Feng Shui Tips for Bedroom
Feng Shui influences us all of the time, but the feng shui of a bedroom is particularly
important. Not only do we spend around 50-60 hours per week in our bedroom (compared
to 30-40 hours or less at our desk), but whilst we're asleep our body tries to heal
itself from the stresses and traumas of the day.
Here are some tips to help your establish auspicious feng shui in your bedrooms.
- Avoid having your feet directly in line with the entry door to your bedroom when
you sleep (the same applies to the bedroom windows if the window sill is below the
height of your body when you sleep). The Chinese call this the “death” position.
That seems a bit dramatic, but I've certainly seen people's health and vitality improve
once they stop sleeping with their feet opposite the entry door to their bedroom.
- Avoid sleeping with your head under the bedroom window. Feng Shui “folk lore” says
that this one damages your liver. Acupuncturists will give you chapter and verse
on the exact mechanism, but the gist of it is that the energy from the bedroom window
enters your body's energy meridians at your head and travels to your liver where
it knocks it out of balance. Do it regularly for a few years and you can end up with
liver disease.
- Avoid sleeping under beams or other things “hanging down” from your bedroom ceiling
(including over head cupboards), or 45 degrees off sharp corners which stick into
your bedroom, or with a partly open door pointing at you. All of these usually generate
sha lines which often result in aches and pains in whichever part of your body gets
hit by them. Keeping all of the doors in the bedroom closed when you sleep is a good
idea as it usually eliminates a lot of potentially troublesome sha lines.
- If your bedroom has sloping ceilings it's a good idea to avoid sleeping with your
head near the bedroom wall at the foot of them – it's yet another source of sha.
- Avoid sleeping with your head next to a steel radiator, or any other source of magnetism,
such as your TV or computer (including those outside your bedroom just the other
side of the bedroom wall). The magnetic fields don't do your energy fields any good
and they may even be strong enough to influence the directions for whichever feng
shui formulas which you use to work out which direction to sleep in (see below).
So you end up sleeping in a different magnetic direction to the one in the rest of
your bedroom.
- Avoid having open mirrors or other reflective surfaces in the bedroom (e.g. large
pictures on the wall, a switched off TV screen), as these often result in people
not getting a sound nights sleep. If you have them in your bedroom and can't remove
them, try covering them over before you go to sleep each night.
- Have a solid bedroom wall behind you when you sleep (e.g. don't sleep with a large
open space or an open doorway behind the head of your bed).
- Avoid sleeping in a direct line with the toilet if it's on the same floor as your
bedroom, as these generate sha flows which are often capable of penetrating closed
doors and even stud and plaster board walls. If your bedroom has solid brick or stone
internal walls, these will usually stop such sha lines.
- Be aware of the content and symbolism of any pictures you have on display in your
bedroom. They are likely to be among the first things you see each day, and will
subtly programme your brain to bring those things into your life (e.g. A picture
of a lone person tends to create a single person who doesn’t maintain a long term
relationship). Also the content of the picture can interact with the feng shui in
that part of your house. It can be for good or ill, it just depends on the specifics
of that particular interaction between that picture and the feng shui influences
there.
Those are the basic feng shui things to get right in a bedroom, but there are other
aspects of the feng shui which can be every bit as important.
Pockets of good and bad influence
In every room there are differences to the qualities of the energy depending where
you are in the room. There are basically two categories of these.
- Those based on the energy spirals which give rise to the BaGua grid. There are several
distinct feng shui formulas which each tell you something about the qualities of
those energies, some will drain your energy, others may help your relations with
others, or your career, yet other influences will cause you to make poor decisions
or get into conflicts. Some of these spirals will put you in control of your surroundings,
whilst some put others in control of you. Which influences go where and how they
combine with each other are determined by compass directions and position within
the building. The control position for instance is sometimes located on the opposite
side of the bedroom the door, but not always and it may or may not coincide with
other beneficial influences.
- There are also an entirely different set of influences which also apply based on
the radial direction from the centre of the building. Both sets of Flying star influences
(San Yuen and Yuen Hom) together with several of the Sam Hap feng shui formulas and
the hexagram influences of Yuen Hom feng shui give useful information about the feng
shui influences of a particular sector of the bedroom.
Generally you will find it better to sleep with your head in an area of the bedroom
which has beneficial feng shui influences, but finding them is a job for a professional
feng shui practitioner, and sometimes it will not be possible to sleep in a beneficial
area and face a good direction (see below) as well. Knowing which one is better in
a particular situation requires experience.
Directions
Each person reacts a little differently when they receive energy from a particular
direction. Some directions are beneficial for them, others are not. There are four
methods of determining what kinds of influence a particular direction has.
- The simplest (and weakest) is based on the 8 feng shui directions.
- Two more are based on the person's BaZi horoscope.
- The fourth (and strongest) is based on their hexagrams.
All of them yield useful information but what is a beneficial direction on one calculation
may not be on another. Strange as it sounds that can actually be quite useful, because
it means that if you inadvertently face a bad direction, there are usually some good
feng shui influences there as well, so the overall effect on you is not that bad.
On the rare occasions when good feng shui influences coincide and reinforce good
and bad feng shui influences coincide and reinforce bad, you need always to face
good directions.
There is quite a bit of myth around as to whether it's where your feet point or where
your head points that matters. All I can say is that every Chinese feng shui Master
who I have personally asked about this have unanimously said that it's where your
feet point that matters, and this accords with my own experience.
If you want to try it for yourself you can use our FREE Online Personal Directions
Calculator, which works out the 8 feng shui directions for you.
Colours
Generally, soft colours will give a more relaxed feel to the feng shui of a bedroom
rather than bright garish colours. But then comes the choice of the actual colours.
Colours interact with the feng shui influences in that part of the building and with
the feng shui influences in the individual persons horoscope. Colours can boost energy,
or calm it, strengthen problematic influences or harmonise and balance them – it
all depends on the particular colour and the feng shui and horoscope influences at
that part of the bedroom and in that part of the house.
Finding the best combination of colours is a job for a professional feng shui practitioner,
but if you want to at least avoid decorating in colours which throw the feng shui
influences further out of balance in your bedroom, you can use the colours here.