Tag Archives: feng shui tips

Rebuilding After a Disaster with Feng Shui in Mind

by on March 4, 2012 in Blog, General, Green and Sustainable, Health, Outdoor Feng Shui, Spiritual, The Bagua

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.

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blue suit

Job Interview Tips with Feng Shui

by on January 15, 2012 in Career and Life Path, Prosperity, Wealth and Abundance

My son is auditioning for an arts school this month, which reminded me to pull out the feng shui tips for job interviews. Here are some of my ideas to maximize success:

1. Employ the “helpful people box.” Place the name of the person you are interviewing with, the company name, and anyone else you can think of that needs to be helpful with regard to you getting this job on paper (try red to activate it) and place it in a metal box with a lid or a metallic envelope, and then place that box or metallic envelope in the front right-hand part of your home or your desk space with the intention of everyone on that list helping you in this endeavor.

2. Start a “fake-it-till-you-make-it diary.” Write down each day how your day goes now that you are employed with this company – diary-style…”For example, “today, I got up excited to get into work today because all of the work I do there is so exciting and rewarding! I literally say to myself all the time “I’m so lucky to have this awesome job!” It feels great to be in such a good position to be so helpful… – whatever you want to say here… Write every day, just like you would write a diary…you might want to do this fake diary cure as if you are talking about your ultimate DRAEM JOB instead of the one you are interviewing for, in case there is a better fit out there for you. (This employs trust – if you do not get this current job, you gotta keep writing as that better on is finding its way to you!)

3. Wear something blue if you do a face to face interview as it denotes “trust-worthiness.”

4. Wear something red (can even be and probably is preferable to be hidden) to give you a little extra “power” during the interview.

5. Peel 9 orange pieces of peel off of an orange and place those bits in your pocket with intentions of clearing any negativity off of you during this interview.

6. Have a neat, clean, and big-enough-to do-the-job desk space built and ready to go at home. Even if you are not going to use it for this job, it will energetically say “I’ve got the time and space to handle this job.”  If you are living in a Starbucks off of a laptop and can’t figure out why you do not have full time PERMANENT employment, consider that your desk space is saying “you are temporary” for you.

7. Be on time, be prepared, and know how to interview – everyone always expects feng shui to be oddball, but the mundane every-day stuff IS important to your feng shui too!

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push hands

The Power of Yielding During Holiday Gatherings

by on December 20, 2011 in Family and Friends, General, Holidays, Just for Fun

There is an ancient game that I learned years ago while studying tai chi called “Push Hands.” It is all about feeling when you are in a yin or yang movement – while your feet are anchored in one place and you are palm to palm.  The goal is to knock your opponent off balance to where he has to take a step to keep his balance.  In the game, you either attempting to push your opponent off balance or are yielding to his moves to do the same. If you counter an attack by pushing back instead of yielding, chances are, you will get knocked off balance. So, even though it feels totally counter-intuitive, you must yield rather than push back.

I bring this little game up during this time of year as a reminder that sometimes, when getting together with family members and other people that feel like all they want to do is push you off balance, that can be a very powerful answer to their perceived  aggression — to yield.

Your new counter attack to their loud, snarky, back-biting, and other unbecoming yang behaviors and expressions is to yield…and allow them to toss emotional grenades in all directions without so much as a twitch back in their direction…

…and as sure as ever, the one who yields best wins. The victory is to create the silence of one hand clapping – no opposition, the fight where there is no fight… now that’s freedom — to be consistently grounded no matter what is thrown your way.

Happy Holidays.

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Feng Shui Tips to WANT TO Want Something Else

by on November 28, 2011 in Blog, Family and Friends, General, Skills and Knowledge

I have noticed a new distinction in some of my recent consultations. Clients have been requesting that they want to want something other than what they want! I have had one client who wants to want to stay in her marriage, one client who wants to want to be straight, one client who wants to want kids, and one client who wants to want to live a BIG life. Dizzying, isn’t it?

Living with these push-me-pull-you feelings is exhausting. Part of them wants one thing, and for some reason or another, part of them wants the exact opposite.

For this situation, ther are many things I might take into consideration. But ALWAYS on the list are the following two:

1. Integrate the conflicting parts. Lucky for me, I have a great technique for this. It is in the consultation that I call “Feng Shui Your Mindset” on my website. It is about re-aligning your thought patterns so that they are going in one direction. Depending on the situation, this usually takes around 3 to 6 hours via the telephone (yes – that’s all!) I have a laser-focused technique that gets every “part” on the same page using neuro-linguistic repatterning and other subconscious “mind reboot” strategies.

If this sounds hard to believe, well – that just may be an unresourceful thought FOR YOU!

2. Look at the Skills and Knowledge and Family guas of the bagua. That is the front left-hand and left side (respectively) of the home or room from coming in the door. ANY confusion there may trigger these thoughts and feelings. It may be clutter, poor symbols leaking chi (big windows, door to door relationship, etc.) or even an element imbalance problem (skills and knowledge gua is governed by earth element and the family gua’s element is wood.)

Working on the skills and knowledge gua can help with the decision-making part (ie: “a part of me wants to do the feng shui your mindset program and a part doesn’t!”) and working on the family gua can help to snip the tether to the past (ie: “My mom said I wasn’t good enough.”) so you can move powerfully into ONE DIRECTION in your future.

If this seems like a level 2 conversation and you are only level 1 or a beginner, review my book or some of the other blog posts here to familiarize yourself with how to do simple changes to change your life!

 

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Feng Shui Success Stories

by on October 7, 2011 in Blog, General, Health, Prosperity, Success Stories

#1 I have to tell you a happy story that involves feng shui. My brother has been laid off for just a few weeks shy of 2 years and had only 3 more checks coming from unemployment. He told me about an interview he had with Antonelli College in downtown Cincy for an IT administrator job. They interviewed him 3 times and said they wanted to hire him as long as he passed a background check. However, about 20 years ago he had legal problems in Texas that has been keeping him from being hired at other companies, so he was really sweating it. I told my sister-in-law we needed to feng shui the wealth/prosperity section of their house just for good measure. Long story short, he got a phone call about an hour ago and HE GOT THE JOB! I get teased all the time from people when I tell them about feng shui, so this time the joke’s on them IT WORKS! Thank you for Move Your Stuff Change Your Life, you have helped our family beyond measure! Diane H. #2 My friend had a brain aneurysm and was willing to try anything. She feng shuied and did nothing else – and it honest-to-gosh shrank — no medical intervention necessary. With this worry out of the way, she climbed up the ladder professionally and she’s really healthy now. So then, she shared feng shui with my cousin who had a brain tumor and was constantly falling down due to balance issues. My friend and I went to her house and guess what we found — – the foot of her bed was lined up with the bedroom door (death position – yikes!) and she had a reading light clipped onto her headboard to read – right above her head! She’s been in the house for a couple of years and that’s where the tumor was diagnosed. Her cat kept smacking the light as if trying to get rid of it (even slept on it sometimes,) but the clamp was holding good so he couldn’t use his cat feng shui gift. :) We used the helpful people box and energized the health guas AND the helpful people gua that is supposed to be in charge of the head. From the very first night after moving her bed, she reported sleeping all night – which was a first! Anyway, she had surgery to remove the tumor, but when the doctors went in her head to remove it, they couldn’t take anything out because they couldn’t find it. They decided that they mis-read her scans and wanted to do another surgery to look for and get it. By the third follow up visit with the doc post useless surgery, the doctors concluded that the tumor was gone. Now she’s going to g back to work! Was it there! Was it not? The docs say it was. Who knows – but we think it is better to NOT have it and we think feng shui helped that! Now we have to get that helpful people box going again because since there was no tumor, she’s having trouble getting her insurance to pay for it! Alice K

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missing link

Find a Home with Good Feng Shui – My Top Six Tips

by on September 19, 2011 in Buying and Selling Property, General

With all the foreclosures happening these days, many people that have read my book or know at least a little about feng shui are questioning me on what to look for in their new home search. Although most things can be quickly fixed, there are some things that just might not be able to be changes. Here are six feng shui things that I would definitely consider when looking for a new apartment or home:

1. How is the building is situated on the lot? Look for first floors that are (at a minimum) at the same level as the street, or above. Try to get a front door that you have to walk up to rather than walk down to from the street. Pass on the building at the end of a T street or a single story building between two multi-story buildings.

2. What is the overall shape of the house or apartment? Missing pieces can be cured, but you may want to check and see if the house is particularly weak in an area that you can’t afford it to be. (Not sure what a missing piece is? Get in the know with my book.)

3. Is the front door easy to find if visiting for the first time? If the front door is hard to find and you can not figure out a simple way to fix/cure it, (again see my book if confused here) then I’d pass on this place.

4. What is the address? The address (the specific house number or apartment number) holds a particular energetic pattern, and you may want to align yourself with the most closely corresponding energy to save time with counterbalancing later. Think about what you are trying to invite into your life and choose a house number that corresponds to that energy. (These numbers and their meanings can be found at the end of each gua’s chapter in my book.)

5. Is there a safe and empowering spot for your bed to be placed? If you have to sleep with a slanted ceiling or beams overhead, or a garage below, or have your headboard up against a window, bathroom wall, or garage, you may want to keep looking. Also, make sure the bedroom is not “outside that bagua” (in front of the plane of the front door.) On a “sick-building” note, make sure the circuit board/fuse box is not near the main living spaces and especially not on the other side of a bedroom wall.

6. If this home is not brand new, try to find out why the predecessors left. If it is bad news (bankruptcy, divorce, death, crime, illness, etc.) and you can’t find the obvious and easily curable feng shui reason, it might be best to keep looking… Of course, there are many foreclosures out there right now, so do your homework to see if you can spot the faulty environmental factor. If you need help, you might want to hire a professional to help you. (I do telephone consultations if you need me, but try your best to get someone to go see it in person if you can.)

Of course,  I could go on and on, but I think these are the major points to consider that might be feng shui deal-breakers. If you’d like a more in-depth list of things to look for, here’s an audio file that I created just for that very concern. It highlights key points with regard to buying real estate.

Good luck in your search!

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Feng Shui Success Stories

by on September 7, 2011 in Blog, De-Cluttering, Relationships and Love, Success Stories, Wealth and Abundance

#1 I had been reading here online and started moving my stuff a week ago. Without any notice, I suddenly received a letter saying that my salary was being increased. I then bought your book, which arrived on Friday 1/7/11. I had Friday off and came home and started reading and moving, adapting and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and cleaning.

I finished reading your entire book and cleaning 99.9% of my flat last night. I ached and ached but felt fantastic and went to bed but was suddenly awake 3.39am this morning and have been actively implementing more of your book since. I have put so much energy and time into moving my stuff and will now continue with my life in the same way that feng shui will work quiet miracles around me – and into life. A great big thanks to you for your book – brilliant read. I was disappointed to get to the end. Thanks, Wendy C.

#2 My husband and I felt that the energy in our home wasn’t good, and I stumbled across your book online (which was highly recommended). I just finished reading it and we started “feng shui”-ing the apartment.

Yesterday, while cleaning and moving things around, I stumbled across a brand new foulard scarf (we live in Paris) which was given to my husband as a gift in a bookshop. The problem was that it had “crime scene” written all over it, with crime scene tape design, and I didn’t know what to do with it. My husband suggested that we used it as a dusting rug and, before I had the time to think about it, he was dusting the career section of the apartment. It didn’t feel right to me, however, and I told him that “I don’t want a crime scene in the house,” so he ended up throwing out the scarf and we both forgot about it.

THIS MORNING while I was asleep (dreaming about a thief, by the way), I was awakened by strange noise and my husband talking to a guy. The guy was a thief that broke a window and pretended to be a construction worker. He fled before the police got here. After a few hours with the police (they took fingerprint and blood samples that the guy left behind), my husband just finished taping the window with colorful tape. In the meantime, I have been trying to figure out what objects we might have moved to the wrong place to attract a burglar, when I remembered yesterday’s incident with the scarf. We are still in shock about how fast feng shui works. So, I just wanted to share this story with you and thank you for your book. If the negative changes can occur this quickly, I am really looking forward to all the POSITIVE changes now! N. N.

#3 Watching the video reminded me to clean up some things. I started in the bathroom (helpful people) by shutting the drain in the tub and wrapping red ribbon around the toilet water pipe. I’m going to get some gray towels today which will go nicely. I’ve got a beachside painting which is hanging too high (I generally don’t hang them too high )

Then, I moved back to the prosperity area where I’ve set up my home office in the main living space. I had stacks of paper for work and it was a jumble-dy mess! I sorted through that and am working to get rid of the paper – by scanning, filing and shredding! I also went to get construction paper and put a piece of purple over there with a bag of coins.

Today I got 3 checks for insurance reimbursement for clients. A client who I’d seen earlier this week had their card declined AFTER they left the session. They’ve been avoiding my calls so today I attempted to run the card again and it went through! Not too shabby! I have some other things in the works but that’s an awesome start! Thanks again, Karen, Delee

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How to Sell a Home Quickly in a Terrible Market

by on August 23, 2011 in Blog, General

Out of ideas to sell your property? Give feng shui a try!

It seems these days that many of my feng shui consultations are geared towards selling a home. So, I thought I’d share some information that might help others out there in their desperate search for ways to sell a home quickly. I’ll start by sharing a success story that just came in:

On July 10th I met Karen in-person for my feng shui consultation in New York. The biggest item on my list was getting my house in Florida sold which had been on the market for six months. I had taken out a loan and could only afford to make one more mortgage payment. My sanity was wearing thin as I read the comments from potential buyers who passed on the house. After we moved my stuff I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I remember thinking to myself, “Karen doesn’t seem that worried about this I hope she knows I’m out of options here”. I stuck to her advice and shortly after what seemed like out of the blue my realtor called to say we received a cash offer on the house. A CASH offer for a house in Florida, I couldn’t believe it!!!!! A month to the day that Karen came to my apartment the “contact of sale” was fully signed. As I write this I’m waiting for the payoff check to clear. To everyone reading this, Feng Shui works!!!!!!! The best investment I made this summer was to feng shui my home with Karen Carter. Karen, Namaste….. Tracey G.

Note: Although I oftentimes do actually go to the home that needs to be sold, I did NOT go to Florida to sell this one. I feng shuied HER home in New York to allow HER ENERGIES to shift towards the possibility of selling it. Does this require out-of-the-box-thinking? Maybe. Is it impossible to make a connection between her energies in New York and that home in Florida. No.

If you are new to the magical world of feng shui, let me start by answering some basic questions:

What is feng shui? Feng shui is a method of mindfully creating your living and work environments so that they support what you want to do and who you want to be in life. Just like the line in the movie Bull Durham, “If you build it, they will come,” if you build an environment that supports your health, wealth, love, or even selling a home, it will happen.

Does feng shui really work? Yes. Although it may seem completely counter-intuitive or unrelated, using the ancient/timeless art of feng shui, (which has modern quantum physics written all over it) can actually be your best bet when tackling a challenge that SEEMS impossible because its rules are not based upon your fears or limited, three dimensional perspectives.

Do you need to know what to do? Not necessarily. Luckily, there are many people all over the world that practice this art now and it is as easy as an online search to find someone to help you. My advise is to interview potential consultants to see how long they have been practicing, what kind of results they have gotten for their clients, what style of feng shui they practice (there are many styles, you might want to do a little research on the style you prefer before hiring.)

I have trained consultants all over the world. If you can’t find one on your own, I may be able to hook you up with one if you email me your information to support@karenrauchcarter.com.

If you need an easy introduction into feng shui before deciding, Here’s the link to my national best-selling book. You can even read the first chapter before you buy it. I get tons of success stories (like the one above) from people who just used my book, so you might want to try using it before hiring someone. It’s easier than you might think to do!

Don’t want to read? I’ve created some Top feng shui tips for selling a home and top tips when buying a home.

If you came to this article from a desperate search on the internet because you’ve “tried everything” to sell that house without success, what have you got to lose?

Karen

PS, As well as on-site consultations, I also do telephone consultations and get great results for my clients.

 

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I’m Speaking at the Omega Institute July 15th – 17th, 2011

by on May 15, 2011 in Blog, Events

I’m Speaking at the Omega Institute July 15th – 17th, 2011

If you want to join me, bring pictures and a floor plan of your home and/or office and register for my Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life weekend workshop! Rhinebeck New York is a wonderful place spend a summer weekend. :)   See you there!

And if you live in the area and need me to come to your home or office for an on-site consultation, there are still a few spots open. Contact me at info@karenrauchcarter.com and we’ll see if we can get you in the schedule!

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What is “the Reductive Cycle” in Feng Shui?

by on May 10, 2011 in 5 elements, General, Just for Fun

What is the reductive cycle? I read up on it in another book but didn’t quite get it.

The reductive cycle is a cycle that got edited out of my book Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life (those darned editors!) It is the cycle where you can “reduce” an element without totally destroying it.  (Now, this upcoming is an answer meant for someone who pretty much knows the other two cycles – so if you don’t, you might want to pick up a copy of my book first!)

Let’s say, for example that you have a totally white room with a lot of metal furnishings. It is also in the creativity/children gua. As much as you love your totally creative life, you can’t sleep for all the great ideas coming your way. You find yourself dragging around life from a type of “creative exhaustion.” You certainly don’t want to destroy your creativity, but you would like to bring in the reins a bit. With the reductive cycle, you would add water element to that metal space.

Basically the reductive cycle uses the element ahead of it in the creative cycle (see page 37 of my book.) If you want to reduce metal, use water. If you want to reduce water, use wood. If you want to reduce wood, use fire. If you want to reduce fire, use earth. If you want to reduce earth, use metal. It’s like the metal in that creativity gua above is saying “I’m growing, I’m growing, I’m growing, oops, now I have to use some of myself to create water.” It can’t become so powerful because it has a job to do. It has to “feed” the water element. (I’m trying with the visual here, I hope it is working!)

Again, if you area trying to reduce wood element somewhere, you would add fire. Then, the wood is “saying,” “I’m growing, I’m growing, I’m growing, feed the fire.” So it has to take the time to feed the fire and therefore not become “out-of-control wood.” (Wow, I hope this is getting clear to all of you out there!)

Hope that helps!

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