Tales From the Crib

Believe it or not, feng shui consultations can be downright “spooky” at times. Here are a couple of story treats to get you in the mood for this year’s All Hallows’ Eve

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: I read your articles every week and love reading stories about the different client consultations you have done, and I always learn something from other’s experiences. Can you share more stories with us?

Of course! And since this upcoming week is Halloween, I thought it would be fun to share the “scariest” feng shui consultations I have ever done. I have visited hundreds of homes and businesses since I started doing this work, so I have many stories.

Here are just two “spooky tales.” I changed the names of the people and created different situational scenarios for confidentiality reasons. Any details or circumstantial similarity to you or someone you know is purely coincidental.

Lions, tigers and wet sheets, oh my!

Monica had me over for a consultation because she was concerned about her 5-year-old son, Joshua, who was wetting his bed at night and seemed to be unnaturally scared of many things. She thought maybe his bed needed to be placed in a more empowered position.

Walking through the home, I noticed vibrant, bold and wonderfully appealing designer decor. I was taken aback, however, when I entered Joshua’s room. Monica had decorated it with a jungle theme, complete with animal print curtains, and wallpaper with zebras and roaring lions and tigers.

“I love how Joshua’s room turned out!” she said with enthusiasm. “Isn’t it so awesome?!”

“Yes,” I responded, “but not for a 5-year-old boy and not for a bedroom.”

I asked her to imagine what it would feel like to sleep in a jungle surrounded by vicious animals. She said she had never thought of it that way. I noticed that Joshua’s bed had soft bunny-print sheets and many vulnerable looking stuffed rabbits on it.

The symbolism, I shared, suggested that Joshua related to and felt like the vulnerable rabbits. Horrified, she agreed to immediately change the decor per my recommendations. Later, she told me that Joshua had stopped wetting the bed and was much less scared.

What happens behind unhinged doors

A few years back, Jack called and asked if I could visit his three-bedroom home on the Windward side. He lived with his wife, two children and elderly mother-in-law. He was willing to pay the extra fee to get me to his house as soon as possible.

When I arrived, Jack told me that a few weeks earlier a string of “weird” things started happening. One, his mother-in-law choked on some food and had to be rushed to the emergency room; two, while he was waiting for her, an old client called (whom he had been out of touch with for some time) and told Jack that he was about to commit suicide by pill overdose; three, after rushing his old client to the emergency room, Jack thought these weird occurrences were over, but in a freak accident a few days later, a plank of wood from his house fell onto his neighbor’s cat, killing it instantly, and his children (8 and 12 at the time) began having nightmares; and four, his wife tripped on a step in their home and broke her arm.

I had no idea what to expect as I walked through Jack’s home, but within two minutes it was apparent to me what the problem was. Jack had started a home improvement project and was in the process of changing all the doors in his home, so every door in the house was off its hinges, leaning against a wall.

What is the correlation? Doorways are portals that usher us from room to room and are meant to have doors on them to contain the energy and control what goes in and out of each room. Energetically, when doors are taken off doorways, unwanted energy in the form of crisis and unexpected happenings tend to come into our lives.

I asked Jack when he had taken down all the doors and he said, “I took off the last door just before joining the family for dinner. Thirty minutes later I was driving my mother-in-law to the hospital. I’ve been too distracted to finish the project since all this started. Why?”

After explaining my view of what was going on, I asked him to immediately install all the new doors. A month after my visit he reported that life was back to normal.

Finally, here’s a bit of friendly feng shui advice for the ghoulish holiday:

To clear the energy of tricks and welcome only the treats, make sure you remove all Halloween decorations when you wake up on Nov. 1.

Alice Inoue is a life guide at Alice Inoue Life Guidance LLC, a company committed to assisting people in living empowered lives. Visit www.aliceinspired.com to read her blog, sign up for her newsletters and download useful feng shui tips.