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The Bedroom— By Terah Kathryn Collins An oasis of pleasure, and the place to celebrate your senses. Serenity and sensuality—two key characteristics of a happy existence—are currently endangered in our Western culture. Their main habitat: the bedroom. This is primarily Madam Yin’s domain, a room meant for sleeping, dreaming, romancing, and recharging your batteries—the perfect antidotes to a busy day. However, with an all-consuming interest in activity, many bedrooms have become just as busy as the rest of the house. All too often, for children and adults alike, they function more as home offices, media rooms, or exercise studios with a bed thrown in somewhere. This kind of arrangement eliminates the soothing ministrations of Madam Yin and can cause many imbalances including sleep disorders and chronic exhaustion. When this last refuge is stripped away, you have no place to go to really relax and be nurtured in a soothing Yin atmosphere. The more active and “crazy” your lifestyle, the more crucial it is to reinstate balance by claiming your bedroom as an oasis of rest, rejuvenation, and romance. Make the bedroom so sensually attractive and comfortable that you melt into “her” warm embrace every night, sleep well, have sweet dreams, and awaken refreshed and energized.
Return the bedroom to its original role, and appoint your bed as the King or Queen of the room. Chaise longues and overstuffed chairs add to the restful atmosphere, while desks, computers, televisions, and exercise equipment drop-kick sensuality and serenity out of the room. Just when you’re ready to call it a night, these “busy-bodies” proclaim that there are bills, e-mails, news programs, and flabby body parts that need immediate attention. When they must share the bedroom with you, maintain serenity by covering them or screening them from the bed. To honor your instinctual need for comfort and safety, place your bed so that you can easily get to both sides and see the bedroom entrance without being directly in front of it. When your bed must be located directly in front of the door, a footboard or trunk can suggest protection between you and the door. If there’s a window directly overhead, add a headboard and window treatments to shelter you from direct exposure and promote the feeling of safety. Nightstands and lighting on both sides of the bed symbolize equality in a relationship and help to hold happiness in place. Choose nightstand designs that are in scale with your bedroom so that both partners are accommodated. If you’re single and would like to be partnered, act as if the love of your life has already arrived by moving the bed away from the wall and giving your “one night stand” a partner. You don’t want to hold your singleness in place by having a bedroom that comfortably accommodates only one! Clear the bed of delicate “guardians,” such as lacy pillows and stuffed animals, and update with enhancements that accurately reflect your current romantic intentions. Remove pictures of solitary people or things; and arrange decorations in pairs, like two flowers, candles, or poetry books. Design an approachable, sensuous bedroom that invites a partner to join you without a “single” care. For safety’s sake, hang only lightweight or solidly anchored items over the bed. Check for sharp corners or protruding designs on nightstands, bed frames, and other furniture that may pose danger to sleepy—or amorous—body parts. If you can’t replace such furniture, wrap, drape, or skirt it as needed to enhance the relaxed feeling in the room. Seen every morning and night, your view from the bed influences your view of the world. Make it a fabulous one! Improve a view that goes directly into a bathroom by curtaining or screening the threshold between the two rooms. Close closet doors, and create an inspiring view with sensual art, restful colors, and other special elements. Remove photos and other items that compromise your sense of privacy by appearing to watch you in bed. Relocate family photos to more public areas of the house, or to children’s bedrooms where they provide a sense of security and connection. Mirrors promote the wakeful Yang qualities of any room by enhancing the size and brightness of the space. In the bedroom, the bigger a mirror is, and the closer it is to the bed, the more likely that it will disturb your sleep. Because it’s often impractical or undesirable to remove large mirrors such as mirrored closet doors, consider curtaining them like a window. This gives you the flexibility of “opening” the mirror during the day and “closing” it at night. You can also drape bureau and other smaller mirrors with beautiful cloths to calm the bedroom’s atmosphere at night. Assess the memories and feelings that are being held in place by the things in your bedroom. As with every room in the house, it’s best when everything in your bedroom has pleasantly nurturing associations. When you let go of any object that triggers negative feelings, thoughts, or memories, you change the atmosphere to one that’s conducive to rest and relaxation. You are as connected to what’s behind closet doors and drawers as you are to the things that are in plain sight in your home. It all counts. Cluttered, disorganized closets and bureaus are the result of an overly Yang lifestyle and cause daily confusion, overwhelm, irritation, and other mood “inflammations.” Order in the bedroom allows for complete relaxation and promotes happiness, clarity, and personal power in your daily life. Clear any clutter from under the bed, and keep it clean and airy. If you absolutely must store items beneath the bed, keep them neat and handsomely corralled in containers made for under-the-bed storage. Consider how often you “wear” your bed linens and splurge on the best, knowing that you spend about a third of your life wrapped up in them! Choose the sensual embrace of high-thread-count natural fabrics including flannel, silk, and cotton. Look for colors that are found in the skin tones of people around the world—beige, pink, peach, yellow, and caramel, as well as the more pigmented tones of coral, lavender, terra-cotta, cinnabar, raspberry, violet, burgundy, chocolate, gold, and bronze. Pure white, gray, black, blues, and gray greens work as accents, but too much of them can take away from the coziness of a bedroom. When cool tones dominate, bring in complementary warm tones via wall color, linens, accent pillows, art, slipcovers, area rugs, tablecloths, flowers, and candles. And, as always, choose only what turns you on! You can benefit from sleeping with your head facing north, south, east, or west, depending on your needs. In general, when your head is pointing north, your physical health and vitality are strengthened. South enhances intuition and can stimulate dream and memory recall, west is calming and helps remedy restlessness or insomnia, and east is revitalizing, relieving sluggishness and depression. Sleeping northwest, northeast, southwest, or southeast blends the qualities of the two primary directions. Children also need a serene bedroom environment. It’s very common to find children’s bedroom decor to be neon bright, very busy, and overstimulating. All of the above suggestions will also tuck your children into the tranquil embrace of a cozy, serene bedroom where they can calm down and get the rest they need. While every room in the house should have a sensual appeal, let the bedroom glow with your personal mark of sensuality. It’s your private domain, an oasis of pleasure, and the place to celebrate your senses. Create an enchanting atmosphere with scented candles or oils, soothing music, amorous colors, and seductive fabrics. When you take your restful and romantic interludes as seriously as you do your work activities, you’re allowing the Yin and Yang influences to balance and enhance your life. Give your senses the lead, and enjoy being sensually delighted every night. Excerpted from The Western Guide to Feng Shui For Romance: The Dance of Heart and Home, by Terah Kathryn Collins. Published by Hay House, it is available at retail bookstores or online.
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