The Feng Shui Bagua, Part 3
Photo by Kara Eads on Unsplash
The bagua is a powerful feng shui tool that practitioners use to gain insights and clarity about a client and their space. In our last two posts, we went over the basics of the feng shui bagua and how to lay it on your bedroom. If you’re not sure how to lay the bagua on your own space, we would encourage you to go back and read Part 1 of this series. You can also download our free bagua kit or work one-on-one with a consultant if you’d like more guidance. If you’re really interested in learning how to lay the bagua, we’d love to see you in our certification program! The bagua is a fairly complex tool, so we spend a lot of time looking at different floor plans with our students.
As we mentioned in our earlier posts, the bagua consists of eight directions around a center, for a total of nine areas. Today we are going to go over the last three bagua areas: Fame, Career, and Relationships. If you missed the first six areas, be sure to go back and read Part 1 and Part 2. As you’re reading through each area, remember it’s best not to try to activate all of them at once. Your efforts will be much more effective if you pick just one or two that feel most important to you.
Fame
The Fame area has to do with your reputation and recognition, and how the world sees you. It’s related to the fire element and the color red. We would suggest adjusting this area if you feel like you’re working hard and doing your best, but you’re not being recognized for your contributions. If you’ve been passed up for a promotion that you’ve been working towards, this would be a great area to focus on.
Fame doesn’t just have to do with how you’re recognized in your work and career. If you tend to feel invisible in a room, or like you’re not really being seen in other areas of your life, you might want to activate the Fame area. You can also work with this area if you want to put yourself out there and find a new relationship or start a new venture, but you’re feeling a little afraid of being in the spotlight. The Fame area is also related to fire and passion, so it can be helpful to activate it if you want to feel more passionate about things in your life.
One of our favorite ways to activate the Fame area is to place a plant here. In five element theory, the wood element (represented by plants) feeds fire, so having wood in this area of your bedroom will help make sure the fire of Fame is burning brightly. Make sure it’s a new plant that you added intentionally to ensure you’re bringing in fresh, new energy.
Career
The Career area of the bagua is related to water, wisdom, and depth. It has to do with looking deep within yourself to find your path and your purpose, and understanding what you want to learn and know really deeply. If you think about water, it moves downwards and finds its way deep into any nooks and crannies. The Career area and the water element are also connected to the color black.
We often find that people who are interested in activating the Wealth area may actually need to focus on the Career area first. If you’re underemployed, or you’re working in a field or position that is not allowing you to use your wisdom and your gifts in the best way, you might want to work on this area. This is also a helpful area to activate if you want to move through life in a way that connects you with more opportunities to improve your career.
Water is also dynamic, like a rushing river. It relates to how we move through the world and connect to others. If you want to expand your social network and connections, you may want to activate the Career area with this intention.
A great way to activate the Career area is to hang a feng shui crystal ball here. This helps to modulate the flow of qi in this area of your home, and it also provides clarity and illumination. The bright, yang energy of a feng shui crystal will help to shine light on what steps you can take towards cultivating wisdom and connections.
Relationships
The Relationships area of the bagua is one we get asked about a lot! This area is connected to partnerships, especially romantic ones. It can relate to business or other types of partnerships, as well as self-love.
Most often, we suggest activating this area if you want to invite a romantic partner into your life. If you’re already in a marriage or long-term partnership, do you want to deepen it or encourage it to grow? Working with the Relationships area can be helpful in supporting those intentions as well.
It’s also important to be honest with yourself about what may be happening in your internal environment when it comes to finding a partner. If you want to meet a romantic partner, it’s important to love yourself first, and you may need to do some work on yourself. Are you falling into a pattern and meeting the same type of person over and over again? That is something to get curious about. Working on this area can be supportive if your intention is to heal yourself so that you can accommodate a partner in your life.
The first thing we’d suggest if you want to work with the Relationships area is simply to notice what is happening there. Is there a pile of dirty laundry, a prickly cactus, or even a cat litter box? Is it collecting dust? We often see symbolic artwork here that might not be supportive of someone’s intentions of finding a partner, like a painting of a single person or object. It can sometimes be hard to see the connection between what you find here and the relationships in your life, so you might want to talk to a trusted friend about it to uncover what might be going on.
One of our favorite ways to activate this area is with rose quartz. Rose quartz has a very soft, healing energy, and its pink hue is the color connected to the Relationships area. If you’re looking for a partner, try adding two pieces of rose quartz to this area of your bedroom. If you need to focus on healing your own heart first, you may want to work with just one.
Now that we’ve gone through all the bagua areas, which ones stand out the most to you? Try activating one or two with intention, and see what you notice!