Bagua Zones in Your Home

The Bagua is like a map of Feng Shui. It is essentially an octagon shaped diagram which, when laid over your home, office, or yard tells you which aspect of your life corresponds to which "gua" or area of the space. When you learn how to apply the Bagua, you can focus your attention on evaluating and adjusting anything in a gua which may be effecting your success in that field.

Say you are having trouble financially; the area of your home or office that influences prosperity and abundance may have the wrong balance of colors and elements in it. Removing an object or adding another object may fix that energetic imbalance, and this could help your financial situation.

How you orient the bagua depends on which of three schools you follow. The traditional Chinese bagua uses compass readings to orient the Bagua, the BTB and Western school do not use a compass, but rather orient in relation to the front door, regardless of which direction it faces. The following presumes that you are not using the compass to orient the Bagua.

In the Bagua diagram, there is a different zone that radiates outward from each side of the octagon. If you were to lay this diagram over the blue prints of your building or over the diagram of a room within it, the zone that corresponds with Career and Life Path would be laid over the entrance door. If we imagine that position to be 6:00 on an analog clock, and we go clock wise from our left hand side, then the next side of the octagon (we could think of it as 7:30) would be the skills, knowledge, and wisdom zone. Continuing up to the 9:00 position would be the family/ foundation zone; 10:30 would be the prosperity and abundance zone; 12:00 would be the fame and reputation zone; 1:30 would be the relationship, love, and marriage zone; 3:00 would be the creativity and children zone; and 4:30 would be the helpful people and travel zone. The center of the octagon is the health zone. To maximize your health and your success in the various aspects of life, the Bagua can be very helpful.

Each zone or gua has its own color: career/life path is black; knowledge is blue; family/foundation is green; prosperity/abundance is purple; fame/reputation is red; relationship/ love/ marriage is pink; creativity/children is white; helpful people/travel is grey; and health is yellow. The element of water corresponds with the career/ life path gua; the element of wood corresponds with the family/ foundation gua; the element of fire corresponds with the fame/reputation gua; the element of metal corresponds with the creativity and children gua; and the element of earth corresponds with the health gua.

For a list of suggestions regarding your adjustment of each gua using these colors and elements, refer to the article entitled How to Improve the Feng Shui in Each Zone of the Bagua.

When your space is oddly shaped, there may be whole zones that seem to be missing. There are ways to compensate for a missing gua, or for a gua which is underdeveloped because of the floor plan. One good way to enlarge a zone that is disproportionately small, and therefor lacking adequate Qi (pronounced Chi, meaning the vital force) to nourish the corresponding aspect of your life, is to put a large mirror where it will make that gua seem to double in size. When the zone feels twice as big, the Qi increases there.

A light source and/ or a broad leafed plant or tree is also good for missing zones. Either place them at the indoor edge of where the zone aught to be, or go out in the yard and plant a broad leafed tree, a lamp post, or a flag pole in the spot that would be the corner of that room if the building had included one in that zone. The height of the pole or tree should be equal to the distance from that spot to the wall where the room would be connected. If, for instance, it was your prosperity zone that was missing in the floor plan, then the part of the yard where that room should have been would be the perfect place for a compost pile, plants with purple leaves or flowers, and a purple food garden growing eggplant, purple lettuce, plums, etc.