Feng Shui Your Life

Launching our new TOTEM Feng Shui Service in the Year of the Dragon!

As many of you already know, I really, really like Feng Shui. I’ve studied it and incorporated it into my life for the better part of the last decade, leveraging it in my personal practice and, occasionally, doing freebie space consults for friends starting new businesses.

[I mean, I was diagnosed with OCD as a very young child, so my powers of obsessive compulsive greatness know no bounds;)]

What is Feng Shui, you might be asking? Well, there are a bunch of different definitions, but I generally describe it as the practice of tweaking one’s environment such that it creates greater harmony, supporting the individual’s needs and desires across various areas of life: work, love, health, children, family, fame, reputation, abundance, etc.

It’s magic, plain and simple. And it’s powerful, ancient magic at that.

When you boil it all down, Feng Shui isn’t that much different than energy work or the intentional use of flower essences, which are internally-focused ways to adjust and refine our energies to optimize performance in pursuit of our specific goals. Feng Shui is just this same stuff on the outside of our energy and physical bodies, leveraging the chi that permeates everything.

And, while I always saw the immediate and long-term benefits to incorporating this practice into my space (and my life), I never felt called to offer it as a formal service through TOTEM.

That is, I never felt called until now.

So, you might be wondering, what’s changed? Well, to start, I finally had the time to actually get certified in Feng Shui. But the other, bigger factor behind this shift was a sudden realization around how to scale this service appropriately for my client base, largely comprised of busy individuals living in apartments, condos or neighborhoods with HOAs. These small spaces, most of which are rented and share common space, inherently limit what many perceive as the fundamentals of Feng Shui: like installing a large water fountain or painting the front door a bold color.

I had only ever witnessed other Feng Shui practitioners offer their clients a super traditional, robust and comprehensive set of services that were very time-consuming and expensive, focused primarily on proactive site selection (i.e. what house should I move into) and remodels (i.e. gut rehabs) in lieu of small, manageable changes to one bedroom apartments, the norm for most living in a major city.

What’s more: everyone I knew that did Feng Shui for a living got super, duper drained from delivering this service and couldn’t maintain it for long, taking frequent breaks and consistently debating whether or not to continue with the client-facing work.

Many of these Feng Shui practitioners would drive for hours to someone’s home, spend a whole day there walking the property and discussing the deepest frustrations and griefs of their clients, clear the space (a very draining undertaking) and then spend the next week or two putting together a really detailed set of robust space recommendations. All in, a “traditional” Feng Shui consultation would take multiple weeks and lots of man hours for most practitioners, making it not only challenging for the practitioner but fairly cost-prohibitive for potential client.

After all, someone has to pay for all of that time and effort!

Small changes create big results

But then I realized that that wasn’t how I ever used Feng Shui.

I mean, I’ve never done a ground-up reimagining of my living or working spaces, nor have I spent large sums of money or time to make the strategic tweaks that I’ve implemented over the years. I’ve always rented my apartments or commercial spaces and, as a result, I’ve always kept my Feng Shui projects limited to super manageable, moveable stuff that can come with me on the next adventure.

What’s more: I’m generally pretty good at the 80/20 rule, focusing on the few, needle-moving priorities instead of trying to boil the ocean.

And realizing this was my “eureka!” moment.

I could just reposition Feng Shui for my clients the way I had for myself all of these years, creating a new and very accessible approach to this ancient practice that hinges on the highest priorities and lowest hanging fruit. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to send the Feng Shui purity police after me for not making it all hard and expensive and stuff, right?

To test this streamlined model— and get my necessary self-assessment credits for my Feng Shui Certification— I got going on making changes to my work/ live space here in Austin, TX. And no, these small (and fun) tweaks did not disappoint in their immediate impact. For the next several months, I’m going to share some of the case studies from these recent, personal Feng Shui efforts, starting with what’s called the Abundance Bagua:

Evoking the power of memory

The last three years have been the most disorienting professional time in my life.

Not only did I transition to TOTEM full-time, but the world seemed intent on serving up Black Swan events (i.e. unforeseen disruptors) like bacon at a breakfast buffet: Covid, supply chain collapse, inflation, shifting buying behaviors, social unrest, workforce churn, market saturation, etc.

I mean, when your Open House at your new meditation center gets disrupted because guests are stopped by riot police during a riot, things aren’t exactly “normal”.

The upshot? The old rules really don’t apply anymore, and small business owners need to be flexible, adaptable, and very, very diversified to hedge against these persistently turbulent markets. Which, in turn, makes it hard to feel confidently abundant on a consistent basis.

So, I prioritized taking a fresh Feng Shui look at my Abundance Bagua first. The Abundance Bagua the area of my work/ live space associated with demand generation, cashflow and having-ness. Luckily, this room already functions as my office and is where I conduct most of my meetings, writing, and client sessions, making it an already optimally situated within the bigger Bagua Map of my work/ live space.

I went into my office intent at looking at it through fresh eyes and a beginner’s mind: what felt or looked stale? what would evoke the energy and excitement I needed to tackle my day? and what could be added to buoy my outlook, reminding me of my ability to not just survive— but thrive?

I instantly decided the art hanging on the office walls needed to change, and I remembered that I had wanted to relocate a large painting from my living room that I had long-ago nicknamed “Sassy Fraulein”. It’s an abstract, mostly black and white piece that I purchased on a day specifically and intentionally to mark a notable professional success. I had been walking by the high-end interior decorating business, Scout, in Chicago’s Northside Andersonville neighborhood, when the painting caught my eye. I had just left my Wacker Drive office a bit earlier after a successful three-day workshop with a large team I was managing, and felt that all of my hard work and sacrifice was actually taking root in material reality.

Things were actually, for the moment, pretty good.

So, I walked inside, looked around, spoke with the owners about the artist and her art’s re-sale pedigree, ultimately purchasing what I thought was the coolest painting of the bunch. Now, for someone that has grown up in poverty and had to work for decades to claw up out of it (like me), buying a painting for the price of a gently used car was quite a paradigm shift. But, as I told myself, I never really bought anything or spent my money on large expenses. Real art that comes with certificates of authentication always appreciates in value (unlike cars or boats or, frankly, real estate).

Besides, I liked it. I wanted it. It embodied something cool and urbane and sophisticated to me, and I was feeling particularly abundant looking at it.

Since that day, this painting has always embodied the buoyant energy of that precise moment in time to me. It has served as a kind of tangible reminder of my ability to reinvent myself, come back from difficulties or bad bosses or toxic cultures, and make money in ethical, human-oriented ways that felt good to everyone.

I bought a nice painting once. I can do it again.

The moment I hung this painting in my new office here in Austin, my business exploded. I had to scramble to reframe my coaching offering and retool my calendar to accommodate unprecedented client demand, and every time I look at Sassy Fraulein now I smile, knowing that this connection to abundance isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Anchoring energy in symbols

After hanging the new art, I also hung two beautiful Feng Shui crystals from red strings in both office windows. These faceted crystals, designed to move chi and prevent energetic stagnation, now cast daily prismatic rainbows across the room and the hallway with the shifting movements of the passing sun.

I moved a display of crystals that had been prominently featured in my office to my energy work room, replacing them with a very rare vintage set of the collected works of William Shakespeare. These visually repetitive books, all stacked up from one end of a shelf to another, offer not only a moment of “zen at a glance” but also a reminder of the professional power of the written word. One of my degrees is in English Literature, and much of my professional success in corporate and elsewhere has come from writing and creating new narrative works.

I want to write more and create more decks in the next year, so these books are here to help me.

To further amplify the positive vibes in the office, I placed a small jade plant (a great plant for abundance) in a lipstick red planter in one of the windows. Red is an activator color in Feng Shui, and is associated with abundance, health and money.

I was reminded of an old Italian spell I read in a book by a classically pagan witch. In this spell, she recommends one places a jade plant at the top of a ladder, representing the abundance that is just within inevitable reach.

Lastly, I added two very cute and kind of creepy little rabbit figurines.

You see, rabbits as a totem animal represent resilient, magical abundance to me. No animal breeds “like rabbits” but for rabbits, a key attribute of the kind of abundance that keeps growing in number and proportion with relative ease. Rabbits have also become inextricably linked to one of my primary Spirit Guides, Mab, whose presence is felt in our TOTEM Flower Essence garden (and our TOTEM Tarot Deck) everyday. I also have a tremendous amount of affection for the brilliantly quantum and fictional world of the podcast Rabbits— not to mention the novel of the same name.

When I see the little rabbits from my desk during my workday, I am instantly reminded of the cosmic magic that permeates everything— and just how asymmetrically abundance comes to us when we’re least expecting it.

I’ve always liked my office, but now it’s a space that I genuinely enjoy spending time in. It’s sights, sounds and smells delight my senses, giving the ephemeral impression of not actually being a workspace, but rather a play-space.

And play is the ultimate key to unlocking abundance energy, particularly when one is a shaman, writer and spiritual transformation coach. The whole damn thing we do at TOTEM is basically a spiritual scavenger hunt, so why not lean into that vibe?

It’s worth noting that all of these shifts and changes to my Abundance Bagua cost me less than $50. I repurposed art I already had, moved some items around, and really only had to purchase a plant, a planter, and two creepy little rabbit figurines from a great Etsy shop. The Feng Shui crystals are $1 each, and I already had a stash in desk drawer.

So, in the case of this particular Bagua, I didn’t need to break the bank to channel the energy of a bank;)

TOTEM Feng Shui Consultations— now available!

In 2024, we head into the Chinese Year of the Wood Dragon. In Feng Shui, Wood symbolizes new growth, and the Dragon is considered the most auspicious of all astrological animals— particularly with regard to career and achievement.

As a shaman, my oldest and dearest totem animal is a large, black water dragon. The last time I lived through a Dragon Year, I changed literally everything in my life and specifically started to set the stage for the shamanic practice to come.

So, it only makes sense that in this new Year of the Dragon I continue my tradition of evolution, focusing this iteration on new growth and new services, like TOTEM Feng Shui Consultations.

We’ve designed the TOTEM Feng Shui Consultation to make the powerful gift of spatial energy balancing accessible for everyone, regardless of space or lifestyle type. We’ve simplified the robust world of Feng Shui to arm clients with immediately actionable insights into their living or working space, arming them with easy tips, tricks and to do’s that will radically shift the energies around: love, work, fame, health, luck, and much, much more.

TOTEM’s Feng Shui Consultation distills the robust, ancient Chinese practice into manageable (and easy and affordable) bits for modern folks living in the modern world. Feng Shui is a game-changing, potent modality that can move mountains in your life, empowering you to take the world by storm—and all with a few simple adjustments! Feng Shui clients receive a free gift via UPS as a part of their session; this gift will include a tailored mix of hanging crystal, incense and/or sage or palo santo depending on client space needs.

If you want to learn more or book a session, please check out the details HERE. It’s also now up on the TOTEM Readings website HERE for future reference.

I promise: these sessions aren’t a painful, soul-sucking or money-draining Feng Shui experience, and I’m eager to continue to share the best practices and lessons learned I’ve gained from continuing to tinker with this powerful modality!

More to come!

Stay tuned for more Feng Shui-themed Substack articles coming throughout this Year of the Wood Dragon, starting with the rest of the findings from the Feng Shui transformation of our TOTEM work/ live space in Austin. And please share our Substack with anyone you think will benefit from these and other posts, including our ongoing How to Read Tarot Cards series, our New and Full Moon Deep Dives, and early previews of episodes of our podcast, The Skeptical Shaman.

Happy New Year and Happy (almost) Year of the Dragon!

-Rachel