LUNAR FENG SHUI: ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE WITH THE CYCLES

In keeping with the vibes of Virgo season, Meghan Wallace James’ guide to Lunar Feng Shui reveals how powerful intention setting starts at home …

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Photo: Jacob Dowis

The New Moon offers us the chance to use darkness to initiate insightful alignment in both our inner and outer worlds (especially true during Virgo Season, the zodiac’s queen of divine detail!)

Let’s start by bringing back the concept of boudoir—a French term that includes the master bedroom, closet, and bathroom, and designed for deep withdrawal and privacy. For this lunar cycle, we’ll start with the master bathroom. In its most romanticized context, a bathroom is a place to leisurely commune with Higher Self: a space to practice self care while contemplating the mysteries of The Universe …

Follow the steps below for each moon phase and sync your space with the cosmos! And if you want more time to prepare, you can plan to begin your Lunar Feng Shui experiment with the October 8 Libra New Moon …

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// NEW MOON// Embrace the mess & purge the past. 
1// During the New Moon phase, sit in quiet contemplation in the heart center of your boudoir. Feel into this space and internally inquire: How would an infusion of elegant minimalism and cleanliness bolster my energy? How would a streamlined bathroom positively influence my energetic imprint within my home and beyond?How does the lunar cycle provide an inherent rhythm to a beautifully powerful reset? Answers will come. Give gratitude. Then, in the name of Beauty, enter your bathroom…

2// Turn on the lights, and your ‘energy detective’ eyes. What do you see? Which metaphors are visible? Embrace the mess – yes, your mess. In divine right timing, dedicate the time to move out of your bathroom before moving back into your bathroom. Take an old sheet and lay it in the hallway to protect the floor. Empty everything out of the bathroom, placing all toiletries, cosmetics, towels, you name it, on the sheet. Allow the sheer bulk to resonate.  Your bathroom was holding all this energy for you. Energy that is likely somewhat damp, moldy, grungy, or expired.  “Thank you dear bathroom.”

3// Now it is time to deep clean. Even if you are blessed with a cleaning service, today this is your job. Play chants, or eclectic world music to lift the stagnation from every nook and cranny. Scrub: scrub the sink, scrub the shower, scrub the bath, scrub the toilet. Clean inside the medicine cabinet and any drawers. Get on your hands and knees and do not miss a spot. Here’s the kicker: you are not just cleaning your space, you are cleaning your subconscious as well. So, clean until it becomes a graceful moving meditation. When you are done, open the window(s) and apply smoke medicine: Smudge your bathroom. Smudge your body. Heck, smudge your whole home.

4// Next, head back to the sheet holding all of your items. Let go of what no longer serves you, no longer captivates you. If you would not use the product on or in your body, rinse and recycle the container.  If something carries a negative emotional trigger – no matter what you paid for it, or who gave it to you – donate it. Keep the toilet brush and plunger out of your bathroom; these are unsightly, unsanitary and should live with the other cleaning supplies in your home, for like items prefer to live together.

5// Wipe down your remaining products. Wash the towels in a hot water cycle, take the hair out of your hairbrush, wash the cup holding your toothbrush, rinse the trash can, rinse and fill the soap dispenser … you get the idea. Place what remains back into your bathroom, with thoughtful consideration of your self care routine. Perhaps a fresh placement makes more sense? Remember, like items do best together. Aim to cultivate some empty space, which is a place for fresh energy to land, particularly if you are calling in Love & Abundance.

6// Finish with a shower, and then ideally an Epsom salt soak. You will sleep well tonight and likely have vivid dreams. Keep a notepad and pen on your bedside table, to capture any downloaded jewels.

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// WAXING MOON// Get ready for an upgrade 
Whew, with your bathroom purged, cleaned and realigned, what special touches could you now add? What ‘daily gems’ could be upgraded? ‘Daily gems’ are the household items we interact with on an everyday basis – the pretty hand towels and dry brushes of the world. They should inspire and uplift us, subliminally reinforcing: “I have a beautiful home; ease and grace surround me.” Easy, affordable upgrades in your bathroom can make a huge impact on your mood, such as a new shower curtain, a vibrant bathmat, or a bud vase with a single clipping from your yard.

Please do not overlook your cosmetics kit. Consider fewer products, all natural and high quality. Consider a signature scent for the upcoming crispness of Fall. Consider a new candle, to add a fire element to a very watery part of your home.

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Photo: Grace Madeline

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// FULL MOON// Celebrate the spatial shift 
This is the easy part: revel in the Oasis you have created. Reflect on your morning and evening beauty routines … do they feel more luxurious? Has anything shifted in your life since revamping your bathroom? Do you feel lighter and brighter perhaps? Hopefully you find yourself lounging in your tub even longer, dropping in some essential oils, lighting your new candle and using this time for decadent insight.  Marvelous ideas are birthed when we are inspired by what we see and sense.

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// WANING MOON// Revise & refine
You are sensing the correlation between visual metaphor and lived experience. With that in mind, is there another layer of purging that could happen? Do you truly need seventeen face creams? Do you really require that storage unit, adding bulk and taking up precious floor space? Make one final pass of your bathroom before moving onto a new spatial aspect of your Boudoir, or your home at large, with the next New Moon. Just wait and see… This work is addictive and effective. Your home will soon be completely activated and in tune with Luna!

**BONUS: Where does your boudoir fall on The Bagua? Use the chart below to discover! A Bagua is a Westernized Feng Shui energy map of a space, using the front door as a point of orientation, dividing the area into nine equal sized zones – or ‘guas’. Each gua has a name and energetic correlation, material element, color family, as well as a variety of other associations. … 

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Graphic: Meghan Wallace James & Sam Haskins

Meghan Wallace Jamesis a mother, manufacturing engineer, Parsons-trained fashion designer, stylist, and healer – bringing it all together with her bicoastal Modern Feng Shui Consultancy. Meghan is honored to offer The Numinous readers a 10% discount with code NUMINOUS, for this lunar cycle ending October 7, 2018. Ready to Begin Again? Connect with her at meghanwallacejames.com and follow her on Instagram.

LIGHT WORKER: THE HEALING JOURNEY OF JODY SHIELD

London-based Jody Shield has gained a reputation as the healers’ healer, and signed as a Lululemon meditation ambassador. She shares her journey with Ruby Warrington

Light Grids healer Jody Shield featured on The Numinous

“Quit your job.” It was back in 2013 that Jody Shield heard the voice, subtle and yet insistent. “The sensation that came with it was one of, ‘it’s fine, you’ll be supported, don’t worry, trust’,” she remembers. “But still I was like, ‘no, no…what’s going on?’ And it just kept repeating, ‘quit your job, quit your job, quit your job’…”

Until this moment it had been a regular day in the office at the London ad agency where Jody had worked since 2005, rising through the ranks to become Business Director. Sure, she’d suffered a degree of burn-out in the role, had taken a sabbatical to Peru to “find myself.”

Since her return, she’d been dabbling in alternative therapies, and quietly working to develop what she felt were her natural healing abilities. But she’d found a happy medium, or so she thought. Her newfound skills were simply tools to help her navigate the demands of her own life in the “real world.” But now it seemed as though Spirit had other plans.

“I realized I couldn’t ignore what I was hearing, and almost as if some external force was pushing me to my feet I found myself walking into my boss’s office to tell him I needed to talk. I resigned on the spot,” she remembers.

Within three months, “I had a business as a healer. People had actually already been contacting me about sessions, and I’d been seeing family and friends at weekends. Once I made the decision to focus on it fully, people just kept coming back, and I was like, ‘okay!’”

In the two years since, Jody has become one of the most sought after alternative therapists in London, also gaining a reputation as “the healers’ healer.” This fall, she was signed by Lululemon as their first ever European meditation ambassador, and with a busy public speaking schedule to boot she’s become a leading voice in the Now Age movement. For anybody seeking a similar transition to a career in healing, her journey is a lesson in surrendering to your calling.

Light Grids healer Jody Shield featured on The Numinous

Born in the North of England, “growing up, I always had a sense that there was something bigger out there and that I was going to be a part of it. I used to look at celebrities and think, ‘they’re no different to anybody else, they’ve just got big energy’. And I felt that way about myself, too,” she says.

As far as connecting to Spirit, “I had a sense of the different energies in our house, and would get goose bumps when I walked into certain rooms. I’d drag the dog in with me for ‘protection’,” she laughs. But like so many psychically-developed young women, “I shut it all down when I hit my teens and began to discover boys…”

The first indication that she would one day be asked to use her gifts blew into her life on the winds of tragedy – after an ex-boyfriend was brutally murdered. “I woke up in bed one night not long after it happened, and there was an outline of him next to me on the matress. I realized his soul wasn’t able to pass to the other side, and I so I just told him, ‘it’s okay, be at peace now. You don’t need to worry about anything.’ And he just left.”

Back in real life Jody was focused on climbing the corporate ladder – even if the incident with her ex had left its mark. “I was emotionally burned out, and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to the point I had to take time off work due to ‘stress’,” she says. Eventually, she set off for South America for what she thought was some much needed R & R. Instead, she found herself on an intensive plant medicine retreat.

“Nobody was talking about Ayahuasca back then, so when I heard about it in Peru I really had no idea to expect. Even on the boat to the retreat center, I remember wondering what on Earth I was doing there, and thinking I would probably just be an observer,” she says. In the event, her 12-day shamanic immersion would prove absolutely pivotal in her journey to becoming a full-time healer herself.

Not least because she was immediately confronted with a truth she’d been hiding for years, even from herself – that she was living in the grips of bulimia. “When we arrived we were asked to drink something to make us vomit and purge the toxins from our system. The potion didn’t work on me, and the facilitator told me to stick my fingers down my throat. My immediate reaction was, ‘but you can’t do that in public!’ I’d kept my eating disorder a secret for a decade.”

In ceremony, having drunk the Ayahuasca itself, “it felt like being cradled in the arms of the Mother, looking down on me and loving me, but going; ‘you’ve got something to confess, and you have to bring it up so I can help you with it.’ When I shared about this afterwards, it was the first time I’d spoken about my eating disorder to anyone.”

Light Grids healer Jody Shield featured on The Numinous

Jody took part in seven ceremonies over 12 days, sharing her little jungle hut with giant cockroaches and spiders, and emerging with an unshakable sense that her bulimia was behind her. “It was as if my brain had been re-wired and I couldn’t even remember the physical process of the illness. I had also made a contract with the plant to never eat meat or take drugs again.”

Further, “I had been recognized by the indigenous tribe as one of them. After one ceremony, they all made a bee-line for me, calling me “doctor, doctor, doctor.”

It’s testament to the grounded nature that makes Jody so approachable as a healer that she was able to pack this experience away with her guide books and resume her “normal” life back in London. Albeit with a desire to discover more about the healing arts, and her own abilities in this area.

It began with the study of EFT, or tapping, but it was discovering the work of Damien Wynne that tapped Jody fully into her gifts. Having developed a system for karmic, emotional and energetic “clearing” called Light Grids Therapy, “for me Damien was the whole package – a very expansive spiritual channel, yet very, very grounded in his human experience,” says Jody. She decided to travel to Germany to train with him; “My mum insisted on coming with me though, to check I wasn’t being indoctrinated into some cult,” she laughs.

“I connected to the work instantly, which centers on the mantra ‘I am that I am,’ and is essentially about allowing you to fully claim your ancestral seat in this lifetime. After five days of working intensively on healing and opening up my own emotional body, noticed quantum shifts in my perspective on my own life and purpose,” she claims.

“But I was afraid. I was like, ‘if this IS my path, how do I bring this to London, and how on Earth do I explain this to people?!” she says, echoing what must have been the thought process of so many great healers before her. But it was shortly after this that she heard The Voice, while experiencing the sensation of being fully supported by the Universe on her journey.

The rest, as they say, is history. And with with London’s creative and business leaders lining up to work with Jody, there’s a sense of her childhood awareness that “something bigger” was out there waiting for her having been fulfilled.

To find out more about Jody Shield and her work and to book a session visit Jodyshield.co.uk