Feng Shui Homework: Work More Gratitude Into Your Home Decor

Franca Giuliani - Here in the United States, the fourth of July is a day of great reverence as we celebrate our nation’s independence. We are grateful.

Sometimes it takes a special holiday to remind us to be grateful. Normally, how often do we go through an ordinary day realizing all the things we are grateful for? Feeling the emotion of gratitude is very important, because it can really help our perspective on life. Remember, I always say that everything is energy. Well, the emotion of gratitude has a very high energetic vibration. The higher your energy vibrates, the better health and happiness you can enjoy.

Awhile back, I asked one of my clients to walk me around her home and show me what she is grateful of or what illustrates gratitude. I think it was one of the toughest things she ever had to do. Needless to say, I gave her an incomplete for this assignment. Then, I tried a different approach. I asked her to show me objects that she is ungrateful for or depicts ungratefulness. Apparently, that was an easier project for her. She quickly grabbed my hand with enthusiasm and dragged me to her bedroom. With an utter look of vengeance, she pointed to her nemesis: her alarm clock. She then processed to tell me how much she hated that alarm clock. She hated how it looked, and more importantly she hated and was very “ungrateful” of the buzzer sound it makes. “But, it’s an alarm clock. I need it. What can I do?” she said.

feng shuiGuest UserJuly 6, 2012Franca Giuliani, gratitude, homeComment

10 Feng Shui Tips - How to Use the Power of Color in Your Home

Franca Giuliani - Within feng shui as within design, color is very important and powerful. Before trying to pick out the "right color” for home decorating, let's try to understand color.

Color is energy. (And, remember, everything is energy.) Colors are specific wavelengths of energy that can be used to balance our chi, our life force. Here's what colors can do for you and yours:

Colors have an impact on our emotions and our vibration. They possess the power to arouse or to tranquilize, to bring joy or create depression.
Colors engage our eyes and influence how we interpret our emotional experiences. By understanding the emotional context of colors, we can manipulate the experience of space to benefit our energetic body.

Color Has Three Dimensions

HUE: This is the first recognizable characteristic of a color. It's the quality by which we distinguish one color from another, as red, yellow, etc.

VALUE: The quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark color (or how clean the color is). Value is raised by adding white and is lowered by adding black. Colors change in value with light - the brighter the sun, the more light you have coming into a room, the brighter the room colors will be.

INTENSITY: The quality by which we distinguish a strong color from a weak one. Color is lowered in intensity by adding gray or by adding its complementary color.

Color Has Harmony

This is an agreeable combination of colors, and there are two kinds of harmony.

CONTRASTED HARMONIES use colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. Most common are complementary colors - exactly opposite.

RELATED HARMONY uses colors close to each other on the color wheel or only one color. Analogous colors are

feng shuiGuest UserJune 3, 2012Franca Giuliani, colors, decorating, green, home, redComment

Feng Shui Tips - Fill in Missing Pieces of Your Rooms

Franca Giuliani - Living in a home or working in an office that has the shape of a square or rectangular is ideal in feng shui. It offers balance and incorporates a complete bagua. The bagua is an energetic map that includes the cardinal and intercardinal directions, each with their own powerful attributes. The bagua divides up any space - from a room to an entire house - into eight sectors plus the center.

Now it's not easy to find perfect squares and rectangles in our homes, apartments, or offices. With incredible design concepts and necessities like bumping out in a room to add a closet, different shapes are created. So, what do you do if you have a missing sector?

Well, first you should symbolically “square the space off.” This is quite easy to do if you have access to the outdoors. You can use bushes, fences, flowers, anything to create that outline needed to “complete the space.”

You should also figure out what sector you're missing and then compensate that space by adding the element of the missing sector. And you can be creative about it! You can add furniture, pictures, fabrics ... you can even paint the whole room the element color! Just follow these guidelines below. If you're missing the following sector, add that direction’s element near that missing sector.

feng shuiGuest UserMay 3, 2012Franca Giuliani, bagua, cures, interior design, room designComment

Feng Shui Tips - What's In Your Closets?

Franca Giuliani - For the record, please note that this is not a “clutter clearing” article. It's a Closet Clearing Summons. There's a difference.

We use closets as a place for storage, unless you have a huge walk-in closet like the one in the top photo (I call that more of a "clothes showroom"). I believe this to be a very noble thing, because we're humans and humans need stuff, and we have to store that stuff. However, many people use closets as the immediate solution to get things out of sight. Don’t know what to do with something? Well, put it in the closet! Where does this go? Don’t know. Well, put it in the closet!

Eventually we've created a plethora of items hidden away in closets, some items needed and some items completely useless.

In feng shui, closets represent our subconscious mind. Depending where the closets are, they can give us a lot of information as to what we don’t want to deal with in our lives, or better yet what we should deal with.

So let me suggest to you that by sorting out your closets, it may help you sort out your mind.

Once, I had a client who had a box of legal papers in her bedroom closet. These papers had something to do with an incident that happened many years ago, before her teenage daughter was born. My client was so afraid that her daughter would find the box.

feng shuiGuest UserMarch 30, 2012Franca Giuliani, closets, clutter, home, organization, storage, tipsComment

7 Ways to Better Feng Shui in Your Bathroom

Franca Giuliani - How do you feel about your bathroom? Do you like it? Do you find it comfortable? Is it inspiring? What is your first reaction when you enter it?

Your bathroom is a very important space. It supports you in the morning as you get ready to face the world, and it soothes you as you prepare for your night’s rest. It symbolizes our self-worth and is directly associated to our finances, because the movement of water relates to wealth.

Here are some important tips for the bathroom.

1. Lighting

Innately, bathrooms tend to be very yin. Make them brightly lit and cheery.

2. Cleanliness

Bathrooms should be clean, clutter-free and as opened and airy as possible.

3. Working Order

Keep everything in your bathroom functioning. Dripping faucets can be a metaphor for money leaking out. Make sure your toilet works properly, and definitely keep the toilet seat down to minimize draining chi.

feng shuiGuest UserMarch 3, 2012Franca Giuliani, bathroom, tipsComment