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.

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

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

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.

Sometimes a house or office can feel uncomfortable and there’s no real reason you can put your finger on to explain your uneasy feeling. Other times, it’s easy: someone has been there that was negative or died or was ill. Homes and spaces often take on the energy of the previous occupants as well. There may be instances when you moved into a space and just felt like someone else was there or that the space just didn’t feel right.

If this sounds familiar, just remember you are not alone. Many people feel uncomfortable in spaces and they can’t explain why. The “why” is not important, though. What is important is that you find a way to make your space feel more comfortable so you can feel more at ease. A first step would be to perform a space cleansing.

Unlike “space clearing,” space cleasing doesn’t rely on getting rid of clutter. However, if you have a bunch of old items and junk from previous residents or others, it is possible that some of the energy is coming from these old items. If that’s the case then you should definitely take some of these things to the trash.

What’s more, if you have had a spate of bad luck and find that life has just been a constant struggle, it’s possible that you have some negative energies hanging around. This is another good instance when it might be a good idea to do a space cleansing. Space cleansing will help you feel more comfortable in your home or office and let you move on in your space comfortably and in a positive state of mind.

Regardless of why or how you feel, if your space doesn’t feel quite right, consider these tips to help you clear out the negative energy in your house and invite the good energy back inside!

1. Clear stale energies from prior residents.

If you have recently moved, you might be feeling some of the residual energy from past residents. If that’s your case, then consider using a simple bell. Walking from the front door and in a clockwise pattern, circle each room and go into the next while ringing a bell. Be sure to ring the bell in corners and in closets where negative energy can remain trapped.

2. Use salt to cleanse an area.

Another tip is to use salt to remove negative energies. You can wipe the walls with salt or sprinkel salt into the corners of the room. Be sure to sweep up the salt and throw it into the trash outside of your house.

3. Feed your ghosts rice.

If you feel extreme negative energy, you can also try sprinkling rice around the perimeter of your home beginning at the front door. The rice will draw the energy outside and away from the interior of your home.

4. Scent the air to rid negative energies.

Smoke from incense or from herbs such as lavender for transcending problems or eucalyptus for healing or mint for prosperity. The scents of incense or herbal essential oils are all excellent ways to introduct beneficial energy.

5. Light and sound.

Light and sound are two very effective “yang” treatments that help to dispel negative energies. Tinkling windchimes and bright crystal rainbows or lit chandeliers are both excellent ways to introduce beneficial — and cleansing — energy to your space.

6. Take a salt bath for yourself.

In the process of cleansing your home, it might also be a good idea to cleanse yourself as well. It is possible that you are bringing negative energy home from work or from the outside world. Soak in a tub with sea salt or make your own sea salt scrub and wash your body in the shower with salt. Salt will purify you and remove negative energies from your person. This is especially helpful if you work in a hostile or gossipy environment and will help you rid the energy from your body.

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.

The bedroom is the site of relaxation, romance, and rest. Designed well, the bedroom can inspire couples to feel more romantic and stir their passions. If not, relationships can dwindle down to a friendly, not so romantic, handshake. If bedrooms are a place of activity, such as exercise, work, hobbies, or other interests, then they will not be the restful space they were intended to be. There is a fine line between creating the bedroom that inspires you and the bedroom that depletes you.

One of the first areas this shows up in is the artwork. Feng shui has stringent rules regarding bedrooms – and correspondingly – the art that goes into them. Time after time, I see bedrooms during feng shui consultations whose artwork appears to be whatever was leftover from the rest of the house. Or, the symbolism of the art in relationship to the room it is displayed in is not taken into account, such as winter scenes in a marriage bedroom. This can fill the bedroom with all the wrong messages. Bbbbrrrrr…….

Bedrooms should display the messages that inspire the person (or persons) who occupy the room. Artwork should reflect their tastes, interests, and desires while still following feng shui guidelines. This will help to ensure that negative messages or inappropriate messages don’t distract from the principal goals of the bedroom: rest, romance, and relaxation.

Look at all the bedrooms in the house. Determine if they are inspiring and if they are making the appropriate statements for the room. For example, a scary Spiderman poster that looks like Spiderman is going to jump off the wall may create a frightening bedroom for a young boy.

Or, pictures of the kids in a marriage bedroom create too much “kid energy” and can be uncomfortable for romance, causing marital passion to wither. Next, take into account feng shui guidelines, such as eliminating mirrors, pictures of dragons, deities. or vicious animals.

Sleeping is a time when we must be the most protected and cared-for. This is why it makes sense to make sure that your bedrooms support you, your family, and your relationships.

Art in Children’s Bedrooms

* Avoid vicious animals and scary figures.

* Place happy, bright images in the children’s bedrooms

* Display images of skill and learning, such as pictures of globes and books or any kind of learning experience

* DON’T hang pictures of water, lakes, or oceans

* Avoid pictures of religious themes, such as crosses or religious figures

* Select pictures of animals that are positive, such as horses (good for sons) that look happy and strong, not frightened. Turtles are also beneficial. Avoid frogs and toads which can appear to “eat” whatever is in the room.

* DO have pictures of parents in children’s bedroom to inspire better behavior and greater respect

* Clouds are very popular for children’s bedrooms. Be certain that if you have clouds on the ceiling, that the child’s head is not covered by a cloud as this will create “a cloud over his/her head” and this can lead to a number of difficulties. (The same is true for adult bedrooms.)

Art in Adult Bedrooms

* For couples, DO place pictures of pairs (geese, ducks, chairs, vases, etc.) to foster togetherness

* Avoid pictures of heavenly images deities, religious figures, etc.

* Avoid pictures of singular items that suggest being alone

* Avoid pictures of flowers and plants, unless someone is ill. Plants and pictures of plants or flowers will cause couples to argue.

* DO have pictures of love, such as couples in an embrace, tasteful nudes, or affection

* DON’T have pictures of children in the bedroom. You have enough “kid time” already. Have one place in the house that is devoted solely to you and your mate.

* If single, make sure you have pictures in the bedroom that represent the energy you are trying to attract, i.e., a single woman seeking a man should hang pictures that show men or have men strongly in the scene.

* To create opportunities for yourself, place a picture of an open field on the wall opposite the bed. This suggests the way of your life is open and obstacles are removed.

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.”

Are you being hurt by harsh corners?

Harsh edges are a feng shui trouble spot. Many times these edges are easy to overlook and can hide themselves. Sharp edges and corners can come from doors, square columns, shelves, cabinets — even arrangements of furniture.

In feng shui, strong, harsh edges are similar to knife blades, and their energy should be treated that way. Some edges are worse than others, though. Edges that are aimed at the back, such as from bookshelves behind a desk, or at the neck, from shelves on a wall or open cabinets, are considered especially dangerous.

Look around your home and office to see if there are knife edges aimed anywhere of importance, such as your bed, your desk, your dining table, or anywhere you spend a lot of time. Then, consider whether it is worth the risk to expose yourself to these harsh edges. Most of the time, by a simple rearrangement, you are able to keep the shelf or cabinet without having to do away with it.

Protective feng shui is one of the first steps one must make when looking to improve the feng shui of a home or office. Protecting oneself from the dangers of harsh edges should be on your checklist so that no one is unprotected or exposed. Read the tips below for more ideas on handling harmful edges.

1. Never place shelves overhead.

These kinds of shelves can press on the head. If they are simple boards, the sharp edges of the boards can be harmful. Placed at a desk or against a wall, a sharp edge overhead will make it hard to think clearly or make decisions well because of the pressure being exerted. Remove them and place elsewhere.

2. Watch for tray or raised ceilings.

These are very popular in home construction now. If you have one of these over your head while you sleep it is possible that you feel pressured, have headaches, or have difficulty sleeping. You could even have financial difficulties. Try to move the bed away from this edge, or create a canopy that covers the edge with fabric.

3. Be careful about bookshelves.

Bookshelves should never be directly ahead or behind you. This can cause confrontation and backstabbing, especially if these shelves are at work. Move the shelves so that they are not in line with your body. This is especially important at work or while you are sleeping.

4. Avoid bookshelf headboards.

These have LOTS of sharp edges and are not good for you. Besides muddled thinking, you could also suffer from head ailments ranging from sinuses to poor vision to headaches.

5. Watch L-shaped arrangements.

These kinds of arrnagements create the “cleaver” or “hatchet” effect. The long side is the “knife blade.” Where do you see these? In L-shaped desk arrangements where the long knife blade is usually your desk! Separate the furniture. Do the same with sofa arrangements, too.

6. Square columns have harsh edges.

Hang a 6-rod hollow windchime in front of the column to lift the energy or place a vine at the bottom to grow around the column, or place a tall plant or curtain or screen of some kind in front of the column. These columns are very dangerous if they are aimed at your table, your bed, and even worse, at your front door.

7. Wall shelves create knife blades.

Wall shelves, especially those at neck height, act like guillotines. Make sure these are covered and not at your head or neck level, especially if they are located somewhere where you work or stand a lot (such as by a stove or sink). Knife blades at the head can create very serious loss.

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.

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.