The living room should be welcoming and reflect your personality and interests. You should feel totally relaxed and comfortable in this room, and so should your guests. In many homes the living room is used only on special occasions. In this situation, an important part of the house is not being used properly, with the result that other areas of your life will be constricted. Make this room comfortable and pleasant and use it regularly. If you are not doing this already, you will notice a big difference in the quality of your life as soon as you do.

The ch’i should flow freely through the living room. This encourages the family to spend quality time together. The ch’i also makes your guests feel relaxed and comfortable.

The placement of furniture should also be done to allow the ch’i to flow freely, creating feelings of warmth and companionship in the room. People should be able to move around the furniture freely. L-shaped arrangements of furniture are not good, unless they are in a corner of the room. This is because they create a shar when located in the middle of the room.

The furniture should be arranged with care in the room. If the furniture is placed largely on one side of the room, the room will appear unbalanced and lop-sided. This can lead to feelings of constriction. Anyone sitting in this room will feel vaguely uncomfortable, but not know why. People also feel uncomfortable when they are sitting with their backs to the door. Consequently, chairs and sofas should be arranged so that the people using them do not have their backs to the doors. If your room does not allow this, it is considered good manners to offer your guests chairs that face the door, and sit in one that has its back to the door yourself. Ideally, the head of the house should sit in a chair that faces the main entrance to the room. The people doing the entertaining should not sit with their backs towards a window, as this indicates a lack of support. A solid wall behind them increases confidence and makes them naturally more outgoing and hospitable.

The living room should be close to the front door and on the same level. If the living room is on a lower level to the front door, an effective remedy is to hang a crystal in the center of the room to encourage the ch’i upwards. Potted plants also make an attractive remedy.

Do not place couches or chairs under exposed beams as these overhead shars can be oppressive and create discord. Two bamboo flutes hung from the beam act as a remedy if there is no alternative but to place the furniture under it.

A fireplace creates a central focal point in the room and, in the winter months, creates warmth and cheer. However, it can also allow the ch’i to escape up the chim­ney. The remedy for this is to hang a mirror over the fire­place to reflect the ch’i back into the room.

In many homes all of the furniture is oriented towards the fireplace. Although this may make good sense in win­ter, it is better feng shui if at least some of the chairs face each other to encourage conversation. Naturally, the chairs should not be placed so close to the fire that peo­ple become too hot. The conversation can also become overheated when this happens.

It is also common to have all the chairs facing the tele­vision set. The TV creates positive ch’i in the room, because it produces light and sound, but it can also kill conversation.

The furniture in the room should be a mixture of yin and yang. Consequently, some items should have square corners and others round. Some authorities insist that everything have rounded corners, but this is not practical, and is likely to concentrate peoples thoughts on money. It is better to create a harmonious mixture of furniture that you personally find attractive.

The living room should be well-lit, but make sure that the lights are not too strong and harsh. Balance the over­head lights with table or floor lamps to light up different parts of the room. Place a pa-kua over a floor plan of the room to determine the positions that you want to activate.

The wealth sector is particularly strong in the living room. Make sure this sector is well lit to reap the rewards that you deserve. It is also an excellent place for a prized pos­session, a potted plant, or the television.

You may like to organize your furniture to make the wealth sector the focal point of the room. Other good areas to highlight in this way are the marriage and family sectors. Alternatively, if the room is not large, you may place comfortable chairs in all of these sectors, arranged in such a way as to encourage conversation.

Negative ch’i is created in the living room when two doors directly face each other at opposite ends of the room. If possible, use a screen to hide one of the doors. Alternatively, wind chimes or a hanging crystal by one of the doors act as a remedy. A door and a window opposing each other also create negative ch’i, as do two windows. The remedy is to keep the blinds pulled over one of the windows.

If the opposing doors form a passage that is used all the time, try and arrange the furniture so that entertaining in this room is not affected by people walking through. If the doors are near a wall, a mirror will remove the shar-like effects of the straight line through the room.

A family room should be comfortable and informal. The furniture should be casual and arranged in a way that encourages comfort and communication. This room should also be uncluttered. Family rooms often serve as storage rooms as well. There is no problem with this as long as the items being stored are put away tidily out of sight.

It is likely that the uses this room is put to will change as the family grows. A table-tennis table may be discarded in favor of a billiard table, for instance, as the family grows up.

Each area of this room relates to a different member of the family as shown by the pa-kua. Items belonging to the oldest son, for instance, should be kept in the east. Items belonging to the youngest daughter should be kept in the west, and so on. Clutter in different parts of the room will relate to complications in the life of the person affected by that direction.

Feng Shui Tips

68 The most commanding position in the living room is diagonally across the room from the main door. This is the best position for the head of the house, as it means that he or she is in control.

69 Gloomy areas in the living room adversely affect the area of life indicated by the Aspirations of the Pa-kua. Use floor or table lamps where necessary to spread the light throughout the living room.

70 Arrange the furniture evenly around the living room. If too much furniture is placed on one side of the room it appears unbalanced, and that side can feel weighed down and constricted.

71 Arrange the furniture so that people can move freely around the room without feeling as if they are undertaking an obstacle course.

72 The backs of chairs or sofas should not face any entrances to the living room. People sitting in these positions feel insecure and lacking in support.

68 The most commanding position in the living room is diagonally across the room from the main door. This is the best position for the head of the house, as it means that he or she is in control.

69 Gloomy areas in the living room adversely affect the area of life indicated by the Aspirations of the Pa-kua. Use floor or table lamps where necessary to spread the light throughout the living room.

70 Arrange the furniture evenly around the living room. If too much furniture is placed on one side of the room it appears unbalanced, and that side can feel weighed down and constricted.

71 Arrange the furniture so that people can move freely around the room without feeling as if they are undertaking an obstacle course.

72 The backs of chairs or sofas should not face any entrances to the living room. People sitting in these positions feel insecure and lacking in support. The Living Room 105

73 The living room should feel comfortable and wel­coming. This is helped if you have comfortable chairs and sofas, sufficient light and pleasant pictures or ornaments at which to look.

74 Your guests will feel more positive when facing south or east. Sunlight makes them more enthusi­astic and conversation.