Environmentally Savvy When Green Wasn't Cool

By Pat Heydlauff

Do you have your own definition of a Green Lifestyle? Are renewable or sustainable energy, climate change and environmental pollution on your short list? Are you considering a shift to a greener lifestyle and making changes in your home and your thinking to bring you into more harmony with the environment?

It is time to take action on your thoughts. Today is the best day to begin to invest in a green lifestyle, eco-friendly products and you?  Whether you agree or disagree with everything you hear and read about the greening of America, you can definitely agree upon the fact that a lot of time, money and effort is being dedicated to this endeavor.

What is a Green Lifestyle?  Everyone has their own definition of the greening of America and what living a green lifestyle should look like. And, sometimes those definitions are vastly different and at opposite ends of the spectrum.

My rather simple definition of a Green America based on an ancient Feng Shui principle is: people who live in, support and replenish the environment and an environment that supports people through providing a life giving atmosphere and resources in order that they both prosper.

The second definition of a green life could be living the Feng Shui lifestyle. The principles of the original Form School of Feng Shui are all about creating your home and life to be in complete harmony with your surrounding environment. Feng Shui is about uncluttering and using positive energy in your surroundings so you and your environment can enjoy abundance.

If you think about it, Planet Earth some 3000 years ago when Feng Shui got its start was in perfect balance. To keep it somewhat uncomplicated, Earth experienced day and night, heat and cold, wet and dry over a yearly cycle. It had oceans and land masses, mountains and valleys, barren land and crop supporting land.

The ancient Chinese civilization learned to work with their environment and to manage the resources so they could live in harmony with their environment. They altered their environment only by cultivating the land and building shelter to survive. When they learned how to position their homes in harmony with the energy forms provided by the environment such as trees, hills, rivers and maximum warmth from the sun in the South they began to thrive.

Feng Shui Today: Since most people would not turn the clock back 3000 years to recapture that pristine environment, there are a number of things you can do today to live in better harmony with the environment.

Rather than think about the environment from a global perspective which is out of reach for most, look around your home to find those things within your reach that you can control and do something about today. Unclutter, recycle and use eco-friendly products indoors and out. Care for and nurture your home and Mother Earth as you would care for yourself and your family.

Preserve, Replenish and Unclutter: In Feng Shui, one of the best ways to improve your personal environment is to make sure positive energy enters your home. That means you need to unclutter the outside too including the walkway leading up to entrance of your home.

When landscaping and gardening, remember to use eco-friendly products that are good for the plants, the birds and the earth. Then, focus on preservation and replenishment care in the planning process. If you have large healthy mature trees, find ways to protect and care for them as they provide you protection from the sun and heat plus help maintain the planet’s healthy atmosphere.

If plants are overgrown, prune them. If they are unhealthy, even dead remove them immediately because they are sending negative unhealthy energy into your home. Plants like this should always be promptly removed and replaced to provide a healthy energy environment surrounding your home. Both you and the environment benefit.

In a home case study, positive energy was not reaching the front door because plantings were old and overgrown causing the walkway to be dark. Plus the large old tree on the left was lifting the sidewalk more than six inches in at least two places making it unsafe and exposing the home owners and guest to injury and litigation.

Saving the tree was their number one priority. The Feng Shui solution was to create a wide S curve walkway to accommodate the roots of the tree and to encourage positive energy to meander into the house and linger spreading abundance throughout. The design not only opened up the walkway so it wasn’t so dark, it also made it safer and more welcoming to guests and for new energy to enter the home.

The final step was to unclutter the area by removing decaying old plants and properly pruning the others to encourage new growth for the plants as well as the homeowners. A few colorful new plantings were added to further energize the welcoming energy.

There are easily thousands of other things you can do and products you can buy that lend themselves to a greener lifestyle. The Feng Shui suggestions are about removing and controlling the clutter in your personal environment which provides you better energy. And, recycling and using more eco-friendly products provides the environment more positive energy rather than having to deal with more waste.

By following some of these simple suggestions you’ve improved your quality of life and that of the environment. Plus, you are preserving and or replenishing the environment when caring for its plants and trees – living a Green lifestyle today that was cool 3000 years ago.

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