Guest Author - Diane Kern

How does your environment affect your relationships? Linda Binns, tells you how in her book Feng Shui for Your Relationships. This slender tome has a lot between its covers. Linda is a graduate of the Western School of Feng Shui and owner of Harmony Inside & Out which offers holistic health and feng shui services.

In chapter two, How to Use this Book, the author states, “This book is designed to help you assess each of your relationships by identifying what works and what you’d like to improve. Each chapter describes a particular kind of relationship- with your spouse or significant other, with your boss, with your children. You learn which areas within your home impact each type of relationship and how your particular space affects your current and future interactions with others.”

Ms. Binns offers some good advice at the very beginning, remember that you can not change another person. You can only change yourself. By changing your attitudes and actions you not only change the way you interact with the world, but also how others interact with you. This important idea has to do with intention, the intention to change your life for the better. Her three principles of feng shui include;
1. Everything is alive with energy
2. Everything is connected and
3. Everything is changing.
According to the author by understanding these basic ideas you are on your way to a more harmonious life.

Advice is interspersed with real case studies and photos that bring the subject to life, and there are numerous diagrams that make each point easy to understand. Chapter five deals with clutter, how it affects you, how to identify it and how to deal with it. Don’t forget the garage, basement and attic Ms. Binns warns. And closing the closet door on your clutter does not solve the problem.

Chapter six deals with the form of the bagua used in various western schools of feng shui. You learn about drawing a floor plan of your house and how to deal with second stories and odd shapes, what to include and what not to include. Then you are instructed on the bagua itself and how to superimpose it on the house and individual rooms.

The remaining chapters; Romantic relationships, Business relationships, Family relationships, Relationships with children, Casual relationships, Relationship with self. All follow the same outline.
1. Set your intention
2. Identify the source of your obstacles
3. Let the bagua guide you
4. Enhance your environment
5. Experience results
6. From Linda’s files
7. Analyze

I am particularly taken with the last section, analyze. This is a mini workbook at the end of each chapter with directed questions to help you evaluate and plan your goals.

If you are interested in improving your relationships you might want to pick up this well written and organized book. It is full of good advice.