168 Days of Magic podcast: Series 1, Episode 13

Episode Focus: Getting feedback, welcoming good things.

Creativity: Getting feedback on your work

Podcast chat: Rosemary Nelson, Environmental Designer and Feng Shui Consultant

Mindfulness: Exploring Beginner’s Mind

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Things I’ve referenced in this episode:

Read my blog post on Beginner’s Mind

Podcast chat with Rosemary Nelson

Rosemary is an Environmental Designer and Feng Shui Consultant. With over 30 years experience as a landscape designer, she’s helped homeowners, artists, businesses, schools and even multinational hotel chains in designing supportive environments. As a Feng Shui Consultant, she helps people explore the energetic patterns of their environments and guides them through harnessing that energy so they can create the life they want. 

Find out more about Julie on her website: equate.net.nz

Can’t listen to the podcast? Here’s an abbreviated transcript of our chat.

Jordan: Rosemary, why is space so important to our well-being?

Rosemary: A lot of people don’t understand how to use space as a tool to create something in your life. 

Jordan: Can you explain the bagua map? 

Rosemary: The traditional  bagua map (the Feng Shui tool used to map out the various energy areas of your home) is a broken down version of the luopan, the traditional Chinese measurement template. This takes the whole home into nine spaces. And each one of these is in an energetic construct that relates to a star out in the cosmos. It’s a virtual star, but it’s vibrational. So from the centre of your home, it reaches out through that particular area, out to that vibration and pulls it into your home.

Jordan: Why does clearing space help us?

Rosemary: Space clearing is the meditative, spiritual side of Feng Shui.

Jordan: Tell us about touchstones. 

Rosemary: Touchstones are things that perhaps ground people. They might be something from a family connection or it could be a precious stone, but it’s something that actually grounds you into a space. And that connection can often help you to feel that you belong in this house, because a lot of people, especially from overseas, they haven’t got their grounding cords here in New Zealand. When you move into it a home, you have to actually ground yourself.

Jordan: You also design, and are interested in, labyrinths. How did that come about?

Rosemary: I did most of my training in Sydney in Australia, and on of my teachers was a  labyrinth master. Labyrinths are Celtic in origin. They go back to times when people couldn’t do pilgrimages, so they actually built a construct and that’s like a pathway.

So you walk into the circle of the labyrinth and focus on what you want to have information on. And then you  walk out. Very simplistic labyrinth work as much as very complicated ones, because when you’re walking in, you’re actually walking on the Chakras of your body. You’re actually finding points in your body  where there are blockages…  the earth is picking up that. That’s why they use it a lot in hospices and places like that. People can actually use them for healing.

Jordan: And when you say the chakras are connected to that process of walking in and out of a labyrinth, how much do people actually need to know about chakras?

Rosemary: I expect the less you know, the better. I always tell people if they feel something in a particular part of their body, just stand there and just let it go.  

Jordan: Finally, what are your three top tips for people wanting to live in harmony with the environment?

Rosemary: Harmony is a very interesting word. And I’ll come to that last. But the first thing I recommend people do is open the front door  – ten minutes, quarter of an hour a day and just open the front door. People no longer open doors. And what that does is let things in and that lets the energy flow in and it circulates around the house. People often say, I want this in my life, I want to achieve this, but they don’t allow it to come. And opening the front door will allow it to flow in.

Jordan: That’s lovely – and so simple.

Rosemary: It’s so simple. And it really does work. I’ve seen people get jobs. I’ve seen people find solutions. All sorts of things… sell houses just by opening the front door. You don’t have to do a thing. The second thing is; beware of the clutter. The three main areas you’re likely to find clutter are your front door; you can trip over the gumboots and so on. Then; your kitchen. That’s the health of the home, where you’re preparing food. And thirdly, the main bedroom. If there’s  clutter in any of those, you’ll find it will turn up in relationships, health or in your career. 

And in relation to harmony, what do you mean? Is it family harmony you want? Work harmony, or do you want work to flow to you? Do you want more a change in direction of how you work or do you want to know more about yourself? So harmony is is something that you’ve really got to strip down. You’ve got to strip it back to actually see what the question is that you are really asking. Get curious. As I like to say, what is actually going on? You won’t shift  energy unless you are clear.

Jordan: So there’s quite a lot of reflection and awareness required of us, then.

Rosemary: Absolutely, it’s a whole way of looking at how you live.  And that’s what got me. You can use this for anything. You can use it to check things. You can use it to make yourself a better person. You can use it for family life. It’s it’s just what you want to do with it.

Jordan: Do you think that people understand when the ground or the place that they live on, the environment, needs healing? 

Rosemary: They do. People do know. That’s that’s one of the first questions I’ll asked somebody. And they’ll say ‘It’s just not right. I don’t feel good here’. Or ‘That spot  over there’. Our awareness is quite magnificent, really. And the same in your home… ‘I just can’t get this room right’. I hear that quite a lot. And so yes, we do know. And we do know what we want too.

Jordan: It’s all in there somewhere. Thank you very much, Rosemary.

Rosemary: My pleasure.