Acknowledging the interest of a few people here on mouthshut, who believe that a little alteration in their daily living and routines can make their lives abundant and not deprived from anything to suffice their basic as well as luxurious necessities, I am encouraged to put up this post, to point out few mistakes people commit, while implementing this art in their lives. I am pointing out a few of those, a minor correction of which, could really snap a lot of hindrance(s) towards your accomplishments.

The three common mistakes which people normally land up committing would be that,: -

[Mistake 1]

Some people choose colors based on their own personal “Gua” or Trigram. As an example, a person born in 1961 is the CHEN trigram, which is associated with the Wood element and the color green. To paint your bedroom green because of this could easily be a mistake and not cater to the inherent energies of the room.

[Mistake 2]

Some books outline the inherent elements (and colors) associated with a particular direction and their benefits accordingly, but most readers think that those are the appropriate colors. A few, luckily though, get away with it through pure coincidence or may be LADY LUCK standing by their side at that point of time and making them implement things correctly. For instance, the south direction is associated with fire and people think it is correct to make or paint the south room in the house, red! DANGER and purely FATAL. This is wrong about 80% (or most) of the time.

[Mistake 3]

The third common mistake is regarding the arbitrary color assignments given to different sections of the house, based on the New Age Bagua Map (Black Hat School of feng shui). People need to be reminded or informed that, the Bagua Map (with the Wealth corner and the Marriage corner) was invented less than thirty years ago and has very little to do with traditional feng shui or its routine practice. The Black Hat school recommends certain colors for those 8 imaginary life stations, based partly on western color psychology (i.e.pink in the Marriage corner) and partly on a misinterpretation of the “later-heaven sequence” of the Lo-shu grid. [Now, I know, you might wonder what this Lo-Shu would mean. God help me, ha ha]

Let me make your life easier by explaining the meaning and the origin of this, Lo-Shu, in short. Hsia Yu, a famous Chinese prehistoric personality, one day, came across some very interesting markings on the shell of a giant tortoise, which came out from the River Lo in Central China. This became Lo Shu (See, very simple). The word 'Lo' means river and the term 'Shu' indicate books. Different Lo Shu numbers indicates different directions which are believed to be auspicious. I would have a separate section on Lo-Shu and its calculations in case I witness an intent from MS members, to know more about this. Lo-shu grid indicates the flow of Qi (energy), based on 9 directions (isn't it marvelous). Now let us come to the remedies, by choosing the correct colors for you.

The first example of stylizing a room, based on who is using it, can in fact be done, but is of least important in my opinion and more information in fact, is needed to come to a balanced conclusion. More than just one element based on year of birth, each person is some combination of elements based on the year, month, day, and hour of birth. As an example, if I have too much earth in my chart, I would need to control it with wood or reduce it with metal. Despite of my love for earthy colors and a preference to have my house painted in two different shades of peach, I would still prefer altering my interiors a bit, to green (wood) and white (metal), so that I feel a lot more balanced.

With mistake Number 2, there is some truth to the inherent element associated with a direction. For e.g., the direction of southeast is inherently a Wood direction. But this doesn’t mean that, the room in your house that falls in the southeast should be painted green. It is more like a “shadow” influence for the other combinations of elements. Calculations based on, when a house is built, will reveal much more explicit information about each room and what element or combination of elements/colors would be needed there, than anything else.

It is also incorrect to believe that the function of a room totally dictates the colors. This would be rather rigid to think that a bedroom must be dreamy blue or an office, power red! Some people also have an extraordinary sensitivity to color, but from a feng shui angle, Swiss coffee white and Navajo white are essentially the same color (as Feng Shui states white as WHITE). Feng Shui is nature friendly and its aim is to bring the person as close to nature as possible, so you go through this divine feeling of being rejuvenated and feel much more than just being energetic, in your lives.