What elements do you need in any room that you wish to Feng Shui? This simple question has a complicated process. Before I even get to the answer, you’ll need some foundational information about Feng Shui.

This is a Lo Shu. It’s a three by three grid with these numbers – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, taking space in all of these nine boxes. Each of these boxes, you’ll see a direction that it is linked to.

Based on the Lo Shu for this period, 7 = West; 6 = Northwest; 1 = North; 8 = Northeast; 3 = East; and 5 = Center (Technically directionless). The Lo Shu is the foundational piece of calculation that we use over and over again, not just in Feng Shui application, but also in Chinese Date Selection and even in some astrological references as well.

If you’ve been practicing Feng Shui, you probably have seen this other chart.

It is the same 3×3 Grid, except this time, you get what we call the Direction for the Elements as well. Following the chart for this period:

• The element in the Southeast and East is Wood.
• The element in the South is Fire.
• The element in the West and Northwest is Metal.
• The element in the North is Water
• The element in the Northeast, Center and Southwest is Earth

This is the formula for Classical Feng Shui.

We do have people who know these two charts with a simple formula and made it into a full-blown Feng Shui practice. That is not the real way to do it. Just because your bedroom is in the Southeast, doesn’t mean you paint your bedroom green. Or if your front door is in the South, doesn’t mean that you paint your front door red. That is absolutely not the way this Lo Shu is meant to be used. This is not the end all and be all of Feng Shui in terms of the elements or the colors that you need.

This is the five element cycle. You have fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. And basically transferred the numbers that I have in the 3×3 Lo Shu Grid. So in this chart here, there’s a clockwise and counterclockwise arrow pattern.

The clockwise pattern, the Dark Arrow is the productive cycle, meaning the earth element produces more metal. The metal element produces water. The water element produces wood. The wood element produces fire, and the fire element produces earth.

The counterclockwise pattern, the Yellow Arrow is the weakening cycle. The fire element weakens. The wood weakens water, water weakens metal, metal weakens, earth and earth weakens fire.

Notice that I have the correlating numbers for all the elements here. 3, 4 is Wood; 1 is water, and so on and so forth. You need to know all of them. Anyone who is interested in Feng Shui need to commit this Five Element Cycle (the productive and weakening cycle) to memory. This will determine ultimately what element you need for your home.

Again, this is not the end all and be all! This is not even where we stop!

So after knowing the element and the correlating numbers. After knowing the weakening cycle and the producing cycle of the five element cycles. NOW we can start piecing things together to find out what elements you need in each of your directions or each of your rooms.

We’ll use an example for illustration purposes.

This is the Flying Star chart of a Period 8 house. Meaning the people in this house, they moved in after February 4th, 2004. I’ve got other videos on my YouTube Channel talking about Feng Shui Period, so I’m not going to go into that here. In this case, this house is facing South2, meaning it’s a between 172.6 degrees and 187.5 degrees on the compass reading.

And again, I’ve got more videos on that. I’m not gonna go into the nitty gritty of that here. So this is now, after knowing the period of the house and knowing the direction of the house, now we are able to plot the flying star chart of the home. Now this my friends, is the permanent energy of the home.

All the top left numbers here correlate to energies that can impact health and relationship.

All the numbers on the top right numbers has impact on your money. It can be your career, your business, your investments.

In more advanced flying star practices, we actually look at the combinations. The combinations of the Mountain Star and the Water Star. Each of these combinations hold another potential of energy, whether it’s positive or negative energy.

Let’s say my office is in the West, for instance. The number 6 is a Metal element number. The number 1 is a Water element number.

The two are actually pretty harmonious. The number 1 in its location right now is actually really auspicious for money, and therefore it’s actually really good to have the office here.

If I want to increase the energy, maybe salary through a career promotion, more clientele, better luck with my investments. Then I’ll need to activate the number 1. Number 1 as we saw earlier, is a water. And I am also very lucky that I have the number 6 here, which is a metal element. And guess what? Metal produces water (productive cycle), right? So in this case, if I were to put me more metal in this room (My metal filing cabinet there and metal colors are whites, grays, silver, gold, chrome, brass. This room will take very well to metal elements or metal color because of the elements that we have in the top left and the top right.

If you are new to Flying Star Feng Shui, this will hurt your head a little bit.

But guess what? This is how REAL FENG SHUI is done. Remember that the Feng Shui of your home is specific to you. For someone who moved in to a different house, even if they have the same period but they are facing a different direction then they would have a totally different energy here in the West.

If someone who moved into a house prior to February 4th, 2004, they are Period 7. Then all the energies are different again. So I hate to break it to you, there is NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL FENG SHUI. Real Feng Shui is complicated.

So like I said, that question of “Safrina, what element do I need?” I don’t know. Until I know your Period, your Facing and your usage of the room. Only then can I help you determine what elements or what colors you need in that room.

Your layout is as unique as your thumbprint. If you want to do Feng Shui properly, it must be unique to your home. No ifs and buts about that. 🙂