Question of the week: I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to use feng shui principles when decorating the home for the holidays?
Of course, I do! Just follow these tips to add positive energetic touches to your home for the season:
Minimize the excess
Put your Christmas decorations up later rather than sooner to heighten the specialness of the season. Decorating for Christmas too early — too much color, sound and energetic activity — can have a numbing effect and tire out the family.
Simplify
Take a good look at your decorations. Do you have items that you keep year after year “just because?” Get rid of outdated items and items that you don’t absolutely love or that are falling apart.
Direct energy up
To create an uplifting mood, hang lights, garlands and ribbons at eye level or at least above the heart and in a manner that makes them “smile” (ends facing up). Any decorations with ends that hang down may create a depressed or subconscious negative energy.
Light from all angles
Avoid lighting that casts unnatural colors into the room. Use a combination of overhead and other lighting. Using only overhead lighting can create an energetic drain, causing discomfort and restlessness. As a complement to overhead lights, use holiday candles, side lamps and decorative table lighting to add the feeling of coziness.
Minimize red
Although red is a traditional Christmas color, it represents the fire element in feng shui, and too much of it can work against you. An overload of fire can create over-excited energy and lead to emotional outbursts, burnout and fatigue. The low energy that many people feel after the holidays is often created by an unbalanced fire element in their Christmas decorations.
Use calm colors
As an alternative to red or to balance excessive red, use green as the base color for your decorations. Green brings in the element of wood and the color of healing to help relieve and defuse stress by bringing the essence of nature into your home. Blue and silver — a contemporary Christmas color combination — bring the water and metal elements into your home and promote a fresh, calming energy that can also be healing and supportive during the holiday season.
Light some candles
Candles add positivity to the feng shui of a space on many levels, but the most overlooked benefit is that they purify the energy in a space (especially if you use soy or beeswax candles). Fire cleanses the energy, and the soft glow it creates soothes emotional imbalance.
Bring in cleansing plants
In addition to your regular houseplants, bring in at least one or two air purifying plants to add beauty and grace to the space, clean the air, and clear and calm the energy. In Hawaii, some easy-to-acquire air purifying indoor plants are the Peace Lily, the Areca palm and the Dracaena Janet Craig.
A Feng Shui Christmas
Feng shui is all about creating a home that has healing and nourishing energy, a must during the holiday season. Remember, if you take care of the quality of the energy in your home, your own energy gets stronger and more balanced, a perfect transition for your whole family as you prepare to move into 2017!
Do you have a question for Alice? If so, send it to alice@ yourhappinessu.com. Alice Inoue owns Happiness U, a lifestyle studio located at SALT Kakaako where anyone can find positive inspiration and high-level guidance to minimize stress and optimize modern day life! YourHappinessU.com.