(helen frankenthaler)
In some methodology of feng shui, you can walk through a space with a practitioner – I have a great friend who is very talented who does this- and your space will be “muscle tested” on you. It’s called Applied Kinesology. Basically, in some way you hold out an arm or hold your fingers in an arrangement and a practitioner will push on that arm or your fingers or some other part of your body and ask you to hold yourself in place against the force. Where you are strong (in this case, indicating the space is strong) you can resist the pressure to your body. Where you are weak (indicating the space is weak in energy in some way) your arm will fall almost instantly at times.
I don’t practice this and perhaps I provided an oversimplification of the methodology. What I really like about this techique is the idea behind it. It is the idea that drives what I do in spaces and it is the real question that always emergest when working on the feng shui of a home and talking to people about their life:
What makes you feel strong?
Everyone has their methods and they work brilliantly for them. I personally don’t feel the need to summon any subtle energies to the surface in muscle tests or anything like it, since I see how people use their space and talk about their space. I can see what is attended to and what is left as an afterthought.
Everyone knows what makes them feel weak and what makes them feel strong.
Not everyone knows what to do with that information, and not everyone wants to actively acknowledge it because, in doing so, you become responsible for ditching the weakness and enhancing the strength.
In your own life, what makes you feel strong?
I know where my strengths lie, and I play to my strengths. I think we all do, intuitively. Why not become wildly immersed in everything that feels great, right? Why not get lost in everything that you know makes you feel strong?
That’s the question I used to pose to people who would tell me that I needed to challenge myself more in places I wasn’t very strong. I am not much of an athlete by nature. I am far better in small groups than as part of a giant group. I know my creative talents and I can easily get lost in them, neglecting the other skills that I am not as facile with like drawing or learning languages, to give a few surface examples. It has been easier to not talk to some of my extended family – that doesn’t understand me- rather than to try to understand them.
In my own home, the health area has historically been weaker than it should be. The legacy/family area almost neglected completely.
In feng shui, this is not an isolated event.
You can’t have a totally neglected or weak part of your home (and, therefore your life) and not have it pull on the rest of your home that is strong. You can only neglect a certain thing for so long before it becomes clear that it is affecting you in more ways than one.
Developing things that have been neglected, ignored or otherwise aren’t easy to deal with is the only way I have found to grow beyond the confines of the comfortably uncomfortable.
You can throw a ton of energy toward everything you are great at and you can have huge success in many ways. In my eyes, if you still feel lost, empty, un-loved, unexpressed, frustrated or otherwise bad about yourself or your life, it isn’t really success.
Why not create strength where you are weaker?
You know where it is that you feel weaker. The places you want to run out of, filled with anxiety, or, conversely, stuff full of junk. The people you don’t want to talk to. The cliff’s edge you find yourself standing on where you can either jump into the water or run back to the shore.
Some risks are worth taking.
Idea for the week: see if you can challenge yourself to make something that feels weak in your life even 5% better! Meaning— can you take even the smallest step toward something that has been neglected? Wash your car if that’s relevant, and you’ve taken a step. Replace a lightbulb. Meet up with a long-lost friend. Whatever it may be, you’ll be very happy to feel yourself stretching in new ways. And that will make you truly strong.
xoxo Dana
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