On a higher level of Feng Shui, which requires knowing when the house was built and it magnetic compass orientation, we can predict all kinds of non-obvious results from sleeping in a bedroom. Each house and bedroom is truly unique and we can find out how your sleeping room influences your health, relationships and even your career. When I think back on some of the bedrooms I have slept in during my life, I know now that the childhood bedroom I grew up in indicated a potential for glandular problems, which I did have.

My marriage ended with a bedroom that could trigger bickering and gossip. And the room also indicated the miscarriage I would have. Soon thereafter I learned traditional Feng Shui and made sure I found a new place with good “flying stars” in my bedroom. I moved into a place where my career advanced in leaps and bounds.

With these unseen, non-obvious influences, this is when and why we add or remove certain natural elements from the room, such as water, metal, fire, wood or earthen objects.

But on the immediate or palpable level, without knowing these unique details, there are some basic Feng Shui principles which apply to almost everyone and their optimal sleeping conditions. The goal is to create a healthier bedroom environment, since that is the most important room in the house. We sleep there about a third of our lives, so the bedroom takes priority over every other room. The exception would be a home office that you spend eight or more hours a day in.

1. Sleep with the bed away from direct alignment with the room’s door. This provides a more harmonious qi flow in the room. The operative word here is “direct” alignment since some rooms will limit where you can place a bed. Direct alignment means that someone could walk a straight line from the bedroom door and walk right into the end or side of the bed.

2. Sleep away from a low window. It is ideal to sleep against a solid wall, for anchoring support. The wall is the “virtual” mountain” that we need for the ideal sleeping environment.

3. Avoid sleeping directly under an exposed beam. The more beams over head, the more chaotic the energy will be, flowing downward toward your body. Likewise, the larger the exposed beam, the more it can cause health issues directly related to where the beam is over your body. As an example, an exposed beam over your stomach area could cause stomach problems. If you do have a beam or beams over your bed, one solutions is the canopy bed frame where you can drape fabric over the canopy bed and deflect the downward pressure of the beams back up towards the ceiling.

4. Avoid sleeping with a large mirror in the bedroom. Cover up the mirrored closet doors or any large mirror at the foot or side of the bed. Mirrors can contribute to sleep disorders or uneasiness in the bedroom.

5. Have a good balance of yin and yang influences in the room. Generally speaking, the bedroom should be more “yin” in character: quiet, not too bright, and other relaxing features. You don’t want the room to be a dark cave, as it should receive some natural light and some ventilation. As well, you don’t want the room to be too hot or too cold.

6. Tidy up the area. This one tip sounds very New-Agey and not really the domain of traditional feng shui. But there is definitely a subjective and emotional layer to feng shui which is as real as anything else discovered. If the bedroom is just a continuous extension of a messy closet or if the bedroom is the same room as your home office, then there will be a tendency to have things in the bedroom which are not relaxing to look at, like piles of laundry or paper work to attend to. This can put you in a bad mood as you go to bed and ultimately undermine the quality of your sleep.

7. This one is also a “modern” feng shui concern: Move the electronics AWAY from the bed. Instead of having your cell phone or digital alarm clock on the night stand, move these objects at least across the room, six or more feet away. We are all bombarded with electrical fields and magnetic radiation, beyond our personal control. The least you can do is take charge of your own home electronics and give your own magnetic field a chance to recuperate, undisturbed while you sleep. In addition to moving electronics away from the bed, there are also pro-active things you can do, such as having shungite and orgonite pieces in the room and throughout the house.

Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Feng Shui Architecture and Design Blog Series