It is important that you love your bedroom and everything in it and that it is kept clutter free. There are many other aspects of your bedroom that you may not have considered but they are very important, so I’d like to cover a few of them here.

Books in the bedroom – many people like to read before they go to sleep. I certainly do. But it’s also a good idea to really consider what types of books you’re reading before you go to bed. Each book has different energy attached to it, such as the subject matter and even the energy of the author. I’ve said before that everything is alive with energy, and that includes books.

Be careful about reading books that are about violence, tragedies or have sad endings. They can affect your sleep or even, on a deep sub-conscious level, begin to affect your health or your relationships.

It’s not a good idea to keep too many books in the bedroom. Just have the one that you’re currently reading, or one that you like to refer to. A bookcase full of books in the bedroom brings too much energy to a space that needs to be calm.

Don’t treat it as an office or exercise room – the energy of the bedroom is about sleep and it’s about relationships – your romantic relationship, as well as your relationship with yourself. It is your most personal space and the energy should be very calm and it should represent your relationship (or the one you’d like to have). When you bring in the energy of work and/or exercise you are bringing in energy that is very active, which will interfere with your sleep, your health,, your relationship and your life generally. It can very quickly create a sense of overwhelm.

There is also a lot of stress that can be associated both with work and with exercise. With work, you may feel as though you can never ’switch off.’ You always have work on your mind – of course you will if you don’t have a personal space where you can detach from it. You are bringing in your work energy – the energy of your day at work – into your bedroom. This is a recipe for even higher levels of stress.

As far as exercise is concerned, again, this is very active and not the right energy for a bedroom. It is often something that you feel you ‘have’ to do, rather than want to do (pressure). It may even be something that you feel you ’should’ be doing but are not, in which case you are being surrounded with the energy of guilt and even failure.

Don’t overdo the furniture – you’ll want to have plenty of space around the bed and to make sure that you don’t have too much furniture in the room. Allow the energy in the room to circulate freely (including underneath the bed). Allow the room to breathe. If you like big, heavy, dark furniture, make sure the room is an appropriate size to accommodate it. You don’t want the room to feel crowded or overwhelmed with furniture. Overall, you don’t want your bedroom to be too dark (except at night when you turn the lights off).

Generally speaking, lighter woods and other natural materials are best for beds and bedroom furniture. Avoid metal beds because they can conduct electro-magnetic fields.

Think about where the furniture came from as well. If it was given to you by somebody else, or is left over from a previous relationship, think about the energy that it is carrying related to that person and your relationship with them. Is that energy positive and supportive? If not, you’ll want to consider replacing it when you can.

These are just a few simple tips that can help you turn your bedroom into a personal sanctuary that supports you in all ways.

Since your home is energetically an outer reflection of what is going on internally, it can give many clues as to the real state of your personal relationships and also many opportunities for growth and improvement.

Let’s start with the room that energetically represents and reflects your relationship the most – your bedroom. how do you feel about this room? Do you like the furniture that you have? Do you love your bed – is it comfortable? What pictures and accessories do you have and how do they reflect your relationship?

Your bedroom is the most important room in your home because it is th room that is closest to you and has the biggest impact on you. It is important that both you and your partner love your room. It needs to be your personal sanctuary – calm, peaceful, romantic. Here are some specifics to pay attention to:

The bed
This is the most important piece of furniture in the room. It should be comfortable, sturdy and solid. If you have a headboard, choose one that is solid – that will symbolize you having solid support in your life. The bed should be in the command position – meaning that it’s as far away from the door as possible, with the headboard up against a wall or corner and that you can see the entrance to the room from the bed.

Remove anything that is stored underneath the bed – items under the bed can create stagnant energy that affects you as you sleep. If you have a king-sized bed, put a red sheet over the box spring to ‘heal’ the split down the middle.

Clutter
Remove all clutter from the room. It stops energy flow and will create problems in your relationship. It will affect both partners, because it will drain your energy until you both find yourself feeling more and more tired and lethargic, lacking motivation. This is when arguments can occur.

Artwork/accessories
Choose artwork and accessories that are calming and peaceful. Things that represent your relationship, such as a wedding photo or something that you brought back from your honeymoon or a vacation, or just a nice, recent photo of the two of you together.

Remove anything that is not conducive to a happy, harmonious relationship – you can put pictures of the rest of your family, children and pets anywhere else in the house, but save the bedroom for pictures of you and your partner and artwork that reflects romance or is particularly meaningful to both of you.

Colors
Choose warm colors, as opposed to cool colors. Any colors that have warmth to them – so, for example, instead of white, choose cream, or go with colors that have a hint of red in them (this does not mean that you should paint your bedroom bright red!) Warm colors help to create warmth in your relationship and foster close communication.

Things that intrude
Keep things like televisions, children’s toys books, desks, computers, exercise equipment, etc., out of this room if you possibly can. These all intrude on your relationship and come between you. They are also ‘active’ with energy and you want this room to be soothing and calm to promote restful sleep. If you have trouble sleeping, look at how much energy is in the room and see how you can calm it down. For example, mirrors are very active with energy. If you have a lot of mirrors in the room (such as mirrored closet doors) you may find you have trouble sleeping. If so, try covering up the mirrors before bed for a few nights to see if your sleep improves.

There are many other ways in which your home reflects and impacts your relationship – this is just one room. But it is the most important room. Making changes here can bring about powerful and positive change in your relationship very quickly.

Discover more powerful tips, tools and techniques for improving your relationships with the Getting the Love You Want and Deserve tele-series. A series of 6 recordings by Relationship and Gender expert Carolyn Casey and Energetic Edge Expert/Feng Shui Success Strategist, Linda Binns.

Most people experience challenging relationships from time to time. Some more than others and for some, they may be facing challenges in a relationship on a daily basis with a boss or co-worker, or even a spouse or family member. When this happens, it tends to leave you feeling frustrated, angry, resentful or just upset. You wonder why this person treats you this way. You wonder what you’ve done and how you can change it. But the more you try to change them or the way they treat you, the worse it gets.

Instead of trying to change it, you can use this experience as a valuable opportunity to learn something about yourself. When you start to look at these challenging relationships in terms of what they are mirroring back to you, instead of how badly they make you feel, you can gain some valuable insights into your own thoughts, beliefs and behaviors.

So when someone does something that you don’t like that triggers a response or reaction in you, stop and think about how you feel. What is the emotion that you’re feeling? What is it that you don’t like about the behavior or what has it triggered in you? Let’s say that someone’s behavior causes you to think of them as untrustworthy. The reaction that they trigger in you when they do or say something makes you immediately feel that you don’t trust them. Now turn that around and look at yourself. Where in your life are you not trusting yourself?

Sometimes people come into our lives to help us develop certain skills or remove limiting beliefs. For example, if you have low self-esteem you may find that you attract people into your life who are bullies. Their behavior towards you may be very aggressive or controlling. Again, instead of focusing on their behavior, focus on how it makes you feel. If you have low self-esteem then you’ll have a deep seated belief that you’re not good enough. This means that you won’t treat yourself very well – and you will attract people who also do not treat you very well.

You will stop attracting these people to you when you develop your self-esteem, start believing and feeling that you are good enough exactly as you are and start treating yourself with love and respect. When you treat yourself in this way, you will also attract people who treat you this way. It’s true that we really do teach people how to treat us. If you don’t love, honor and respect yourself and treat yourself well, how can you expect others to?

In Feng Shui your environment gives many clues as to how well you treat yourself and what you feel you deserve. One of the best areas to look for clues is your bedroom. I’m sure you have heard me talk before about the importance of your bedroom – that it’s the room that is closest to you and has the biggest impact on you. How you feel about your bedroom gives you a big clue about how well you are treating yourself and what you feel deserve.

If your bedroom is cluttered, you have things stored under the bed, you don’t like your bedroom furniture, the colors or artwork in the room, then there is probably a lot about your life that you are not happy with. If the room is very neutral and doesn’t truly reflect you and your personality, then you probably are not doing what you want to be doing in life, and you may not even know what that is.

Your bedroom should be your personal sanctuary. You should absolutely love it. You should love everything in it. That is an easy way of saying I deserve the best, I deserve to have a bedroom that reflects who I am and that nurtures and supports me. When your bedroom supports you in this way, life will support you as well.

I often visit homes where it’s easy to tell what the husband and children love to do – you can see what sports they love, what hobbies they have, yet there may be no signs of the wife’s passions and interests visible at all. This is usually because she is so focused on doing everything for everybody else that she sacrifices her sense of self. She puts herself and her life on hold for everybody else and may not even really know any more exactly who she is and what her passions are.

This is how your home can give you clues about how you feel about and treat yourself. When you make changes by creating a bedroom that you love and by making sure that your home reflects you and who you are, as well as other members of the family, it will alter not only the energy in your home, but it will help you to make the shift so that you start feeling better about yourself and treating yourself with greater respect and love. That will have a positive effect not only on your relationships but on all areas of your life. You will enjoy life much more and it will flow much more easily.

If you want to improve any of your relationships, first look at yourself. Use your relationships as a mirror and use your home as a mirror to reflect back to you just what you think about yourself. When you first change how you treat yourself, everything else will change – for the better.

Linda Binns
The Feng Shui Success Strategist

Feng Shui Success MasterMind Members can listen to a recording of the relationships tele-seminar on the membership site. Not a member yet? Join now at www.FengShuiSuccess.com.