This week I feng shui’d my flat. (And for everyone wanting to know more on this… I had Liz Wiggins of Feng Shui Living, Sydney, come in and give me the rundown. She provides a full report and sends salt cleansers to put in rooms that need some extra help.)
So there we were – it was about a year ago – Dad and I, standing by the side of the road hugging a tree. I don’t know if you’ve ever got your inherently skeptical, raised-by-Catholic-nuns father to do this. It’s some feat. Admittedly mine will give most things a shot. In a fug of boredom once I asked to shave his head and he just handed me a razor. And when we were kids he would always let me and my brothers do jumps over him on our BMXs. He loved it.
Dad had asked if I “actually believed all that energy stuff I go on about”. I’d responded using a rusty understanding of Quantum physics and nanotechnology. But the tree hug was the clincher. He got it. “It” being that we humans are made of exactly the same matter (or, more accurately, energetic non-matter) as a eucalyptus melliodora. “We are one!” he cried.
On Monday, as feng shui expert Liz worked her way through my apartment showing me how to balance the energy, or chi, in my living spaces, it was Dad’s raised eyebrows I had front of mind. Did I actually believe all this? Well, yes. And no.
Using a compass and ancient Chinese formulas, Liz gridded up a floor plan of my flat into eight sections, each relating to a different aspect of life (relationships, wealth etc). The section a room lies in is significant, and how you position furniture and belongings affects the flow of chi in not only your home, but also in your body, your finances and so on. My front door lies in the South West section, which signifies the importance of relationships. Which is great. The fact there’s no light shining on it ain’t.
I’m quite a trinkety person so Liz had a field day questioning me on the symbolism of the 1950s tea towel emblazoned with “sacrifice” in big red letters displayed as a wall-hanging in my self-awareness corner. In my reputation section I have a small hall table holding a collection of Virgin Mary statuettes (my grandmother’s) and a bare-chested Ken doll (go figure). Next to Ken, a vase of dried roses. I could dwell on the disquieting picture this paints so far as my reputation is concerned, but strangely Liz only found the dead flowers disturbing. “They’re dead; which is not great energy.” So too are leaky taps (denotes draining wealth) and, yes, clutter.
My home isn’t full of clutter; it has pockets of it. Clutter kind of clumps like fungi in one particular cupboard or on a random bookshelf and I pretend it’s not there.
Now what was fascinating was this: every one of these clutter clusters sits smack-bang in energetic areas that currently feel blocked. Liz pointed out my clutter isn’t on the ground (denotes depressed energy), but bulges from up high (which indicates issues hanging over me, obstacles to moving forward). She’s so right. Every time I open my wardrobe, which sits in my “new ideas” section, I brace myself for half a dozen thick winter jumpers stuffed onto the top shelf to topple on my head. The symbolism is blatant: stuffy energy is swamping me, blocking clear, forward thinking.
These jumpers have done this for 12 months. I now realize how annoying I find this assault from above every morning. Ditto, the other clutter clusters. Yet I’ve done nothing about clearing them. Why? I’ve been pondering this all week (no answers yet, but the jumpers have moved).
So do I “believe all this”. Thing is, I’m not sure it’s about believing. Believing sounds blind. It’s about intention, something most grounded energy healers emphasise. The mere act of stopping to observe blockages you’ve created in your life is what’s powerful. Once you’ve observed the blockage, it just can’t exist as it did. That’s how energy works, it shifts once witnessed. And I think this is how feng shui works: it gets you to observe your own energy flow.
By session’s end, Liz didn’t need to point out the boxes of old wrapping paper in my abundance zone for me to get how I’ve been cluttering my chi. It was obvious. So too the connection between my home, my relationships, my finances, my creativity. Hey, Dad, it’s all one.
