You may have thought about hiring a fengshui master when you were buying a new home. But when disagreements happen frequently at home, it doesn’t matter if you’ve just moved in yesterday or you’ve been living there for years. Changing things up a little with fengshui could help improve relationships at home, according to Malaysian metaphysics maestro and author, Joey Yap. But it’s not as simple as adding a potted plant here or a mirror there. Read on for the fengshui master’s tips.

“Fengshui can help you to figure out why a certain issue keeps happening in your life by looking at the various sectors of your home. You can do so by employing the 9 Palaces grid method, which is basically about dividing your house into nine grids.

“To do this, all you simply need is a compass and your house floor plan. On the floor plan, draw nine squares, which basically looks like a tic-tac-toe match template. Then stand at the centre point of your home and determine the North direction using the compass. Mark out the sector in that direction as North on the nine grids you’ve drawn. You can identify all the other seven sectors according to the directions of the compass. There, you have your 9 Palaces. The middle box will be empty with no direction written in it.”

“After that, you need to figure out which particular stars are located in which sectors and whether those stars are being activated or not, in order to truly identify the specific problem you’re having. It’s best to invite a proper fengshui consultant to perform an analysis on your home if you don’t have the time or expertise to locate the sectors yourself.”

“Relationship-wise, you’d want to pay close attention to the #7 star, which is located at the South East sector. This star, when activated, is known to encourage arguments to spark among those living in the property. Whether it’s about couples facing relationship problems, parents and children not getting along at home, siblings getting aggressively competitive with each other all the time, house mates in a rented apartment not seeing eye-to-eye frequently or even three-generational families constantly bickering under the same roof, the #7 star could be the root cause.”

“The simplest solution to [fix relationships at home] would be to simply not stay in or use that particular sector of the home where the #7 Star resides. Do this and you could see a significant drop in the number of heated exchanges you have with loved ones.”

“The root cause here could be slightly different. In fengshui, the key issue to tackle isn’t about earning money — it’s about retaining wealth. Among other things, the problem of retaining wealth could stem from not having a proper Bright Hall which makes it hard to retain Qi in the household. The solution here would be to locate where the #8 star resides in your home and activate it by simply using that room often – the #8 star is located at the middle of the 9 Palaces. This would usher in more wealth opportunities into your life which you can try to take advantage of.”

“[Home-buyers] should especially watch out for irregular-shaped structures as these structures contain missing sectors due to their weird design and layout which may impact a particular person, depending on whether their Life Gua is missing or not. For example, if your Life Gua is 7, you have to make sure that the West sector exists in the household. If that sector is missing in your floor plan due to the property’s unconventional design, every other occupant might turn out okay but you alone might experience certain difficulties because your personal sector is considered ‘missing’. If you encounter houses like this during house-hunting escapades, it is best you move on to the next option!”

“There seems to be a huge misconception on which types of plants ‘give off’ good fengshui. But actually, the type of plant does not have any on bearing on fengshui whatsoever. However, indoor plants do have their uses in fengshui. For instance, indoor plants are used in fengshui to soften the impact of ‘sha qi’ generated by a corner or room door pointing towards the bed. ‘Sha qi’, aka killing qi, is aggressive, volatile and destructive and is the type of Qi that we try to stay away from. In this case, it’s acceptable for these plants to be placed between the bed and the corner, but make sure they don’t obstruct the sunlight.”

“Here’s another misconception that needs to be pointed out – there are no specific fengshui items designed to exude positive Qi. Items like Mandarin Ducks and the Laughing Buddha statues do not have any innate fengshui power. However, certain things can enhance good stars or mitigate bad stars depending on the element they’re made of. For example, this year the Five Yellow (which isn’t a good star) resides in South West sector. If this sector is unavoidable in the home — for example, the home’s main door — then you can at least mitigate the Five Yellow’s effects by placing a big metal-made object at that sector.”

More info at www.joeyyap.com.
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