Feng Shui: The Bagua Map – Around DB and Life on Lantau

Each room in your home represents a different aspect of your life, which means that your happiness is largely dependent on your home decorating skills. Samantha Wong reports

In order to successfully apply feng shui in your home, you need to determine where each room is located on the bagua map. This is simple enough to do but first you need to decide whether you are going to follow the Western (BTB) bagua or the traditional bagua. Both BTB and traditional baguas are divided into nine squares (see the BTB map overleaf), with each square representing a different aspect of your life wealth, fame and reputation, love and marriage etc. Each square also corresponds with one of the five elements and a colour or colours.

Simply put, the bagua connects aspects of your life with areas in your home. This allows you to work on specific areas in your life by improving the energy in the corresponding area of your home.

You can do a BTB bagua reading in three easy steps. Step 1: Draw the BTB bagua map on tracing paper. Step 2: Superimpose your map over your floor plan, aligning the bottom row of your map with the wall of your front door. Step 3: Note down which parts of your home fall under and are therefore governed by which sections of the bagua map.

A traditional bagua reading works in much the same way, except it takes the points of the compass into account. You need to take the compass reading of your front door in order to line up a traditional bagua map with your floor plan.

If your floor plan is not a perfect square or rectangle, sections of the bagua will be foreshortened or missed out altogether, and youll have to work at filling in the space (and therefore the energy) that is lacking. Remedies include introducing potted plants to activate the area or hanging crystals, especially when there is a window. If a whole section is missing, place mirrors on both walls of the interior corner to expand the area.

Extensions, like a bay window or balcony, are a positive in feng shui even if they fall outside the bagua map. This is because they extend the good energy that you are creating within your home.

Plotting your courseIn many ways a bagua reading is so literal, you can work out how to boost the energy in a room intuitively. Worried about your health? Revamp the decor in the centre of your home (which falls under the health section of the bagua map). Hoping to travel again soon? Decorate the travel corner of your home (bottom right on the map) with photos of the countries you want to visit. Sex life in need of a boost? Place candles and flowers in the love and marriage section of your home (top right).

But theres more to the bagua than that. Youll see from the map below that each bagua square corresponds not only with an aspect of your life but also with one of the five elements. So, once you know where a room fits in the bagua map, youll know which element needs to be supported in it. Lets say your living room falls under the creativity section of the bagua map, which is supported by metal if you feel you are lacking in creativity, youll benefit from introducing more metal into your living room.

An easy way to boost the presence of a particular element in a space is through colour use for instance, metal is commonly represented by the colour white, so you can invite more metal energy into a space by introducing some white-coloured furnishings. But take another look at the map below, youll see that colour-use in the bagua is more complex, since colours in each square correspond with both the element and aspect of life represented. For instance, you can up the metal energy in the creativity section of your home by adding white-coloured accents, but to boost the travel section of your home, also associated with metal, you need to decorate with grey and black, as well as white.

By learning about the bagua, you can improve your quality of life. So think about which aspect of your life needs work. Lets say its your relationship with money. Work out which room in your home falls under the wealth section of the bagua (top left on the map). Which element do you need to boost in that room to bring more money in? Wood. How do you do that? By incorporating plenty of blue, purple, red and green accents into your decor. Throw in a piece of real wood furniture and youll soon be as rich as Jack Ma.

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Feng Shui: The Bagua Map - Around DB and Life on Lantau