With all the tornadoes flying around this past week, I thought I’d give those badly affected a little checklist to consider if they have to rebuild. In order to be brief, I’m going to assume you know a bit about the feng shui that I practice or have read my book.
I would highly recommend, if you have the resources, to hire a feng shui consultant (hopefully one that is very comfortable with the design process like an architect, landscape architect or interior designer) to help you navigate the rebuilding process with the best feng shui outcome. But if that isn’t in the cards, consider these ideas below:
1. Place the names of your insurance agents and companies, government agencies, designers, contractors, employers, family members, and feng shui consultants – or anyone else that you need help from – in your helpful people box. Even if you are staying in temporary housing and no longer have your old box, remember, you can simply wrap the names in aluminum foil or anything metal. If you want to write notes to them like “Thank you ________ for being so helpful to me while I rebuild my home and life back.” so much the better.
2. Do a ground blessing on the land before rebuilding. Make up whatever ritual you want to, or use a traditional one. I’d recommend the “Exterior Ch’i Adjustment” if I were choosing a traditional feng shui ritual.
3. During re-construction, consider:
∙ Spray painting the sub flooring with the bagua color pattern before you lay down the final floor materials.
∙ If you have the chance – redesign the home to make the building shape complete – no “missing pieces.”
∙ Create a winding path to the front door and make the door visible and easy to find from the street.
∙ Create flat ceilings overhead – at least in the bedrooms if possible (and no exposed beams if possible.)
∙ Avoid placing ceiling fans directly over where you spend a lot of time (especially the bed.)
∙ Design the bedroom such that you can get your bed up against a solid wall and not in line with the bedroom door…and preferably place the bedrooms in the back half of the house.
∙ Spray paint a circle of red around the hole where the toilet goes before it is set. Then you will not ever need to counterbalance it later!
∙ If you had mirrors up against walls to keep noisy neighbors away, etc, try placing them between the studs if you have the chance to get them inside there! You can place mirrors inside the walls wherever you need to – like if you want to push the toilet away from a bedroom space or a kitchen, etc. Or if your bedroom has to be over the garage, you can place the mirror under the flooring between floor joists facing down to push the garage energy away from the bedroom, etc.
∙ Consider healthy home and sustainable building advice when rebuilding. Now’s your chance to get a lot of design mistakes remedied – take advantage of it! Put the laundry room on an outside wall, seal the slab floors that were wicking up moisture into the house, choose flooring that is not toxic like synthetic wall-to-wall carpet, properly vent the gas stove, etc.
Reframe this as a “fresh start” or a “new chance to get it right,” and it will be a lot less painful to rebuild. Looking back with regret is not a powerful or resourceful state. “A conviction to create the healthiest home for you now” is much more powerful during this time.
One more thing. If you can not get over your grief, or fear, or sadness, or any other unhelpful emotional state, give me a call and I’ll be happy to help you work through (actually eliminate) these states. This kind of thinking is exactly why I designed a program called the “Feng Shui Your Mindset” Program.
Good luck and be well.
