Where Energy Flows

Interior Alignment™ teaches us that everything we do has a direct effect on everything else. The wise use of water this spring and summer not only helps our environment, but saves time and money. Becoming stewards of our ground water ensures healthy vibrant water will be available for our children and grandchildren. Here are some ideas to get you started thinking Green in the water department..

1. Consider what type of chemicals you are using on your lawn or garden. Water-soluble fertilizers and pesticides can easily leech into the groundwater. Read labels and follow the application directions carefully. Better yet look for organic or “green” brands that are safe for humans and our environment. Many, such as compost, manures, and mulches release their nutrients slowly over the growing season.
2. Properly dispose of products according to your waste management provider. Never pour a pesticide or fertilizer down the drain or anywhere else it may contaminate the water supply!
3. Conserve water with a rain barrel. A large plastic garbage container works well. Place it in areas of the garden that your have difficulty reaching with the hose. Cut a large 3-4 inch hole in the lid to allow water to accumulate but not leaves and other debris. To control the breeding of mosquitoes in your rain barrel, float B.T.I. Briquettes. These rings contain bacillus thuringensis, which is consumed by mosquito larvae and kills them. It is safe for humans, fish, and other animals.
4. Practice Xeriscape gardening.  Xeriscaping, is using drought resistant plants that survive on the water nature provides, with minimal assistance.  Purple Coneflower, dusty miller, goldenrod, lavender, mullein, Queen-Anne’s lace, Russian sage, sedum, thyme, yarrow, pine, hemlock, and juniper are all good candidates. These plants do need some attention their first year to become established.
5. Place a one-inch layer of mulch around trees and plants to slow down evaporation, and reduce the need to water. This can save 750 to 1,500 gallons of water a month. Set your lawnmower blades one notch higher to create longer grass with less evaporation, and that means less time mowing!

© Minnie Kansman, 2008. All rights reserved.

The name of this poem is Flow, author unknown, and it speaks eloquently about the important movement of water in our lives. Water is the element in feng shui that teaches us about our life’s path journey or Career. The color representing water, deep water, is black and the very dark navy blues. Round free form shapes and curving lines symbolize water in our environments, as well as, of course, the actual element of water. When we have strong water in our personality, we have the ability to adapt well, and to flow around rather than trying to push through obstacles in our way. We can change our minds easily and literally go with the flow!

Be as water is

Flow around the edges of those within your path

        Without friction

Surround within your ever moving

       depths those who come to rest there.

Enfold them

          while never for a moment hold on.

Accept whatever distance others

        are moved within your flow

Be with them gently

As far as they will allow your strength to take them

And fill with your own being

The remaining space when they are left behind.

When dropping down life’s rapids

                  Froth and bubble if you must

Knowing that one of you now many

              Will just as many times be one again.

And when you have gone as far as you can go

                    Quietly await

                                your next beginning…

I am delighted to announce the New! Improved! Personality Profile Results Report on my website at Touchstones.  Even if you’ve done it before, I encourage you to take a few moments and do the 5 Element Personality Profile, again, just for the fun of seeing your bar graph and pie chart.

If it is new to you, it’s easy.  There are fifty descriptive words in each category:   Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal.  All you do is mark the words that you feel apply to you.  When you are finished, you click on “Show me my Personality Type.”  This will give you your current balance of the five elements.What do you do with this information?  Lots of stuff. Some or all of which many of you may already know.  On the other hand, perhaps it is the perfect time to be reminded!

First, you notice what your ‘lead’ element is — the element with the highest number.

You may have a tie between two or three elements.  If that’s the case, one element at a time, read the words you marked.  Out loud.  Pause.  Then read the words marked in the other element.  Which feels more like you more of the time?

You make decisions based on your lead element.  If you’re Water, your desire for deeper meaning will color all your choices.  If you’re Wood, usefulness is your compass.  If you’re Fire, fun rules.  If you’re Earth, other people’s feelings hold sway on your decisions.  If you’re Metal, your choices must be appropriate.

Since each element is ‘housed’ in a particular part of your overall home and each room, it is useful to know which elements are your strengths because those are the safest locations to place ‘necessary evils.’ 

Such things as your knife drawer in the Kitchen, or your shredder in your office, or the drains (Kitchen, bath sinks, bathtubs, and toilets) are ideally placed where you are strong.  This reduces their potential harm.

If necessary evils are located in a area associated with your weak elements, they weaken you further.

Most of the time, how you are in the world reflects your unique combination of elements.  A person strong in Water, Wood, and Fire will go with the flow, having fun, yet be extremely efficient with their time, for example.

When you are stressed or tired or hungry or feel vulnerable in any way you will revert to your ‘default mode,’ which is your lead element.  When stressed, if your lead element is Water, you will go inward.  If Wood leads the way, you will become more focused and less tolerant.  If Fire is your lead element, when stressed you will seek fun elsewhere.  If you’re Earth, you will be accommodating, even to your own detriment.  If you’re Metal, you will become even more reserved and distant.

Choices made solely from the lead element’s viewpoint have only a one in five chance of being the most successful approach to any given situation. The more balanced you are in all five elements, the more you will respond with the combination that is most successful in every situation.  Being balanced also has the perk of becoming stressed less frequently by life’s surprises.

How do you increase an element?  You can use color, pattern, shape, scent, wall art, sculpture, music, or activities.  Stay tuned to learn how to increase each element individually.

If there is a wide gap between your strongest (40, for example) and your weakest element (12), it is best to make adjustments gently and gradually.  If the gap is significant but not dramatic (strongest 18, weakest 10), you can make bigger changes more quickly. 

And if all five elements are basically the same, (28,28,32,30,26) consider yourself … lucky … and balanced.

When you know what your lead element is and you begin to recognize when it is operating without leavening from the other elements, it can serve as an early warning signal that stress is building.

For myself, as my lead element is Wood, when little stuff irritates me like a slow check-out clerk, it is a warning signal.  After all, how much time is even the slowest clerk wasting?  Am I hungry?  Fatigued?  Disappointed?  Whatever it is, my irritation helps me by triggering those questions.  It is then possible to take steps to alleviate whatever the cause is — and the grocery clerk receives kind attention.

What is your early warning signal?  Inquiring minds want to know!

© Copyright Kathleen Tumpane, 2008. All rights reserved.

Sometimes places, homes, or businesses can feel sticky, heavy, or just plain weird. Usually that is the point where I just want to leave, get outdoors and take a deep breath of fresh air. 

Clutter can make a home feel this way, yet sometimes it can be as pristine as a museum, and still have that oppressive heaviness hanging around. As a feng shui consultant, many times I would feng shui a home to the nines, and still there was something missing, like the air still needed to be lifted of an unseen fog. Lower vibrational energy from strong emotions like arguments or depression can be absorbed and held by the wallpaper, the carpeting, and the furniture. Additionally energy can get stuck from lack of movement, use, or neglect. Old, forgotten, disrespected, unwanted and unloved; a space can also feel how you feel about it. (Think basement here). 

Space Clearing to the rescue! The loving attention of a Space Clearing Ceremony can immediately shift the energy in a place. As Interior Alignment™ practitioners, we use a wide variety of tools that lift and transform.  Burning white sage, using rhythmic drums and music, or ringing Balinese bells can make all the difference. Of course, the intention we hold while using these tools is also an important part of the process. When a Space Clearing is complete, the air looks crisper, and one can breath deeper. It is a healthier and more radiant place to be. And when we feel good in our space, we tend to infuse that mood into our work, our relationships, and our community.

There are many layers to learning the art of Space Clearing. And, if you would like to take your training to a deeper level, you are invited to join me for an intensive Space Clearing course this summer, called Beauty, Space, and Balance - An Exploration of Advanced Space Clearing Techniques.  Along with Master Teachers Deb Swingholm and Neshi Lokotz, I will take you on a magical journey to learn the inner workings of this sacred practice. 

© Minnie Kansman, 2008. All rights reserved.

by Guest Author Oi Servais

My Banana Tree and Lillianne’s Pink Pommelo Tree

I like to grow fruit trees, so the first thing I did when I moved into the house in Pointe Noire was to plant a banana tree.  Our house overlooks the ocean so there is a limit to what we can plant. I know that we will be in that house only for 4 years, so I am not too sure if we would ever have  a chance to eat the bananas from that tree or not. But I planted it anyway. I also planted other fruit trees and we got to harvest the passion fruit and sugarcane right away. The banana tree grew very slowly because it got hit constantly by the salty breeze from the sea, but it grew nevertheless and I never felt the need to transplant it somewhere else.

The last day of my stay in Pointe Noire after I packed the house completely and said good bye to everyone, I went for a walk in the garden to say good bye to my garden. And to my surprise, I saw the first banana bunches of this garden. I knew that it was not for me. It will still need to stay on the tree for at least a few more weeks before it can be eaten and I will not cut it even though the gardener told me that he can cut it the next day so I can take it to Brazzaville. Better leave it for the next occupant of the house as a welcome gift from the garden, I told the gardener.

Then we moved to Brazzaville, the capital city of the republic of Congo on the bank of the mighty Congo river. I can grow anything I want here. I am not limited by the proximity of the sea like in Pointe Noire. Our house search in this city is quite an ordeal (read Looking for Home). I almost had a nervous breakdown and needed the help of the company psychiatric emergency hotline when we lost one hard-to-find-decent-house to someone else because we were too late in responding with a written contract.

When I visited my friend Lillianne at her house in Brazzaville, the first thing I saw walking in through the gate was a big pommelo tree overflowing with plump, heavy fruit. The huge pomelos hanging from each branch are so abundant and heavy that they need to use sturdy wooden poles to support each branch. Lillianne offered me some pommelos from the tree and I swear I ‘d never had any pommelo as sweet and juicy with no trace of bitterness like most pink pommelo has.

But this particular pommelo in front of Lillianne’s house is a special tree. She told me that the first time it gave fruit, there were only three pommelos. She picked all three and brought them into the kitchen.  After she cut them and tried to eat them she found out that she picked them too early and that all were dry, hard and pale like ones we usually see from the market.

So she took all the fruit back outside and told the tree that she was sorry that she didn’t know not to pick the fruit too early and also to not take them all at the same time.  With respect, she offered the fruit back to the tree by burying it in the earth under the tree and also asked the tree to let her know when can she pick the fruit and next time she will respectfully follow the indication.

Within 6 months the pommelo tree produced countless fruit on each branch. Not only were the fruit perfect and juicy, but also the ones that were ready to be picked always hang down to eye-level, and ones that are not ready always stay a little higher than adult reach. So she always knows which ones she can pick. I love looking and greeting the old pink pommelo tree in front of Lillianne’s house each time I go see her.

Now it looks like with Lillianne’s help, I am going to get a newly built house across the street from my husband’s office which miraculously has just become available. Timing is everything and I hope my husband will react quickly to do all the paper work to get it. One thing that makes me feel almost sure that this will be our house is that when I walked to the front yard, I saw two mature banana trees overflowing with banana in full bloom. Somehow I wonder if this can be classified as the saying, ‘ What’s goes around comes around’.

© Copyright Oi Servais, 2007. All rights reserved.

A Guest Post of behalf of Oi Servais. 

Moving to live in Africa brings me closer to Europe. After my husband accepted the job assignment to work in the Republic of Congo, I have been travelling back and forth between Pointe noire/Republic of Congo and Geneva/Switzerland, where my children go to boarding school.

I like Geneva airport. To me, it is the cleanest and the least complicated airport in Europe. I feel safer there than in any other airports I ever gone to. But this is about to change as the last time I travelled to Geneva, my purse got stolen in my favorite airport! A young lady followed me from the passenger exit as I pushed the trolley loaded with 3 big heavy suitcases and a small purse containing all my IDs and Swiss money.

The little purse was tucked in the small compartment of the trolley and parked next to me in front of AVIS counter car rental. While I was busy with all the documents and signing the rental contract with AVIS, the young girl snatched my purse and started to walk away. The AVIS clerk behind the counter saw this and asked me if I came with someone because he thought the young girl could be my daughter taking my bag to go buy something. I told him I was traveling alone.

I barely finished my sentence when the clerk jumped across the counter with an agility of an Olympic athlete and sprinted after the young girl who had my purse in her hand. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The clerk snatched the purse back and ran back to the AVIS counter and returned it me. The security camera has registered all this happening and many people came to congratulate me, saying that I was lucky to have my purse snatched in front of some one who reacted rather quickly. Just a year ago, Roger Moore, the James Bond actor had his briefcase stolen in this very spot but never got it back. So I was luckier than James Bond!

I will never forget this incident; that something like this can happen in the heart of the civilized Europe. I believed that something like this happens only in Africa. During my first two years in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, I purchased a CD from my Interior Alignment™ friend from Switzerland. It is a meditation CD in both French and English.  Very easy to use, it is guided meditation calling on awareness to meet with guardian angels. I started using the CD with a group of expat ladies in town and everyone really enjoyed it. So we set up a session once a week to do the meditation in the French version.

Even when I traveled away from Pointe Noire, the group still met at my house to do meditation using the CD every week. I learned later that all the houses around my area have been robbed several times during my stay in Pointe Noire because the area is ‘up and coming’, and there is a lot of construction going on along my street. I never experienced any robbery at my house; to the contrary I never felt insecure in that house at all. Even after I left, the family who took over the house told us that they feel happy and secure the moment they enter the house, no matter how much noise and the brouhaha going on outside.

Now I am in Brazzaville and my new home is going to be in a somewhat vulnerable area. Even though it is located in the safe zone of the city, it is within proximity of the port, where petty theft abounds. I even experienced a near hit twice while shopping in the area. But my chauffeur was able to ward off the danger at the very last moment.

I feel so blessed to be in the protection of the guardian angels. It is not an accident each time and anywhere in the world I feel myself being protected by an invisible force beyond our mundane realm. Sometimes the angel came to protect me in the form of a human being like the clerk at the car rental counter or my chauffeur in Brazzaville. But sometimes, the angel gives the protection as energy radiation telling me to avoid association with certain people, groups of people or certain places, and to go to see certain people or groups of people or visit certain places. I always have some idea why I show up at certain place at a certain time to meet someone. There is always the reason why one is where one ends up at the moment.

I have some idea why I am still in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo. But sometimes I wish I could communicate in a more linear way with my guardian angels. As the challenges of living in this African city accumulate, I wish I could ask my angel when I will be done with this place. But I know the answer already. I should not even ask. You will be ready when you are ready my dear. After you did what you come here to do or learn what you come here to learn or suffer what you come here to suffer. After it all said and done, you can go on.

© Copyright Oi Servais, 2007. All rights reserved.

Posted on behalf of Guest Author Oi Servais 

Oi speaking…

Now that I have been here for some time, I have some observation about the President of Brazzaville. If you live in this city for two weeks to a month, chances are good that you will get caught in traffic by the road blocking which occurs each time the President leaves the palace to go somewhere. The road block is normally preceded by four to six rows of motorcycles to announce the arrival of the long procession. The processions itself consists of two or three truck loads of machine gun bodyguards, followed by several ministers in shimmering shiny cars, and finally the President’s limousine with four motorcycles surrounding the car at each wheel. On top of  this, every time the President goes anywhere, an ambulance with doctor, nurses, paramedic and medical emergency equipment follows the procession, then a few more cars of protocol people and a few more military cars full of green camouflage costumed soldiers with machine guns. This does not include all the soldiers and small machine guns at every corner of the street where the procession will pass.

This procession blocks the roads both ways and lasts for the duration of his procession to the President’s destination and then the return of all the cars, ambulance, trucks used for the procession to the presidential palace. Only after those cars are all back in the palace are the roads of Brazzaville city cleared for normal public circulation again. And talking about the roads in the city of Brazzaville, there are not too many of them suitable for normal cars. Most streets are not maintained and are full of potholes, but for the President’s procession, they always manage to find the routes that are OK for his limousine to pass.

The people seem to be so proud of their President’s procession. The cars and protocols are modern symbols of the leopard skin throne and scepter that were traditional symbols of the chief in the past; the decorations and ceremony that replace the old time African head of state’s possession. I’ve never seen a photograph of the President of the Republic of Congo in traditional costume. I wonder if there is even one at all, but I have seen the picture of the previous president of the RDC in a leopard hat. As far as I know, he has never been seen anywhere without his leopard hat on. The same way the President of Republic of Congo never goes anywhere without his long procession.

If my visitor is lucky enough to get caught in traffic during one of this impressive procession and be in the front role to see all these cars and soldiers and ambulance and the whole shebang, it will hard for him or her to forget the visit to Brazzaville.

© Copyright Oi Servais, 2007. All rights reserved.