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
You can also join Kartar’s monthly e-newsletter and find out about her global services at http://www.FengShuiSolutions.net.

Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Red Lotus Letter feng shui e-zine and the ebook APPLIED FENG SHUI, The Science of Determining and Applying Authentic Feng Shui to Your Space In 9 Easy Steps. For more information, logon to http://www.redlotusletter.com and receive this special report “16 Feng Shui Secrets for Greater Prosperity” FREE.

Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Red Lotus Letter feng shui e-zine and is dedicated to helping her readers develop successful, prosperous, and supportive environments with feng shui. To subscribe, logon to http://www.redlotusletter.com and receive this special report Fr*ee “16 Feng Shui Secrets for Greater Prosperity.”

Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Red Lotus Letter feng shui e-zine and the ebook APPLIED FENG SHUI, The Science of Determining and Applying Authentic Feng Shui to Your Space In 9 Easy Steps. For more information, logon to http://www.redlotusletter.com and receive this special report “16 Feng Shui Secrets for Greater Prosperity” FREE.

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. You can also join Kartar’s monthly e-newsletter and find out about her global services at http://www.FengShuiSolutions.net.