Feng Shui Space Clearing

As buildings get older, their energy starts to feel “heavier”, and as it does so people living in the building tend to feel more lethargic than they would otherwise, especially when they are inside the building. The building also begins to attract clutter which contributes to the heavy feeling, which helps to attract more clutter and so on.

How quickly this happens depends on the building. For a house which is open to the air on all sides it can take 30 years to get to the point where space clearing is likely to be helpful; longer if the house has plenty of large doors and windows to let the energy in. At the other extreme, a house which is blocked in on three sides (like the old “back to back” terraces that are still prevalent in some parts of the North of England) is likely to reach the stage of benefiting from space clearing within 10 years.

The way to recognise when your home can benefit from space clearing is both to sense when the energy is beginning to feel heavy and stuck, and to look around to see if it’s accumulating clutter.

So if you’ve decided that your home needs space clearing, how do you go about it?

Well, there are lots of ways (there are some good books devoted to space clearing, listed on the right of this page):-

The first stage is to remove the physical stuff that’s surplus to requirements. I use that phrase because it’s probably not junk, just stuff that you don’t need anymore and probably never will (e.g. the TV that you kept as a “spare” after you got the new one - just incase the new one breaks). The stuff that’s cluttering your house may be just what someone else is looking for, so sell it (on eBay or a car boot sale), give it to a charity shop, Freecycle it, recycle it, and, if you really must, bin it! Let me give you an example; about a year after we moved into our present house, the electric motor in the lawn mower burned out (basically “killed” by the large garden). The rest of the mower was in good condition, but it wasn’t economic to repair it. So I put it on our local Freecycle with make, model, what was wrong with it etc. I got a phone call from someone with an identical mower, but with a different fault and they took ours as a source of spare parts for theirs.

So HOW do you space clear ?

Even the act of taking stuff out of storage, examining it, dusting it and putting it back will improve and lighten the energy and the feel of the place.

Redecorating is a wonderful way to improve the energy, and the effects usually last for several years, but either stick to the same family of colours (in terms of the five elements) as you have now or seek advice from a qualified professional (or learn some feng shui yourself) so that you get the right balance of elements in the new decor.

A very quick way to space clear and improve the energy is to use sound, whether you go through the house clapping, ringing Tibetan symbols, or just turn on the radio.

My Tibetan Master used to say “have a party” - he wasn’t far off either; sound, movement and clutter clearing before and after!

You can also “smudge” with Sage or other aromatic herb, or burn incense or Josh sticks.

Having successfully cleared the space, you are likely to find that the energy will start to stagnate again, and that you’ll need to repeat the space clearing at regular intervals. If you sort out the feng shui (e.g. with a consultation) you are likely to find that you won’t need to space clear anywhere near as often, if at all. The analogy that I use with my clients to explain the reason is as follows:-

“Imagine a muddy pool being fed by a muddy stream. If you clean out the pool and refill it with clean water, it will be clean - for a while, until the stream muddies it up again. If you clean the stream, the pool will gradually become clear without you needing to do anything else.”

Space clearing in that analogy is the equivalent of cleaning the pool, Feng Shui is the equivalent of cleaning the stream.

DIY TIP

If you decide to space clear by redecorating, make sure that you remove any old wall paper first, it often holds onto a lot of very dense energy which will permeate through fairly quickly if you take the “easy” way and just paint or paper over the top.

If you’re planning on changing the colour scheme, it’s worth thinking about getting advice from a feng shui professional (which will mean they need to visit your home), or learning about feng shui and colour yourself, or you could create some problems.

There are several good books devoted to space clearing listed below (including how to do space clearing) which you might find useful.