Archive for August, 2010
A Feng Shui garden embraces a sense of comfort, balance, beauty and inspiration. A Medicine Wheel Feng Shui garden aligns balance with the power of the directions and the symbology of the circle. It is a place of tranquility and a connection to nature.
Circles, they are the foundation of life, from the shape of an atom, the face of a flower and the growth rings of a tree, circles surround us with the patterns of nature.
The circle has symbolic meaning as well, never ending love and protection in the shape of a wedding ring, Stonehenge in England aligning with the power of the sun, labyrinths, ancient mosaics on temple floors, the perfect balance of Yin and Yang, the Hindu Wheel of Existence and the Native American Medicine Wheel. All are symbols represented by the shape of a circle.
A circular flower bed can
be a powerful and simple
Medicine Wheel garden
Everything Feng Shui stands for and seeks to achieve aligns with balance and harmony. In Feng Shui, the circle represents balance, wholeness, and complete unity.
Medicine Wheel gardens can be as simple as a circle with representation of each of the 4 Cardinal directions. They can be as complex as a large garden circle embracing sacred healing herbs, flowers, and plants, adding their power to the power of the Medicine Wheel. There is a strong connection between Medicine Wheels and healing. To include plants that align with healing is a strong and powerful way to use a Medicine Wheel Garden. A Medicine Wheel garden can be whatever you want it to be; its meaning and power uniquely aligning with you and the space it’s in.
Sometimes the place for a Medicine Wheel garden almost announces itself, and sometimes we have to consider the size of our space, our needs and the type of Medicine Wheel garden we want to create. Choosing a site is an opportunity to connect to your inner knowing, that place of deep awareness, that place of intuition and insight.
A good way to choose your location is to slowly walk your property, carefully and thoughtfully, in a meditative mood. Picture your Medicine Wheel in your mind’s eye as you walk your property; stay open to how you feel as you walk. Often you’ll come to a place that just feels right, other times you’ll have to consider the size and shape of the land and make your choice accordingly.
If you live in an apartment, you can use a balcony, a windowsill or even a plate for your Medicine Wheel garden. Remember the size isn’t what’s important, what’s important is the feeling and connection created through your Medicine Wheel garden.
Your Medicine Wheel garden can even be located in the front garden, wrapping itself around the path to your door creating a sacred sense of welcome to all who enter.
How you create your Medicine Wheel garden is less important than the meaning it has for you. A simple sand circle with a stone in the center embraces a sense of serenity and balance just as effectively as a large ornate garden. While each are visually quite different from one another, the inner connection they create is the same and it is this connection we seek with Medicine Wheel gardens.
The possibilities are endless. The sacred connection is the same. Beauty and inspiration await you!
Follow the process shared by Nikiah Seeds on her blog .
© 2010 Harmony Life, LLC by Laurie Bornstein
Visit www.fengshuilifeandstyle.com for inspiring Feng Shui Lifestyle articles, tips and conversation.
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What’s the difference between a garden and a Feng Shui garden? In a word, love.
A Feng Shui garden is a holistic garden co-created with nature. Flowers are still picked, trees and shrubs are trimmed, and the lawn is mowed but it’s all done with appreciation and thanks. A careful hand is used, not one that grabs and damages what’s touched.
A Feng Shui garden is a garden that embraces an understanding that first and foremost, we are the earth. A Feng Shui garden embraces organic methods, as these are methods that nourish, replenish and reenergize the earth in a natural and safe manner. If we tend to those spaces of earth that are our responsibility with the same care we choose for ourselves, our gardens prosper. And when our gardens prosper, the earth prospers.
Soft undulating color and curving walls
embrace you with beauty
As Minnie Kansman states in Spirit Gardens, “Feng Shui is about tuning into all that surrounds us, knowing that what we are surrounded by affects us deeply. Our mood, energy level and even our health are influenced by the spaces we occupy.”
Nature flows along the path, and the path is curved. Create flowing paths in your garden, curving walkways from the street to your front door, soft flowing paths from your driveway to the front door, soft flowing paths through your garden. These paths should be easy to see, safe and well lit, gently pulling you forward with the movement and grace of their curves.
A curved pathway draws you forward and welcomes you
One of the ways to incorporate the principles of Feng Shui into your garden or just an area in your garden is to utilize the Bagua . The Bagua is a template or grid with 9 sections, it is used to map the space being evaluated. (Home, property, business.) Each section defines the fundamental life energies present in all places around us and shows how these energies are affected by one another and the natural phases of nature.
The nine life areas are Career, Inner Knowledge, Family, Abundance, Illumination, Relationships, Creativity, Helpful People and Health & Balance sits in the center position. Each life area has attributes that are specific to it: color, elemental relationship, shape and the energy of the area itself. (Click here for your FREE Bagua map with instructions.)
An easy way to work with these 9 life areas is to incorporate the colors of the areas or items that represent the energy of the areas.
For example in the area of:
- Relationships: add red, yellow or pink flowers
- Fame: add red
- Abundance: add red, purple, green and gold
- Family: green and blue
- Inner Knowledge: add blue and yellow – this is a wonderful place to add a meditation area or simply a comfy place to sit and enjoy the beauty of your garden
- Career: incorporate a fountain or birdbath, and the color white
- Helpful People: area add white
- Creativity: add something that embraces the spirit of creativity to you and the color white
- Health: add yellow, red or deep orange
Your Feng Shui garden is your personal sanctuary, your spirit garden. It’s not only about how it looks, it’s also about how it feels. A Feng Shui garden can be big or small; size isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that you take the time to connect to your space and in that connection you’ll feel a sense of comfort and welcome.
Reconnect to nature and incorporate Feng Shui in your garden and beauty and inspiration will surround you. Your spirit will be enriched.
© 2010 Harmony Life, LLC by Laurie Bornstein
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG OR WEB SITE?
You can, as long as you include the copyright and the following information:
Feng Shui Teacher, Designer and Entrepreneur Laurie Bornstein, is the author and creator of ‘Feng Shui Lifestyle’, her FREE monthly ezine filled with Feng Shui and Lifestyle Marketing articles and tips, empowering and inspiring you to live and work in comfort, balance and harmony.
Visit www.harmonylifedesign.com to learn more.
As I sit here staring into the beautiful liquid brown eyes of my dog, Marni, I feel completely surrounded and embraced with love. Those eyes simply resonate with devotion, kindness and trust.
Marni and the look of love!
Have you ever wondered if your pets understand you? What they think, or even if they think? I have. I believe that our pets have a deep and profound connection to us; that they are able to sense our mood, our feelings and even our thoughts. My hairy girls certainly understand it when I’m talking to them!
Gaby and Marni – the hairy girls!
Several years ago I bought a book by Penelope Smith called, Animal Talk, in it she shares 8 powerful tips to help you connect to the energy, the spirit of your pet.
I was re-reading them today and realized that these 8 steps are universal, they can help us connect to our pets and they can also help us connect to our energy and the energy around us. So I’m going to share them with you! (The following excerpt is adapted from Animal Talk by Penelope Smith)
Step 1 – Be humble and receptive.
Step 2 – Believe in your own intuitive ability to give and receive telepathic communication. Don’t invalidate your perception of impressions, images or messages in any form.
Step 3 – Be ready, receptive, mentally quiet and alert. If your mind is busy, full of thoughts and background static, you can’t listen and receive.
Step 4 – Cultivate flexibility – that is, a willingness to learn from all beings and to change your ideas. Watch for judgments and preconceptions that limit receptivity …be open to surprises, welcome the unexpected.
Step 5 – Be emotionally peaceful. Having an emotional investment…can influence what you receive.
Step 6 – Be alert and calm. Don’t force the communication or try too hard. Notice your body posture and tension… shift into receptive mode. Lean back, open your chest and hands, breathe slowly and deeply, relax and listen.
Step 7 – Let communication assume its own form, whether it be feelings, images, impressions, thoughts, verbal messages, sounds, other sensations or simply knowing…let the sense of meaning unfold by itself. Don’t analyze, evaluate or criticize. Remain innocent and nonjudgmental. Accept what you get.
Step 8 – Practice…step back from your normal routine and expectations and be willing to learn and discover.
Incorporate these powerful steps into your life and you’ll be on the way to a deeper level of understanding and awareness in all things.
Harmony and insight are just around the bend!
© 2010 Harmony Life, LLC by Laurie Bornstein
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG OR WEB SITE?
You can, as long as you include the copyright and the following information:
Feng Shui Teacher, Designer and Entrepreneur Laurie Bornstein, is the author and creator of ‘Feng Shui Lifestyle’, her FREE monthly ezine filled with Feng Shui and Lifestyle Marketing articles and tips, empowering and inspiring you to live and work in comfort, balance and harmony.
Visit www.harmonylifedesign.com to learn more.
“In every moment the universe is whispering to you. There are messages for you carried on the winds. There is wisdom for you in the morning songs of the birds outside your window and in the soft murmurs of an ebbing sea. Even ordinary, everyday events in your life carry communications from the realm of spirit.” ~~ Denise Linn, The Secret Language of Signs
Have you ever wondered if there is meaning behind life’s everyday occurrences? Those times when you’re outside and suddenly find yourself surrounded by butterflies. Or a groundhog makes an appearance and stays instead of shuffling off to a den or secret hiding place. Or perhaps a hawk swoops by every time you venture out. Are these random occurrences? Is there meaning behind the appearance of these animals at this time?
Yes and no.
If you feel that there is a connection, some meaning behind these sightings then there is. If on the other hand, you barely noticed any of the animals or barely felt a connection, then probably no not at this time.
Sometimes we pass one another randomly, other times there is meaning in the passing.
I believe those times I see an animal that isn’t usually around people or my area, or when I see an animal repeatedly, these visits are visits meant for me and the meaning of these visits is for me to divine.
Let me give you an example from my life right now. Over the past three weeks every time I go outside or I’m looking out my kitchen window a beautiful, large Tiger Swallowtail butterfly drifts by. And it stays as long as I do. Sometimes, it’s the yellow and black version of a Tiger Swallowtail and other times it’s the mostly black version.
Butterfly dancing on flowers
At first I thought it was a wonderful sign of the vitality of summer. But as the sightings gained in frequency I began to feel a deeper connection and symbolic meaning.
According to Denise Linn in her book, The Secret Language of Signs, butterfly signals a powerful new beginning, a time of transformation, beauty and new awareness, a rebirth.
And Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak, says butterflies represent the process of transformation. Butterfly shows up when we are changing, evolving somehow.
Butterfly reminds us that life is a dance, a journey from moment to moment, flower to flower, experience to experience. The sweetness of life is experienced in the dance….or perhaps the sweetness of life is experienced in how we choose to dance.
Butterfly is a totem that has flown into my life on several occasions. The first time I recall was during my first Feng Shui training. I had a powerful dream in which a butterfly emerged from its chrysalis, spread its beautiful wings and lifted off. Initially, my sense was to name my business Emerging Butterfly, but then I realized that I was the butterfly emerging. Emerging from what I had been and lifting off, flying into what I was to become.
Butterfly showing up in my life now is also meaningful. I am at a time of change and transition in my life once again. Only this time, the transition involves my family and our relationships to one another. As we move from parent and child to adult relationships we all must release our past patterns and embrace each other as we are now: loving adults. (Course, I’ll always be the Mom!) And in this transition, I feel our space condensing, strengthening, and crystallizing.
There is such beauty and opportunity in change. I am grateful that butterfly comes to remind me and show me how fun the flight of life can be!
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.” ~ George Carlin
Butterfly invites you to embrace the dance!
© 2010 Harmony Life, LLC by Laurie Bornstein
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG OR WEB SITE?
You can, as long as you include the copyright and the following information:
Feng Shui Teacher, Designer and Entrepreneur Laurie Bornstein, is the author and creator of ‘Feng Shui Lifestyle’, her FREE monthly ezine filled with Feng Shui and Lifestyle Marketing articles and tips, empowering and inspiring you to live and work in comfort, balance and harmony.
Visit www.harmonylifedesign.com to learn more.
