Feng Shui Chic; Change Your Life With Spirit and Style

Excerpted from
Feng Shui Chic; Change Your Life With Spirit and Style
By Carole Meltzer, David Andrusia

Good Chi, Good Chi!

But what does chi have to do with Feng Shui Chic? Almost everything, as it turns out. Just as placement and position have everything to do with achieving the best flow of chi in our physical environments, so too does our physical countenance. How we dress and wear makeup, and even the food we eat, have a direct result on our chi.

And, why, precisely, is our chi so important? In Chinese medicine, it is the unencumbered flow of chi that is seen as a prerequisite to good health. Unlike Western medicine, which treats individual health symptoms, Eastern medicine treats the body as a whole. Thus, doing whatever necessary to unblock our chi is of prime concern to our physical and psychological health.

So, too, it goes with feng shui. Using color and placement to encourage optimal chi is what Feng Shui Chic is all about.

Need proof? Then consider the example of one of my clients, who made wonderful changes in her life by doing just that.

Sandra: Physician, Heal Thyself!

Sandra is a physician who received very little love and support during her childhood. Although she achieved academically, she was the product of an absent father and a narcissistic mother who felt her own needs were more important than Sandra's. As a result, she walked through her adult world with a profound sense of self-doubt-even though to other people she was a shining star. Indeed, Sandra, who was raised in the Mexican-American barrio of East Los Angeles, earned a medical degree from an Ivy League university and is one of the most esteemed specialists in her field in the United States.

During our first meeting, I noticed that Sandra was wearing black from head to toe. Now, this is not something that would have been unusual in the bohemian quarters of any large city in the 1980s; however, we were no longer in the eighties, and we met on a summer day when the temperature was well over 90 degrees!

Of course, my first question was this: "Sandra, why are you wearing black in July?"

"Oh, I always wear black," she said without thinking. "It's my favorite color."

Now, as a fashionista who lives in New York half the year, the attraction of black as a style statement did not escape me. But in the middle of July? And always? Something, clearly, was wrong.

It doesn't matter what your element is, or what season of the year you're in: Wearing one color all the time (black or otherwise) is not going to get you the happiness you want and deserve-in any area of your life. The feng shui color that brings you prosperity in one season is not the one that will achieve the same results in other seasons of the year.

With that knowledge, I diagrammed Sandra's feng shui color chart. We used both her month and element and her best color for season cycle to determine that she was a metal element. As we were in summer, I found her two best feng shui shades: khaki for day and burgundy for night.

Does this mean one has to wear all khaki or dress entirely in burgundy at that time of day, throughout that season? Certainly not.

What Sandra needed to do-just as you will-is to pick a zone (or life area) of most importance to you. These are the baguas I mentioned in chapter one and will discuss in full detail in the next chapter.

Although Sandra and I had just met, some things were clear. Her problem zones were not fame, creativity, career, knowledge, health, or power. Nor were love or support her primary problems, as she had a husband who (despite Sandra's deep-rooted psychological problems) had been with her for nearly fifteen years.

That left one bagua, and it's a vital one indeed: nurture. It was very clear from Sandra's story-even without the benefit of a psychology degree-that her problems derived from a loss of nurturing during her early years. Without correcting this problem, all her wealth and fame would continue to be for naught.

Examining the body bagua chart, we saw that the nurture bagua is centered around the navel and extends to most of the lower stomach and abdomen area. In fact, when I showed my co-author, David, this chart, he nearly jumped up from his seat. "My God, Carole!" he shouted. "I think I finally understand why I've had stomach problems for my entire life!"

There is a simple yet very effective way to adjust the problems in this bagua: by wearing the feng shui colors that effect her best chi. And that is precisely what Sandra did.