The peaceful nursery

Feng shui

Many cultures recognize the link between your home and your life. In India, the five-thousand-year-old Hindu design practice called Vastu holds that you must first create harmony in your environments in order to experience harmony within yourself. Many Native American rituals revolve around connecting to the land and giving thanks to Mother Earth. In Germany, Bau-biologie, the study of how your environment and the materials in your homes and office affect your health, holds that you must live in healthy buildings in order to experience optimal health. Feng Shui is the three-thousand-year-old Chinese practice of making positive changes in your environment to produce positive changes in your life. All of these practices have evolved similar holistic approaches to design, the core of which acknowledges the connection between one's environment and one's well-being.

Feng Shui revolves around the universal principle that everything is made up of energy, including your body, your thoughts, and the empty space surrounding you. Even objects you may consider inanimate, such as a table or a rock, are made up of moving molecules and send out their own unique vibration. Your own energy is affected by all the energy that surrounds you. The goal is to help positive energy flow through your home in a way that enhances your life. Feng Shui embraces the idea that, just as different pressure points in acupuncture correspond to specific parts of the body, different areas of your home are associated with different areas of your life. These areas include health, family, love, relationships, career, wealth, fame, helpful people, children, creativity, knowledge, and self-cultivation. So when you improve the energy in part of your home, you're also improving part of your life.

Although Feng Shui may seem complex, its philosophy includes commonsense practices and simple suggestions such as keeping your environment clean and organized, clearing clutter, arranging furniture so you can move easily from room to room, surrounding yourself with things you love that reflect and support your goals, and putting safety and comfort first by making sure your home is healthy and functional as well as beautiful. Fundamentally, Feng Shui is about making a home that you thoroughly enjoy-a home that supports your dreams and nurtures your mind, body, and spirit.

Excerpted from The Peaceful Nursery by Laura Forbes Carlin and Alison Forbes Copyright © 2006 by Alison Forbes. Excerpted by permission of Delta, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Image courtesy of Pottery Barn Kids.