Feng shui: Yea, Nay, or No Way?

Dana Bahir’s room in East Quad is like many other college dorms: it’s small and it’s filled with a lot of stuff. But unlike many drab dorms, Bahir’s room is anything but boring. Glossy photos of family and friends cover her walls; clothes bulge out of several organized storage spaces in her, as a friend once deemed it, “glorified closet”; and sorority spirit oozes from the seams of the room. Like many college students, Bahir, a sophomore and treasurer of her sorority, is making the best out of her imperfect living situation. She’s living in a small space and trying her best to make room for the increasing amount of “stuff” she acquires over the course of her college career. Ideally, your room would grow to match your increasing knowledge and your clothes acquisitions but alas, reality sets in and your closet space closes in. Whether you believe it or not, where you live and what your room looks like affects the way you view your life. If you have a fabulous dorm and feel at least somewhat organized, you’re going to feel more at ease with this area of your life. But if your room is depressing and disorganized, that’s going to affect how you see certain aspects of your life. Up until now, Bahir’s room hadn’t seemed like much of a problem. She says she didn’t have any major issues, and she was relatively happy with most areas of her life. In short, she didn’t feel a huge need to make a change in her life or her room. So if you asked Bahir if she felt the need to make a big change two weeks ago and try out something as seemingly extreme as feng shui, she most likely would have responded with a resounding “No way!” After all, although the organized clutter filling her room can sometimes seem a bit overwhelming, Bahir says she’d simply like to de-clutter a bit and says she’s much happier in her current space—a single room—than she was last year in her Usen double. But after a meeting with feng shui expert Mary Roberts last Sunday, and after experiencing some emotional awakenings, Bahir feels quite differently. And she says other students could benefit from learning a bit of feng shui too. “If anything, I’m probably the best candidate to show that this can benefit everyone,” Bahir says. “I really am pretty skeptical about [things like feng shui] and I also don’t have a huge issue. And so if anything, I of all candidates can show that it really can benefit everyone and it can be a real thing.” Last week, Her Campus Brandeis invited Roberts to visit Bahir’s room to teach her the ancient art. Roberts is the author of “The Mystical Pizza E-Kit,” and has been helping college students with their dorm rooms for seven years. Since 2003, Roberts has been presenting at colleges and teaching students how to effectively confront living in a cramped dorm space. “College students live in tiny spaces, so having too much stuff, especially when there is no place to put it, can feel pretty stressful,” she says. Roberts says learning a bit of feng shui can help college students address many problems typical of living in dorms. “In feng shui, there [are ways] to improve a negative situation, and ‘The Mystical Pizza E-Kit’ is full of improvements college students can make to feel better in their dorm rooms,” she says. “Unlike decorating, which is more about how a place looks, feng shiu is about how a place feels. We want the space to look good, and we want the person to feel good in it.” Like many other people, Bahir wasn’t so sure how effective feng shui would be. After all, many people are quite skeptical about the ancient art, and the mere mention of the word sometimes triggers eye-rolling and snickering. But Roberts helped change Bahir’s perception of both feng shui and the way her room affects her life. “Before I saw my room as [a form of] storage space…and then afterwards I’m kind of seeing… how [the changes in your room] can affect your life,” Bahir says. “At the end of the day, [it’s] the space that I live in and instead of just being a room, it’s kind of like my life.” But that doesn’t mean Bahir wasn’t nervous about letting a stranger into her room. Doing so can understandably be a bit nerve-wracking, especially if you think that stranger is going to tell you what you do to make your room better. Many people understandably get a bit defensive about how they arrange their living space, but Bahir stayed open to Roberts’s suggestions. “I was a little bit intimidated—not just intimidated—I just didn’t know if she was going to come into my room and say ‘Do this, this and this,’” she says. “Then when she started asking me [about] issues I had in my life I got kind of scared for a minute and I didn’t know if what I was going to be able to contribute was going to be what she wanted.” During their meeting, Roberts asked Bahir to evaluate eight areas of her life ranging from career and academics to relationships and wealth, to pinpoint which areas of her life, if any, she’s looking to improve. Overall, Bahir seemed pretty happy and had no overt desire to majorly change her life. Roberts introduced Bahir to one of feng shui’s oldest tools: the nine-square tic tac toe diagram, originally an octagon shape, called the bagau. The idea behind the bagau is that the various parts of your room relate to specific parts of your life. For instance, Roberts discovered that Bahir’s closet is located in the “Knowledge” and “Career” area of her room and as such, some of her knowledge is hidden. Roberts went on to suggest a feng shui improvement—placing a mirror on the back wall—to help pull Bahir’s knowledge out of the closet. Roberts also explained how each life area of the bagua has a corresponding color that Bahir could place in that part of her room to “energize” a particular area of her life. Although feng shui is an art and science people can intentionally apply to their surroundings, Roberts says that oftentimes, people can perform feng shui intuitively, like Bahir did with one area of her room. As Bahir and Roberts studied how she had arranged her room, they discovered that Bahir had placed an Israeli flag and photos of her relatives in the “family” part of her room, the place to celebrate one’s ancestors and roots. As Roberts pointed this out and suggested that Bahir might have done so intuitively, Bahir started to tear up. As she wiped her eyes, Bahir explained that among these images were photos of her godfather, who passed away in November in his native Israel. Bahir, a Cincinnati native, has family in Israel and has spent every summer there since she was born, so it’s been difficult to be away from her family during this tough time. So when Roberts pointed out that the family side of Bahir’s room had the Israeli flag and pictures of her godfather and family right next to it, Bahir couldn’t help but cry. “It was a very emotional moment for me to just see how important that was to me,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that it’s there— I don’t know what it was— but it definitely was [a powerful moment].” Bahir had, indeed, intentionally placed these items on her wall because they were important to her. She hadn’t, however, realized the importance of where she had placed them. Roberts thinks this example shows that people can, in fact, feng shui intuitively. Roberts and Bahir also discussed the positioning of her bed and how sleeping with your feet facing towards the door can make you feel as if you’re on display and can make you feel tired. In the end, Roberts didn’t come in and move around Bahir’s possessions or force her to change anything she didn’t want to change. What she did do was change Bahir’s view of feng shui and make her realize how feng shui can make even the most seemingly comfortable of rooms much better. “Feng Shui is more than moving furniture,” Roberts says. “It is creating the safest and most suitable living and work space for the individual. Feng shui is about you and what you want.” The experience even made Bahir reevaluate what she will do when she moves into a new residence hall next fall: “It definitely made me think of the arrangement of my room for next year. I’m still planning on living in a suite with my close friends but I think now that when we choose rooms in the suite, I’ll think a lot more about the positioning of my bed and my desk inside my room and the decorating.“ I see bamboo in your future So where does Bahir go from here? Will she—like she originally expected—be sticking bamboo poles in the middle of her already-cramped space? Or will she take Roberts’s advice to heart and make simple changes that fit her personality? Bahir says she first plans to cover her chaos-filled closet and cubby drawers with either a curtain or a cloth to de-clutter the appearance of her room. She also wants to move her dresser and some photos. Roberts suggested that Bahir remove some items from her room that she now considers unessential and also said Bahir can dust her room to “clear the way for new and good things to come your way.” Bahir was pleasantly surprised by how simple feng shui is. “I think before I thought that you had to believe [in feng shui] and that [for] people who did believe in it, it would make a dramatic change in your life,” she says. “And then afterwards I definitely saw it as practical and just [as capable of] changing the general vibe of your life and [making] you happier without [making] dramatic [changes.] In the end, whatever changes she makes to her room, Bahir has learned the tools to take control of her own living space: “It definitely made me consider what I have in [the different] area of the room; what’s important to me; how it’s affected me in the past; and how it will in the future if things stay that way.” Check out Roberts and Bahir In Action!
FreeVideoCoding.com Want more information on feng shui? Visit Mary Roberts’ Web site at www.fengshuioptions.com