The maddening rush towards innovation that we have experienced in the past few years has abruptly, forcibly slowed down in 2020.
Spending long time at home has led us to ponder and rethink many of our lifestyles and ways of doing business.
We have had the time to wonder about what would be the most suitable behavior for humankind to adopt; although in too confuse a way, we have realized the need to go back to those principles that humankind needs to conform to, the ethical standards that rule our existence and our complex network of social interactions.
What we have experienced in these months is what TAO has been teaching for thousands of years – the need to find the right balance between the constant drive for innovation and progress and our physical and mental wellbeing.
We discussed this with Master Paola Neglia, owner of Living Naturally, who has spent years studying the oriental disciplines, to try and understand together with her what direction the thousand-year-old Taoist tradition is indicating for us.
Nature is sending us a clear message, we are going too fast!
TAO teaches us that the answer to excessive speed is slowness, so we need to take a break! TAO teaches us to go with the flow, be flexible and always look for balance.
I can confirm that, in the past few months, requests for consultations have multiplied, as people have been trying to understand how to deal with this new living dimension.
What kind of consultation is this?
Being forced to spend long time at home and live together has revealed that our houses are often not in line with our new life needs. Sharing spaces with others, even if we love them, can be complicated.
Many have come to me to find a solution for the discomfort they were experiencing at home. In my experience, what may help in such cases is a Feng Shui consultation.
How can Feng Shui contribute to our wellbeing?
By reawakening us, and making us listen to our inner selves. By making it possible for our homes to tune in to our needs. But not everyone is aware of this. We often experience too many influences. In this respect, starting by working on our home with Feng Shui helps, because our home is us, literally.
Our home is our dress, our protection, but should not separate us from nature.
We often use our homes as safety helmets, to say this with a metaphor, but it is exactly when we wear helmets that we need to always lift our visor up, or we might risk taking a leap in the dark. Interacting with our surroundings is not just important, but necessary, too.
Going back to listening to the outside, to natural cycles, means finding our wellbeing again.
The first step to do this is rearranging environments. Everything has its own natural order, and this needs to be respected.
What do you exactly mean by this?
Feng Shui is the sum and root of many olistic disciplines, a science that considers visible phenomena and energy data and that, if correctly applied, can produce excellent results.
Let’s consider for instance how crucial it is in agriculture that a field should be correctly exposed to sunlight and protected from the winds, or how the weather can impact our mood. Likewise, we need to take care of arranging and protecting our homes.
In Feng Shui, every part of the house represents the family members, the vital organs, the past and the present.
Working on our houses means working on ourselves, on our present and consequently on our future.
Just like our body should be properly covered according to our needs, our houses need to follow our changes and adapt to the period we are living in.
At the times of China’s great imperial dynasties, the emperor would not make any decision before consulting the Feng Shui masters. Today, obviously, we cannot be that radical. The assessment of living spaces often presents me with architectures that clash with spatial and environmental universal laws; my job is to solve these problems, or at least to minimize them in order to restore the harmony between space and people, the family members and their life projects.
How to minimize architectural weaknesses?
Sometimes I cannot transform houses, so I help people not to be too influenced by the houses themselves. Gain awareness is the most important step.
Houses need to be our allies in life, to help us become the best version of ourselves.
Experiencing the least influences, children and animals are often the first to have benefits from the changes I suggest.
In Italy, real estate investments are often considered as something final, Feng Shui is about change. How to conjugate the need for the stability that a house symbolizes with the need for flexibility that Feng Shui supports?
The consultant’s goal is to get the maximum benefits with the smallest number of physical interventions, having the least effects. When such small interventions are not possible either, what matters is to at least realize what we need. My job is about getting to this realization, and starting from there to achieve wellbeing. I am not an architect, I do not move walls or redesign spaces, but work with what I have in order to identify any possible weaknesses, any possible flaws there might be at home and outside, and to change them, or at least minimize what cannot be changed.
A two-way relationship is created: I change my environment, and my environment changes me. It is a big change. Realizing that there is a problem is the first step to change the standard. Going off the tracks of conditionings does not mean that you are derailing, but that you are simply finding a new way.
During these months of lockdown, it can’t have been easy to arrange onsite visits for consultations.
As a matter of fact, I thought of creating online training courses in order to give everyone the tools to carry out a first assessment of the state of the art. My job is to give indications, advice that might be the starting point for change. In my ten-year experience, I have come to realize that having a specialist to outline the way forward is key, but everyone is the master of himself or herself. I firmly believe in this new approach.
Thanks to Maria Mele
