Sense of Soul - Feng Shui For Your Home And Soul

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Today on the Sense of Soul Podcast is the beautiful Feng Shui healer, coach, owner of Sanctuary Feng Shui and “energy detective” Stacy Scott! She is an intuitive with an empathic nature, which helps her to uncover energetic blocks in her clients home.  Stacy shares with us how to soulfully reconnect to your deepest essence using your sacred space and soulfully applying Feng Shui, shifting your  perspective from home, being the 4 walls around you, to home as co-creator of their dreamiest life.  For over 10 years, Stacey was an Occupational Therapist (the original life coach!), then received her Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Thomas Jefferson University, worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital, mentored countless students, and have been published in several journals. She is a teacher assistant with Mindful Design Feng Shui School, and loves to help guide her clients through the soul’s transformation, regardless if they are just beginning to awaken or deepening their journey. Find Stacy and her Feng Shui practice, wisdom and healing at her website https://sanctuaryfengshui.com. Follow Stacy’s journey on IG: @sanctuaryfengshui *Don’t forget to rate, follow and leave us a comment! Please go check out our Sense of Soul’s merch and workshops including Shanna’s CLEAR ancestry workshop and learn more about us @ www.mysenseofsoul.com! Exclusively NOW on Sense of Soul Patreon  is the 777 Chakra Journey, 7 weeks 7 Chakras, beginning with the Root Chakra and ending either the Crown at the end of 2021! You can also listen to Shanna’s mini-series about her ancestral journey, “Untangled Roots” and Mande’s mini series about her two NDE’s has begun.  https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul **NEW!! SENSE OF SOUL’S NETWORK OF LIGHTWORKERS! Announcing our first Amazing Affliate, join the founder and director of the Intuitive Path Academy, Kawena Charlot for her amazing, 8 week Intuitive Meditation Class at the link below! Sign up now! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page

Hey, Sense of Soul listeners, you may remember me. I'm Kavena Sharlow, the founder of the Intuitive Path Academy, and I am so excited to announce that I will be collaborating with the Sense of Soul ladies. So right now I'm offering an intuitive meditation class and it's beginning January 11th. And you can go to my senseofsoul.com right now and sign up and get more information. And I hope to see you soon. And remember, when you change your energy, you change your life. Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shannon and Mandy.

Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have the Stacey Scott. She's a Feng Shui consultant and she is founder of Sanctuary Feng Shui, where she helps you get empowered, get awakened and get your soul aligned using the ancient practice of Feng Shui. She's the energy detective. She is an intuitive with an empathic nature where she helps her clients to uncover the energy blocks in their homes. In this episode, Stacey shares how you can soulfully apply Feng Shui to your own sacred space and shift your perspective from your home being the four walls around you to home as a co-creator of your dreamiest life. We are super excited to have Stacey with us today. Yeah, I'm excited. We've had no one like you on,

and we've had no one that's talked about this. You bring a really cool aspect to it that really aligns with Sense of Soul. So thank you. I do enjoy listening to your guys' podcast too. That's what draw me to it. I was like, these are conversations that sound like I'm having with my friends. And that's why I was just was like, I have to reach out. I really, really like this. Mandy and I love to learn. We're so blessed to be able to talk to people that can teach us new things. But Shwe has always been something that I've been very attracted to since before I was even really into spirituality. And I love your spin on the soulful part of it. Yeah, I have a lot of questions. Yay, I'm ready to answer them all. Where do you live, Stacey? And where are you from? I'm originally from New York,

but now I live just outside Washington, DC. Well, let's jump into this, Stacey. One thing I noticed in your bio that you sent over was that you said serving others has always been a core value to you and your life. When you think about that, is that a core value that you feel like has been part of your soul since you were born? Is this how you felt as a core value that you feel like has been part of your soul since you were born? Is this how you felt as a child? Are you an empath? Like when did you realize this was part of your core value? Oh, I love this. So, you know, I think this is truly how I was born. I don't know if I necessarily was able to hold that as an intention and have an awareness of it until I was a much older adult.

But I was somebody who was incredibly empathic as a child, could feel emotions that were left over in spaces days after they occurred. And as a kid, you don't have words for that. You don't have a lexicon for those things. So I very much grew up and until recently, you know, within the last several years, I just thought I was kind of weird. You know, I could sense spirits and all these different things. And that just made me very afraid. And I clammed up really up until kind of the Saturn return era, where I was then able to kind of open back up and realize that this was a gift and not something to be afraid of. Serving others can sometimes be very dysfunctional as well. Did you have to go through that?

You're absolutely right about that. And so a lot of my childhood was not having good boundaries. They weren't modeled to me and I didn't know how to enact them. So now as an adult, that awareness of serving others just feels so much more palpable because I do have much better boundaries between me and the clients that I serve, between me and just people that I meet on the street, even me and close friends and family. So it's been such a journey to not only understand that that is just part of my gifts in this lifetime, and then to also kind of move that into the next steps of, okay, this is my gift, but in order to use it, I have to kind of put it

where it needs to go. And then I need boundaries in these other areas of my life. Well, and unfortunately it seems to be a pattern that a lot of times trauma leads us to our purpose. And it sounds like you had a little bit of that in your story as well. Can you talk about that for a moment? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm, I like to be open with this, with folks. I did come from an abusive childhood and it has just taken time to really dissect that, unpack that in all of the ways that it has since informed my personality and the way that I kind of moved through the world. But I've looked at my entire healing journey as something that I promised myself I would do. It felt like a soul contract. I very much remember the day I walked into my kitchen and I heard very clearly in my head, girl, if you don't do this now, you will end up in an early grave. And like, I just had to get

all of those strong emotions. Oh, you like open up that Pandora's box, so to speak. And I just had to have the courage and the faith to just face every single aspect, every memory, every icky emotion that could possibly come up. And that is probably the point that I have the greatest pride in myself in, that I do not run away from things. And that is now what an energy and an essence that I bring to my clients, that I help them turn inward, using their home as this tool for transformation and help them see ways that they're kind of also running from themselves. I was the queen of running away. I think I'm not so much anymore. The more present

you are, the harder it is to run away. I was like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. I'll worry about that tomorrow. Fear and having to tackle on some of the things that seemed overwhelming. Absolutely. And we have this saying, right, that we pick up the rug and we shove it under the rug, right? And this is so fun for me because that saying is literally then what happens in our homes. Our homes can kind of soak up these strong emotions, both positive and negative, both yin and yang, the good stuff, the joy, and then also kind of that theory, icky emotion. We literally do energetically and spiritually and physically in our homes, lift up the rug and shove those emotions underneath them. Just yesterday, me and a client were talking about how we both have

severe ADHD, very deep issues with organization and clutter. What's happening in her house right now, it's destroying her family. And she's such a beautiful person. She spent so much money on people coming in and helping her declutterize and they just come in and clean and say, bye. But that, and I, we talked about the yesterday. I said, it's not getting to the root of the problem. It's just like going in to the doctor and having them, you know, fix something for you, but not ever asking how did this start? Decluttering is emotional. And we completely overlook that the decluttering industry and all the things that the decluttering kind of gurus like to say to us are very shaming. They say, you don't need these things, just get rid of them,

power through, fill a garbage bag. But what you're doing is you're bypassing your emotions in those moments because stuff, tangible, physical things take on our emotions. And by trying to power through it, all we're doing is shaming ourselves and causing more emotional and spiritual harm. I absolutely love that you brought this point up because within the last three weeks, I have gotten just a strong download to write a decluttering book that talks all about emotions and how to unpack those emotions. So the gist of it, it is not that you are lazy, unorganized, unmotivated.

You are none of those things. What's happening is you are having difficulty turning inward to a former self, the inner child, the inner teenager, the inner young person, and you're not listening to him or her. And they're crying out. They want you to turn inward and see them, listen to them, kiss them on the forehead and say, I see you, but these possessions were part of your life. They no longer are helping me evolve into my next chapter. They just want to be heard and seen. And when you come to decluttering from a place of empowerment and love, there's no more shame. And that's when your hands can just kind of open and you're able to then ask that very clear, rational question to yourself, or should I keep this or should I let this go? It no longer becomes emotional because you've quieted the inner child that's screaming.

So here's an example. I have an Ikea dresser. Probably everybody in this world has an Ikea dresser. It is a dresser that has been following me since college. I make excuses for it. It is straight up broken. But I'm always telling my husband, oh, no, we should keep it. It's still functional. It's only

a little janky. Oh, but if we get rid of it, we'll have to replace it. And we don't have money. You know, you make a whole bunch of excuses about it. When I started to try and connect the origin to when I got that dresser and pull up the emotions, the memories, and the context around how that dresser makes me feel. I realized that when I purchased that dresser, that was the moment in time that I felt so completely autonomous and had sovereignty over my space in life. I went to Ikea with my mom. I didn't get pushed or badgered. I was free to make the choice and I chose that dresser. So what I'm reacting to in my inability to let that dresser go is not the dresser. It's the emotions that I've put on that dresser. It's the emotions that said, I didn't look at that girl

that had that moment in time where she felt so fucking good that she got sovereignty. She felt so independent. I wasn't listening to her. I needed just to turn inward and say, you were a badass. You got through so much in life and I am so proud of you. And that is how you come to decluttering, at least in my book. So I changed my background because

this dresser that you see behind me is broken and it's been sanded and repainted like four times. And my daughter is like, I want a new dresser so bad, but it was my little brothers who passed away and I feel like it's my last piece of him and I refuse to let it go. So it's emotional. I'm attached to it. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. My friend was sharing with me and her mother breastfed her to a pretty inappropriate age and that her mother has always had fear of being alone and she has deep rooted attachment issues and she's a hoarder. You can't even see her floor and they'll get rid of it all. And she'll accumulate it again. She's so afraid of being alone that I think the stuff surrounded around her makes her feel like she isn't. It's

actually very sad. Yes. And in a lot of ways, we all feel uncomfortable with open space. You know, everybody says they buy a bigger house and they get all these closets. They're so excited. And what do they do? They fill them. They absolutely fill them with stuff. It's because we are afraid of this open space in our homes. Open space means in feng shui that new opportunities can come to you when you let things go. You're creating more room for energy to flow. But we have this kind of subconscious fear of this open space because we have trouble letting go. And we've got this kind of deep-seated fear of change and this feeling like we are going to be lesser than if we let go of things or we have fewer objects and possessions around us. And it's this very interesting mentality, but my biggest

goal is to re-regulate people's nervous systems through feng shui, through their homes, so that they can kind of come to understand in this very body-centric way that open space can be a good thing and it's not something to be afraid of. Can we go back and just kind of define what feng shui is? I remember, you know, getting a book, I think at like TJ Maxx, like 20 some years ago and thought it was amazing. It was about colors and how you organize things and how you place things, placement of furniture, plants, and much more. So I'm actually, I really don't know if that's what it is.

So I would love for you to tell us, what does feng shui mean? So feng shui is basically an entire spiritual system. Yes, we can boil it down into how to arrange your home for good energy flow that helps bring you opportunities, abundance, and kind of all those wonderful manifesting things into your life. You have a relationship to your space. Your home is your biggest energetic tool. And you can create a home. You can set up and manipulate the home that you live in energetically through color, objects, placement, decor, design, to help you move closer and move into your next evolution, who you want to become, what your goals are, where you see yourself in five years. So to me, I love to bring in this idea of spirituality and the soul and marry it to feng

shui because I come from a health services background. I was an occupational therapist before turning to feng shui. So I have a very different viewpoint of feng shui than most interior designers. To me, it's not what your home ends up looking like. To me, your home has to act as a tool to help you move through healing and to help you also get to that point where you feel like you're thriving. Your home is reflective of your healing journey because it changes along with you. And because energetically it can kind of get embedded with our hopes and dreams, but also our fears and some icky behaviors. So that's how I see feng shui as this tool for personal transformation. Your home is energy and we can manipulate it, shake it, shift it, whip that bitch up

and get it moving to the point where it's with you and not against you. I love you. You speak our language. I loved that on your Instagram and you pretty much just said it, but I'm going to quote it. What you're tolerating in your home is a mirror for what you're tolerating in your life. You get to decide what energy crosses the threshold of your home and your life. And I fricking loved that. And then I also loved the one that said, it's not how your home looks.

It's about how your home feels. I say that my house reflected how I felt. So if I was like feeling good, everything kind of looked good, smelled good. If I wasn't, then my house is kind of a shit show. Of course I had kids and it was hard and I definitely am not neat and tidy and organized like Mandy, just I'm not. However, don't look in any closets. Don't look in any drawer. Don't look under beds. It's all hidden. And then when I went through my awakening, I realized that I had been doing that for a long time. If everything looked good on the outside, then that showed the world that we were good, you know, but in the inside, I wasn't. Yeah. How we store clutter can give you a little window into how you feel about it, which is exactly the point that you just made. When we store it away, when we hide it,

we feel uncomfortable about it. We're not ready to face it yet. And that is absolutely okay. We all have clutter in places that we're not ready to face. This is not about shaming you. This is not about ensuring that you live this very minimalistic lifestyle. None of that. It's just, I want folks to understand that your home is meeting you where you are.

And you can use your home as this mirror to help you feel better about, okay, I can't do that closet today, but that's okay. I know that it's there. And when I get there, I will get there. We had a guy on last year, a specialist who researches poltergeist and different phenomenons. And he talked about how sometimes the energy in your house can cause these things to move or can cause a poltergeist. And a lot of times it also was the

energy of the people in the house, you know, whether the stress was, you know, high in the house and that tend to maybe kind of coincide with poltergeist or something moving in your house or he called him jots just one of those things actually I've experienced that when I was a single mom I left my husband I moved into my mother's house I had all of my stuff in her her living room I mean it was stacked stuffed and usually that was an open space right everything was in there and things were happening around that house i mean it was a hundred percent like there was no doubt about it shit was happening falling off you know the mantle hard in the middle of the night stuff coming out of the cupboards and i was talking to

a friend who was kind of spiritual she suggested sage and all that. She said, has anything changed as in like in the house, new furniture or anything like that? And I said, well, yeah, my entire like household is in her living room. She's like, oh, okay. Well, if you can imagine that energy might get stuck if it's no, if there's no longer the same flow. Exactly. Absolutely. So there's, there's really two things in there I want to tease out. Energy is neither good nor bad. It's just is, and both things, emotions like joy and fear get equally embedded into your home. So just in reference to kind of spirits and energies potentially entering, there's also something called chi of the land.

In feng shui, energy is really called chi, C-H-I. And you can also have a lot of dense energy on the property of what your home is on, whether that's Native American energy. So you can have that as well. That's potentially impacting the energy of your home, especially if you're sitting there going, well, nothing has changed in my home, but you know, there's something kind of happening now. So that's something as well. And then there's another point in there that you just said in your story about when we move and, or we put a whole bunch of stuff in a

corner and then it kind of sits there for six months, eight months, a year, you know, we're busy. It's just kind of there stored away. That can slow down energy flow in your home. Energy and feng shui enters the front door and it moves around from there. Now, energy is affected by gravity, just like you and I. So it can get pulled down. When it gets pulled down, it's stagnating. That's what we call it. And we don't really want that energy to stagnate because that means it's just kind of pooling on the floor and it's just kind of sitting there. And that's when home starts to feel a little icky, a little off. You walk into your room and you're like, what the hell? This is wrong. And you can't quite put your finger on it. So that's why one of the easiest things you can do from a feng shui standpoint to kind of realign your home is

cleaning it, getting into those corners, trying to move around some of the stuff that's sitting there. Even if you don't have the energy to go through it, just kind of moving it. There's that really great old adage. If you're into feng shui, move 27 things and change your life. And that's really where that comes from is if you move enough things, you're going to kick up that energy flow again, home will kind of go back to homeostasis. That's super, super interesting. I was in there questioning myself on why is it that I'm borderline OCD when it comes to like organizing and cleaning my home. So I was thinking about the emotional piece of it. And I kind of treat my house like my lungs. And what I mean by that is when I was young, they instilled into my mom and to me fear that the more I collected,

the more dust there would be, the more asthma attacks I would have. So my mom had to go through the house and get rid of anything that could collect dust, get rid of stuffed animals, get rid of extra pillows, get rid of extra blankets and make everything very simple so that that dust wouldn't throw me into an asthma attack. So I've kind of taken that on throughout my life. And then I tend to move things around a lot to create more of a simple open space, because maybe it's like the flow of air going through me, creating space for me to be able to breathe. I've never really thought about that before, but I was thinking, where did it start? And I think for me, it was modeled by my mom and that's how we're brought up, but also it's fear based. Interesting. So we all have an energetic set

point when it comes to how much we neurologically in our bodies tolerate when it comes to kind of possessions around us things. I try not to use the term clutter because the term clutter literally translates to trash. And I don't want to use that term anymore because the possessions that you used at some point, the clothes that you wore in term anymore because the possessions that you used at some point, the clothes that you wore in your body, the pots that you cooked in, they're not trash. They're just things that you used to use that you no longer have use for. You energetically and neurologically have a set point. It is informed by who you are as you come into this world and then the experiences that you have as a child. I grew up in an incredibly cluttered, dusty, overbearing environment. And now I find

as an adult and very much in this space, I think about home all day long, that I really don't tolerate things on surfaces. I need to, I'm a little bit like Mandy. I need to have that open space. So I feel like I can breathe. It neurologically nourishes me. So the first step, if you wish to change, that is just becoming aware of it. And one way you can do that is I tell everybody, go walk outside, get out of your house, go take a quick walk be in nature and then when you come back I want you to open up the door very intentionally and look at your home as if it is a brand new home you have never seen it before what does it feel like what does it smell like what is the first thing your eyes land on what emotions and memories come up for you? And then move through your home slowly. Don't

force anything. Just see where your energy gets pulled. We all have kind of energetic patterns where we walk in and we go right, left, front, back, and everybody's home is going to be a little different. So just go the way you're pulled and in every space, feel it, see it, experience it. And you'll start to say, oh, hey, that has that closed, but in the corner for how long has that been there? Or you'll see the chair that's broken and you're like, well, shit, I keep saying I've been meaning to get that fixed and I haven't. And you're going to start to kind of see your home through a much more intentional lens because we ignore our homes. We completely ignore our spaces because we're so busy. We don't have that mindfulness piece.

And because we're ignoring our homes, we're ignoring our thoughts because your home is giving you this energetic and this tangible feedback constantly. What your home looks like, smells like, feels like, the colors in it. It's giving you all this feedback. But because we don't always have that mindfulness piece, when we wake up, we go to the bathroom, we get our kids ready for school, we got to cook breakfast. And when we miss that, we're missing these kind of energetic nudges, these cues, this energy nudge from your space that says, pay attention to me. Really? You're that's what your body is saying to you though. Your body and your brain is saying, pay attention to me. When you're getting these cues from your space on your website, you talk about how you'll feel if it's aligned and

how you'll feel if it's misaligned, what are some of these feelings? Yes. That's such a good question. So when you will feel aligned with your space, you're just, you're kind of on crack a little bit. And let me break that down. So you will start to move through your space. Like you're on a cloud. Has anybody ever done that? You just kind of move it's maybe after you cleaned and you'll just move through and you'll just gently touch everything and you'll smile and you'll just feel a nice exhale, like a, and you'll sit down maybe with a cup of tea or a book and however you like to relax. And you just feel breath and freshness and like a big exhale throughout your body. That's kind of the best way I can describe what you will feel like.

And usually people will feel this after they've given it a good clean or they've opened up the windows and the doors and they've gotten some fresh air in. When home feels misaligned, you will start to feel in your body, in your mind, your mental health might start to kind of dip a little bit. You will just start to feel icky, off. You'll have a little bit more trouble getting up in the morning. Your normal routine will feel a little bit, off. You'll have a little bit more trouble getting up in the morning. Your normal routine will feel a little bit thrown off. And obviously there's lots of potential reasons for why that might happen, but that's usually when home is kind of misaligned with you and it needs a little bit

of a boost or home is pushing you to change something. Our homes can push us. So for example, I had a crack in my bathroom shower for ages, super, I'm the feng shui girl. And I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I left that crack in my shower for probably about a year. And I knew why, and I wasn't ready to change it. So that crack happened to fall in my career area. So everybody has nine kind of energy centers in their home. And this crack happened to fall in the area governed by the energy of my career and my life path, my Tao or my Dharma. And when it comes to kind of cracks or things that are broken in our homes, we kind of don't always rush to fix them because we're not ready for the energy shift that occurs when we do. So when we kind of avoid fixing things in our homes,

we're not avoiding it because we're lazy and motivated and organized, or we have no money. We're avoiding it because we are subconsciously uncomfortable with the energy shift that happens when we fix that. When I say to myself, no, I'm valuable and I'm worthy. I'm going to get this crack fixed. And I know then that my career, something will get a boost. Something will get a new opportunity. It will get a fresh, a breath of fresh air to it. So that's kind of how we can tease that apart. Okay. You just said nine energy centers of a house. I just saw the chakras and I saw this as, as an actual thing, as you were just, as you were talking about this and it made me go back and connect to my, my mom was kitchen in New Orleans was a place of gathering. And if you ask any buddy in that family,

they will tell you that their favorite times were surrounded that kitchen table, whether if it was a family full of people or just you in my, in your mom, I mean, it was the heart. It was a family full of people or just you in your momoa. I mean, it was the heart. It was the heart center of her house. I still today get emotional when I see pictures of that kitchen. Is that the heart center? How does that work? Is every house different? What does that map look like?

Yeah. that work? Is every house different? What does that map look like? Yeah, so the map that I just brought up is called the Bagua or the energy map in feng shui. And actually for every home, it's going to be different the way it gets laid down. So the energy centers in my home are going to look different than the energy centers in your home. We have kind of the same nine areas, but my career area is going to fall differently than your career area. And that's why it's so beneficial to bring a feng shui practitioner in because we can really kind of energy map your space alongside of you. And you will start to connect so much of, oh my gosh, that's my wealth and abundance area. No wonder I cannot be in there. I've been working on that and I cannot be in that

corner. It doesn't feel good to me. Or, oh my God, the crack in my career area, I have been trying forever to get a new job and nothing's happening. I will go fix that crack now. A lot of times people tell me in their love and partnership area, if they're looking to kind of invite in a new energy, a new soul to kind of be in partnership with them, that's an area that they just store all their clutter in and that they shut the door. It's got a big closet in it. They shut the door and they ignore it. So when you can start to connect these things that happen in your life, bodily, emotionally, and spiritually to what's happening in your home, tangibly and physically with clutter or design or how the room feels. That is really kind of the, some of the juiciest little bits of doing feng shui in your home.

What is, what is the word feng shui come from? It is Chinese and feng is wind and shui is water, wind and water. You talk about these elements on your website, like the metals, water. You want to figure out what your element is and bring it into your home. Yeah. So everybody is born with three elements. So in feng shui, there's a total of five elements. There's wood, water, fire, earth, and metal. so this is actually different than kind of the cardinal elements that people are kind of more familiar with when it comes to paganism so these elements are a little bit different and at the time of your birth you were born into three elemental essences so all of us embody kind of some of the element of you might embody wind. I'm sorry, you might embody

water or fire or earth. And that plays a role in kind of the style and decor that you really feel aligned with that makes your soul really happy. And those are the things to bring into your home. So for example, my three elements, I have both types of wood. I have yin wood, yang wood, and then yang metal. So I am someone who needs a lot of plants, greenery, freshness, this feeling of movement and action, but I'm also someone with that metal element who needs lots of gray, gray geometric shapes and patterns. So every single element has its own kind of tangible physical things, whether it be shape, color, or design that according to your three elemental essences you were born with kind of really makes your soul happy. And you will find you're already

gravitating towards them. So often when I do these readings and I give the person their elemental essences and tell them what those are and how they can find those in their home, they'll kind of just turn around and be like, oh shit, I've already done that. Yeah. Like you've already adapted this balance naturally to the elements. Yeah. I am going there. I was very lucky in my, um, in the shatsu class that I took or maybe it was acupressure I had a very very wonderful Chinese very authentic teacher and she taught us the elements and I am earth and I am young fire and water and I am so not metal or wood but because I am not, I want to bring those into my life to balance me. Yes. If you feel like you are out of balance, yes. That's the beauty of yin and yang. If you

feel out of balance with your fire or your water, you can bring those things into your space to harmonize you. Okay. Well, what about the yin and yang of my husband wants to decorate the whole house with tacks and posters of John Elway and the Broncos. And I like very subtle, clean, white, light blues. What do you do as a feng shui person that goes into a house and has to deal with two people that are completely the opposite? I don't know what I can do about the John Elway posters. You should know this has been your whole 20 some years of marriage fighting that one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Build them a man's shed in the back and tell them to put it all there. No, I'm kidding. So when it comes to a couple, when I'm working particularly with two people and they make it very clear that this is for the both of them, I like to pull both of their elemental

essences and see if there's any commonality that they're missing. They might share an element that I can, we can kind of turn the dial up and help them kind of see eye to eye on a few different things. And then that way, both of them can maybe have a few things where you get your baby blues and he gets his John Elway, but we've turned the dial up on that shared element, whether whatever that might be. don't share any sort of elements at all. I tell people, I want you to find artwork and color that personifies your relationship together. And I know that's a challenging question. And I tell people they have to sit with this because as a feng shui practitioner, I'm not coming in to curate your space. I'm coming in to help guide you into your next evolution using the home as a tool. So if you can kind of find the shapes, the colors, the energy that personifies your relationship, that's really ideal. So for example, my husband and I love to travel. And I know you can see behind me, there's a picture of a map up here behind me, above me. This was a way for us to find commonality because he has a very

distinct taste in artwork and I have a distinct taste. And this was a way for us to be like, okay, this is how we can come together. It's over our bed. Our bed is shared space. It's supposed to be space for both of us to kind of come together physically and also to sleep. So this was a way for us to find a pathway forward and hang something up on the wall that really personified something we both love to do together. So I just have to point, I wish I could show you guys right now. So Jamie has like a bathroom. That's what he has. That's his.

And it just has a toilet. But there's a Bronco rug and a Bronco trash can in it. That's all he gets. That's it. Just toilet. What is really sad is that I live in Colorado, but because I'm from Louisiana, I've always had like this desire to go back there. And it's just my home and my love.

My whole house looks like I'm from Louisiana. I mean, I have fleur Lee's all over, you know, it's so crazy. And he like is looking around going, what's up? And I'm like, I put a Bronco trash can in your bathroom. Oh my God. That symbolism of the Florida Lee end up being something different. And actually maybe we should talk about symbolism and what you're putting up in your home and what energy it actually holds to me and all of these years I mean this floor delay I mean I'm not a huge Saints fan but I am a Saints fan but it reminded me of home Louisiana my mama my family and then during my ancestral journey I ended up discovering that one of my ancestors actually, when his slaves would run away, would brand them with fleur de lis. All of a sudden, it just really significantly

changed for me, even talking about it. And every time I see one now, it's changed for me. And that, and I have crosses, I have a little cross wall. Symbolism is so interesting. And there's a few very powerful symbols that are very common in Ducour. Yeah. And the way it makes you feel like you pointed out, it can change too. It can change over your lifetime with when new information comes to light. So do I need to make that change? So let me, let me say it this way. If something has changed for you internally in your body, in your mind, in your aura and energy field, yes, you want your home to then reflect that change. That does not mean though, that you need to get off this call, take off every fleur de lis and go burn them in a bonfire in the back. It doesn't mean that if you're not comfortable with that, it doesn't mean that. The Broncos suck. Take it all away.

Your nervous system can overreact to changes in your environment. So I always recommend do not make wholesale changes, massive changes right this very minute, because you can kind of recoil. Hey, did you know that Sense of Soul now has a Patreon where you can get exclusive episodes, mini series that Mandy and I have been working on for a long time that we can't wait to share with you. Monthly readings, Sense of Soul sacred circles, workshops, behind the scene clips, and much more. Hop on Sense of Soul Patreon right now and sign up. So it's interesting, Stacey, because when I was living in Seattle, I was looking at it from a point of chakras. If you look at, I was like obsessed with getting these reds out of my house and replacing them with blues. And at the time when I was using

the reds, it was because I actually had moved so much looking back now it's because I was just like desperately trying to seek feeling rooted. And then those light blues was, you know, at a time in my life where I was feeling as if I was wanting to speak my truth and to speak up. So do you use the chakra system at all? I did see something on your website about, you know, aligning doors and chakras. Can you talk about that for a moment? Yeah. So let me just say this, the chakra system and feng shui are technically two separate systems. I love, however, to use color when it comes to helping people kind of move through challenging times in their life. Because the home needs to evolve with you, the kind of the situation you gave for yourself, Mandy, you were looking for rootedness and things like that.

So you changed your home to bring in or to take out different colors. So you can use the colors of the chakra system to help you feel more rooted in your space. That being said, though, the colors of feng shui are slightly different than the colors of the chakra system. Red in feng shui is actually the color of fire. It's linked to the element of fire, rather. It's linked to the color of fire. It's, it's linked to the element of fire, rather it's linked to the color of red and what that color does is it helps you feel more comfortable with being seen in the world, feeling comfortable in your own skin and saying, Hey world, here I am. Listen to me now. I have something great to bring to this world. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Cause I had just gotten sober and I was confident finally in who I was and I was ready to like share my story and my sobriety. So, I mean, I don't know why I was so obsessed with the red, but that totally aligns as well.

We definitely find ourselves gravitating towards colors when we feel like we were just talking about the red that's to really show up in the world when you finally feel ready to be just heard and seen whereas somebody who is you know maybe looking for a fresh burst of ideas or they're looking to start a new business or they're just ready to kind of shake shit up you might gravitate towards green greens and blues That is in feng shui, the element of wood, which helps bring vastness, invigoration, energy, vitality into your life. So you'll find people even start to wear this kind of colored clothing as well. That's a really simple thing you can do to kind of bring that energy into your life. You don't want to, you know, make more changes in your space. So you can absolutely, you know, align with where you're headed using color.

Yeah. That actually totally aligns with my situation in Washington too, because I felt like such a lack of energy because it was so drew like rainy out cloudy. Huh? So interesting. So let's talk about like this element essence report you have on your website. Cause I think that's just the coolest thing ever. Yeah. So this is probably one of my favorite things to do. This is very much like a, an astrology reading, but I'm not reading the stars. I'm reading the energy of

your home. So what this is, is I pair your energetic essences, the three essences you were born with. I kind of tell you what they are, what align with tangibly. And then we go through your home and we actually read the energy of it. What are the colors that are chosen? What are those colors say? The decor, what does it say? And I kind of literally put together what your home is trying to tell you right now. And then you get to decide between your now knowing your energetic essences and what your home is saying. I literally transcribe the energy of your space into like something verbal for you to read and written down. And then you get to kind of pair those together and decide, okay, am I happy with what I have? Do I feel like I need more of my energetic essence?

Do I feel like I need less? My home is saying this and that. Wow, I had no idea. Let's start making some moves. Do I have to have a shit ton of money in my bank account to do feng shui and to like, I mean, seriously, I think that's a lot of people's fears. It's like if we hired you to come in, do we have to like get rid of everything we have? Or is it about just simply moving a few things here and splashing a few colors here? Like, I think a lot of people are under the assumption, like an interior designer,

that we have to have a crap ton of money in our bank. And that's so important to bring up. And thank you. And I think this is, feng shui has a PR problem. In the 90s, when feng shui got really westernized and popular here in the States, in order to sell it to an American audience, we paired it with interior design. To me, that is stripping away everything that makes feng shui special. To me, when I come in, the most important thing to me is giving you awareness and guiding you to better understanding where your energy is showing up in your home, what your home is trying to tell you. Yes, I will absolutely make recommendations from very small, inexpensive, not, you know, free things all the way up to larger things. But I ask you,

I will not come in and just say, you need a crystal chandelier here. You need all new bedroom furniture. I always ask people, where are you comfortable? We can work with anything, but to me, the real nugget of juiciness is really more the awareness of what home is energetically trying to tell you because knowledge is power because I use this for healing and thriving. It is not about you painting your walls or choosing the right color for your doorway. I think that's, we are just selling feng shui short. And so this is my mission and my soapbox. So thank you for that question. When just recently, a few weeks ago, I went to the Myrtles Plantation, which is one of the most haunted plantations in America and has some of the most haunted artifacts like known that are recorded. When I walked in, you know, being someone that works with energy, I definitely, you know, understand energy

and sense it. And I'm looking for that. I'm in a freaking haunted house. Of course I am. So it was interesting from room to room, the different energies I was experiencing. And some of it, I wondered if because some of the elements in the room were so strong they literally have in the foray of this plantation a 350 pound amber I think it was amber stone or maybe it was I think it was amber 350 pound chandelier from France heavy there was other things like a fireplace made of malachite malachite is so strong I can barely hold malachite just a small piece and feel so much some of the elements in the room I felt was definitely causing me to have an energetic reaction, but then also you have the stagnant energy of old, like you had mentioned the Indian burial ground. Well, as much as this plantation has had trauma, many murders

and all this stuff in it, it also was built on Indian burial ground. My hair was standing up. I felt out of breath.. I was feeling heavy. I was, you know, there were so many things I was experiencing from room to room. It was pretty amazing. And so cool. It's just like, that's like a confluence of all the things that, you know, energy that can kind of just get sucked into four walls and a roof, you know, on very heavy feeling land. You know, you mentioned this heavy, heavy chandelier, not even to mention that it's an actual crystal too. Amber is conductive and amber is red orange and in feng shui that can really excite you. It gets you moving, it gets you going. And so you,

between the activity of the crystal and the heaviness of the chandelier, that space is going to feel probably not comfortable. Even if you stripped away all of the ghosts and all the extra energy, that space ain't going to feel comfortable to anyone. And then, you know, add on a couple hundred years of ghosts. Wow. We know that stones actually carry these energies that will either pull in or reject or intensify the energy in spaces. I know for me in my house, probably the two most energetic rooms in my house that I see most activity are where I have a shit ton of gemstones. Yeah. They're absolutely going to conduct and just vibrate higher. You know, they're going to definitely alter the energy of your home. Between crystals, plants too of the plants were just there in that space. And it

actually felt like too much. Like my heart started racing in that space because there was too much energy there for such a small room. It was this teeny tiny like spare bedroom and they must have had over 50 plants. And so this is what I love about feng shui is because nothing is inherently good or bad. It's just unintended and intentional. So because plants are wonderful, I recommend them all the time to folks. Go pick yourself up a wonderful plant. But this is kind of a great example of how you can kind of turn the dial up too much and have something that's a little unintended too. Kind of like your malachite and your amber stories, how you create this. But because it was created out of a gemstone, it's kind of like your Malachite and your Amber stories, how, you know, you create this,

but because it was created out of a gemstone, it's like, it's kind of just unintended. You can have all these kinds of things that can also happen. If I were to look at my home now and feel it and bring awareness to it and each space and everything, I'm not really wanting to bring to my home right now. What I'm feeling, what I want to do is bring what's going to help me evolve. Correct? Yes. So it's almost like setting your home up for the next step in the future of where you in direction you want to go in your transformation.

Yes. I love that. I love that. So intentional because we are sold between the decluttering kind of culture and, you know, just, just the way home is sold to us through everything we see on Instagram, design magazines, all these things, home is sold. We are, we are sold this kind of sanitized and aspirational vision of your home should look like this.

It should have no possessions in it. It's completely minimal. It looks like this. And then when the trends change, it looks like that. And we just fall for it. So instead of actually taking the step back and saying, what do I need? Again, it's switching your perspective to home is a tool for transformation. And you take that step back and you say, what do I need from my home? Recognizing that it's potent and powerful. You start to push back on that, all those industries that wanted to take sovereignty from you, from your space, from your home. And you kind of switch on this intentionality of like, okay, well, what do I need? You know, you don't necessarily need

me to tell you, I can guide you. You already know. I'm using your home to unlock what's already within you. I've always placed my headboard of my bed according to what I could find online that said I was supposed to. Is that something that I should have been doing? Because there is a reason for that, or is it same as what you just said? Whatever feels right for you. How does that work? So there are definitely some tried and true feng shui principles, and that's one of them. So you're talking about command position, and this is good for anyone. We always like to put beds,

desks, and stoves in the command position. And what that really is when we unpack that is we're finding the place in the room that actually turns your anxiety down. So it's always the place where your back is supported. It's up against a wall and you have a sweeping view of the room. So think about all of those like 1980s mobster movies, you know, the guys in Brooklyn, he's eating Italian. I'm a New Yorker. I can say all this. And, you know, he's when they sweep the restaurant, the mob boss is never at the table closest

to the door with his back to it. He's all the way in the back table in the corner, and he has full vision and sight, not only of the door, but of the entire room. And what that does on an evolutionary and neurological kind of perspective or viewpoint is that kind of slowly turns down your limbic system. It takes you out of this fight or flight. We all live now in the state of heightened fight or flight. We look at Instagram, we look at Twitter, the world is a shit show right now. and we really do have to slowly figure out ways to turn this dial down so when you find that specific place in your room

that's where you want to put your desk so you can see the door so different styles of feng shui say it a little bit differently feng shui is a lot like astrology over the thousands of years there's different systems that have kind of come out so So astrology, we've got Western, we've got Vedic, there's something called side reel, which I don't even really understand. And Feng Shui is similar. So some styles of Feng Shui do take into account the cardinal direction. I think everything is valuable if you find value in it. I have found though, that because of the way homes are built, set up, not everybody is able to see the sunrise and sets. So they're not going to get that visual cue from the environment. So using command position is a really nice way for them just to kind of shift into this really

downgraded anxiety level, especially with desks. Anytime I switch somebody's desk around, they're like, fuck that feels. What would be that? You know what? I was just going to ask that because with COVID, a lot of people are working from home and they've gotten these new desks. So like my husband right now has his position. It feels yucky to me, but like literally like right in front of the window looking outside and I get why, but then his back is to the door. Energy enters through doorways, just so we know. So you can have a gangster. Yeah. Put yourself in the CEO position, put yourself in the mobster position. You actually want to go for these types of positions in rooms. So if you find that your back is to the door, I get it. You you're getting that natural

light on your face. So you'll look better on your zoom, but I want you to find the spot in the room, the corner. I want you to put your back in the corner where you actually have a direct line of sight to the door and a sweeping view of the room. You don't need to move any furniture. Just go put your body there and take a few deep breaths. I do that exercise with people all the time and they immediately feel better. And I'm like, okay, now move your desk because what's happening. If you're, if your back is to the door, you're getting a shot of energy at your back. And that is turning the dial up on your anxiety. You might not consciously feel it, but your work might feel a little more tedious.

You're going to be a little short tempered on that zoom call or with your family and things just feel more challenging. Flip around and you will feel a difference. Okay. One more really important one. How about that glider for when you're nursing that baby and that crib? That's such a good question. Okay. So when it comes to baby's rooms, you know, kids are all going to be different. I like to work with new

moms when it comes to either, if we can put both the glider and the crib in that command position, we do both. Obviously that's not always possible in some rooms. That's when it's, I start to like to ask a lot of unpacking questions. Okay. Is, is baby sleeping through the night? Is baby having any trouble here? Okay. No, you put yourself in that command position so that when you're bonding with baby, your anxiety is lowered because I have lots of friends that are starting to have kids. They're having their second kids. I see what they're going through because I don't, I don't actually have any children. So if you, while you're bonding with baby and feeding baby, whether it's breastfeeding or bottle, if your anxiety is lower, put yourself

in that command position in the glider. And we can always kind of talk about baby in the future. If he or she is having any trouble sleeping. Okay. I'm going to take this to a super weird level real fast. Okay. Should we, should we function way like our dog houses and our dogs area and our pets areas? I mean, I'm serious. They feel anxiety too. They can. Are there command areas for kennels? So your dog is going to feel anxiety just like how how you do yes you can command position your dog's kennel or home i will leave people with this thought though your dog's energy is connected to yours right we always kind of joke anybody ever noticed that their dog takes on their own traits like if you have a tummy your dog starts to vomit um if, if you focus on you, dog will be okay. We so often pour from our cup,

pour from our cup, take off our oxygen mask, focus on you and your energy, baby, family, husband, partner, dog, everything will start to feel a little bit better. Okay. I have one more question. What are some of your biggest don'ts? Like no way to never do this. It's a bad idea or that you've seen a lot of problems. What I'm going to say about that, cause I don't like to give people no-nos. I get a lot of people coming to me with fear, fear-based feng shui. They read something online that their front door should not be aligned with their back door or their wealth area should not be a bathroom. And they come to me in a tizzy. They come to me freaking out. What about like

furniture placements, you know, maybe something in the house, like, and like something that people could actually make a change with. The biggest thing, the biggest do not to me is don't ignore your space. Don't ignore it. Furniture can change. Paint colors can change. All of these things can move and shift and shake in our rush for practicality. We overlook ourselves. So I could give a whole bunch of do nots, but they're just going to ratchet up fear in anybody listening to this right now. And I am so committed to not doing that because feng shui should not be fear-based. So the biggest takeaway from this, my biggest do not, is do not overlook your space. Pay attention to her. She's trying to tell you something because she's an extension of

your energy field. She is you. She wants to tell you something. So pay attention to where you're storing possessions. Again, I don't like to use the word clutter. So pay attention to where stuff is getting piled high. Pay attention to how you feel when you walk into a kitchen that has dishes all over the sink. Does that immediately make you kind of like tense up inside or does that feel okay? It doesn't bother you. Pay attention to these space triggers because that will give you so much more information that is rich in your own natural wisdom than me sitting here being and shaking my finger and saying, don't do this. That cool. Wow. I'm, I'm like mind blown. I mean, you can tell that your true intention is about transforming the person and their healing. Like,

I mean, you're talking about the nervous system. You're talking about awareness. These are the things that Shannon and I talked to like other guests about when they're talking about just how to heal yourself and you're bringing it into a space and into their home, bro. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's, it's beautiful. About to go clean my house right now. You know, a lot of times Mandy will come over and I'm like, where is she? Where's she go? She's fricking clean done cleaned my whole kitchen. Like five minutes. I have no idea how she does it so fast. What takes her five minutes would take me a day for sure. It's amazing. Well, and can I just say something, Stacey, and you're the professional. So if this isn't correct, please tell me, you know, to shut up. Shanna, I feel

like if she went into her home right now and did what you said, where she would go and stand in each room, if she did that right now today throughout what you said, where she would go and stand in each room. If she did that right now today throughout her whole house, what would happen to her is she would crumble and be overwhelmed. It's like, she needs to walk in and do look and feel what's directly in front of her, just the little bench in the entryway and start there. And then maybe the next day or the next week, because otherwise she's going to freak out and just be like, I'm not doing any of it. So what I would say to that, let's Shane, let's say you're my client. I would unpack that more with you. Why are you freaking out?

What is the expectation that you've placed on yourself that your home needs to look perfect at every single moment of the day? Now that I'm thinking about my childhood, my mama's house was hardly ever clean. There were kids toys all over because there was always kids there, kids running around and making messes. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We get such expectations in our lives of what home should look like because it's what's sold to us. How many of us grew up with living rooms that you never fucking sat in oh we had friends like that yeah you couldn't go in that room and you know what in feng shui that room's a dead room that room is a stagnant room that room is not nourishing you because you're not using the space so we need to push back on what happens when we let all of society's judgments, our parents,

our friends, magazines, whatever, kind of enter into our own home. This is how home personifies and continues to kind of roll out the perfectionistic rug. You know what? What freaking area of our lives were we not worldly conditioned? Damn it. Even in our decorating homes. it's serious, this feels like just, this is like, I don't know if it's the final, certainly not the final frontier, but it is certainly a frontier that needs to be pulled apart from the shit that society tells us our homes

should look like much conditions. So many pressures. Well, I just want to say that these words were off of your website and they just spoke to me. It said home can make you feel both grounded in your truth while freely soaring on the wings of your wildest dreams. I freaking loved that. Cause I believe that I have healed myself using my home. And I realized while I was healing, I was thriving at the same time. And that is yin and yang that is embodying inner sanctuary. That is understanding that as you heal, as you uncover more shit in your home, you are thriving at the same time. And as you're thriving, you're healing. To me, we live in a dualistic world. It's neither black nor white. It's not one or the other. We do both at the same time. And home to me is a tool to get you there. Thank you for looking at

my website and pulling that up. I love that. Do you have your own sacred space in your house? So I believe the entire home is sacred space. I knew you were going I love that. Do you have your own sacred space in your house? So I believe the entire home is sacred space. I knew you were going to say that. If my body is my temple, my home is my kingdom. And you better fucking believe I am going to every single corner of my kingdom to feel good about myself. That being said, though, I do recommend to folks who feel like they need it, that they carve out, especially moms with lots of kids or, you know, a busy family life. Cause again, I do not have children. I have a husband and a dog. I can throw them somewhere else. You know, I do recommend for folks who have a much busier home life than I do

to carve out a little space for themselves. Cause I do find that valuable and we do work to find ways to find physical boundaries for them while they're cultivating their inner boundaries. So yes, it is to me, it is both. Where can our listeners find you? Where can they sign up to do one of these element to vibe reports? Can you shout out your Instagram and social media as well? Yes. So you can find me on Instagram at Sanctuary Feng Shui. Feng Shui is spelled F-E-N-G-S-H-U-I. And my website is the same Sanctuary Feng Shui. And one question I get all the time, and I just want to clear the air on it. There is no difference between an in-person or a virtual Feng Sh shui session. Just like how you might get virtual Reiki sections, I can connect to the energy of your

home in the same way. There is no difference. So it's all fun for me and for you. Awesome. And now it's time for break that shit down. Ah, okay. So what I want to leave for your listeners is this. You are not lazy, unmotivated, unorganized, or any of that shit.

This is just a set of skills whose time has come and you can learn how to do these things. You can learn how to help heal yourself through your home. So no more self-shaming. There are energetic reasons why you are holding back from decluttering, from changing the space. So let's stop making ourselves wrong and shaming ourselves in the process because you absolutely have this. Oh my God. I absolutely love you. And what divine timing. I'm going to shoot this right over to my friend. She needed to hear exactly what you just said instead of the world. And I just love you. Thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you guys for having me. I love listening to y'all and all the special, you know, speakers. I love you. I want a t-shirt that says you absolutely got this.

I love that. I can curse here. It's great. You sure the fuck can. Oh my God. Stacey, you're awesome listeners. You got to reach out. This is such, I love that you use the word juicy. This is so good. And all you can do is change yourself, work on yourself and the rest of your home will shift with you. This is, this is inner child healing and nobody wants to do that, but it is, it is deep work. People align with the energies of their home so they can better align with the energy of the world. Lovely. Thank you guys are great. This was so fun. You guys. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.