Your kitchen – the heart of your home

By Anette Halfon

The kitchen is the heart of each home. Here the meals are prepared, providing energy for our body without which we cannot survive. Therefore according to Feng Shui the kitchen is particularly sensitive and vulnerable. Where the kitchen is located in the house, how it is built and organized and also how it looks is most important.

It is in fashion, to have an open kitchen by the open living room. However this creates a problem: the kitchen, just like the heart in our body, lacks protection it deserves. We are dealing in the kitchen not only with vegetables and fruit, but also with dangerous elements such as fire, gas, boiling water and so on, which demands care and caution.

Our food turns to body energy and the way of its preparation decides the level of energy in our meals. Nothing is better than mummy’s cooking! It is correct: meals, which are cooked at home, taste better and are healthier than any ready cooked meals in the supermarket or any meal in restaurants. Therefore during cooking some rules have to be observed so that the meals become tasty and healthy.

A few conditions are important for good results. A totally open kitchen does not give any privacy. Everyone working there is not only busy cooking, but also watching everything and everyone around. The attention focused on cooking is distracted and therefore dangerous accidents may happen, sometimes even causing injuries. It is difficult to keep an eye on the boiling water when the children are running mad, television is working, the telephone ringing and the guests are just coming in. It is far simpler, more relaxing and also more secure to work in an at least partial closed kitchen far away from the entrance door. Here the cook can concentrate only on cooking . He will feel protected and in command of things.

Therefore it is not desirable, to have the kitchen in a place where anyone entering the door can see the normal “untidiness” there. If a kitchen is regularly working, you can see pots and dishes and it usually does not look like a picture in the kitchen journal.

The fact that one can look from the entrance door straight into the kitchen shows a lack of privacy, too much social commitment, too much listening to other opinions and thus too much expenses for exterior, in order to please the social demands. If the kitchen is only for show, then it may not be used in order not to get it dirty. Therefore one must buy more ready made food, which doesn’t dirty the kitchen, but costs much more money.

Many mothers come to me because of problems with their small and big children: the baby does not sleep, the boy is still wetting at night, the girl is aggressive and has problems in school or the eighteen-year old, young man, who is too tired to get up and spends time in bed.

Normally these mothers come to me, after consulting with different physicians, psychologists or other advisors without much success.

Can Feng Shui help with health problems or disturbances in behavior of children? Definitely!

Feng Shui is examining not only the problem of the children (or also the adults), but looks at the cause in the innate personality and only then one can experience surprising success by applying relative small measures.

I would like to share with you some examples of my practice.

What can you do now, if one can directly see into your kitchen from the entrance door?

In this case you must ensure that an at least partial separation of the kitchen prevents the full view. This is possible by adding a door, a curtain, a large shelf or a high plant … any creative ideas are possible.

A further problem is the situation of the kitchen in the house plan, because according its direction each sector in the house has a special meaning, which affects certain areas of life. One sector, which affects extremely unfavorably, if the kitchen is located there, is the northwest. This is the part, which symbolizes the father, the man or the head of the family, his income and his authority. If your kitchen is located exactly in this area, your man is in trouble.

How can you save your man nevertheless, even if your kitchen is in the northwest?

One must admit honestly that a correction is difficult here. But increased adding of the materials metal (in all forms and colors), ceramic(s) or marble, the colors white, silver, grey, gold, brown and yellow and under avoidance of the color red, can improve the situation.

When planning a new kitchen you should also prevent that devices, connected with water (like refrigerator, dish washer, sink …) stand close to those connected with fire or heat (oven, micro, toaster…) because water is extinguishing fire.

In kitchens, where the element fire predominates anyway, it does not have to be strengthened with strong red colors or candles. Therefore red colors as well as candles should be avoided, because they might increase the fire danger.

A kitchen should be spacious, properly organized, well lit and well aerated. Make sure to furnish your kitchen in such a way that you feel comfortable there. Meals, cooked with love, have a higher energy level which affects our health positively. A kitchen must be practical and comfortable. Here is no place for complex and exaggerated decoration. A cook must love his kitchen! The one who feel good in his kitchen will cook better and healthier, which will benefit the health of the whole family.

In the kitchen one can see the whole cycle of energies: being in a pleasant environment you can work better and more effectively. That affects the quality of the meals, which affects again body and spirit.

I wish you Bon Appetite!