| | Published March 22nd, 2017
| Feng Shui
| | Enhance your home's entrance for good fortune | | By Michele Duffy |  | | This Moraga residence has strong front entrance Feng Shui with lush greenery and chi-attracting and protective red front doors. |
Why is the home's front entrance so, well, front and center in Feng Shui?
Here are some clues to divining the mystery of this all-important area and to critically review, enhance and improve vibrant and nourishing Feng Shui to be attracted to your home. Our external world is full of uncertainty and Feng Shui continues to offer an elegant, nature-infused, time-tested design approach for enhancing what we do have control over: our personal environments.
The front entrance of our homes establish first impressions and the first subliminal messages about you, your home,and the quality of life you live at that home. The repetitive subliminal messages of our front entrances reinforce either an uplifting or draining energy. The design system of Feng Shui stems from the ancient philosophy of the Tao, meaning everything is interconnected, so that naturally, our living spaces especially influence us far more than westerners may realize.
The front entrance is so vitally important in Feng Shui because this is the main portal for the qualitities of energy that enter and nourish home. Often called "the mouth of chi" or the "threshold of good fortune," the front entrance is the entry point for the strong, healthy life force chi needed to nurture an entire living space. It's akin to mindfully allowing clean, healthy and nourishing food into our mouths so our whole body benefits. If we eat junk food we also suffer the immediate negative lack of energy plus longterm consequences.
Choose consciously to create a warm, welcoming, well- lit, fragrant, colorful and tidy front entrance to your home. Review your current entrance to note the obvious and subliminal messages you see. Is success, prosperity, and happiness reflected or is there a degree of lack, laziness, draining, sad or neglect?
Feng Shui asks us to set a positive intention every time we enter our house so we feel the most welcome in our own homes. Our homes reflect us best when they welcome ourselves, others, new opportunites and positive vibes into our open arms with as grand an entrance as possible. Why? If we personally are first greeted with fragrant trees and flowers, soft flowing water, and perhaps a windchime tinkling gently we immediately feel uplifted and full of ease. Our visitors and opportunities are best treated generously with an experience of harmony, abundance and beauty as they also approach our homes.
Feng Shui asks us to pay more attention to our front entrance, home and property to attract positive results. So what are the subliminal messages of a cluttered front stoop or debris in the front yard or items that ought to disposed of but are still in plain sight? Clutter stops energy flow and creates blockages, overwhelm, and create stress and feelings of being stuck. Unfinished projects also deplete and drain your energy, things undone weighing heavily upon us so we feel stuck. Look around your front yard and entrance and notice if there garbage bins, withering plants, overgrown shrubs, cluttered pathways, chipping paint, a rundown roof or abandoned childrens toys. Is the front door clearly visible from the front street? Does the front door need a coat of paint, does it stick, is the door frame well maintained so you feel safe with a front door made of glass? Does your front entrance face a T-intersection or a dead end? Is there a electrical tower facing your front door or some other large sharp structure? Is there a tree directly in front of your front door? Do you experience frustration, fatigue and overwhelming feelings before you even open the door of your home? Would your visitors project happy thoughts onto you on the way to ringing your front doorbell?
Since Feng Shui is based on the law of attraction and interconnectivity, what might you attract towards your home if your front entrance is difficult to locate, blocked, messy or chaotic?
As you preveiw your front yard by gazing upon the front entrance, here's a checklist to help you prioritize and purge the negative to attract auspiciousness to your home and own the front entrance energy flowing towards your home.
Start with bagging up and disposing any debris in yard;
Place toys and other items in the garage (organize the garage for needed
additional storage);
Trim back plants that encrouch on pathway to door;
Remove all cactuses;
Add a fresh coat of red, black or dark green paint for front door;
Oil stuck joints of creaking doors;
Repair/replace rusting door jambs;
Update with fresh house numbers that are clearly visible to all;
Flank front entrance door with sized-to-scale potted Nandina
evergreens or red flowers;
Ensure you have working and clean front entrance lighting;
Place a colorful, cheery silk or real seasonal round wreath on your front door;
Broom cobwebs away from entranceway;
Add a fresh, new and stylish welcome mat;
Add a bubbling, to-scale water fountain to right of front door;
Place a grounding statute for stability in the home;
Soften straight walkways to front door with colorful potted plants
that ease rushing chi;
Actually use front door daily to continually bring healthy chi into home.
Try to tackle a few things on this list each day or each week and be mindful to put a "love my home" intention into your tasks so what's created is a positive thread you can, from that day forward, weave into the layers of what home means to you. As you create more flow and greater ease be mindful of the profound shifts that abundant healthy energy invites towards your home. As you tidy up just enjoy the process of an intentional orchestration of all that is positive into your home and life and be grateful for all that you have created.
Next month I will give tips on the "heavenly gate" of your home, the next logical place to spruce up, the foyer, and help you create that "wow" moment once inside your home.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you want an extra pair of hands or eyes to energize, uplift, and renew your property or living space.
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 | | The front entrance is flanked by life force potted plants which mark the entrance at this Lafayette home |  | | The Bagua Map: Front Door |  | | |  | | Michele Duffy, BTB M.F.S. is an Orinda resident who, since 1999, enjoys creating "Space as Medicine" Feng Shui one space at a time, as well as hiking in nature, cooking, and spending time with her family; Canyon Ranch Feng Shui Master, International Feng Shui Guild (IFSG) Red Ribbon Professional. To schedule a professional 2015 Feng Shui Consultation, contact Michele at (520) 647-4887 or send an email to spaceharmony@gmail.com. |  | | story-photo-caption6 | | | |
Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA