Firstly, I have to mention that by the time we get to making adjustments inside a home, we are working with the “small” Tai Chi, compared to the larger environment, which might be called the “big” Tai Chi.
Historically, Feng Shui principles were used to plan cities and roads. The larger outside environment was taken into consideration, such as the location of nearby mountains and the proximity of water courses like the ocean, lakes or streams. By the time we get to an individual property, we are still able to make improvements to the space and improve people’s lives, but these are more the details. This is one reason why classical Feng Shui practitioners get excited about being involved in big development projects or working with the natural landscape. Most of the time, we are dealing with “after the fact” constructions and some pretty serious limitations.
In modern living, the garage has replaced the front door as the main entry. The entrance to a house is a portal of energy and even though we don’t spend much time there, the relationship between the outside world and the interiors can be profound. Many times I have placed much more emphasis on the garage entrance than the front door, when it was so obvious that the garage entrance would be used 90% of the time. The garage then becomes a very important area to remedy sometimes.
And yet, trying to place a natural element in a garage, adhering to Five Element Theory, can be a challenge and one needs to be creative with this challenge. One Element, Metal, is very easy to manifest in a garage. For one thing, a car is a half ton of metal so if you park in your garage before you enter the house through it, then you are essentially done if it just so happens that the garage needs the Metal element to stabilize it.
Then of course, many people store other hefty metal items in a garage, such as metal file cabinets, gardening equipment, construction machines and even appliances like a washer and dryer or an extra freezer. These metal items did not exist until recent history, so they are in a class of their own, compared to the olden days when a main entry needed metal. This is where the practice of lining a doorway frame with gold coins comes from.
What do you do if your garage needs Water? I hesitate to recommend a fountain in a garage, which is usually pitch dark. Even if you could plug in a fountain in the garage, the darkness of the space could make the water very “yin” and this is not a good solution. I have had one client who gladly used water in her garage because she actually had a little entry table at the garage door leading into the house. It was where she put her keys and a few other items and she was fine with using a fountain there.
As another alternative to putting water inside a garage, you may be able to use an OUTSIDE fountain hugging one of the exterior walls of the garage, if it happens to be in the right direction outside. The right direction is not the same for every house; rather it would be determined by the classical calculations based on when the house was built.
Another alternative to real water inside a garage could be a floor painted black. These days a lot of people are finishing their garages, including the walls, ceiling and floor. A large surface area that is black or dark blue in color can work as a weak manifestation of the water element.
If your garage technically needs the Wood element, you would also understandably be reluctant to place a live plant in an area that hardly sees any natural light. Here too you may need to use color as a weak back-up choice, such as a large display of medium to dark green color. I have had clients get a solid colored bed spread and drape it over items stored along the walls in a garage as a quick, inexpensive and portable remedy.
If your garage needs the Fire element, common sense will dictate that no candle burning would ever take place in a room with highly combustible materials. Instead, you could install a light that goes on for a certain number of hours a day or night to work as FIRE in the garage. You could also use a bold display of red color, like my client who hung a red blanket on the wall inside the garage.
If your garage needs the earth element to satisfy some flying star combination, you could store a bag of potting soil, some rocks, bricks, ceramic tile or even a bag of sand in the garage and it would not be considered weird or out of place.
For people who have turned a garage into living space, then it is much easier to use furnishings and décor as remedies, just like any other room in a house. But for the garage which is just used as a garage and frequent first entrance into the house, having it be a balanced space is important, especially since it is such a wide opening. That much more qi can enter the space compared to a regular “man” door.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions (R) since 1992
From the Architecture & Design Series
