauty and a thing that increases your beauty as well.

Amber Liddell is resource for the website Serenityhealth.com, your one stop shop for any type of water fountains and water fountain information. You will find many outdoor fountains for your garden, wall fountains, tabletop fountains and even custom fountains. Visit Serenityhealth.com or call to talk to one of our water fountain experts.

The primary entrance to your house is called the “mouth of chi” in feng shui. It is an extremely important area to focus on because so much of the energy that comes into your house comes through this primary entrance. A few small changes here can make a big difference in the rest of your house. Here are a few ways to make the most of what’s good about your front entrance and how to overcome any existing problems.

1) Use your front door

So many people come through the garage now that it is quite common that no one has even stepped over the real threshold to your house in the last few days. Make a point of changing that by walking out your front door to get the mail, or just to look around your front garden.

2) Make sure the lock works well and the door opens easily

Blocked entrances are very bad in feng shui, and the front door is the most important entrance. If your door leaks heat, get it sealed. If it sticks, either oil the hinges or get a locksmith to fix where it is stuck. Absolutely make sure that the door can swing open all the way inside, with no coat hangers or anything else behind it.

3) Widen the path

The wider the path to your door (and the wider your door, too) the more energy and, symbolically, the more money can come into your house. Ever notice how big, expensive houses tend to have double doors and wide paths? Make your house like that, even if it just means adding a row of paving stones on either side of the front path.

Having steps in front of your house can be good, bad, or not matter too much. Having steps going up to your house can slow chi down, whereas steps going down to your front door (like a basement apartment), can slow it down so much as to create stagnation. So long as there are just a few steps, and they seem in proportion to the rest of the entrance, they will not affect too much. But if someone has to climb lots of steep stairs to come to a little door, then you need to take some steps of your own to increase the flow of chi so it can overcome that barrier.

4) Consider the direction

The direction your front door faces is very important in feng shui. Most directions are positive, but doors facing North and particularly North-East are not auspicious. If your door faces either of these directions, you want to insulate the inside of your house from this energy. You can do that by having a winding path to the front door and adding bushy evergreen plants so the energy has to meander in. Painting your door with high-gloss paint will also reflect back some of the negative chi, as will using shiny metal fittings on the door. Other ways to block this energy include putting a reflecting globe or a convex near the front door.

Front doors facing East are excellent for building up a career or getting started in life. A South-East facing door helps with communication and steady progress. The South is a high-energy direction that may even need to be toned down with a dish of sea salt if you find yourself arguing with people. A South-West door gives more settled feel, but there is a risk of some not-so-good energy settling in, too. A Westward facing door will help with romance and contentment. A North-West facing door is good for authority and stability.

5) Consider the activity beyond your door

What’s going on just beyond your property line will also determine whether you want to block or increase the energetic openness of the front door. If your house is at the end of a street, or in the direct line of a traffic flow, you want to put up some blocks to slow the speeding chi down. But if you are on the inside curve of a quiet street, you want to bring the energy in and activate it, possibly with a water fountain or wind chimes.

Leslie Donohue is a professional decorator who specializes in how to use light. She just finished an extensive installation of outdoor ceiling lights around her home and is now moving on to the ceiling light fixtures in her home.

If you are serious about stress relief, then you have to look at your living space and see whether it adds to, or relieves the level of stress in your life.

So what exactly is ‘Feng Shui’?

Feng shui is simply about changing the way energy flows around your living space. It is the ancient Chinese ‘art of placement’ and deals with the relation of objects and other elements to each other.

For most of us, we cannot rebuild our homes, but we can apply some simple feng shui beginner’s principles and have fun doing it!

I use these feng shui tips regularly when I feel a “heavy energy” around me and need to force a shift and lighten the spirit! It might sound involved if it is new to you, but even a simple change of furniture, mirror placement, plant arrangement or introducing a new colour can have very positive results…

And, anyway, it is said that “a change is as good as a holiday”…

If your home doesn’t display the template that you desire, try my feng shui tips for simple and fun ways to change the template. Do it and watch your life change!

Start with these 5 Feng Shui beginners tips to create templates that can positively influence your life …

1. Create More Abundance

Start by creating the feeling of luxury in your living space. Use your creativity! Buy inexpensive things like richly coloured fabric. Include a few items that appeal to your sense of self-indulgence. Start with one room – maybe your bedroom. Drape your bed with the rich fabric. Add lots of pillows.
Display pictures or photos that portray abundance to you. Create a ‘treasure map’ to hang on the wall. A treasure map is a collection of photographs or magazine cuttings that you have put together to convey the image of what you want to manifest… A vision board. Place the ‘treasure map’ where you can see it and it will soak into your subconscious mind.

2. Create More Love In Your Life

Look to see what symbolises love to you and then fill your home with that. If the color pink reminds you of love – paint a pink wall in your bedroom. Put pink flowers in your lounge. If hearts remind you of love, put heart shaped pillows on your bed. Lots of them!

3. Generate More Creativity in Your Life

Creativity comes from being able to see “ordinary” in a different way. Look at a basket and see a lampshade. Take things that are being discarded and see what you can do with them. Take what someone throws away and make a thing of beauty out of it. You can use your home as a canvas for your creativity without spending a lot of money… Paint on fabric, paper a wall with torn paper bags layered over each other. String a length of Christmas tree lights in a dried branch and use as decoration, Frame family photos in pieces of wood off-cuts.

Be creative in your home, and you will find that you have begun to create a template of creativity in your life.

4. Create More Peace in Your Life

To create more peace in your life fill your home with the energy and feeling of peace. Paint a room blue. Replace reds and oranges with blues and pastel colors. Get rid of any object that you don’t like or anything that makes you feel irritated You DON’T have to display it just because your granny gave it to you! Play soothing music. Dedicate your house crystals to peace. Have pots of ferns in your home. Invest in an aquarium with slow-moving, graceful fish. Create an indoor waterfall so that you can listen to the sound of water flowing. Display photos and paintings of peaceful nature scenes. Soften sharp corners by draping with soft fabric. Spray lavender aroma throughout your house periodically.When your home looks and feels like a sanctuary of peace, peace will fill your heart.

5. Create More Passion in Your Life

My feng shui tips for this may seem obvious… Purple velvet curtains, luxurious pink towels, candles everywhere, overlong curtains folding onto themselves as they lay on the floor, an assortment of pillows everywhere, a mix and match of colors and fabrics. Place bowels of flowers wherever you feel. Toss your shoes over your shoulders when you take them off. Throw a paisley shawl over the sofa. Put a burgundy scarf over the lampshade. Put an oversized nude painting, slightly askew, as the central focus in your living room. Spray flower essence throughout your home. Play your favourite romantic music.

Maybe the energy in your home is too precise and confined for passion to enter and feel comfortable? Rearrange things. Create a template of passion and form will follow.

Of course, passion means different things to different people. Find out what it means to you and make a BIG show of it. It can be really fun!

Start with a small change in any area of your living space and notice the change in how you feel. Feng Shui is real stress relief for you and your home.

Want to ‘Feng Shui’ your bedroom?

Have a look at http://www.diy-stress-relief.com/feng-shui-bedroom-tips.html for a simple ‘how-to’.

Margo Bastos is passionate about holistic healing and natural stress-free living. Her abiding interest, continuing personal research and every-day philosophy is in alternative mind, body and spiritual modalities.
She has a real estate business in South Africa and her formal qualifications include a MA in Jewish Studies from the University of Cape Town. Together with Alan Mounter, a practising holistic therapist, she has a website dealing with natural remedies for managing the negative effects of stress. Visit at http://www.diy-stress-relief.com

When it comes to apartment buildings, they are often more complicated to analyze than a house. The house generally has one family inside or an extended family and the whole house is viewed as one unit, having one orientation. Then, each room can be micro-managed as a smaller version of the house whole house. As an example, if we discover that the northeast section of someone’s house happens to be very positive in their particular house, then the northeast section of each room in that house would have a small dose of that good quality. Simple and straightforward.

But what about an apartment building with any number of occupants? Does the chi (energy) have an intelligence to understand that these tenants are not related to each other? Should the apartment building be viewed as one giant house, where everybody inside is just occupying a room that happens to be their individual apartment? Or should each apartment be viewed as its own universe, with its own distinct orientation? These are the kinds of questions that feng shui practitioners have different opinions about. The distinctions in the analysis can include whether or not the apartment building has one big main lobby or entrance that everyone uses or in the case of certain condos and townhouses, where each person has their own separate entrance from outside. And would a common parking garage matter?

I have always taken the approach, where I make a mental note of where someone is within a building (the big picture) and then I help the client micro-manage their own apartment, with its own unique orientation, especially since this is all the client has control over. Feedback from clients confirms that often similar types of people will occupy the same building. Creative types might be an example. Perhaps you are a chef and the person who lives above you is a kitchen designer!

It is valid to note where someone’s individual apartment is within a building. If I can use the metaphor that the building is like a state or country and the individual apartments are like cities or towns. You will have the greatest potential to succeed and be healthy and happy if you are in the cleanest and most prosperous city, as opposed to the most polluted or poverty-stricken town. Over and over again, I have clients confirm for me that the people who occupy the best part of a building are doing better than those in the worst parts of the building. If I discover that my client is in a bad part of the building with no practical or affordable way to move, I try to see if they can make better use of the best parts of their individual space.

No place is too small or too large to evaluate according to Feng Shui principles. Visit Feng Shui Master Kartar Diamond on the web at http://www.FengShuiSolutions.net

Kartar has books, workbooks, e-books and telesminars to avail yourself of in the pursuit of learning authentic classical Feng Shui.

Kartar is also available worldwide for consultations, including her long distance report which serves people far and wide who cannot afford to have Kartar come to their location in person.

You can also find Kartar Diamond on Facebook and her Twitter name is FengShuiRx

Along with all the other rooms in the house, there has certainly been a lot written about what kind of Feng Shui impact the kitchen has on its occupants. Many myths abound and I have had clients needlessly worry about features in their kitchens, some of which will be addressed in this issue.

Firstly, the residential kitchen is not normally looked upon as the most important room in a house. In fact, with the way we live today, fewer people actually cook on a daily basis. There may even be an ironic parallel between how high-tech and ostentatious a kitchen is, with how little cooking actually take place.

And yet it is one of the more important rooms in the house which could make or break a real estate deal. Here are some of the more popular kitchen myths: (READ: not true)

• A mirror behind a stove brings prosperity: I have walked into kitchens where clients had propped up make-ups mirrors behind their stove burners or had placed one large mirror propped up or against the wall because they had heard that this brings in more money. Aside from the fact that grease and food will splatter onto the mirror and look bad, I don’t recommend this practice. This notion has something to do with creating the illusion that the more food you are cooking, the wealthier you are. Nice concept, but not very effective. In fact, if you really want to be spiritually rich, it would probably be better to pack an extra lunch each day and then give it away to the first homeless person you see each day.

• A sink placed right near a stove, or a refrigerator right near a stove, is bad Feng Shui: this is very intangible. And I would not argue with a kitchen designer about the most functional placement of appliances. The Feng Shui myth is that hot and cold (stove/refrigerator) should not be placed side by side because it would be a conflict of the yin-yang energies.

None of the authors who claim this is a problem have given information about what the measurable consequences are when stove and fridge are next to each other. Not worth worrying about.

• When a person stands at a stove and cooks with their back to the entrance, this is seen as vulnerable or prone to accidents. I can see some truth to this, although I have never in all my years of practice heard a client blame a kitchen accident on their having their back to the entrance. (And since mothers supposedly “have eyes on the backs of their heads,” this should be a mute point for a large percentage of the people who cook in the family kitchen.

• Kitchen in the center of the house is bad luck: This seems to simply be a poor design and possibly more prone to a fire. It is more practical for a kitchen to be on the side of a house where there can be a window for direct escape of cooking odors, excessive heat or steam.

• Bathrooms next to kitchens are bad Feng Shui: This concept is hinged on the notion that there could be a sanitation problem by having “elimination” energies in close proximity to a food prep location. Just remember that you can walk across a whole house with unwashed hands and end up in the kitchen also.

Some of my consistent findings, using traditional Feng Shui, is that when a kitchen ends up being in the most positive area of the house, the client often reports that this is in fact the favorite hang-out place for occupants as well as guests. Conversely, when a kitchen is located in a particularly accident-prone area of the house, there are more injuries and/or appliances break down a lot.

Another consistent finding: when the kitchen resides in the Northwest quadrant of the house (NW=metal and cooking produces fire), the result of fire symbolically melting metal can create a home where the children are unruly and do not listen to the father. (NW is associated with the father figure.) There is no physical explanation for this, but the feedback supports this association.

A commercial kitchen in a restaurant or catering company should be in a positive location within the building because the success of the business is based so much on the food.

Finally, we are all psychological and programmable beings. When people enter the house from the kitchen, there seems to be a universal agreement that the occupants will feel like eating whether they are hungry or not.

Feng Shui Solutions, founded by Kartar Diamond, is dedicated to advancing the information about Feng Shui as a natural science. Author of four books and two e-books, so far, Diamond has taught introductory classes to over 10,000 students and has had over 4,000 clients as of 2009. She began her consulting firm in 1992, and has studied with a number of Feng Shui Masters, including Master Larry Sang of the American Feng Shui Institute. Kartar is one of his senior instructors and she also moderates the Institute’s on-line Forum for on-line students.

You can find Kartar Diamond on Facebook and her Twitter name is FengShuiRx
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