Requested Episode: A look at the elemental remedies of Feng Shui

This week, I bring you a requested episode!

I really enjoyed recording this, so please let me know if you have any topics you'd love for me to cover!

Today I'm taking you on a journey to discover the 5 elements that govern how deep Feng Shui works. This is not a tips and tricks episode; this is about 'real' Feng Shui.

I'll talk you through the layers of Feng Shui, from generic practices to the deep energetic workings of Flying Stars.

We cover each of the 5 elements that are the cornerstone of the 5 Element Theory, in which Feng Shui is rooted, as well as looking at why the balancing of these elements is so important. We look at what imbalances may look like within our home and how running blind when placing remedies can be really detrimental.

This level of Feng Shui is where my passion lies, so if you have any questions, just get in touch - I'd love to answer them!

Lots of love,

Speak soon,

Rachael xx

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Did you know that the energy in your home shifts each year? You can find my 2026 Home Energy & Crystal Guide here

Download my free guide to your home's energy map here: The 9 Energy Areas

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Transcript

Welcome And Listener Request

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, I'm Rachel. You could say I'm a modern-day Feng Shui consultant here to help you transform your home into a space that truly supports and uplifts you. My passion is showing you how to work with your home to unlock its full potential. I'm here to show you how to tap into the power that your home holds and make this powerful practice simple, accessible, and something everyone can use. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Everyday Feng Shui podcast. Today I am recording a podcast that is based on a request. So last week I mentioned that I was quite happy to record things that you guys want to learn about and listen to.

Three Layers Of Feng Shui

SPEAKER_00 0:49

And one of the requests I had was about elements and how we actually use remedies in Feng Shui. So I also had quite a lot of questions over on Instagram about metal because I talk about metal. I talk about metal all the time because metal is my favourite. So what I need to do is kind of go back a step and talk a little bit about feng shui as a little bit about the theory and then I'll talk about the elements. So I've talked a lot both on here and on my Instagram and in my emails actually about how feng shui is a layered sort of practice. So there are, I mean, I look at there being three layers really, there are multiple more than that, but let's try and make it as simple as possible. So in sort of this three-layered approach, you've got the surface level feng shui, which is things like decluttering your home to make sure that there is no real spaces for stagnant energy to hold. It's things like making sure that you don't have broken items in your home so that energy can flow without getting stuck on sharp edges and things like that. It's about making sure that your home is clean. Reasonably, we're not talking about, you know, we don't we we do live in our homes, and that's okay, but it's about things like not having corners that are never never hoovered. I say this to you as somebody who has a bed that has got so our bed has sides that go all the way to the ground, and then at the end, there's two drawers. Let me tell you, that takes some work, and but I don't get hung up on it, right? So this is not something I get hung up on, and this is why the surface level of Feng Shui can feel can make Feng Shui feel unmanageable and overwhelming because when you're only focusing, certainly in this modern world, and let's be honest, most of us are women in in this space, and many of us are mothers, and we are busy beyond belief. So when you hear either me or other feng shui consultants talking about this surface level feng shui, which is really decluttering and cleaning, right? It feels like this isn't for you because how on earth do we keep up with everything that life expects of us, plus then this added layer of sort of this perception, I suppose, of what feng shui is, which is way beyond decluttering and cleaning, and so much deeper than decluttering and cleaning. But because that's the generic kind of surface level stuff, that's the easiest stuff to talk about and the easiest and the easiest bit to share with people. So that's why you hear about it all the time. But you know, as somebody who does this for a living, my bed has dust bunnies underneath it. You know, I can't stick the hoover under there very easily, it's not an easy thing to do, and I certainly don't do it weekly. So this is me just saying to you, you know, the surface level stuff, yes, it is important if if that is the only access to Feng Shui that you have, but it's not worth getting hung up about because it's a bit, you know, it's kind of one of those things whereby doing something is better than doing nothing, and I have this approach in my life across every single aspect. We as a kind of society, I'm gonna go off tangent. I always go off tangent, don't I? But you know, as a society, we're hung up on this like perfectionism, we are hung up on doing everything perfectly, and whether that be, you know, your diet, like if you eat a great health-fuelled diet for 90% of your day, and then you fall into a dairy milk bar, you know, you then think, Well, it was a complete waste. It's not a waste, you know, it's not a waste. Something was better than nothing. It's like going for a walk. If you want to go for a long walk, or you're and then your day kind of doesn't go to plan and you can't fit in an hour walk, going for 10 minutes is better than nothing. And it's the same with Feng Shui. Something is better than nothing at this surface level. So that's kind of the surface level. So it's it's the it's the cleaning and the decluttering, and then you've got this sort of middle layer, which is more about the specifics of each room, it's a bit more about furniture layout, so it's things like knowing how to place your desk in your office, so making sure that it's in the command position, it's things like knowing where to place your bed in your bedroom and how you should sit facing or not necessarily facing the door, but so you can see the door in a living room. It's about how to lay out those spaces. In particular, a living room, for example, where a family comes together, it's about knowing how to lay out that space so that it it kind of harbours that feeling of connection and togetherness and what shapes to use and things. So, still, this mid-layer is is generic, right? It's just it's generic information because that is applicable to every single house. So you've got the cleaning and the decluttering, which is something that we all do anyway, because we all live in homes and we all have to look after our houses. Then you've got the midlayer, which is kind of starting to think about how energy actually flows through a space, but it is still applicable to everybody, everybody's home. So I could tell you now about how to lay out a living room, for example, to encourage a family to talk together and spend time together, and so that people don't feel left out, and all those sorts of things that kind of go on within family. So I could tell you that now, and it would apply to everybody who is listening. And then you have this deeper layer, so like this third layer, and that is where these remarkable and beautiful remedies come in, but it's also a massive, massive jump from this kind of the middle layer. So the first two layers are really, really generic, and then you've got this huge jump because it's that's where you start looking at the the real in-depth, energetic, not just the flow, but what energy is there. So the first two layers of Feng Shui, and this is what we can share on podcasts, this is what we can share on email letters, it's what we can share on Instagram, so the stuff that is applicable to everybody that is just working with the energy that is already in your home and allowing that to flow more freely and encouraging it to flow more freely. When you go into that third deeper layer of feng shui, you are now talking about manipulating energy. So that is where it this is the huge, huge jump, and that is where these beautiful remedies come in. So that's kind of my intro, just so that we've got some context for what we're talking about and where these remedies sit within kind of the wider picture of feng shui. So, again, you will have heard me talk before about how feng shui is almost like acupuncture. Well, the remedies of feng shui are actually like acupuncture. So everybody knows, everybody's heard of acupuncture, and everybody pretty much knows what it is, right? So you go to somebody who is trained in acupuncture and they will make an assessment and use needles to clear energy blocks. That is ultimately what acupuncture is. Now, it has been dressed up into this more kind of westernized and modern version of it. And you know, if you were to go onto the NHS website, they're probably not going to be talking to you about removing energy blocks within your body, right? But that is what acupuncture is. So if you actually look at the history of what acupuncture is and where you know its success and the history of the training, that is what it is all about. It is about unblocking the flow of qi,

From Surface Tips To Energy Work

SPEAKER_00 8:43

the flow of energy in the body. So the remedies that we use in feng shui are basically like these needles that you use in acupuncture. So with specific placement of them, we can unblock stuck energy, or we can calm down energy that's just a bit too much. So within Feng Shui, we work with the five-element theory, which is the it's all the sort of the same kind of um school, if you like, as traditional Chinese medicine, which acupuncture sits under. So we are looking at the five-element theory, which includes fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. Now, the belief is, and the history of it is, is that everything in our world belongs to, has an elemental energy of one of those elements, so fire, water, earth, wood, metal. Now, what's really cool from my perspective, because what I think is cool, might be different to what you think is cool. Certainly different from what my kids think is cool. Although I have to say they are kind of they they do they're now starting to say, Oh, is that the Feng Shui mummy? With a little bit of an eye roll sometimes, but we get we're getting there, we're getting there, and they're starting to understand. So, with that theory, all of those elements exist within our home. So they exist within the decor, they exist within you know everything that is in our house. But when you look at flying stars feng shui, we have this like invisible layer, and this is where I get a bit geeky and really excited because this is where we start talking about like true energy. So, in Flying Stars Feng Shui, which is the school that I teach and practice, and you know, when I analyse people's homes, this is the practice that I'm using. We are looking at these stars, they're called stars, but the stars are essentially just these invisible sort of channels of energy. Now, you know, we number them, and each one is allocated to one of these elements, it they all have a personality. I mean, I'm not going to go into the depths of that because that's a course in itself to understand and learn all of these stars. But essentially, what it means is that when we look at a home and when I analyze a home, I look at these stars, and working out what those stars are comes from things like if you've had your home analysed, you'll know the information I asked for. So it comes from things like when your house was built or when there was any major renovation, because renovation can change like the birth date of a home. It is based on things like the direction that your home is facing in, and sometimes that's the front of the house, sometimes it's not the front of the house. So there's so much that goes into working out what these stars are, and it also includes the year that we're in now because these energies kind of ebb and flow and they change every year. And you will have seen maybe from myself, or you certainly might have heard it on this podcast already, about the fact that we have just moved into in fact, we're not even at Chinese New Year yet, so we're we're literally just into this new fire horse year, which means the energy is completely different to how it was last year, which was the year of the wood snake. So if you just imagine, you know, if you if you had a wood snake

Flying Stars And Invisible Energies

SPEAKER_00 12:18

and a fire horse, you know, I don't need to explain to you what the difference between those two energies are, like you can visualize that yourself. So, and that's what we're looking at. So when we when we take all of that into consideration and we kind of do this mathematical equation, we can see and start to kind of understand and decode what energy is sitting within a home. Now I know it sounds, I know it sounds absolutely bonkers. I do understand that. Like I do understand that. And if you'd well, actually not if you'd said to me, because I've always been a bit like this and I've always been into energy and I've always been able to feel things that other people can't feel, but you know, I know many, many, many people, my husband included, who is about as straight as they come. He is pretty much, you know, like absolute square straight down the line. I don't mean square boring by the way, I mean square, like, you know, you know, just doesn't necessarily lean into these kind of invisible things that I do. And even he, even he now is starting to understand how this house feels and how it feels different, and how things seem to magically change when we change and play with our remedies. So, you know, I know it sounds bonkers, but there are so many people who have sort of jumped in with both feet and said, Okay, let's just see how it goes, and then had their minds absolutely blown. In fact, I will just say I'm listening at the moment to an incredible book which is all about energy. As I say, this is where I completely geek out because this is you know, this is what I live for ultimately, it is what I live for. So I'm listening to this incredible book, and I love the science of energy, I love things like quantum physics. Like I'm I'm not gonna go into that because this is not what this is about. But you know, when we look at the fact that literally everything, everything, everything that you are looking at, sitting on, touching whatever now is made of energy, that we can't deny that things interact with each other, it's not it's not possible. Like the physics, physics, the law of physics tells you that things interact with each other on an energetic level. And and in this book that I'm listening to, it was absolutely crackers. It basically said that if you collapsed all of the matter from all of the humans on Earth, so what it was it like eight billion people, something like that. I think it's something like that. If you collapsed all of the matter and took out all of the kind of energetic space and just had the physical matter, you could fit the entire population into the size of a sugar cube. Now that literally blew my mind, that blew my mind, and I live in this world and I live in energy, so yeah, energy is real. Whether we it is just a case of you know, you can decide whether you want to lean into it or you can decide not to, and that's cool, it's fine either way, but it doesn't take away from the fact that all of the science says that energy is real and energy flow is real and things interact with each other. So, going back to these elements the fire, the water, the earth, the wood, and the metal, the aim of feng shui is to balance those elements. So, when we are looking at these stars, these energetic stars in flying stars feng shui, each of those stars represents an element. Now, when we kind of do the mathematical equation, if that's what you want to call it, what we do is we look at any kind of negative energy that is showing up, and our first job as Feng Shui consultants is to neutralize anything that is showing up as a negative, right now Feng Shui has a bit of a bad rap for focusing on negativity, and it does, like there is no getting away from it. The traditional language is sometimes a little bit unpleasant. Well, not unpleasant, it's just a bit straight to the point, frankly. So, you know, there are there are feng shui consultants and practitioners that you know lean into that negativity and talk about that because that is the traditional way of talking about it, and that is sort of the the traditional focus is focusing on how to protect yourself from the negativity. Personally, I don't want to live in that world and I don't want to think about negativity all the time. I'd rather be in this lovely high vibey place. So my job as a as a consultant is to look at the energy of a home, find the negative sort of stars, the negative energy, and neutralize those by balancing these five elements. So we have some of these elements are kind of neutralizers, they bring energy down, and some of them are activators and they bring energy up. So if we take um we'll go through them each one by one. So if we look at the fire element now, I probably don't need to tell you about what colour fire element things are. So we are looking at, you know, your reds, your oranges, that yellow is in the fire element kind of spectrum, but only that really, really bright yellow, not kind of anything that goes into more of a muted or a pastel or a sort of mustard that comes out of fire. Fire is like banana bright yellow. So again, we're talking about fire because it's a fire horse year, and if you think about the energy that is associated with fire, you know, it is very active, it is a bit unpredictable, it's very intense. So if you think about what can come if you have got too much fire, so let's say you had an awful lot of fire energy in, I don't know, let's say the living room of your home, right? Let's let's say the living room. What you might find there is that when you come together collectively as a family in that space, you frequently have these heated discussions, these arguments, you know, it can cause people to be fiery and angry and just quite intense if it's out of balance. Whereas, you know, thinking about water on the flip side of that, again, we're looking at the colours, water is your blues, your kind of sea greens, your turquoisey kind of tones, all the way down to black because obviously the depths of the ocean are black. And if you think then about what that represents, that is all about flow. But too much water isn't good either because what that shows up as is things like it can be things, for example, money flowing through your house too quickly, so it comes in but it goes back out. It can be things like just too much movement, never feeling like you're kind of stable, it's a bit rocky, it's a bit turbulent, and then you look at the earth element, which is the literal earth, the ground, the stones, the crystals, the the actual physical earth. And again, you think about the qualities of that as an element, and it is grounding and it is stable and it is still so too much earth is an element, and your home is stuck. Now, this is where I'm going to talk a little bit about modern day decor, because again, we if we're just if we're talking about sort of the more surface level of Feng Shui, if you don't know what is going on energetically in your home, as like an undertone current, we all, myself included, live in homes now that are basically beige. They are beige. None of us really have a huge amount of that's not true, that's really generic, and I probably that's that's a very, very generic my era of Instagram Pinterest women. We live in beige homes, right? We do, and there is actually there's an awful lot of interesting science about that, and and it all comes back around because

Five Elements Explained

SPEAKER_00 20:51

we are as a generation of women and mothers wildly, wildly overstimulated and overfull all of the time because of what life expects of us these days, and actually the reason that we gravitate so hugely to these earthly tones is because they represent calmness, they represent stability, they represent slowness. So when you actually look at the the effect of that on the brain, it's really interesting, and again, I'm not going to go into like massive geeky levels, but there is science as to say why we are all kind of leaning so much onto this more muted lifestyle because everything else is just so much. Um, but the issue there is that it generates this feeling sometimes of being too still and too stuck. So if you are running a business, let's say, let's say you are a mum, let's let's say somebody like me, right? So I have got three children, it is crackers, it is busy, and I am running my own business. So my life is very, very full and very, very busy. So, you know, psychologically, I Lean into these karma colours because that is what energetically my psychology needs. But my home, my home does not need any earth at all. But my home is full of these earth colours and the fact that it's full of crystals as well. So when you haven't got that balance right, it can lead to this feeling of not really making any moves forward, and that then creates frustration and it all just gets really, really sticky. So let's look at wood. So wood is literal plants. There's an awful lot of people who will talk to you about whether driftwood or kind of wooden ornaments is okay and representative of the wood element. Personally, for me, it is a no because any wood that has been cut down is dead. That's ultimately, you know, it might be beautiful, but it's dead. And the whole point of Feng Shui is to bring this life force energy. So when you are looking at alive wood, which is plants, right? So we're talking about soft leafy plants, they don't have to be huge plants, things like jade plants are beautiful. Try and avoid things like cactuses because although they're really, really good for air quality, they're quite spiky and it brings like this agitated energy. So we really want to be looking at soft leafy plants. But when again, when you think about what that plant represents, it's growth, it's steadiness, it's this upward movement, it's this kind of unstoppable surging forward. When everything else is set up for it to thrive, it will thrive, and that's the energy that it brings to a space, it's kind of upward movement. And then we have metal. Metal is my favourite, as we know. No, I shouldn't have favourites, but I do. So metal is my favourite, and it is you know, it's the iron ore from the earth, so it is true metal. We're talking, you know, like steel and iron and those sorts of things. And what metal is is like a magnet, magnet for for negativity, it's like a purifier, and that's what I love about it so much. So my home energetically, you know, even if let's even if my family didn't live in this home, this home would need a lot of metal just because of the way that it is set up, the way that it is laid out, and the years that it was built and the year that we're in, right? So my need, my home needs a lot of metal, and then you add my family and my dynamics into this home. And you may have heard me talk about it a hundred times before. I have a son who is autistic and he has ADHD, and he takes a lot of work. I am a very, very busy SN mum when he is at home. We basically, you know, when he's not doing so well, we are on one-to-one kind of body doubling and management to make sure that he is safe, basically, is an intense role. So for me and for my lifestyle, the metal, like we know when the metal's out of this house. And I know it sounds bonkers, but we do because it what it does is you know, feng shui and these remedies, they're incredible, but they don't, they're not gonna change, it can't change my son, they can't change me, they don't change who we are. But what they do is that they like metal, for example, it soaks up all of this kind of excess energy. So, what you find in my home in particular is that we there are in our house there are huge emotional explosions from him and from my other children because they respond to him, so there's these huge emotional explosions, but very quickly, once we've got the situation sort of calmed down and back under control, the feeling that is left behind dissipates. There is no kind of leftover. So, you know, when you walk into a room and you can tell that somebody's haven't had an argument in there, you know, you you arrive at your friend's house, for example, and you can tell they've just had this massive blow-up because you can literally feel that tangible energy in the air. That is what this metal like sucks into itself. It's like an air purifier, and I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. So that's kind of a brief introduction. As I say, this would be a course if I went into it in much detail. I might actually record a course at some point when life gets a little bit less busy. Maybe, maybe one day. So maybe I'll put it on the list for this year. So if we just talk really briefly about how the elements work together, there are three cycles. There is a creative cycle, there is a productive cycle, and there is a destructive cycle. So these five elements are interacting with each other constantly. So, for example, if you think about water and wood, right? You can probably guess that water feeds wood, because if you water a plant, the plant will grow. But but there are so many layers to it. So if we think about, well, let's just let's just go through them. So if you think about fire on wood, fire is going to burn wood, right? So it destroys the wood, but then in turn, that wood turns to ash, which then goes into the earth and feeds the earth. But if we wanted, if we brought metal into that equation, for example, if you think about what metal does to earth, you're literally extracting metal from the earth, you're taking away from the earth, so that is not a productive or good cycle. And then you think about metal and water, and what happens, you know, if you think about overnight, and if you've got, let's say you put something outside overnight, what do you find on the metal? Water, because that's the reaction

Beige Decor, Overstimulation, And Stuckness

SPEAKER_00 27:58

between the coldness of the metal and the air creates water. So the you can see how the five elements themselves work so closely together. So when I get questions about things like where do I put metal in my home, or where do I need fire, or where shall I put this these crystals? So much of that is unanswerable when you look at this level of feng shui because it depends on so much what is going on as that kind of undertone of energy within your home. So that is why every single analysis or every single you know assessment of a home, an energy assessment of a home, is so different because every single house has a completely unique energy kind of blueprint to it, an energy footprint. There are schools of Feng Shui that sit within that more generic bracket that will say, you know, these are the schools that say, well, the front door is the north, even if your front door sat in facing the southeast, let's say. There are schools of Feng Shui that would say we treat every front door as the north of the home. And then they work around, you know, on an internal compass that is nothing to do with the actual compass itself. Now, they would be able to say to you, you should put this element here, because it works on a different kind of theory, if that makes sense, on a slightly lighter, less in in-depth theory. So when we're talking about flying stars feng shui, it is impossible to tell you without looking at the deeper energy of your home what elements you need where. What I can say is have a think about. So if you've got the I've got a download that is called the Nine Areas of Your Home, and that will talk about where in your home you represent certain areas of your life energetically. So let's say you are somebody who feels stuck at work. Let's just, you know, use that as an example. So whether you feel like you're not progressing, whether you feel like you can't get a job, a new job, whether you are out of work and you want to find employment and nothing is happening and you feel really stagnant about that, find that north area of your home and have a look at it and see what's there. Because without knowing about the undertones of the energy, all we can do is work at this surface level, right? So if you were to go to that north area of your home and you found that you had an awful lot of like the beiges and the earthly tones, you could try popping a bit of fire in there just to activate it, just to bring it alive a little bit and bring it up a little bit. And you know, it's it's about playing with it, it's about you finding out what works for you if you're you know not at the point where you want to go deeper with it. Or if you have a child who is quite angry and quite fiery, I would be looking at the areas that they spend a lot of time and I'd be having a look at the colours that are in there. And I might bring if there was lots of reds and oranges and yellows, especially, so you know, pink, pink is a fire colour, it's a soft pink, a soft, a soft fire colour, but so it's not wildly intense. But you know, those of us with sort of pre-teen girls and teenage girls, if there's a lot of pink and there's an awful lot of intensity, it's not about redecorating, right? Nobody really needs to go and put that on their list of things to do, but bringing in some of those more kind of blues, if you can, turquoises sometimes fit a little bit better with the girls, they're a bit more understanding of that and a bit more kind of receptive to that. Although my daughter's favourite colour is blue, so you know, I again I'm being wildly generic because that's all I can be here, is you know, bring some of those more calming water tones in because that will extinguish a little bit of the fire. So there are some really great ways of playing with the elements in your own home on a surface level. But if you really want to know, you know, when we're talking about sticking 300 kilos of metal into a home or you know what my home needs, 30 kilograms in X number of places, you don't want to be guessworking at that because that is an energetic vortex if it is wrong, and that is not what anybody wants to be doing. So if you want to go from a playful perspective, that's great. If you want to go in depth, then obviously that's where you can get in touch with me, and we can talk about how Feng Shui can be sort of used within your home, within the specifics of your home. There is so much more to it than that. That's just such a brief overview. But I realise that I've been talking for a really, really long time, and I've always tried to keep these podcasts to about half an hour. But this is such a massive topic, but I'm going to leave it there. If anybody has any like specific questions, send them to me because I pick up all these messages. So send them across to me and I will have a look at them. And then when so I'm not going to record next week because it will be half term. I will record again from the week after. So if you have questions that's come from this and you want to know more and you want to understand more about the theory of it, then let me know because I can I'm always happy to. This is like this is this is my happy

Wood, Plants, And What To Avoid

SPEAKER_00 33:30

space, this is my happy place. Talking about the depth of Feng Shui, like giving people tips and giving people surface level stuff. That is all I can do on you know when we're talking about social media and emails and things, but talking at this depth, this is where I'm a happy bunny. So I'm always, always, always happy to record things for for you on that basis. So on that, I'm going to leave you for the next two weeks, uh, or two weeks or week, well, week off. Uh, I don't know what that transpires to, but um, I do really hope that wherever you are in the world, because this is now across the world, which blows my mind. I can't tell you this is the power of Feng Shui, okay? Because this is now global, which is wild. So wherever you are in the world, I hope that you are happy, healthy, and well. And I will speak to you really, really soon.