Let's be honest. We could all use some extra good health and fortune in our lives, especially during this year's flu season. Introducing Feng Shui, one of the five arts of Chinese Metaphysics, a spiritual ideology with a focus on harmonising an individual with their surrounds through the balance and flow of energy (Qi). To introduce some more balance into your life, try the following five steps.

Step 1: Declutter

A cluttered house equals a cluttered mind. Not only is clutter an everyday inconvenience, but it's disrupting the flow of positive energy throughout your household. Even worse, however, is the way it absorbs the energy in any space. Aside from the therapeutic benefits of cleaning as a means to remove any unnecessary burden from your life, it will act as a catalyst for the transference of Qi, the first step towards creating feng shui within your home.

Step 2: Balance

Feng shui is all about balance and the way to achieve that in your home is to ensure the five elements - wood, earth, metal, fire, and water - are equally represented in every room of the house. Think a wooden bowl, with pebbles lining the bottom, filled with water while a candle floats atop as a centrepiece. It's all balance, and that means materially, too. 

Step 3: Know your energies

Defining the Bagua, or energy map, of your home with the BTB (Western Feng Shui) grid or the classical school Bagua is both the most complicated and crucial part of creating Feng Shui. The Bagua is the primary tool in analysing the Qi of your household, enabling you to determine what sections of your home are more closely connected to particular areas of your life. The eight areas of the Bagua are as follows: Health and family, wealth and abundance, fame and reputation, love and marriage, creativity and children, helpful people and blessings, career and life path, spiritual growth and cultivation. After defining the Bagua, you can orientate your home accordingly. For example, according to traditional Feng Shui practices, the Southeast corner of your home is spiritually connected to the positive flow of money energy so it would make sense to relocate your home office or business to that location.

Step 4: Know your elements

Each of the five elements has associated energies that you will need to understand before inviting them into your home. For example, for those wanting to cultivate a more prosperous environment, they may place wood and water oriented objects in the Southeast section of their home, and for those wishing for better health, they may place lush plants or items symbolic of the wood element in the East wing of their home. It's all about orientation and understanding the associations each component has to your home's Bagua. 

Step 5: Invite the good energy in

There's no point having a home primed and ready for positive energy if you're not providing that energy with the opportunity to come in! Open your front door and let the energy flow through. Where energy can go stagnant around closed or blocked entryways, inviting pathways allows positive Qi to enter the home, bringing with it all its positive energy. When doing this, however, make sure to keep the back door closed, as entryways with a direct line to an exit are prone to 'runaway Qi', meaning the energy will flow straight back out again! This includes windows, for those of you who were wondering. If this direct line is something, one can't avoid structurally, place an object to disrupt this direct pathway, like a statue or decorative piece, to disrupt the runaway flow. Rugs and room dividers are perfect for this, all while adding a personal touch to your home. 

Now you understand the basics. It's time to re-orientate your home and embrace the positive energy of Feng Shui!