The Five Elements in feng shui are Wood, Water, Earth, Metal and Fire.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine and philosophy, these five components comprise everything in life that there is (from objects to food to animals to people), and all five of these elements must stay in balance to have a harmonious life.
Each element has specific traits attached to it—- for instance, wood is the element of growth and flexibility, and adding wood to a room can increase your energy, prosperity and creative flexibility. However, too much wood can be stifling, make you feel stiff physically and mentally rigid and stuck. You don’t want to have too much or too little of any one element in your life for a long period of time.
Imbalances in elements often are expressed physically, mentally and emotionally in your life…and your home will probably feel “off” to you, too.
While I don’t make any claims to be a doctor or a magician, I do know that balancing elements for my clients has opened up their lives significantly!
Here is the element cycle. Its a big part of both Traditional Chinese Medicine and my feng shui method. Everything in the world is composed of these five elements (some or all of them) and human beings are composed of all five elements.
Each element has colors, tastes, emotions, energies, tendencies, body organs and even sounds that are associated with it, and each element has a profound affect on the other five.
This is a great big complicated study, but I’ll explain the basic cycle here to demonstrate the fact that Nature has its flow: Water feeds the seedlings in the ground to create trees and plants of Wood. Wood in great quantity will dry and a spark in nature will set off Fire to burn all that Wood. When wood burns it creates ash that becomes Earth. And, over time, when you compress Earth you will create Metal. The cycle then starts again as drops of water condense on Metal.
People ask how they can start decorating with elements and know which ones they need.
Because its such a huge and complicated study it would be pretty impossible to do it justice here, but the exercise below will help. It is a good practice to both gain objectivity as well as greater balance in your space without sweating it to much.
My best way to start with the Elements is a basic one: integrate more nature in your home. Whether it is natural materials or plants and pets, the more nature and humanity you have the more you will be able to feel where things are not flowing well in nature. Its as though pure nature is our best teacher. My puppy helped me to understand my need for more color and wood in my environment; some plants for might shine a light on how much light you do or don’t have in your home. A handful of crystals will either feel amazing or strangely out of place in your home.
This is intuitive, not scientific. It’s useful because it gives you both more nature energy as well as a real personal litmus test to see how things look at feel with fresh eyes.
Does this make sense?
You can try this simply: Compare your environment to pure Nature and you will start to feel a bit more of the shifts you need to make to get aligned with the natural, powerful cycle of the universe!
xoxo Dana
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I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
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xoxo Dana
very interesting- love how it follows intuition but at the same time I am dying to learn more about the different factors that help guide your school of fung shui..