With the spread of teleworking, more and more employees have had to set up an office space at home. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have a room, among all the rooms of the house, dedicated to this purpose, sometimes it is just a corner table in the main room. In any case, there are several rules to follow when setting up this office so that it provides the most conducive energy possible. Here are my 5 tips.
A well-designed office
As I said in my article on the bedroom, the more time we spend in a room, the more important it is to look after the energies in it. We spend a certain amount of time sleeping, but we spend almost as much time at work. This first piece of advice can be followed whether the office is at home or in a professional location.
The best way to set up an office is to place it in the room in the best possible way. Ideally, the desk or work table should be placed so that you can see the entrance to the room when you are sitting at it. However, it should not be directly in line with the door. As you can see, you should not have your back to the door.
Ideally, the desk should not be placed against a wall: sitting facing a wall (see photo below) can block ideas, limit creativity and cause concentration problems. If you really have no choice, put a jumble of positive quotes, inspirational images, etc. in front of you.
The solid wall (without windows) should be behind you to give you support, it will play the role of a turtle (see the school of form). To reinforce this, choose a good chair with a backrest that reaches at least to the shoulders.
As was the case with the bed, avoid placing the desk in the window-door flow or between two doors. The energy there is too fast and is considered as shar chi. It is also not advisable to place a desk in a room with beams on the ceiling.
Finally, pay attention to the lighting: if possible, favour natural light. If this is not enough, or if you are still working after dark, choose a desk lamp with a light temperature appropriate to your activity.
A tidy and orderly office
Last week I saw a report about a person with DID (dissociative identity disorder). She was going to see a specialist in Paris. I lost all concentration on the dialogue between the patient and the psychiatrist: my eyes remained frozen on the man’s desk, filled with various papers, books, magazines… And I kept repeating to myself: how does he do it? How can he work and think in such a messy place?
I know that some people say they work better in an “orderly mess”, and it is true that for some jobs, in order to encourage creativity, it is appropriate not to put EVERYTHING away. However, there is a fine line between having a small mess while you create, and having things all over the place that are never tidy.
The first thing to do is to provide storage for everything: drawer units with wheels, closed bookcases, archive boxes, magazine holders, etc.
The desk area must also be organised. It can be cluttered from time to time during an activity session, but it is important to tidy it up at the end of the day, especially when the office is not in a dedicated room. A tidy environment makes for more orderly thinking. The tidier it is, the easier it is to clean. As you know, Feng Shui likes clean and healthy places.
The 8 aspirations applied to the office
If you are familiar with the 8 aspirations school, you can even arrange the surface of the work table according to the sectors.
Remember:
- in the south, the reputation
- in the north, career
- in the west, projects
- in the east, health
- in the northwest, luck
- in the southwest, relationships
- in the north-east, knowledge
- in the south-east, money
Now imagine the working surface of the desk as if it were the floor plan of a flat: South is in front of you, in the upper part of the table, North is also in front of you but in the lower part (I remind you that the Chinese compass is inverted).
You can place the objects on the desk in the most appropriate area. An object can be adequate, depending on its symbolism, otherwise choose a decorative object of the shape and colour of the area.
For example, in the south-east, I can place a money box and as it is the wood element, I choose it in green. I’ve given you a few examples in the diagram below: dice for the luck zone, a photo cube for the relationships zone, a notebook for the knowledge zone, etc.
It’s up to your imagination!
Don’t forget that before activating zones according to “aspiration”, you need to know what you want and therefore, here, have a clear vision of your professional objectives.
A well-oriented office
In Feng Shui, orientation is never neutral. As you know, your Kua number determines your most favourable orientations. I let you read the article again to have more details (and in particular how to calculate your Ming Gua thanks to your birth date and to know your personal orientations).
Ideally, you should position your desk so that you look towards one of these directions when you are sitting.
The most favourable direction when working is Sheng, the direction of prosperity.
The least suitable is Fu Wei, harmony, as it can cause drowsiness.
I know that it is sometimes difficult to turn to a favourable direction while respecting the principles of arrangement described above. If you work on a corner table, however, it is easy to choose the right chair 🙂
Feeding the energy of the Feng Shui office
This is where you have to get out the compass. Indeed, nourishing energy means bringing the right element (and the element that produces this element) to the area of the home where the office is located.
The fact that the office belongs to one (or more) trigram(s) makes it possible to define the most suitable colours, shapes and materials.
In a survey carried out this summer, the client wanted to fit out her office. Luckily, only one area was involved: the west.
The walls were all white, which is metal. But to nourish this metal and reinforce the supportive side of the wall behind her, I advised her to use a solid yellow colour (the element Earth produces metal). A beautiful, bright yellow has a place in an office because it boosts the intellect while encouraging concentration and the assimilation of new ideas.
Finally, the most advanced feng shui expertise will be completed by the school of the flying stars: it will be a question of determining where the dominant water star is located. This star, known as the “front star”, governs prosperity. It is the ideal place in the house for the office room, or the ideal place to place the boss’s desk in business premises.
