A feng shui expert diagnosed our home with some blocked energy — and then something unexpected happened.
Feng shui expert Brad Crane using a luopan to measure electromagnetic fields around my home — and to see what might be blocking energy. As my husband, Grant, and I hauled our sons’ dresser across their shared bedroom in a desperate hope that its new position would somehow help them stop picking fights, we eyed each other with a shared expression that said,You’ve likely heard of feng shui , the ancient Chinese practice of arranging your environment to support the flow of energy , or chi.
And maybe you’ve also learned that there are a couple of camps when it comes to people’s opinions on the practice. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either a deeply strategic system rooted in centuries of observation — or a vibe-y excuse to buy expensive new furniture. I wanted to figure out which. So I called in a professional.is a consultant trained by the American College of Classical Feng Shui.
He works within traditional Chinese lineages and date selection to diagnose how environment and timing influence health, relationships and financial outcomes.
“Feng shui starts with where you’re at,” Crane told me, standing in my yard eyeing my 1940 brick Cape Cod home in East Nashville, Tenn. “Decoration is just the spin on that. ” He told me the practice originally used to be about where tohouses, cities and farms — and that practicality was paramount. “Timing, when we do things, also matters,” Crane added.
Since I’m the owner of the house, Crane used my birth date to determine the best date and time for his visit. It was, he explained, like timing “when you plant your crops. ” I was skeptical but interested in his feedback on my home. That’s not because anything was dramatically wrong with my house or my family’s energy.
But the vibes weren’t, like,either. Grant had left his job a few months prior and was struggling to figure out his next move. My kids — two boys ages 3 and 10 — are sweet and smart, yet constantly at odds and/or punching each other. It’s not like I thought feng shui would provide some mystical fix; I was just curious if there was anything this guy might see or sense in our space that we didn’t.
At most, I expected a few furniture tweaks and maybe a gentle nudge to declutter. What I didn’t expect was how specific the recommendations would be, or how strangely obvious the results. Crane started wandering around my house and yard with his luopan — a type of compass that, he explained, measures electromagnetic fields. As he traversed the property, he told me he was “looking for telltale signs; you don’t want to see drains in certain places,” he added, shuddering.
“A lot has to do with the external environment,” Crane continued. “You don’t want big huge trees blocking doorways, overgrown bushes. ” Why? Because windows and doors are considered the “mouth of chi,” he explained — the entry point for energy into the home.
“Tall bushes,” he added, “attract peststhieves. ” This, I was quickly learning, was not the kind of feng shui content I’d been seeing on TikTok. Inside the house, the notes kept coming.
“Is there a reason why these plants are right there? ” Crane asked me, gingerly, about a cluster of potted cacti near our main entrance.
“Feng shui doesn’t like pointy things. Because your subconscious mind is constantly scanning the environment for threats, having poky stuff next to a door can create a sense of friction, so if you do nothing else, move those. ” Reader, I did. I replaced them with a much less pointy jade plant — a Chinese symbol of wealth, prosperity and friendship.
My cacti were deemed a feng shui no-no. “Your house is like a heart; you have to be clear for the energy to flow,” Crane continued as he wandered through rooms.
“Feng shui is a Taoist skill set or tool — you need space between things. Everything gets a home. ” Crane has worked with people at every level of clutter, including hoarders. That said, “the goal is not 100%.
” Rather, it’s to “come up with a strategy; resourcefulness trumps budget. There’s always a way to make things 98% better. ” He noted that one of the biggest roadblocks to executing feng shui improvements in the home is that “people can feel overwhelmed. … Their critical thinking freezes.
So I help them come up with a strategy that’s actionable. ” In other words: Feng shui tweaks, like any new approach or habit, work best when they’re realistic. We eventually got to the space I had a feeling might be … energetically cursed: my husband’s home office. I mean, it was functional, but not exactly inspiring.
The room felt a little cramped, a little chaotic — but nothing that seemed obviously catastrophic. Crane, however, saw the problem immediately. A bit of backstory: Over the past two years, I quit my corporate job, started my own business and paid off all of my family’s credit card debts and student loans. Crane was not surprised when I told him this, after he took a cursory look at my own home office.
“Your home office is in the wealth location,” he told me. But my husband’s?
“His is not in the ideal location,” Crane said, wandering into the room and shaking his head disparagingly. Over the past few years, Grant has gone from playing full-time in a rock band to going back to school for software development to taking a corporate gig to becoming a stay-at-home dad. Now, professionally, he was a bit … lost. And he admitted to feeling twitchy about deciding how, exactly, he wanted to spend his time going forward.
“It’s not supporting his industry,” was Crane’s immediate diagnosis of Grant’s office design and location. “The bookshelf behind you; from an energetic perspective, it’s overwhelming. The fact that there’s a doorway here is not much better. ” Crane even described how any wealth Grant might earn with his desk in that position was immediately draining out behind him, into his closet . Translation: Grant’s setup was working against him. If we couldn’t move the office entirely, Crane said, we needed to change everythingElsewhere in the house, the changes Crane recommended were smaller but oddly specific. In the living room, he insisted we should incorporate more metal elements around the mantel, explaining that our fireplace was sitting on a “sickness star” and needed to be balanced out with metal.
So we added Buddha and Ganesh statues alongside our existing fire screen and tools.
“You’ll notice more vitality, more well-being, more energy and overall less sickness throughout the winters,” was Crane’s prediction for the future after these additions. In the bedroom, we were told to get a higher headboard because our bed sits directly under windows — not ideal for support or rest.
And in my kids’ room, we got an unexpectedly relatable diagnosis: Crane explained that the placement of the boys’ big dresser was creating a “mountain” — a heavy, looming presence — that was likely to inspire conflict. So we moved the dresser to a corner and brought in a bulletin board and a little reading-nook chair in its place, hoping to usher in a sense of calm.
After Crane’s departure that day, I was surprised to see Grant get to work immediately on his office, shifting furniture around. He cleared out the entire room and started over — this time with intention. He flipped the desk to face a more supportive direction. We moved the bookshelves to the side to reduce that “overwhelming” feeling.
And later that week, per Crane’s suggestion, we went all-in on color-drenching the room.
“A greenish color would be really good in here,” Crane had advised, noting the color’s connection to growth and money. “Color theory is important. In feng shui, it represents about 15% of what we’re trying to work with as far as cures go. ” Days later, when the paint dried and everything in the office was put in its place, the energetic shift felt dramatic.
A slick of green paint and some rearranged furniture gave the home office a new vibe. Here’s where things got weird. While yes, it’s possible the boys’ bedroom furniture adjustment contributed to an immediate fight-free week, maybe they just plain felt calmer since we’d cleaned the whole room in order to move their dresser. No toys on the floor, fewer fights … or feng shui?
We may never know. And within one week of redoing his office, Grant sent out a few freelance pitches for the first time in five months of stay-at-home parenting. The pitches were quickly accepted, landing him his biggest client ever. The same person who had been feeling stuck, uncertain and lost suddenly had new momentum.
Was it timing? Confidence? Or was it feng shui — that is, some sort of psychological boost from working in a space that suddenly felt better? Honestly, it was probably some combination of all three.
Feng shui led us to ask, of Grant’s home office and elsewhere, a few stealthily crucial questions I don’t think we’ll ever rearrange a room without:Am I positioned in a way that feels secure — or exposed? Of course, feng shui doesn’t replace effort, skill or human decision-making. Even Crane doesn’t think you should just check off furniture and color tips and expect to feel more confident or at ease.
But the practiceforce my husband and me to look at our environment in a much more intentional way. I do think that will have lasting effects — on our psyches if not onAfter all, as Crane put it: “Feng shui is like getting a new car; you still have to drive it. ”
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