This is the second part of a series of articles that discuss blockages to personal growth and transformation in areas of life including long-standing problems and difficulties, addiction, and trauma. Addressing the unique aspects of living and how your home’s feng shui can help free you from these blockages is the goal to help you transform stuck and draining areas of your life so you can get growing again.
When you experience little or no growth in your life, it could be because the growth portion of your home is blocked, impeding your progress. This article specifically addresses the wood energy of the east and southeast.
Lack of growth, health, anger, alcoholism, family issues
When you have a health issue that remains unresolved, it can chip away at your energy and zeal leaving you feeling dull and lifeless. This is also true if you have emotional baggage from your family, like old scars and secrets you’ve carried too long, PTSD, or emotional apathy.
You may also feel that life for you is only moving sideways and you’re not growing, evolving, and moving forward. Pursuit of a life goal or ambition may have also eluded you.
This is the domain of the east corner.
This corner relates to our general health, relationships with our family whether positive or negative, or our ability to see our lives grow and evolve. It is also the corner most related to anger and diseases of the liver, like alcoholism, or past trauma.
When you feel stuck in life, with little growth or improvement to show for you effort, the east corner should be looked at thoroughly.
Another area where east blockages shows up is in problems with the feet, pain in the feet, or problems with walking. When you feel blocked, stuck and stagnant, you may experience a physical impediment to walking and literally stepping forward in life.
Oversized clocks are a reminder of the fleeting aspect of life and lack of time. Photo by Dominique Vorillon, architecturaldigest.com
Wood blockages.
Elements of fire and metal are the two culprits that undermine health, leave entrenched family issues, and promote a low- or no-growth life. This is also true if the east corner is missing or if your bed is not in the command position.
There can also be a problem with physical and financial energy-draining, such as a front door that opens outwards instead of inwards, or if your bed is in line with a door or bathroom.
The element of death may also be present, from dried plants to shrubs or trees in your garden that have died or a non-working or overly large wall clock, ashes of pets or loved ones, or mementos from funerals. All these items should be removed from the house. Excessive images of loved ones who have passed should also be pared down.
Activators.
Sometimes the best activation is the removal of items that are blocking your health and growth. Remove all items from your home that are painful, especially if you have health problems you can’t seem to move past or family items or other mementos that represent loss, trauma, lies, hurt, and disappointment.
Add health-related colors of green, blue, and brown and items to boost your growth potential and health effects, such as a healthy plant, new landscaping, beautiful flowers, images of trees and nature, images of healthy people, exercise equipment, and rectangular shapes.
What are you working toward? Writing a novel, better health, freedom from old tapes and family wiring? Add images and words that are meaningful to these areas and place in the east corner to support your growth here.
Life feels like living on one long line of crumbs
Many people who have a nice income often lack assets, savings, and true financial security. This is one of the biggest pain spots in life that creates a background of worry that can drain your growth.
If your financial difficulty is that you have little or no financial reserves, there is always a gnawing sense of insecurity, or like you’re not a real adult even at an advanced age when there’s nothing to fall back on.
Having a salary and income is nice and makes life possible, but assets set aside for emergencies, retirement, or just to have for things you want and not the kind of money that just “pays the bills,” is the sweetest fruit.
More importantly, having assets, investments, and savings – and contributing to savings and investments regularly – gives you peace of mind and makes you experience life more fully, more abundantly, and it makes you feel richer.
But your net worth is sometimes a reflection of your self-worth, and if you don’t feel worthy, or build your self-worth like saving for an important trip or to invest, life can feel like it’s something to endure, devoid of pleasure… like sitting at the table and only eating one crumb at a time. Life may feel small, not noteworthy, significant, and like your achievements are just a succession of small things.
This is the area of the southeast sector and is the corner related to your prosperity that goes beyond your salary.
This is the area of wealth you foster, tend, and add to, like a garden of money that you grow.
This is the goal of wealth. It’s not just receiving the way you do with a salary, but that it’s money you dedicate to yourself and actively cultivate. Are you growing your money? Do you feel like disaster is just one layoff or one delayed check away? Have you made financial progress in your life?
Financial lack can create issues of anger, feelings of insecurity, and can lead to anxiety and feeling that you’re not in control of your life. You also may feel that good things in life happen to other people and not you.
When you fail to save for things you want in life, it can feel like life has failed you.
In health, you may have problems with your legs and hips, or you may not want to face up to insecurities. The liver may also be involved as resentment and anger at life can build, moody swings and outbursts can occur unexpectedly.
To make more money, receive more financial blessings, and see your wealth grow, you have to put something in that creates the energy that makes you feel abundant in life.
This starts with making investments and putting money away that only goes in and that you don’t touch.
It’s the consistency and the act of investing for yourself that re-routes your chi toward one of greater abundance, re-wires your mind and self-view, and helps turn chi from lack and insecurity toward growth and reward.
And this can show up everywhere in your life, from a nicer place to live, a healthy and loving relationship, and a feeling of accomplishment.
Blockages.
Like the east, there may be a fireplace, a stove, or anything related to fire or metal that can stop your wealth and the wealth of living. You may also have dead plants or other broken or non-working items. All sources and items related to death, broken items (windows, cracked car windshield, chipped dishes, dented pans), and dead or dying plants should be removed.
Activators.
Look to water-related items to help spur your energy and to grow your wealth. Adding water in the southeast corner of your home, garden, or living room in the form of a fountain, image, or figure helps promote the small wood growth that relates to abundance and prosperity. Ships, fish, and water scenes are also auspicious. Furnishings made of wicker, small rectangular shapes, green and light green colors will help stimulate growth.
Remember, that feng shui is also made up of your actions.
Look at ways you can accumulate money, such as starting a small investment or savings account where money goes in and never comes out, and whose only job is to grow.
Find a financial planner, a money guru, or subscribe to newsletters and online services and people who talk about investments, such Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey, or the online stock and investment service Motley Fool.
Buy some small plants to tend and grow, or plant a garden with flowers, vegetables, or herbs. Tending plants helps promote growth chi.
Have a financial goal.
Maybe it’s to save $50 a month….or $500 a month. Just have a set amount and stick to it and make it an automatic withdrawal.
In your home, add a small fleshy-leaved plant like the jade plant, or other succulents, to the southeast corner. These plants represent savings and accumulated money.
Look at ways to strengthen your hips, such as with lunges, rollerblading, or yoga.
Be interested in money.
Invest your time to learn to grow it and find out ways to grow it. Being interested in money and being consistent with it is one of the best ways to get money interested in you.
This is about you seeing yourself as worthy of building your self-worth, and no one can do this but you.
Living on crumbs is not living, but you don’t have to be a millionaire to be wealthy or feel abundant.
Starting with even a small amount can change the direction and flow of energy toward abundance and give you have more self-esteem.
Add an image of someone in the finance world that you admire and place books related to wealth in this corner of your home or living room. Add pictures of gardens to the southeast, especially ones that show flowers or fruits. These are the “wealth” of plants and the fruitful and abundant results and rewards of tending your self-worth garden. Images of waterfalls and rivers are also potent activators for the southeast corner.
Putting money into a savings account is you telling yourself that you’re worthy of your own attention and dedication. You see, it’s never really about money. It’s about growth.
