amanda gibby peters: everything is energy, everything's connected, everything's always changing. We all go through different seasons. You know, just knowing that where you are in whatever moment of your life you're in,
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that's what you need. And so what I look at Feng Shui as is, okay, here is this body of wisdom that comes with so many opportunities for triggering change, for calling in what we want, for aligning ourselves with more support than thinking it's all us. That's really the purpose of Feng Shui is to bring yourself into alignment with the energy of fortune. And you do that through your surroundings.
Darshna Patel: Hello everyone and welcome back to the She's Next Level podcast. I'm your host, Starsh, and I help women look hotter, feel healthier, and be happier. Today's episode, we have a special guest today, Amanda Gibby Peters. Did I say your middle name right?
amanda gibby peters: You did. It's my maiden name and everyone calls me Amanda Gibby Peters as quickly as they can. It has been with me since I took on the Peters when I got married twenty six years ago. So it's a mouthful, but
Darshna Patel: Okay, awesome, awesome.
amanda gibby peters: it rolls very easily.
Darshna Patel: Awesome. So I have Amanda here today, and we have a very interesting spiritual practice and modality to share with you guys. It's called Feng Shui. So she is an expert and a specialist in Feng Shui. And I wanted to bring this on to the podcast because I'm really big on bringing people that do unique things that are very different from what the world will tell you. And Things that actually move the needle forward, things that actually make a big difference in our energy and the way that we manifest. We're really big on energetics here, so I thought that it was a great idea to bring you on board to talk more about Feng Shui because I personally heard of Feng Shui, but I'm not so familiar with it. So I'm actually really excited to learn more from you around what it really is and how we can apply it for our health and our wealth, which is the two biggest things that I personally care about and I know a lot of my people care about. So before we get
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: started, I know some people may not know what this is So what is feng shui for the people that have never heard of this before? How would you explain what feng shui is?
amanda gibby peters: So we'll keep this really simple because I think that if you are already talking about just energy and the impact or influence energy has on us, this will make a lot of sense. So I want everyone to think of like a houseplant or something that's growing outside. If you happen to notice that its leaves are yellowing or they're spotting, or something seems to be struggling, it's not living its best life. What we typically do is get curious about its environment, right? We're like, do does it need more water? Does it need less sun? Does it need to be moved? Right. That is essentially function. We are the same way. We are subject to what is in our environment. And what makes this conversation so incredibly, you know, important and empowering is that we're always in a space. So we're always under the influence of wherever we are. And we tend to think of, it's just these four walls and this roof. But when we think about the plant, right, we get really curious about it. We're like, do we need to fertilize the soil? What do we need to change? Because we want to improve its chances for success. So I want everyone just to treat themselves like they would the plant, you know, and start to get really
Darshna Patel: I love that analogy.
amanda gibby peters: curious. Yeah, get curious and mindful about the environment you're growing in.
Darshna Patel: I love that analogy. I've never heard of it like that before, but it really makes sense because what I call in the world is there's a lot of contagions. There's a lot of influence. There's a lot of on the energetic level, you know, our 98% of our thoughts are not even our own because we're all connected to source, like everything is just flowing in and out. So The environmental approach is really fascinating to me because in the work that I do as an intuitive, I go into the emotional like root cause. I go look into the energetics, I look into the inside, like the energy. But technically there's energy in everything. There's light in everything. So I'm really curious about what is it about the environment that affects us?
amanda gibby peters: Well, I think so so, you know, one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, okay, what are the rules of feng shui? There are no rules, right? This is you know, many, many thousands of years old wisdom. And it is so nuanced in where you are in your life, the circumstances, what your goals are. Okay. But if I had to distill down the things that you probably need to know, sort of your beginner's guide to feng shui, it is that everything is alive with energy. Everything is connected and everything's always changing. And that means that everything in your space is also having an energetic contribution. It's not just you in your space assigning energy. It's the things around you having an energetic impact. And we know that in really common ways. If you go into a museum, you start to act a certain way. If you go into a church, you act a certain way. If you go into an Apple store, You act a certain way. If you show up to a boutique hotel, you start to act a certain way. And what is that? It is the environment informing behavior. It is environment having an impact on the decisions we make, right? So we just get so familiar with our spaces. We make excuses, we become tolerant, we allow ambiguity, we think that things are just things that they don't matter when in fact. You know, I will see people doing so much work, whether that's affirmation or doing a lot of self-improvement work or, you know, tapping, meditating, you know, all of the different things that are very internal. And very rarely do we stop to look up and say, okay, externally, is there something in my environment that's contributing to this? But the really cool thing is is once you start to make those connections, you have an entire storyboard.
Darshna Patel: Wow, I love that. I don't think anyone has really like explained, even in the in the spiritual world and the work that I do and everything that I've learned, I don't think anyone has like explained the importance of the physical environment and how that is like another
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: component to healing and calling in what you want to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: call in. so like what what's your story? Like I wanna now I wanna know how did you get into this and what what was your experience like? You know, getting into this
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So so love I love my story because it really allows me to show up where a lot of people start, which is, you know, a little skeptical. So I, you know, twenty plus years ago we moved to the house I'm in now. And even though, you know, as I always tell the story, it met all the needs that we'd given the realtor, right? It checked all the boxes. Something about us was different in this house. And at the time, my husband was traveling for work, we had three-year-old twins. I just thought that the chaos and sort of the looming depression I was feeling were completely related to big life change. You know, lots of new, not a lot of support. And so I kind of like swirled in that for six months. And there came a day where I had had it and I just grabbed a book that was bedside and I thought, whatever this book says, whatever I open it to, that's going to be the answer. Sure enough, it's Feng Shui. And I'm reading it thinking, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like if I change my house, I'll change my life. And at the time I had a very narrow sort of interpretation of that. I was like, well, I just changed houses. Not thinking, yeah, that's exactly it. You did just change houses and that's why everything's going wrong. Because I, like so many people, thought, feng shui can only mean good things happen. So I thought this is ridiculous. But it made me angry enough. That I thought, you know, I'm gonna start a blog and I'm gonna write about this and I'm going to show people what I'm doing, and we're just gonna disprove this. Again, completely naive. Had no idea it was thousands of years old, was just really going from the perspective of, I'm gonna show people that changing your house has nothing to do with your life. It's a really long story, all the things that happened, but there were so many coincidences that started compounding that there was this moment that I realized, okay, I can keep being a skeptic. Or I can get really curious about what's going on and I decided to become a student instead. And here we are.
Darshna Patel: Wait, what kind of coincidences were you seeing?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so okay, so initially I got a book and I read through it and I highlighted some things that I thought we could realistically do. And one of those things was buy fresh flowers. Like so many people, I thought that this is such a splurge. It feels irresponsible. We have bills we need to pay. I just don't and we are we're on this tight budget. I don't know that this, you know, makes it like worth it. But if I was gonna talk about it on a blog, I kind of needed to do due diligence. So I bought the flowers. I got a little water fountain because water fountains are tied to wealth. I added some purple to our yeah, I I tie I I brought in some purple. Yeah. So
Darshna Patel: Really? Wait, how? Why is it tied to that?
amanda gibby peters: because water, moving water represents fortune. So feng shui translated means, you know, energy and fortune. Feng is wind, shui is water. So wind is energy, water is fortune. So that is like the literal translation of feng shui. And if you think about wind, it's energy that you don't see, but you see the effects of. And water is energy you typically see. So that is the entire Like everything you need to know about Feng Shui, right? It is that you are, you know, always under the influence of these seen and unseen energies. So you can jump out from there that water represents fortune. It is movement. It is life, right? when you look at the five elements, the five Chinese elements, water also suggests wealth. Like that moving water suggests prosperity. Things are coming in, right? if you look at like the roots of Feng Shui, where it began, you know, it was originally, you know, sort of this way of locating the most auspicious burial spots for royalty. It was for royalty only at the time. you know, the Chinese emperors. Yes. And the way that they located
Darshna Patel: I'm like, how did they even think of that?
amanda gibby peters: us, well, they so that's a great question. You had these philosophers that had been hired. I mean, they weren't hired, like they were probably told you're gonna do this, but they were brought in by these, you know, empires to
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: study the relationship between the earth and the cosmos. And they started making all of these observations about the way that energy interacts. So one of those observations, funny enough, is that if a seed landed somewhere where everything was just right, right? Good soil, not too much wind, good sun, enough water that it would. thrive. But if it landed somewhere where any of that was compromised or there was too much, that it would struggle. And so that was one of the, you know what? I bet people are the same. So the auspicious burial spots had a couple components. They needed to have a mountain at the back. They needed to have a view of the valley and they needed to have rolling hills at the side. And this was protection, this was support, and this was room for opportunity to gather. Okay. So all of those components, you know, feng shui again started out just for royalty, started out simply to locate auspicious burial spots because they believed if their ancestors were happy, they would bless them, right? With wealth, health, and happiness. But feng shui began migrating as there were, you know, revolutions and people, you know, moved to different areas. They developed different ways of working with this wisdom. And so you have many iterations of it today, but there are foundational principles that are the same in every school and every approach. And the five elements is one. And the water being representative of fortune is another. So anytime you have that moving water, it speaks to abundance and prosperity and things flowing into your life.
Darshna Patel: Wait, I'm literally like going to buy so many mini water fountains
amanda gibby peters: I know.
Darshna Patel: after this. Like literally
amanda gibby peters: So
Darshna Patel: right where I sleep. Right like literally every aspect. I have like affirmations back here in my the side of my back, but I'm like literally gonna have it everywhere.
amanda gibby peters: I'll tell you something that you can do. here's something
Darshna Patel: Ha ha ha.
amanda gibby peters: that's really fun. So just as a user's note for anyone listening, if you work with water, you do have to keep the water fresh. So I would tell people if you're going to get a water fountain, they're pretty finicky. distilled water is going to be your friend. It's worth the extra effort because the water, if it starts to get, you know, slimy or, you know, kind of mucky, then that's the quality of Prosperity, you're going to be bringing in. So it is, there is some diligence required there. but something you can do with your intentions is you can write them on a piece of paper, slip them in a red envelope. Red is like the color of blood, it brings life force. You can put that underneath the water fountain. And then it's really bringing that energy to your intentions, that flow. That's a great way to combine a couple of different things in Feng Shui.
Darshna Patel: That is very interesting. So, what are the other elements, the explanations of the other elements that create I guess wholeness is what it is, it that it creates abundance.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so basically you have the five Chinese elements, which are different than the four elements that a lot of people think of. The four elements are Western, the five elements are eastern, and they're considered to be the building blocks of the universe. So essentially where you'll hear people talk about the four elements, those are all very independent of each other. In the five element theory, they all need each other. They all support each other. They all manage each other. I often talk about them as being the original checks and balances. So you have wood, which speaks to growth. You have fire, that's expansion and transformation. You have earth, which is settling and grounding and cohesion and cooperation. You have metal, which is refinement and, you know, form and function. And then you have water, which is that, you know, going deep. So that's sort of like a very simple profile of each element, but then they all work together to create different energies within your home.
Darshna Patel: That is so interesting. I've like I'm thinking about the body, you know, how our body's made up of water. So
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I think about that when it comes to health and like our bodies, and how how does that relate? How does that relate to our bodies? Does it have any correlation or?
amanda gibby peters: Well, I would say like, you know, just a little bit of, you know, bumping into different conversations and different practitioners over the years, that's why having clean water around you is so important because it does actually affect the quality of water in your body. So whenever I talk to people about having water features, I'm like, this is important. You know, make sure that you're up for the task of cleaning it out. But also think a little bit bigger. It's important that we're mindful of what's around us where we live, right? Because our bodies attuned to the environments that we're around. Now, that doesn't mean that if you're somewhere where like, my gosh, I don't love everything that's around me, that all is lost. It just then starts a really intelligent conversation about, okay, the way we function your house is going to be very specific to counterbalancing whatever's happening around your house, if that makes sense.
Darshna Patel: Interesting. So is that why like some people like prefer the city life versus some people prefer more being in nature? What what's the connection with that when it comes to Feng Shui? How that
amanda gibby peters: I I yeah, I don't think that there's one that's wrong or right. some people may say other, but you know, going back to what I just said about everything is energy, everything's connected, everything's always changing. We all go through different seasons. I mean, even those five elements all represent a season, right? you know, wood is spring, fire is summer, earth is light summer, metal is fall, water is winter. And so You know, just knowing that where you are in whatever moment of your life you're in,
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that's what you need. And so what I look at Feng Shui as is, okay, here is this body of wisdom that comes with so many opportunities for triggering change, for calling in what we want, for aligning ourselves with more support than thinking it's all us. That's really the purpose of Feng Shui is to bring yourself into alignment with the energy of fortune. And you do that through your surroundings.
Darshna Patel: Interesting. Okay. So I would assume that it's summer right now. Where where I'm at. Where do you live, by the way? Okay,
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Where do you live? I'm in Dallas.
Darshna Patel: you're in Dallas, yeah. So it's summer. So I'm assuming it's
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: fire. Playing a lot with like fire would support us in the season. Is that how it works?
amanda gibby peters: so fire right now is the element of the season. But you know, again, like I mentioned, they're a checks and balances kind of situation. So let's say that there is a lot of transformation happening, but let's say that you're starting to feel really burned out. There are things that you can do to start to manage some of that energy. It doesn't mean that because we're in summer and it is fire, that we have to be all fire, right? Like we get to go through the personal seasons that is our life, that is our experiences, that is our whatever life journey, life lessons. And so that's another thing that makes working with the elements a really cool, you know, tool to have is if I'm feeling like I need more fire, I can bring in. The energy of wood because wood feeds fire. But if I feel like things are like happening so quickly and I'm gonna lose control of it, maybe I bring in water because it'll put out some of that fire. So it's always an ongoing conversation. It's it's a really fascinating way to start to be really deliberate about like the choices you're making, about what's happening in your home, and just the things that you're, you know, choosing to engage with.
Darshna Patel: So let's say, someone, you know, really struggles with feeling overwhelmed and and I think stress is
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: a big thing that everyone experiences. especially like
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: ambitious women. So, how would you advise someone to start? Like, what would you advise them to start looking at for feng sh using feng shui to help ease that overwhelm and like reorganize their space? Like, what are some things that they can do? And also I want to know why. Cause I think understanding
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: something at a deeper level and why it works the way it works really helps people get on board and they're human on board.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So the very first question I'm going to ask a client is take me to your spot. I want to see where you prioritize you. Most of the time, women don't. Most of the time, if I'm stereotypically speaking, most of the time women put everyone else in front of them, right? They're not even on their own to-do list. So the very first thing I'm going to do is say, take me to your spot. Where do you sit? Where is your touchdown? We have the kids' rooms. We have the office. We have where everyone drops their stuff. Maybe husband has the man cave or the garage, but like where is your spot? If they don't have a spot, if they can't allocate a spot, I'm then I will ask, let me see the side of your bed. I want to see what you're keeping on your nightstand. And is it all sort of like best intentions, but all self-improvement? I've got to put on this retinol, I've got to have this moisturizer, I've got to have this sleep mask, I've got to have this sound, I've got to have these books, I've got to have that journal, I've got to have these potions and lotions. Like What are you telling yourself before you go to sleep? Because keep in mind, just because you fall asleep doesn't mean your house stopped talking to you. You're always in conversation with wherever you are. Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: That's that's a big one. I I didn't even realize that because I've struggled
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so
Darshna Patel: with sleep a lot. Yeah. Keep going. That's that's another question I have for later.
amanda gibby peters: Yes. Okay. So yeah. So, and I know it's the impossible ask to not have your phone in there, but like really, how do you prioritize yourself? Who gets access to you? Who doesn't? What are you actually using? What's actually making you feel better? What is truly supporting and nourishing you? So that is the edit that we would start with. Okay. That's the first thing I would do. And then I would look at where is your house maybe fighting you the most? and there are a couple spots that tend to show up more than others. It doesn't mean everyone's home or situation is the same, but usually there is if it's a home with kids, mom does everything. So kids just drop their stuff places, they don't pick up after themselves, and mom feels like she has to do it, but she has everything on her to-do list. And so she doesn't always get around to it. So then she's stepping over things or she's making excuses for things. And so one of the suggestions I'll offer is okay, let's find a home for everything because belongings belong somewhere. So let's figure out where things go. Let's get everyone up to speed so that everyone can, you know, you can delegate. They have a responsibility to take care of their things. And I know. I have I have 23 year olds. So I'm I I understand the challenges of every age. but I also want to encourage people to consider we are training these humans how to be in the world. And I don't think any of us want our kids to be that guest or that person
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: in a home. We want them to know how to take care of their things. We want them to know how to respect a space. We want them to learn how to leave a place better than they found it. So you start teaching that by delegating some of these responsibilities. Another thing that I will, if they're really an overwhelm close to that burnout, we'll bring in the element earth. Now, the element earth has a lot of different, you know, expressions. And this is a really big conversation for a podcast. But Earth is about how do you self-soothe? How do you start to feel grounded? How do you start to sort of Let yourself feel supported instead of trying to support everyone else. And so it may be like, do you have somewhere that you can sit and just be? Do you have, you know, room to spread out? Right. Like any flat surface is very much earthy, right? It's a place for things to land. But if you have everyone else's stuff congesting it, Then you're not getting that break. You're not getting that reprieve. So we might look for those opportunities. We might, you know, if someone has a ton of crystals, I might suggest bringing out some of the weightier crystals as a way of like holding things in place long enough for them to catch their breath. I might suggest working with like just more neutral colors as a way of suggesting slowing down and taking time to take care of themselves. We might bring in certain scents. There's all different ways to bring in the earth element, but Earth is about there are two things. It's about calming some of that fire down, right? Because think about it. When you put a fire out, you're covering it with the ashes, right? Ashes are earth. So it's a way of managing that fire, but it's also, if you think about the seasons, summer goes to fall, but there's that moment in between where everything is still looking alive. But you know, any day now the wind's going to come in and the leaves are going to start falling. And that's the fall, right? So that Late, late summer is earth energy. And really, what that's suggestive of is pausing, taking time to appreciate, being ready for the transformation before things start to change. And so when women are like, I'm doing all the things and I'm not getting anything, earth is how you start to say, I am open to receiving. That is the that's the element of earth. If you think of, you know, a big field. Or, you know, just even soil. When it rains, what does that earth do? It soaks it up. So earth is the energy of reception. And that's what I would
Darshna Patel: Wow.
amanda gibby peters: look for for those women. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Wow. And I I'm so glad we went this way because I will like just kind of give you some context. I actually live with my parents and I do want to move. I just haven't decided where I want to go yet. But it's so interesting because when I find myself getting to that place of feeling a little like chaotic or overwhelmed, I go straight outside and the moment I step my foot outside, I like it's like my body just instantly grounds itself. And I just like literally want to be outside a lot. Like more and more. And I loved being outside as a
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Darshna Patel: kid.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. That's that grounding energy. That's exactly like being receptive to sort of the earth's energy, letting it recalibrate you, right? I mean, that's
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: the beautiful thing about, you know, if people are like, I can do nothing that she just said, I would say this go outside, stand on some, you know, like preferably not a sidewalk, go find some grass and
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: I I had a shaman teach me this years and years ago. I love it. She was like, just say everything that frustrates you. Like, just get your day out and then spit and give it to the earth because the earth, yeah,
Darshna Patel: That
amanda gibby peters: spit it out. Like you're just like spitting it. You're like saying all the things, you're removing the energy, and then you're spitting. And essentially what you're doing is you're giving that to the earth to transmute. It's it's like earth energy is not, it's neutral. It doesn't recognize things
Darshna Patel: It's unconditional.
amanda gibby peters: as bad. It doesn't recognize Yes. And so you clear your energy field and you give it to the earth and then you can go back in. And if you made that a practice, you probably wouldn't start to feel as much of the piling on. I'm not going to pretend problems go away, but you don't feel as like, my gosh, everyone is giving me their burdens to carry.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, in emotional mastery, something that I talk about a lot is getting in control of your emotions. It's not to keep dwelling and feeling in it, it's getting control and then shifting that emotional imbalance back to unconditional love. Cause I and I think emotional
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: mastery side note is something that everybody needs to like know and get a hold of. But I really love that take and I wanna actually go into the receiving a little bit, and how we can set up
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: our space. to receive more. I know that you talked about earth energy, but what are some practical things that we can do to really bring in that receivership energy and embody that and make it easier for women to embody that? Cause I think that's one of the biggest things that women struggle with as well is because they just don't
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: feel worthy to receive more success, more love, more of anything that they desire.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So I love this question. and I'm gonna go for the thing that people hate to hear, but it is okay, let's have a serious conversation about what you keep company with. So you have things in your house. Most of us, this is a fact, most of us, if we had to lay everything out in our spaces side by side, we would run out of floor space before we ran out of things. Now, I am in no way a minimalist, you can see. but it is about having consistent, mindful conversations about what you're keeping company with. So what is in your space that you're tolerating? What is in your space because you don't know what to do with? What is in your space because of obligation? What is in your space because of fear? Versus what brings you joy? What is actually necessary? What is part of your ritual and routine? That is one of the easiest things to start with. And here's why. Because when you start to open space, you have room to receive. And the easiest everyday example I can think of is if you went to buy a new refrigerator today, you would probably, if you have one already, you would probably ask if they could haul the old one away, right? You don't have room to receive the new one until they make room for it. It's the same thing in our lives. And so again, this isn't about doing some big black trash bag purge, but it's about really asking yourself, are these books on the shelves, are they still representative of who I'm becoming or something that's meaningful to me? Are the clothes and the closet suggestive of the goals that I am trying to achieve? Or do they suggest who I was five years ago? You know, are the ways that I keep my rooms focused on the things that matter to me, right? So if I go into a living room and it looks like everyone just watches TV and no shame, I love a good show, but it's like it's not set up for conversation, but you're someone trying to get yourself out there to have conversations and communities, you might want to rearrange that room. So it really is again coming back to what is my house saying? What is my house telling me? Every day because you can be writing those goals down, you can be doing the meditation, you can be doing the affirmations, but if your house is suggesting something else, remember that's 24-7. So you want your house to cooperate with this idea of being available to receiving. And so those little things that start to bother you that that are telling you you don't have enough time, you never follow through, you don't have the energy, you don't have what it takes, those need to get evicted. Like truly, because
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that is one of your biggest hurdles right now.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, I can definitely relate to this like calling myself
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: out here. I think that's been actually the biggest thing that has caused me to not get the best sleep, honestly. I actually wanna well have a quick question about the ho I have a quick question about hoarding. What does
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that mean? Because my parents, they hoard like a mother and I'm like, we don't have space here.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so there's a lot of you know, you can't overlook sort of like the cultural upbringing of that. Like there are certain ways that we're wired based on our experiences. But if I were just to say high level, high level overall, hoarding is really tricky because we think if we buy more or we have extra or we keep accumulating that we'll have enough. The funny thing is, is what actually gets wired in our brains is that, okay, you don't have enough yet, you need more. You don't have enough yet, you need more. It actually has the reverse effect. There's not a point that we reach where we think, I have plenty. And then what happens is because we have all of this stuff, there's just the common sense piece of it that we forget what we have. And so we go and get more, and we just kind of get buried alive by our things.
Darshna Patel: Sounds good.
amanda gibby peters: And then that can become it can run a little bit of interference with the opportunities or the visibility or you know, sort of the energy that we want. Now, that said I want to be really clear because I don't think that enough functional practitioners or even organizers, professional organizers share this. There are times when people hold on to things, maybe even hoard things, because it gives them a sense of protection. I have found that when I have worked with women who have been abused, they will often, when they get away from the problem, they will find a small space and they'll put everything that they took with them in that small space. And to some people, it might look cluttery. To some people, it might look like too much stuff. But I want you to think of it as insulation. It has a way of really holding energy in place. It's heavy, it stills things down and it gives people a sense of comfort. And so in those situations, people have dangerous jobs, people, you know, you know, have come out of something traumatic. even little kids, right? They love all of their things around them. That is actually in service to where their nervous systems are. The question then becomes when they come out of it or when they're ready for something new, what are they open to? Right. So I don't want to look at clutter or hoarding as a end all bad thing. Again, we're all on different journeys and it's about really pulling out what is this in service to? And if it is helping you right now, then that's what it's doing. It's helping you right now. But that's not a forever state either.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, that that makes sense. let's go into sleep because I think
amanda gibby peters: Okay.
Darshna Patel: sleep is something that also not a lot of people really they value it, but they don't really pay much mind to it. And I know that getting quality sleep really affects everything that we do. It's something that I have been working on for the
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: longest, and Even just recently, I go to sleep say the same bed, you know, same way for a while.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: And I definitely have found myself not being able to get the best sleep lately. So having this conversation is really intriguing to me of like how can we use Feng Shui to optimize our sleep specifically and why it happens and what we can do to, you know, help get better sleep.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So this is this is another really big topic. So I'll run through the list of things that I would first look at. So, you know, immediately when I go into a room, I'm looking to see does it say sleep, stillness, sex, sensuality? Like those are kind of the purposes of a bedroom. If I see the Peloton in there, if I see the laptop in there, if I see the dry cleaning over the chair in there. Then that's the good news is those are easy things to remove. And I know some people are going to be like, my Peloton can only go in my bedroom. So here's what I'll say: I don't care if you have exercise equipment in your bedroom so long as you're using it. But if you're not using it and you keep telling yourself one day, one day, one day, that's what you're sleeping with. That is the energetic contribution that you're allowing. And you know how that shows up is you walk out into the world thinking one day I'll get to it. That touches every other part of your life. So just make sure that if you do have to share space in your bedroom with some of those things, that you are actually using them. And then for the things that can be put away, say like work, that you have a shutdown ritual for those so that they are not impeding on your sleep. Another thing that I'm going to look at is what do you have under your bed? Like do you have a lot of things shoved under there? And again, people will say, well, I have to use it. I don't have a very big bedroom. And that's totally fine. But we might take an inventory of can we move some of the things that are maybe sharp or hard or like wouldn't actually be comfortable to sleep on out and move more soft things underneath, sort of be really mindful about what we're sleeping on top of. When we have a lot of things underneath our bed, especially if we have no idea what is under there, it can create agitation. So it's just another layer that could be interfering. I will Also look at okay, what is the energy of the room? Do I feel okay, I can start to unwind, it feels soft, it's soothing, or does it feel like it's very energizing? If I go into a room that has, like say, ceiling to floor windows, there's a lot of light, the ceilings are high, there's a TV in there, you know, it feels it doesn't have that sense of intimacy. Then we're going to talk about how we can sort of bring a little bit more yin energy into the room. Yin is how we start to feel like we can embody and nourish and be available to. And it doesn't mean that you have to get rid of any of those features, although the TV I want to talk about here in a second, but it's about how can we counterbalance some of that bring me to life energy when really you're just like, let me go to sleep. So those are some immediates. The TV in the bedroom. Everyone wants to make a case for it. And I'm not going to get in your way. If you love having your TV in your bedroom, that's fantastic. What I would encourage you to try is covering it up for like a week. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard back from people who, with as much resistance as anyone listening is feeling, have covered up their TV only to realize because their watches tell them or because they just feel better. That they sleep more deeply, right? So it's worth the effort to just cover it up and see what happens. Because if you do sleep better, we don't have to keep talking about it. You're going to want to figure out what to do with the TV. But it's a good thing to try because that TV, that, you
Darshna Patel: Wow.
amanda gibby peters: know, what do we do with TVs? We watch them, right? And so there is this, you know, again, this conversation, like, Pay attention to me. Watch me. That's happening.
Darshna Patel: It's signaling the subconscious mind.
amanda gibby peters: Yes, yes, yes. Again, what is your room saying? Is it prioritizing whatever's important to you in that room?
Darshna Patel: Wow. Okay. So speaking of the room, I know that you're talking about like the Peloton, but what if you work? What if you have like a desk and your workspace? How can we start to go through that ritual and kind of separate it, you know, in our room? Because I know a lot of people work
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: from their room I do. So I'm asking for me.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? That was over COVID. That was a lot of people had that situation. They had kids were, you know, schooling from home, they were working from home. You know, they didn't have enough space for everyone who needed workspace, right? So what I would say is if I just want to put this at the top, if you have space in your house to work, meaning you have a guest room or a dining room that you never use, but you are dedicating them as a guest room or dining room, utilize the room. Make it your workspace. I just want to say that because that is something that's very common that I run into. But for people who have to make work, sleep, play all happen in the same space, a couple things. One, like I said, have a shutdown ritual, right? Shut the laptop. Have a space that you kind of pack up everything and you put it away. It is a ritual that tells your brain to start turning things off. If you leave the laptop open, your brain doesn't, it it doesn't disconnect from it, right? You have to actually You know, I don't want say formally, but you need to have this way of telling your brain, okay, here's what's about to happen. Work is gonna go, you know, here for the rest of the night. It's now time to sleep or to rest, and we'll revisit this in the morning. The other thing, and this is so tricky, I know, for people, but what do we do? We grab our phone. I myself am guilty of this. We grab our phone, our iPad, our laptop, and we sit in bed and we work. Okay, so. The way that places get programmed is by the activity that's happening there. So if you are doing work and you're sitting on your bed right where you would put your head and you're doing everything, you are programming that to be as much work as it is sleep. So with the kiddos when they were schooling from home, I would say don't invite the classroom into your bedroom. Find a chair or even the foot of the bed where you can do your schoolwork, but it is separate from where you actually put your head. And even that creates an energetic boundary. So that is that's a really powerful thing to do. It starts to change the way you experience the room.
Darshna Patel: That makes sense. That definitely makes sense. I'm like already thinking of things to like start shifting and working on. okay, so let's move over to health. I did want to talk about specific parts of the health. I know gut health is really important. We just talked about sleep, but also the feminine reproductive system, like the sexual health for women. Nobody's talking about this, and I want to talk about it about. Feng shui can help with our gut health. And I know the energetic, like overarching emotional root cause for gut is nourishment. And I think a lot of women lack
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: in nourishment nowadays. So I wanna talk about how we can start
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: prioritizing this, you know, gut health for women and also our sexual health for women using feng shui. I think it would be really cool to dive into.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so I would say with like gut health, like let's just say health in general. Okay. Your kitchen is going to always be the seat of health and wealth. Okay. So when I go into a kitchen, what I'm going to look for is what is on the counter? What am I seeing in this space? Does it feel like there's congestion? Does it feel like there's open space? Like, think about what it requires to have a healthy body. Okay. And then think about the things that are actually contributing to that. And then the things that could be counteracting that. Right. So I always tell this story of, you know, I go into this home and for different reasons, this guy wasn't concerned about health, but he was wanting more opportunities. And I go into his kitchen and he has one of those really fancy espresso machines, like a like one from Italy, like four or five thousand dollars. But he's standing there talking to me and he's holding a Starbucks cup. And so I'm like, what do you like? Do you make coffee like during the day? How often do you use this? Cause it was taking up a huge portion of the available counter space in the kitchen. And he's like, no, I just like the way it looks. And I'm like, okay, well, here's the deal, yo. If you want room to receive, if you want things to show up in your life, you need to actually have the space for those things to land. I mean, feng shui is often. As physical and literal as it is metaphorical and symbolic. So was he going to get rid of the you know, espresso maker? No. But that was like the easiest win for him. So when I go into homes where someone is like, okay, it's about nourishment. I need to take care of myself. What's sitting on the stovetop? Have you cleaned your oven out? What is the situation of your fridge and your freezer? Do you have anything fresh out that suggests that really ripe, fresh, yang, high potency energy? do you have every drawer filled to the gills? Are there things that you don't ever use? Do you have a lot of cookbooks out that suggest this is who I'm gonna be? But oops, I never use any of them. Like what this is, is about aligning yourself with your actual goals. And this is not about being aspirational. It's about being realistic because. Aspiration gives us permission to get to it eventually. Being a lot more realistic says, okay, I'm gonna plan for what I'm capable of on Monday, not some future date down the road when I suddenly wake up with all the right energy. So, what is the one, maybe two things that I can do? And that's how you start to audit your kitchen in a way that better aligns with who you're trying to nourish, you know, physically. Like, is it that I Can't sleep. Okay, maybe I need to have a cup of tea before I go to bed. So maybe that's something that would be really important to find space for. do I feel like I'm always eating on the go? Okay, so then what can I do that would suggest sitting down? Do I have the table clear? Do I have things that I could set the table with so that I feel invited to? Can I set up a meal time where we're not on our phones? Like so that we can actually digest our food, enjoy conversation, and linger. Like What are the specific to you goals? And then how do you make your kitchen match that? Those, those are the things, right? But so often we get busy, we let things, you know, certainly in a refrigerator, you know, leftovers are there or we don't have anything fresh in there. If we want to eat healthy meals, we don't even have what we need, our pantries are filled with stuff that maybe aren't the best for us. And this isn't about going all in about everything has to be good for you. It's just about making the space work for you in a way that feels realistic to you.
Darshna Patel: You mentioned wealth as well. That really caught my attention of how the kitchen is the home for
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: wealth. So as we're talking about
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: health and wealth in our conversation today, I love to know
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: like how do they go hand in hand, tie in together, like that guy that came to you for opportunities, right? So like if someone
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah.
Darshna Patel: wants to work on specific things like more financial flow, you know, opportunities.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Like all of these things honestly tie into success, right? They tie into business and career
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: success. So how does Fen Shui tie into those things and
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: why and like how like certain practical things that we can do. Cause I see that Feng Shui is very practical, which is really cool because you don't have to believe it, it doesn't have to be woo woo for you
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah.
Darshna Patel: for people to actually get on board and change their lives, which I really love.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So let me explain why the kitchen is the seat of health and wealth. So when we talk about wealth and feng shui, it is a pretty broad umbrella, is what I want you to think of. And what I mean by that is if I were to ask you what makes someone wealthy, you might say, having all the money in the bank. But if you have all the money in the bank, but you don't have friends, you don't have a support network, you don't have opportunities, you don't have your health, you don't have, you know, A passion. You don't, you know, you don't have those things that genuinely make the money worth having, then you just have money, right? And I'm not knocking it. I love money, but wealth is all encompassing. And wealth is also the idea of, you know, it's the accumulation. Here's what I want you to think of. It's the accumulation of those resources. All right. So then let's jump to why the kitchen specifically represents wealth. The idea in Feng Shui stems from the belief was if you were able to feed many mouths and those bodies were strong because of the nourishment and they were able to go out and work and earn and they could bring those resources home, the universe was sort of seeing you as already abundant. So it was like, you know, sort of that infinite eight loop, right? It's just like the the idea of wealth was just sort of baked in. You also have the stove and the oven, which represent the hearth of a home, right? It's like bringing all of the resources that are important together. So in Feng Shui, one of the things that's maybe not so practical that we'll talk about is stoking your burners every day, not cooking on a favorite burner, but actually rotating through all the burners because they are suggestive of resources coming to life. your oven being clean again, so that you have a storehouse. for your resources that is prepared for abundance and prosperity. So all of these symbols start to kind of tie together and merge and they create this spot of wealth. Does that does that make sense?
Darshna Patel: It definitely, yeah. So essentially using all of your resources to support more wealth to come
amanda gibby peters: Mm.
Darshna Patel: in, not just going off of like your your cause we're so like habitual, right? We we like to use the same things that work for us. So it's it's
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yes.
Darshna Patel: basically tying in the idea of trying something new every day to get better to align more with wealth. Okay.
amanda gibby peters: Well, and I also the thing that I I one of the things that I love about rituals. So I'll I'll I'll share this. Something that people could do is if they have a stove, you know, and it doesn't have to be a gas stove. So it doesn't, you it can be whatever kind of stove you have. You just go once a day and you light the burners, you turn them all on and you see them lit and then you turn them all off. Like you don't have to wait until you're cooking. Like you can make this an actual ritual and do it for nine or twenty-seven days. But here's the sort of real magic behind the ritual. You are bringing an intention to a very specific action. So when you go over there and you're lighting the burners, what are you doing? You're thinking about stoking resources. You are putting yourself in the path of being aware and receptive of those opportunities. So it's not just, well, I'm going to go stoke the burners and everything's going to land on my doorstep. I often say functu will trigger opportunities, but you got to be a participant, right? So if an opportunity knocks and you say, no, I'm going to pass, That might not be like you called in something. This is how Feng Shui is working, right? So the ritual, the magic of it is stoking, focusing on your intention and doing it in a consistent way, that starts to change you, that starts to edify you a little differently.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, intention is everything. I always like
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I'm setting intentions every single day for everything that I do. when you were talking about I wanna kinda take it back to when you were talking about the enoughness piece that came up with finances of like
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: We were talking about it in terms of how we're kind of hoarding on the things that we have and that comes from like us not feeling like we have enough. Finances came
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: to mind and I think this really plays out a lot with people. So how does how does that tie into finances for us? And how can we what can we do to like kind of heal that part of us that shows up in our house in terms of feng shui?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Well, I would say, I mean, again, it's not the sexiest of exercises, but going through your space and looking for the things that suggest you're not enough. And, you know, if you s if you're someone who
Darshna Patel: What do you mean?
amanda gibby peters: loves reading books, I do. I love books. Yeah, like if you go and notice things that are saying, okay, you've got to work on this, you haven't done this, you've got this project, right? Like all the ways that Okay, your home holds all different versions of you. It's not just who you are today. So the version of you that thought, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna buy that starter kit and I'm gonna start this business, or I'm going to buy those cookbooks because I'm gonna totally go gluten free and you haven't. I bought this whole faceline and I'm going to like just give myself the most glowy skin, right? When you are surrounded by things of, you know, previous versions of yourself. That suggests you didn't follow through, you didn't do it, I didn't have enough time, I didn't have enough energy, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. The overriding message becomes not enough. Not enough.
Darshna Patel: So what are some examples of like things that we can maybe look into?
amanda gibby peters: Well, okay, so I would say like let's do something really easy. Okay, how many self help books do you have by your bed? How many of them have you read? How many of them have you actually implemented the ideas? And if you haven't, what are you gonna tell me?
Darshna Patel: So the so we would wanna keep
amanda gibby peters: I'm gonna get to it.
Darshna Patel: the ones that we use. That's that's the differentiation
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: is keep the things that were it made sense.
amanda gibby peters: Because think about it. So let's go, let's go a little bit deeper. Why do you have and I am going like true transparency? I do this too. I struggle with this too. But why do you have five instead of one? And please don't stop buying books. I love people buying books, but why do you have five instead of one? Because oftentimes we think the one thing's not
Darshna Patel: Well, I per this is the way I think.
amanda gibby peters: going to be enough. Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: This is the way I think with the books is like if I can even extract like just the gold from what I needed from it, then to
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: me that's enough. And like that's how I kinda go with things.
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: But what does that still count?
amanda gibby peters: Right. And I've and I that totally counts. But the reality is, like the real if I'm gonna hold a mirror up to everyone, that's not how a lot of people are. We buy usually out of desperation. We usually buy the book because it promises something. Just like we buy the lotions and potions because it promises something. We buy the clothes because we think it promises something. We bring something home to put in our home because we think it's going to promise something, right? I often talk about a lot of things that come into our home as counterfeit happiness. It has big promise, but then once it crosses our threshold, somehow we don't follow through or it doesn't hold that same spark. This is not to say anything's wrong with us. The marketing out there is fierce. Like you said, we are all sort of getting the same messages and we're not even having our own thoughts. But that's what you want to be mindful of because when people are like, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I don't think I'm enough, you got to start looking at what the things around you are saying. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Has been this that's been the bane of my existence. Is it's the good enough that really kicks in.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: It's one of my recurring soul lessons. Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: Okay, let's talk about that. Yes, the good enough. Okay, so that's a great thing too. Like that's good enough, but someone's like, okay, I want to have like, I want to have a 5K launch, I want to have a 6K launch, I wanna, you know, I want to have a job that pays this, or I wanna have the investments, or I want to have the vacation, or I want to. And then I'll say, okay, well, where do you acknowledge and you know, invite wealth in? Okay. Now
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: If there's not a ritual around that, if there's not, I might say, okay, so let's start where I started. Let's bring in fresh flowers, to which most people will say, they don't last long enough. There's not a special occasion. I don't know where I'd put them. I don't know. That just seems kind of frivolous. And it doesn't matter whether you decide to bring the fresh flowers in or not. I,
Darshna Patel: Yeah. I think it's pointless.
amanda gibby peters: you know, that's up to you. But but here's the thing. That's a source of wealth. And you're using excuses. So that shows you where you're
Darshna Patel: Wait, how though?
amanda gibby peters: holding out on yourself because you're saying there has to be a special occasion.
Darshna Patel: Flowers.
amanda gibby peters: Well, flowers are a full expression of life. They're beautiful. They're not meant to last forever. They're very much about the present moment. Think about when people usually give flowers, when someone is sick or someone has died, or to celebrate something, right? So why flowers? Because they have such enormous energy. That's why. So when you go, I can't do that because there's not the right occasion, or I don't know, that feels really expensive. I again, the excuses don't matter to me, but I'm listening to where you're holding out on yourself when it comes to wealth. Because wealth isn't gonna land on your doorstep. Finding ways
Darshna Patel: So acknowledging yeah, so ign
amanda gibby peters: to have proofs of abundance. That make you feel a little uncomfortable because if you think you can handle a million dollars, but you can't handle a $20 bouquet, I got news for you. Like you have to be comfortable with wealth before you can really allow yourself to receive more. You have to be okay with saying, I can indulge, I'm deserving, I'm enough. I am enough. I don't need an occasion,
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: I don't need a special moment, I don't need an excuse. I'm enough. And the flowers are just one example of it. It can be a million things. It can be a million different
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: things. But the flowers are the easiest way for me to get people from point A to point B to realize because whether you again, whether you buy the flowers or not, doesn't matter. But I want people to see where they're interrupting wealth, where they're saying not yet. That's the real sort of reveal here.
Darshna Patel: How can what comes to mind for me is how can we kind of make sure that we're not in like diving into indulgence and just like, I want this too, and then I want this too, and all of these things. Where we're using our wealth in a responsible way as well. It's not just like kind of like going bananas. Cause if I was to go that route, I'd literally be in Europe right now. Like and I'd just be buying everything.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Well, so right. So most of everything that we've talked about today is actually reflecting on what's already in your space. The flowers are the only thing that I suggested of bringing in to suggest wealth. Most of it comes down to having a really honest conversation about what you have. Now you may have already audited all of your stuff, but most people live with a lot of ambiguity. Most people live with, I need to hold on to this because what if things don't work out? A lot of people say, well, if I get rid of this, then I'm probably just gonna have to buy it later anyway. Like we project our expectations literally by what we're keeping around us. So it's like, okay, where are you willing to see things a little differently? Because if you want to see things differently in your space, you gotta see things differently in your space, right? Like if you want to be a different you, something has to change. Like that's and so the most within reach way for most people is to start room by room, drawer by drawer, just you know, having an honest conversation. And sometimes it's not even about letting anything go. Sometimes it's just about, okay, I'm starting to hear what my space is telling me. Cause I think that this is just a door full of clothes. I think this is just a cupboard full of spices. I think this is just a basket full of blankets. I think this is just, but when you start to pay attention to what you really love, what really lights you up, what actually gets used, what actually sort of weaves into your life, you're gonna realize you have a lot of stuff taking up space from other things showing up in your life that you're really trying to call in.
Darshna Patel: Mm. I think that's kind of the foundation of this entire like message of everything that we were talking about is just if we just focus on that and we take inventory, now I'm getting it of like,
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: wow. The way Source has created the system is just
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: so like it's it's so complex, but it's so perfect at the same time. Cause now it's like, it's finally clicking in my head.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: so then our relationship with overflow, right? When it comes to abundance, And you're talking about buying things that we may think it's not necessary, but we're just allowing that to come in because we want to allow the goodness in life to come in. Is that right? Is that what you're kind of talking about when it comes to overflow or is that different?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, but I wouldn't I wouldn't say that like what I don't want people to do is to walk away from this conversation and be like, okay, well, I've got to go buy, you know, the expensive lamp and I'm gonna go buy the really expensive sofa and I'm gonna go. That's that's not it. It is about how do I allow, like, have I prepared my space to receive the company of abundance and prosperity? Is my space clean? Is it cared for? Is it intentional? Does it represent me? Okay. And then if I feel like I'm wanting to welcome more wealth, then what is it that I can bring in that becomes the environmental metaphor for that? So for some people, it might be a bowl full of fresh fruit or vegetables, right? For some people, it might be the fresh flowers. For some people, it might be splurging on a wind chime and that you hang it outside. And every time they open their window and they hear that wind chime, they think abundance, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be tied to you buying anything. It could be also clearing out space and giving really good geography to the things that you really do love. Right. Maybe you have a chair that's, you know, a fabulous velvet, but you never sit in it because it's always covered with stuff. And so instead you decide to clear everything off of it and you put a little table by it. And now you have the space that you're like, my gosh, why didn't I do this sooner? You see this all the time when people go to sell homes. You know, they live a certain way. And then the realtor comes in and says, You're gonna have to take care of that, you're gonna have to do this, you're gonna have to do this. And they're like, gosh, why didn't we do this sooner? Like I love my house
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: now, right? It's the same thing. So it's yes, to have overflow, you need to challenge yourself, right? Always I let me say it this way: investing in yourself is always a good way to get closer to wealth. So some easy ways to do it are buying the fresh fruit, are buying the fresh flowers. For other people, it's signing up for the classes and showing up and being held accountable to what you're learning. You know, for other people, it is travel, right? Being open to the rest of the world and different ways of thinking and being. The the the thing I often tell my students and people who are in my community. is you will never regret investing in yourself. You just have to figure out what that is for you where you are based on where you want to go. Right. And so
Darshna Patel: Yeah, I agree.
amanda gibby peters: it changes for everyone. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I'm really big on that. And that's the only thing that's like where a lot of my money goes, anyways. but I also think it's important for us to do it from a place of complete neutrality, too. Cause I found myself getting into that state of I need this information, especially with books, with courses, with mentors, all of these
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: things. so yeah, that definitely makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah. That becomes another type of hoarding, right? Like that's another type of hoarding. And we do it. So, you know, with the things coming in, what you know, when people ask me about clutter, here's a really good filter. I'm like, just wait. Just sit on it. Like, you know, just give yourself a couple days breathing space to see if you still love it. A lot of times we are reacting on impulse. We're acting out of desperation. We're acting out of whatever's happened to us that day. But that is going to fade. So wait until you've kind of gone through a couple versions of yourself, right? Cause today I might be really hungry and tomorrow I might be really crampy. And the next day I might be in a really good mood. It's really great to give yourself a little breathing room so that you're not making those impulse decisions, that you're not feeling desperate and I need and grasping and white knuckling and all of that. It comes from a place of confidence.
Darshna Patel: That makes sense. Is there something that we can do to invite more flow in our day-to-day lives and what we're doing in the house? Like, you know, from waking up to, you know, brushing our teeth, having breakfast, and then working and then Is there some like a a trick
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that you like or something, like a little hack, a fun hack?
amanda gibby peters: I mean, I do think that wherever you are, wherever you sleep, that is a prime space to intentionally bookend your day, right? So what is it that you're seeing? Smell, think of your senses. What is it that you're experiencing before you go to bed? And then obviously experiencing as you wake up. Because that is going to bookend your
Darshna Patel: Right.
amanda gibby peters: day. So right there, a lot of opportunity to set the day right. you know, if I am, if someone's working on self-esteem or something, we might talk about working with the mirror in the bathroom as they're getting ready. As, you know, you can program a mirror, you can speak to it, you can tell it your intentions, you can write your intentions and put them in a red envelope and slide them behind the mirror. And then that mirror, what do mirrors do? They reflect, they double. So it's reflecting and doubling that energy onto you. So there's a way to be really specific with mirror work. I'd make sure that.
Darshna Patel: That's actually really cool.
amanda gibby peters: You know, you Yeah. Yeah. It's it's
Darshna Patel: Never heard of them.
amanda gibby peters: a simple way. Yeah. Well, it's a it's a very specific feng shui thing, but it's a way of letting your house start to collaborate with you. Right. So you set the intention, you get really clear, and then you let the mirror stay on for you while you go about your, you know, your life. And then every time you're in the mirror,
Darshna Patel: I notice that you
amanda gibby peters: you're in the way.
Darshna Patel: I notice that you've mentioned that with the water fountain with the red envelope. What is
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: it about the red envelope is just in everything that you're intending for? I think that's really fascinating.
amanda gibby peters: Well, so red envelopes are a symbol. They're a very traditional, you know, they're they're traditional in Chinese culture. At the lunar new year, a lot of times people will gift money in red envelopes. So red envelopes speak to fortune and prosperity and blessings. The red is symbolic well, it's a very yang color. It's very it has a lot of energy and power to it. It also is the color of blood, so it suggests life force. And you know, the shape of the red envelope is rectangular. So it's symbolic of a shield. So it's also protection. So one red envelope brings in a lot of energy. And then you put intentions in it and it amplifies all of that. So it's a way of saying, hey, this thing that I'm talking about, it matters. And it sort of
Darshna Patel: I just wanna put the red envelope in the bank account.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, well I mean there's yeah, you could, you could, but you can I mean there's a lot of ways that you can work with red envelopes and and truly it's you know, it's just again giving emphasis to something that matters to you. It's taking an intention and pairing it with an action.
Darshna Patel: How important are vision boards for feng shui like when it comes to feng shui?
amanda gibby peters: I, you know, I think vision boards are fantastic.
Darshna Patel: For manifesting.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, I I think vision boards are fantastic. I love them because I again going back to environmental environmental metaphor, whatever you're seeing as having a conversation with you. So I genuinely believe in like if you prioritize and frame goals, ideas, experiences, words, whatever it is, however you vision board, then you're, you know, you're saying this is important. And this is a container for this energy. It's accumulating that energy. So I think they're really fantastic. I think where people slip on a banana peel is when they feel defeated by the vision board. Like they put things that feel so impossible to them on there that it almost reinforces the idea that that's not going to happen. Right. So I mean, you want to dream, you want to think big, you want to do all those things, but you also want to stay plugged into. Does this still match? Do I still feel hopeful? Do I feel optimistic? Does this, is this even something I still want? And treat the vision board more as a living thing than just a one-time, okay, well, now it's up there and I'll change it whenever I change it all, right? Like engage with it, participate with it. Let it be a partner in you reaching, you know, your goals.
Darshna Patel: That totally makes a lot of sense. Awesome. We are coming up in an hour and I do value your time. So just want to make sure that we sort of wrap things up. But I did want to ask you a really juicy question towards
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: the end. And that is that what is it about Feng Shui that really stands out to you the most that you love that makes it so different than any other modality out there and methods? Like what is the thing that
amanda gibby peters: Mm.
Darshna Patel: you really love that stands out to you the most about Feng Shui? Cause I can tell you're really passionate about it and I really love that.
amanda gibby peters: Well, I yeah. Yeah, I love that we all, regardless of where we are, are in a space and that most people don't realize that there are all these opportunities immediately within reach. The thing I love about Feng Shui is it is a wisdom that has been around for thousands of years. So even though it's ancient, it has so much modern day application. And my favorite thing, my very favorite thing about Feng Shui is being in a space with people who don't know much about it, having conversations like this, and knowing, and people often tell me anyway, but knowing that people are going to leave and they're going to be very deliberate and loving and intentional. And mindful in their spaces, like there's this before and after because now they realize my house, my space, it's this power player. And I've just never thought it was on my team, and now it is. Like that is that's the piece of it that lights me up. It's why I keep coming back to it. You know, every time I get to be in a conversation with people who don't know enough, or as I always joke, like know enough to be dangerous. It's like I want you to really understand this because. We spend so much time focusing on all the things we can do and we don't think about what our house can do. So I love, you know, opening that door for people.
Darshna Patel: I love that. Something came in mind that I did want to ask you before we wrap up
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: is when it comes to moving, how do
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: we like how can we apply Feng Shui and the art of it and knowing like, you know, when it's time to move and move on versus being in the space that we are in?
amanda gibby peters: So there's this exercise that I learned from a teacher that I share with a lot of my students. And it sounds a little out there, but when you do it, you you'll see why I suggest it. so you know, usually people know that they want to move, and so that's a very specific conversation. But if someone's like, I don't know when it's time, there's this opportunity to write your space a letter, right? And say, you know, if you if you've named your space, if you've named your home. Call it by its name, but you know, here's what I love about you. Here are some things that we've been going through, here's some things that I hope to do for you. You know, just like literally write a letter. and then on another day, you're going to write a letter from your space, meaning you are going to just be the channel, but you're going to just start writing and your house is going to say what it needs to say to you. And if you can get out of the sort of abstract or stream of consciousness that it requires. You often are able to discern what your home wants because every space we're in is a living, breathing energy, right? Going back to the everything is energy. And your space has ideas, it has opinions, it wants certain things to be known. And we just don't usually make ourselves available to it again because we're so busy and so distracted. So writing the letter allows that to come through. And so if you're someone who's like, well, when do I know it's time to move? Ask your house. Ask your house and start to let it have that conversation with you because it starts to open you up to, you know, this again, this conversation that's already happening, you just haven't tuned in. That's a really direct way to start hearing what your house is saying.
Darshna Patel: I love that. And I also do believe that like we take our energies with us wherever we go.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: So it's important to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: kind of leave from that place of abundance, of happiness, of nourishment, because then that's just gonna carry on and grow on the other end of wherever you go.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah. And your house won't I mean I love every house. It doesn't matter what the situation is. I can always find Shui wins in it. And I genuinely believe that we're called to these spaces for very specific reasons. Sometimes it's our life lessons. Sometimes we're the one that's going to be most capable of taking care of the space. Sometimes it's just a chapter and a really long book. But that's the thing is that it is a relationship. And so treating it like, my gosh, you know, there's a good chance that this space is gonna be here long after I'm gone, having that respect, having that level of care, it changes the way you experience your space. And yeah, it's it you are able to go on to the next space and, you know, take care of it and, you know, steward it well. But more importantly, you leave the space that you were in better than you found it if you have those conversations.
Darshna Patel: I definitely came back here to my parents' house for I got a reason, because I've definitely healed a lot with my parents.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: And yeah, I could definitely relate to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that. my god. Honestly, I feel like I need to listen to this episode like on replay. And everyone listening, please listen to this episode a few times because our brain really only takes around 20 to 30 minutes of information in a given moment. So we talked about so much where I feel like I even I feel like I had a session with you because I feel like I got so many
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: practical tips. And things that I could start implementing. And sometimes it's around
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: asking ourselves like what is the most needle moving thing that I can do right now that creates that biggest movement and start working on that. So super, super grateful that you came on today to share your wisdom. And I definitely want everyone to know, like, if someone wants to work with you, what does that look like? What do you have available? and where can people connect with you?
amanda gibby peters: So I would say that the best places to get more of what just happened here is to follow me on Instagram, Amanda Gibby Peters. I have a book and it's only because I'm sharing tips every day. So it's right on my desk. Simple Shui for every day. yeah, so
Darshna Patel: Love it.
amanda gibby peters: I am sharing tips on Instagram right now. It's August. and I'm sharing additional information. So you can literally follow along and just like what happened today, where we were having conversations, I'm like. writing notes in the inside, right? So that you can write notes on the inside, but it's a really great way to learn a lot of concentrated Shui in a short amount of time. The other place is my podcast, House Therapy. I have over 200 episodes. I, you know, drop new episodes every week and they're about 15 to 20 minutes. So they're really short, but again, a lot of good information. So for people who are curious, like wait, I have so many questions. Those are great. sort of watering holes to pull up to. And then from there, I do have a course, the Simple Shui Course. And for people who complete the Simple Shui course, then there is a certification. But all of that is on my site at simple shui.com. but I would say get on Instagram, go listen to the podcast. You're gonna learn so much and you're going to be incredibly excited about things that you can do in your home. So yeah, those are those are great resources.
Darshna Patel: And Do you have one on one offers as well, like one on one sessions that you do? Do you do that? Or is it more of just this?
amanda gibby peters: I I do I do have like a ninety minute session and then a 30 day session, but a lot of times it depends on where I am in my teaching. So I would say if you want a one-on-one session, reach out, Amanda at simple shui.com and we'll definitely talk about kind of your needs and my calendar. Cause that's the alignment right there. But yes, I do offer one on one consultations.
Darshna Patel: Yeah. Amazing, amazing. I will have everything in the description box below so you guys can go check it out. And give Amanda some love because I feel like we received so much value today. I really definitely feel like I have a more of a personable understanding, like more of a realistic understanding of what Feng Shui is. And you made it so practical and so easy to understand and also implement and fun, which I love. Everything. So
amanda gibby peters: Yes. Yes. I w yeah, I want it to be fun. I want it to be easy. I want you to feel motivated. I don't want you to feel like your mom's telling you to do stuff.
Darshna Patel: Yes. Yes. I honestly the that's the way I live my life too and that I aspire to. So thank you so much for being on here and I will catch you guys in the next episode.
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that's what you need. And so what I look at Feng Shui as is, okay, here is this body of wisdom that comes with so many opportunities for triggering change, for calling in what we want, for aligning ourselves with more support than thinking it's all us. That's really the purpose of Feng Shui is to bring yourself into alignment with the energy of fortune. And you do that through your surroundings.
Darshna Patel: Hello everyone and welcome back to the She's Next Level podcast. I'm your host, Starsh, and I help women look hotter, feel healthier, and be happier. Today's episode, we have a special guest today, Amanda Gibby Peters. Did I say your middle name right?
amanda gibby peters: You did. It's my maiden name and everyone calls me Amanda Gibby Peters as quickly as they can. It has been with me since I took on the Peters when I got married twenty six years ago. So it's a mouthful, but
Darshna Patel: Okay, awesome, awesome.
amanda gibby peters: it rolls very easily.
Darshna Patel: Awesome. So I have Amanda here today, and we have a very interesting spiritual practice and modality to share with you guys. It's called Feng Shui. So she is an expert and a specialist in Feng Shui. And I wanted to bring this on to the podcast because I'm really big on bringing people that do unique things that are very different from what the world will tell you. And Things that actually move the needle forward, things that actually make a big difference in our energy and the way that we manifest. We're really big on energetics here, so I thought that it was a great idea to bring you on board to talk more about Feng Shui because I personally heard of Feng Shui, but I'm not so familiar with it. So I'm actually really excited to learn more from you around what it really is and how we can apply it for our health and our wealth, which is the two biggest things that I personally care about and I know a lot of my people care about. So before we get
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: started, I know some people may not know what this is So what is feng shui for the people that have never heard of this before? How would you explain what feng shui is?
amanda gibby peters: So we'll keep this really simple because I think that if you are already talking about just energy and the impact or influence energy has on us, this will make a lot of sense. So I want everyone to think of like a houseplant or something that's growing outside. If you happen to notice that its leaves are yellowing or they're spotting, or something seems to be struggling, it's not living its best life. What we typically do is get curious about its environment, right? We're like, do does it need more water? Does it need less sun? Does it need to be moved? Right. That is essentially function. We are the same way. We are subject to what is in our environment. And what makes this conversation so incredibly, you know, important and empowering is that we're always in a space. So we're always under the influence of wherever we are. And we tend to think of, it's just these four walls and this roof. But when we think about the plant, right, we get really curious about it. We're like, do we need to fertilize the soil? What do we need to change? Because we want to improve its chances for success. So I want everyone just to treat themselves like they would the plant, you know, and start to get really
Darshna Patel: I love that analogy.
amanda gibby peters: curious. Yeah, get curious and mindful about the environment you're growing in.
Darshna Patel: I love that analogy. I've never heard of it like that before, but it really makes sense because what I call in the world is there's a lot of contagions. There's a lot of influence. There's a lot of on the energetic level, you know, our 98% of our thoughts are not even our own because we're all connected to source, like everything is just flowing in and out. So The environmental approach is really fascinating to me because in the work that I do as an intuitive, I go into the emotional like root cause. I go look into the energetics, I look into the inside, like the energy. But technically there's energy in everything. There's light in everything. So I'm really curious about what is it about the environment that affects us?
amanda gibby peters: Well, I think so so, you know, one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, okay, what are the rules of feng shui? There are no rules, right? This is you know, many, many thousands of years old wisdom. And it is so nuanced in where you are in your life, the circumstances, what your goals are. Okay. But if I had to distill down the things that you probably need to know, sort of your beginner's guide to feng shui, it is that everything is alive with energy. Everything is connected and everything's always changing. And that means that everything in your space is also having an energetic contribution. It's not just you in your space assigning energy. It's the things around you having an energetic impact. And we know that in really common ways. If you go into a museum, you start to act a certain way. If you go into a church, you act a certain way. If you go into an Apple store, You act a certain way. If you show up to a boutique hotel, you start to act a certain way. And what is that? It is the environment informing behavior. It is environment having an impact on the decisions we make, right? So we just get so familiar with our spaces. We make excuses, we become tolerant, we allow ambiguity, we think that things are just things that they don't matter when in fact. You know, I will see people doing so much work, whether that's affirmation or doing a lot of self-improvement work or, you know, tapping, meditating, you know, all of the different things that are very internal. And very rarely do we stop to look up and say, okay, externally, is there something in my environment that's contributing to this? But the really cool thing is is once you start to make those connections, you have an entire storyboard.
Darshna Patel: Wow, I love that. I don't think anyone has really like explained, even in the in the spiritual world and the work that I do and everything that I've learned, I don't think anyone has like explained the importance of the physical environment and how that is like another
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: component to healing and calling in what you want to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: call in. so like what what's your story? Like I wanna now I wanna know how did you get into this and what what was your experience like? You know, getting into this
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So so love I love my story because it really allows me to show up where a lot of people start, which is, you know, a little skeptical. So I, you know, twenty plus years ago we moved to the house I'm in now. And even though, you know, as I always tell the story, it met all the needs that we'd given the realtor, right? It checked all the boxes. Something about us was different in this house. And at the time, my husband was traveling for work, we had three-year-old twins. I just thought that the chaos and sort of the looming depression I was feeling were completely related to big life change. You know, lots of new, not a lot of support. And so I kind of like swirled in that for six months. And there came a day where I had had it and I just grabbed a book that was bedside and I thought, whatever this book says, whatever I open it to, that's going to be the answer. Sure enough, it's Feng Shui. And I'm reading it thinking, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like if I change my house, I'll change my life. And at the time I had a very narrow sort of interpretation of that. I was like, well, I just changed houses. Not thinking, yeah, that's exactly it. You did just change houses and that's why everything's going wrong. Because I, like so many people, thought, feng shui can only mean good things happen. So I thought this is ridiculous. But it made me angry enough. That I thought, you know, I'm gonna start a blog and I'm gonna write about this and I'm going to show people what I'm doing, and we're just gonna disprove this. Again, completely naive. Had no idea it was thousands of years old, was just really going from the perspective of, I'm gonna show people that changing your house has nothing to do with your life. It's a really long story, all the things that happened, but there were so many coincidences that started compounding that there was this moment that I realized, okay, I can keep being a skeptic. Or I can get really curious about what's going on and I decided to become a student instead. And here we are.
Darshna Patel: Wait, what kind of coincidences were you seeing?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so okay, so initially I got a book and I read through it and I highlighted some things that I thought we could realistically do. And one of those things was buy fresh flowers. Like so many people, I thought that this is such a splurge. It feels irresponsible. We have bills we need to pay. I just don't and we are we're on this tight budget. I don't know that this, you know, makes it like worth it. But if I was gonna talk about it on a blog, I kind of needed to do due diligence. So I bought the flowers. I got a little water fountain because water fountains are tied to wealth. I added some purple to our yeah, I I tie I I brought in some purple. Yeah. So
Darshna Patel: Really? Wait, how? Why is it tied to that?
amanda gibby peters: because water, moving water represents fortune. So feng shui translated means, you know, energy and fortune. Feng is wind, shui is water. So wind is energy, water is fortune. So that is like the literal translation of feng shui. And if you think about wind, it's energy that you don't see, but you see the effects of. And water is energy you typically see. So that is the entire Like everything you need to know about Feng Shui, right? It is that you are, you know, always under the influence of these seen and unseen energies. So you can jump out from there that water represents fortune. It is movement. It is life, right? when you look at the five elements, the five Chinese elements, water also suggests wealth. Like that moving water suggests prosperity. Things are coming in, right? if you look at like the roots of Feng Shui, where it began, you know, it was originally, you know, sort of this way of locating the most auspicious burial spots for royalty. It was for royalty only at the time. you know, the Chinese emperors. Yes. And the way that they located
Darshna Patel: I'm like, how did they even think of that?
amanda gibby peters: us, well, they so that's a great question. You had these philosophers that had been hired. I mean, they weren't hired, like they were probably told you're gonna do this, but they were brought in by these, you know, empires to
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: study the relationship between the earth and the cosmos. And they started making all of these observations about the way that energy interacts. So one of those observations, funny enough, is that if a seed landed somewhere where everything was just right, right? Good soil, not too much wind, good sun, enough water that it would. thrive. But if it landed somewhere where any of that was compromised or there was too much, that it would struggle. And so that was one of the, you know what? I bet people are the same. So the auspicious burial spots had a couple components. They needed to have a mountain at the back. They needed to have a view of the valley and they needed to have rolling hills at the side. And this was protection, this was support, and this was room for opportunity to gather. Okay. So all of those components, you know, feng shui again started out just for royalty, started out simply to locate auspicious burial spots because they believed if their ancestors were happy, they would bless them, right? With wealth, health, and happiness. But feng shui began migrating as there were, you know, revolutions and people, you know, moved to different areas. They developed different ways of working with this wisdom. And so you have many iterations of it today, but there are foundational principles that are the same in every school and every approach. And the five elements is one. And the water being representative of fortune is another. So anytime you have that moving water, it speaks to abundance and prosperity and things flowing into your life.
Darshna Patel: Wait, I'm literally like going to buy so many mini water fountains
amanda gibby peters: I know.
Darshna Patel: after this. Like literally
amanda gibby peters: So
Darshna Patel: right where I sleep. Right like literally every aspect. I have like affirmations back here in my the side of my back, but I'm like literally gonna have it everywhere.
amanda gibby peters: I'll tell you something that you can do. here's something
Darshna Patel: Ha ha ha.
amanda gibby peters: that's really fun. So just as a user's note for anyone listening, if you work with water, you do have to keep the water fresh. So I would tell people if you're going to get a water fountain, they're pretty finicky. distilled water is going to be your friend. It's worth the extra effort because the water, if it starts to get, you know, slimy or, you know, kind of mucky, then that's the quality of Prosperity, you're going to be bringing in. So it is, there is some diligence required there. but something you can do with your intentions is you can write them on a piece of paper, slip them in a red envelope. Red is like the color of blood, it brings life force. You can put that underneath the water fountain. And then it's really bringing that energy to your intentions, that flow. That's a great way to combine a couple of different things in Feng Shui.
Darshna Patel: That is very interesting. So, what are the other elements, the explanations of the other elements that create I guess wholeness is what it is, it that it creates abundance.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so basically you have the five Chinese elements, which are different than the four elements that a lot of people think of. The four elements are Western, the five elements are eastern, and they're considered to be the building blocks of the universe. So essentially where you'll hear people talk about the four elements, those are all very independent of each other. In the five element theory, they all need each other. They all support each other. They all manage each other. I often talk about them as being the original checks and balances. So you have wood, which speaks to growth. You have fire, that's expansion and transformation. You have earth, which is settling and grounding and cohesion and cooperation. You have metal, which is refinement and, you know, form and function. And then you have water, which is that, you know, going deep. So that's sort of like a very simple profile of each element, but then they all work together to create different energies within your home.
Darshna Patel: That is so interesting. I've like I'm thinking about the body, you know, how our body's made up of water. So
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I think about that when it comes to health and like our bodies, and how how does that relate? How does that relate to our bodies? Does it have any correlation or?
amanda gibby peters: Well, I would say like, you know, just a little bit of, you know, bumping into different conversations and different practitioners over the years, that's why having clean water around you is so important because it does actually affect the quality of water in your body. So whenever I talk to people about having water features, I'm like, this is important. You know, make sure that you're up for the task of cleaning it out. But also think a little bit bigger. It's important that we're mindful of what's around us where we live, right? Because our bodies attuned to the environments that we're around. Now, that doesn't mean that if you're somewhere where like, my gosh, I don't love everything that's around me, that all is lost. It just then starts a really intelligent conversation about, okay, the way we function your house is going to be very specific to counterbalancing whatever's happening around your house, if that makes sense.
Darshna Patel: Interesting. So is that why like some people like prefer the city life versus some people prefer more being in nature? What what's the connection with that when it comes to Feng Shui? How that
amanda gibby peters: I I yeah, I don't think that there's one that's wrong or right. some people may say other, but you know, going back to what I just said about everything is energy, everything's connected, everything's always changing. We all go through different seasons. I mean, even those five elements all represent a season, right? you know, wood is spring, fire is summer, earth is light summer, metal is fall, water is winter. And so You know, just knowing that where you are in whatever moment of your life you're in,
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that's what you need. And so what I look at Feng Shui as is, okay, here is this body of wisdom that comes with so many opportunities for triggering change, for calling in what we want, for aligning ourselves with more support than thinking it's all us. That's really the purpose of Feng Shui is to bring yourself into alignment with the energy of fortune. And you do that through your surroundings.
Darshna Patel: Interesting. Okay. So I would assume that it's summer right now. Where where I'm at. Where do you live, by the way? Okay,
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Where do you live? I'm in Dallas.
Darshna Patel: you're in Dallas, yeah. So it's summer. So I'm assuming it's
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: fire. Playing a lot with like fire would support us in the season. Is that how it works?
amanda gibby peters: so fire right now is the element of the season. But you know, again, like I mentioned, they're a checks and balances kind of situation. So let's say that there is a lot of transformation happening, but let's say that you're starting to feel really burned out. There are things that you can do to start to manage some of that energy. It doesn't mean that because we're in summer and it is fire, that we have to be all fire, right? Like we get to go through the personal seasons that is our life, that is our experiences, that is our whatever life journey, life lessons. And so that's another thing that makes working with the elements a really cool, you know, tool to have is if I'm feeling like I need more fire, I can bring in. The energy of wood because wood feeds fire. But if I feel like things are like happening so quickly and I'm gonna lose control of it, maybe I bring in water because it'll put out some of that fire. So it's always an ongoing conversation. It's it's a really fascinating way to start to be really deliberate about like the choices you're making, about what's happening in your home, and just the things that you're, you know, choosing to engage with.
Darshna Patel: So let's say, someone, you know, really struggles with feeling overwhelmed and and I think stress is
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: a big thing that everyone experiences. especially like
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: ambitious women. So, how would you advise someone to start? Like, what would you advise them to start looking at for feng sh using feng shui to help ease that overwhelm and like reorganize their space? Like, what are some things that they can do? And also I want to know why. Cause I think understanding
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: something at a deeper level and why it works the way it works really helps people get on board and they're human on board.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So the very first question I'm going to ask a client is take me to your spot. I want to see where you prioritize you. Most of the time, women don't. Most of the time, if I'm stereotypically speaking, most of the time women put everyone else in front of them, right? They're not even on their own to-do list. So the very first thing I'm going to do is say, take me to your spot. Where do you sit? Where is your touchdown? We have the kids' rooms. We have the office. We have where everyone drops their stuff. Maybe husband has the man cave or the garage, but like where is your spot? If they don't have a spot, if they can't allocate a spot, I'm then I will ask, let me see the side of your bed. I want to see what you're keeping on your nightstand. And is it all sort of like best intentions, but all self-improvement? I've got to put on this retinol, I've got to have this moisturizer, I've got to have this sleep mask, I've got to have this sound, I've got to have these books, I've got to have that journal, I've got to have these potions and lotions. Like What are you telling yourself before you go to sleep? Because keep in mind, just because you fall asleep doesn't mean your house stopped talking to you. You're always in conversation with wherever you are. Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: That's that's a big one. I I didn't even realize that because I've struggled
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so
Darshna Patel: with sleep a lot. Yeah. Keep going. That's that's another question I have for later.
amanda gibby peters: Yes. Okay. So yeah. So, and I know it's the impossible ask to not have your phone in there, but like really, how do you prioritize yourself? Who gets access to you? Who doesn't? What are you actually using? What's actually making you feel better? What is truly supporting and nourishing you? So that is the edit that we would start with. Okay. That's the first thing I would do. And then I would look at where is your house maybe fighting you the most? and there are a couple spots that tend to show up more than others. It doesn't mean everyone's home or situation is the same, but usually there is if it's a home with kids, mom does everything. So kids just drop their stuff places, they don't pick up after themselves, and mom feels like she has to do it, but she has everything on her to-do list. And so she doesn't always get around to it. So then she's stepping over things or she's making excuses for things. And so one of the suggestions I'll offer is okay, let's find a home for everything because belongings belong somewhere. So let's figure out where things go. Let's get everyone up to speed so that everyone can, you know, you can delegate. They have a responsibility to take care of their things. And I know. I have I have 23 year olds. So I'm I I understand the challenges of every age. but I also want to encourage people to consider we are training these humans how to be in the world. And I don't think any of us want our kids to be that guest or that person
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: in a home. We want them to know how to take care of their things. We want them to know how to respect a space. We want them to learn how to leave a place better than they found it. So you start teaching that by delegating some of these responsibilities. Another thing that I will, if they're really an overwhelm close to that burnout, we'll bring in the element earth. Now, the element earth has a lot of different, you know, expressions. And this is a really big conversation for a podcast. But Earth is about how do you self-soothe? How do you start to feel grounded? How do you start to sort of Let yourself feel supported instead of trying to support everyone else. And so it may be like, do you have somewhere that you can sit and just be? Do you have, you know, room to spread out? Right. Like any flat surface is very much earthy, right? It's a place for things to land. But if you have everyone else's stuff congesting it, Then you're not getting that break. You're not getting that reprieve. So we might look for those opportunities. We might, you know, if someone has a ton of crystals, I might suggest bringing out some of the weightier crystals as a way of like holding things in place long enough for them to catch their breath. I might suggest working with like just more neutral colors as a way of suggesting slowing down and taking time to take care of themselves. We might bring in certain scents. There's all different ways to bring in the earth element, but Earth is about there are two things. It's about calming some of that fire down, right? Because think about it. When you put a fire out, you're covering it with the ashes, right? Ashes are earth. So it's a way of managing that fire, but it's also, if you think about the seasons, summer goes to fall, but there's that moment in between where everything is still looking alive. But you know, any day now the wind's going to come in and the leaves are going to start falling. And that's the fall, right? So that Late, late summer is earth energy. And really, what that's suggestive of is pausing, taking time to appreciate, being ready for the transformation before things start to change. And so when women are like, I'm doing all the things and I'm not getting anything, earth is how you start to say, I am open to receiving. That is the that's the element of earth. If you think of, you know, a big field. Or, you know, just even soil. When it rains, what does that earth do? It soaks it up. So earth is the energy of reception. And that's what I would
Darshna Patel: Wow.
amanda gibby peters: look for for those women. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Wow. And I I'm so glad we went this way because I will like just kind of give you some context. I actually live with my parents and I do want to move. I just haven't decided where I want to go yet. But it's so interesting because when I find myself getting to that place of feeling a little like chaotic or overwhelmed, I go straight outside and the moment I step my foot outside, I like it's like my body just instantly grounds itself. And I just like literally want to be outside a lot. Like more and more. And I loved being outside as a
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Darshna Patel: kid.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. That's that grounding energy. That's exactly like being receptive to sort of the earth's energy, letting it recalibrate you, right? I mean, that's
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: the beautiful thing about, you know, if people are like, I can do nothing that she just said, I would say this go outside, stand on some, you know, like preferably not a sidewalk, go find some grass and
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: I I had a shaman teach me this years and years ago. I love it. She was like, just say everything that frustrates you. Like, just get your day out and then spit and give it to the earth because the earth, yeah,
Darshna Patel: That
amanda gibby peters: spit it out. Like you're just like spitting it. You're like saying all the things, you're removing the energy, and then you're spitting. And essentially what you're doing is you're giving that to the earth to transmute. It's it's like earth energy is not, it's neutral. It doesn't recognize things
Darshna Patel: It's unconditional.
amanda gibby peters: as bad. It doesn't recognize Yes. And so you clear your energy field and you give it to the earth and then you can go back in. And if you made that a practice, you probably wouldn't start to feel as much of the piling on. I'm not going to pretend problems go away, but you don't feel as like, my gosh, everyone is giving me their burdens to carry.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, in emotional mastery, something that I talk about a lot is getting in control of your emotions. It's not to keep dwelling and feeling in it, it's getting control and then shifting that emotional imbalance back to unconditional love. Cause I and I think emotional
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: mastery side note is something that everybody needs to like know and get a hold of. But I really love that take and I wanna actually go into the receiving a little bit, and how we can set up
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: our space. to receive more. I know that you talked about earth energy, but what are some practical things that we can do to really bring in that receivership energy and embody that and make it easier for women to embody that? Cause I think that's one of the biggest things that women struggle with as well is because they just don't
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: feel worthy to receive more success, more love, more of anything that they desire.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So I love this question. and I'm gonna go for the thing that people hate to hear, but it is okay, let's have a serious conversation about what you keep company with. So you have things in your house. Most of us, this is a fact, most of us, if we had to lay everything out in our spaces side by side, we would run out of floor space before we ran out of things. Now, I am in no way a minimalist, you can see. but it is about having consistent, mindful conversations about what you're keeping company with. So what is in your space that you're tolerating? What is in your space because you don't know what to do with? What is in your space because of obligation? What is in your space because of fear? Versus what brings you joy? What is actually necessary? What is part of your ritual and routine? That is one of the easiest things to start with. And here's why. Because when you start to open space, you have room to receive. And the easiest everyday example I can think of is if you went to buy a new refrigerator today, you would probably, if you have one already, you would probably ask if they could haul the old one away, right? You don't have room to receive the new one until they make room for it. It's the same thing in our lives. And so again, this isn't about doing some big black trash bag purge, but it's about really asking yourself, are these books on the shelves, are they still representative of who I'm becoming or something that's meaningful to me? Are the clothes and the closet suggestive of the goals that I am trying to achieve? Or do they suggest who I was five years ago? You know, are the ways that I keep my rooms focused on the things that matter to me, right? So if I go into a living room and it looks like everyone just watches TV and no shame, I love a good show, but it's like it's not set up for conversation, but you're someone trying to get yourself out there to have conversations and communities, you might want to rearrange that room. So it really is again coming back to what is my house saying? What is my house telling me? Every day because you can be writing those goals down, you can be doing the meditation, you can be doing the affirmations, but if your house is suggesting something else, remember that's 24-7. So you want your house to cooperate with this idea of being available to receiving. And so those little things that start to bother you that that are telling you you don't have enough time, you never follow through, you don't have the energy, you don't have what it takes, those need to get evicted. Like truly, because
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: that is one of your biggest hurdles right now.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, I can definitely relate to this like calling myself
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: out here. I think that's been actually the biggest thing that has caused me to not get the best sleep, honestly. I actually wanna well have a quick question about the ho I have a quick question about hoarding. What does
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that mean? Because my parents, they hoard like a mother and I'm like, we don't have space here.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so there's a lot of you know, you can't overlook sort of like the cultural upbringing of that. Like there are certain ways that we're wired based on our experiences. But if I were just to say high level, high level overall, hoarding is really tricky because we think if we buy more or we have extra or we keep accumulating that we'll have enough. The funny thing is, is what actually gets wired in our brains is that, okay, you don't have enough yet, you need more. You don't have enough yet, you need more. It actually has the reverse effect. There's not a point that we reach where we think, I have plenty. And then what happens is because we have all of this stuff, there's just the common sense piece of it that we forget what we have. And so we go and get more, and we just kind of get buried alive by our things.
Darshna Patel: Sounds good.
amanda gibby peters: And then that can become it can run a little bit of interference with the opportunities or the visibility or you know, sort of the energy that we want. Now, that said I want to be really clear because I don't think that enough functional practitioners or even organizers, professional organizers share this. There are times when people hold on to things, maybe even hoard things, because it gives them a sense of protection. I have found that when I have worked with women who have been abused, they will often, when they get away from the problem, they will find a small space and they'll put everything that they took with them in that small space. And to some people, it might look cluttery. To some people, it might look like too much stuff. But I want you to think of it as insulation. It has a way of really holding energy in place. It's heavy, it stills things down and it gives people a sense of comfort. And so in those situations, people have dangerous jobs, people, you know, you know, have come out of something traumatic. even little kids, right? They love all of their things around them. That is actually in service to where their nervous systems are. The question then becomes when they come out of it or when they're ready for something new, what are they open to? Right. So I don't want to look at clutter or hoarding as a end all bad thing. Again, we're all on different journeys and it's about really pulling out what is this in service to? And if it is helping you right now, then that's what it's doing. It's helping you right now. But that's not a forever state either.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, that that makes sense. let's go into sleep because I think
amanda gibby peters: Okay.
Darshna Patel: sleep is something that also not a lot of people really they value it, but they don't really pay much mind to it. And I know that getting quality sleep really affects everything that we do. It's something that I have been working on for the
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: longest, and Even just recently, I go to sleep say the same bed, you know, same way for a while.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: And I definitely have found myself not being able to get the best sleep lately. So having this conversation is really intriguing to me of like how can we use Feng Shui to optimize our sleep specifically and why it happens and what we can do to, you know, help get better sleep.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So this is this is another really big topic. So I'll run through the list of things that I would first look at. So, you know, immediately when I go into a room, I'm looking to see does it say sleep, stillness, sex, sensuality? Like those are kind of the purposes of a bedroom. If I see the Peloton in there, if I see the laptop in there, if I see the dry cleaning over the chair in there. Then that's the good news is those are easy things to remove. And I know some people are going to be like, my Peloton can only go in my bedroom. So here's what I'll say: I don't care if you have exercise equipment in your bedroom so long as you're using it. But if you're not using it and you keep telling yourself one day, one day, one day, that's what you're sleeping with. That is the energetic contribution that you're allowing. And you know how that shows up is you walk out into the world thinking one day I'll get to it. That touches every other part of your life. So just make sure that if you do have to share space in your bedroom with some of those things, that you are actually using them. And then for the things that can be put away, say like work, that you have a shutdown ritual for those so that they are not impeding on your sleep. Another thing that I'm going to look at is what do you have under your bed? Like do you have a lot of things shoved under there? And again, people will say, well, I have to use it. I don't have a very big bedroom. And that's totally fine. But we might take an inventory of can we move some of the things that are maybe sharp or hard or like wouldn't actually be comfortable to sleep on out and move more soft things underneath, sort of be really mindful about what we're sleeping on top of. When we have a lot of things underneath our bed, especially if we have no idea what is under there, it can create agitation. So it's just another layer that could be interfering. I will Also look at okay, what is the energy of the room? Do I feel okay, I can start to unwind, it feels soft, it's soothing, or does it feel like it's very energizing? If I go into a room that has, like say, ceiling to floor windows, there's a lot of light, the ceilings are high, there's a TV in there, you know, it feels it doesn't have that sense of intimacy. Then we're going to talk about how we can sort of bring a little bit more yin energy into the room. Yin is how we start to feel like we can embody and nourish and be available to. And it doesn't mean that you have to get rid of any of those features, although the TV I want to talk about here in a second, but it's about how can we counterbalance some of that bring me to life energy when really you're just like, let me go to sleep. So those are some immediates. The TV in the bedroom. Everyone wants to make a case for it. And I'm not going to get in your way. If you love having your TV in your bedroom, that's fantastic. What I would encourage you to try is covering it up for like a week. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard back from people who, with as much resistance as anyone listening is feeling, have covered up their TV only to realize because their watches tell them or because they just feel better. That they sleep more deeply, right? So it's worth the effort to just cover it up and see what happens. Because if you do sleep better, we don't have to keep talking about it. You're going to want to figure out what to do with the TV. But it's a good thing to try because that TV, that, you
Darshna Patel: Wow.
amanda gibby peters: know, what do we do with TVs? We watch them, right? And so there is this, you know, again, this conversation, like, Pay attention to me. Watch me. That's happening.
Darshna Patel: It's signaling the subconscious mind.
amanda gibby peters: Yes, yes, yes. Again, what is your room saying? Is it prioritizing whatever's important to you in that room?
Darshna Patel: Wow. Okay. So speaking of the room, I know that you're talking about like the Peloton, but what if you work? What if you have like a desk and your workspace? How can we start to go through that ritual and kind of separate it, you know, in our room? Because I know a lot of people work
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: from their room I do. So I'm asking for me.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? That was over COVID. That was a lot of people had that situation. They had kids were, you know, schooling from home, they were working from home. You know, they didn't have enough space for everyone who needed workspace, right? So what I would say is if I just want to put this at the top, if you have space in your house to work, meaning you have a guest room or a dining room that you never use, but you are dedicating them as a guest room or dining room, utilize the room. Make it your workspace. I just want to say that because that is something that's very common that I run into. But for people who have to make work, sleep, play all happen in the same space, a couple things. One, like I said, have a shutdown ritual, right? Shut the laptop. Have a space that you kind of pack up everything and you put it away. It is a ritual that tells your brain to start turning things off. If you leave the laptop open, your brain doesn't, it it doesn't disconnect from it, right? You have to actually You know, I don't want say formally, but you need to have this way of telling your brain, okay, here's what's about to happen. Work is gonna go, you know, here for the rest of the night. It's now time to sleep or to rest, and we'll revisit this in the morning. The other thing, and this is so tricky, I know, for people, but what do we do? We grab our phone. I myself am guilty of this. We grab our phone, our iPad, our laptop, and we sit in bed and we work. Okay, so. The way that places get programmed is by the activity that's happening there. So if you are doing work and you're sitting on your bed right where you would put your head and you're doing everything, you are programming that to be as much work as it is sleep. So with the kiddos when they were schooling from home, I would say don't invite the classroom into your bedroom. Find a chair or even the foot of the bed where you can do your schoolwork, but it is separate from where you actually put your head. And even that creates an energetic boundary. So that is that's a really powerful thing to do. It starts to change the way you experience the room.
Darshna Patel: That makes sense. That definitely makes sense. I'm like already thinking of things to like start shifting and working on. okay, so let's move over to health. I did want to talk about specific parts of the health. I know gut health is really important. We just talked about sleep, but also the feminine reproductive system, like the sexual health for women. Nobody's talking about this, and I want to talk about it about. Feng shui can help with our gut health. And I know the energetic, like overarching emotional root cause for gut is nourishment. And I think a lot of women lack
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: in nourishment nowadays. So I wanna talk about how we can start
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: prioritizing this, you know, gut health for women and also our sexual health for women using feng shui. I think it would be really cool to dive into.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, so I would say with like gut health, like let's just say health in general. Okay. Your kitchen is going to always be the seat of health and wealth. Okay. So when I go into a kitchen, what I'm going to look for is what is on the counter? What am I seeing in this space? Does it feel like there's congestion? Does it feel like there's open space? Like, think about what it requires to have a healthy body. Okay. And then think about the things that are actually contributing to that. And then the things that could be counteracting that. Right. So I always tell this story of, you know, I go into this home and for different reasons, this guy wasn't concerned about health, but he was wanting more opportunities. And I go into his kitchen and he has one of those really fancy espresso machines, like a like one from Italy, like four or five thousand dollars. But he's standing there talking to me and he's holding a Starbucks cup. And so I'm like, what do you like? Do you make coffee like during the day? How often do you use this? Cause it was taking up a huge portion of the available counter space in the kitchen. And he's like, no, I just like the way it looks. And I'm like, okay, well, here's the deal, yo. If you want room to receive, if you want things to show up in your life, you need to actually have the space for those things to land. I mean, feng shui is often. As physical and literal as it is metaphorical and symbolic. So was he going to get rid of the you know, espresso maker? No. But that was like the easiest win for him. So when I go into homes where someone is like, okay, it's about nourishment. I need to take care of myself. What's sitting on the stovetop? Have you cleaned your oven out? What is the situation of your fridge and your freezer? Do you have anything fresh out that suggests that really ripe, fresh, yang, high potency energy? do you have every drawer filled to the gills? Are there things that you don't ever use? Do you have a lot of cookbooks out that suggest this is who I'm gonna be? But oops, I never use any of them. Like what this is, is about aligning yourself with your actual goals. And this is not about being aspirational. It's about being realistic because. Aspiration gives us permission to get to it eventually. Being a lot more realistic says, okay, I'm gonna plan for what I'm capable of on Monday, not some future date down the road when I suddenly wake up with all the right energy. So, what is the one, maybe two things that I can do? And that's how you start to audit your kitchen in a way that better aligns with who you're trying to nourish, you know, physically. Like, is it that I Can't sleep. Okay, maybe I need to have a cup of tea before I go to bed. So maybe that's something that would be really important to find space for. do I feel like I'm always eating on the go? Okay, so then what can I do that would suggest sitting down? Do I have the table clear? Do I have things that I could set the table with so that I feel invited to? Can I set up a meal time where we're not on our phones? Like so that we can actually digest our food, enjoy conversation, and linger. Like What are the specific to you goals? And then how do you make your kitchen match that? Those, those are the things, right? But so often we get busy, we let things, you know, certainly in a refrigerator, you know, leftovers are there or we don't have anything fresh in there. If we want to eat healthy meals, we don't even have what we need, our pantries are filled with stuff that maybe aren't the best for us. And this isn't about going all in about everything has to be good for you. It's just about making the space work for you in a way that feels realistic to you.
Darshna Patel: You mentioned wealth as well. That really caught my attention of how the kitchen is the home for
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: wealth. So as we're talking about
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: health and wealth in our conversation today, I love to know
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: like how do they go hand in hand, tie in together, like that guy that came to you for opportunities, right? So like if someone
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah.
Darshna Patel: wants to work on specific things like more financial flow, you know, opportunities.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Like all of these things honestly tie into success, right? They tie into business and career
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: success. So how does Fen Shui tie into those things and
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: why and like how like certain practical things that we can do. Cause I see that Feng Shui is very practical, which is really cool because you don't have to believe it, it doesn't have to be woo woo for you
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah.
Darshna Patel: for people to actually get on board and change their lives, which I really love.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. So let me explain why the kitchen is the seat of health and wealth. So when we talk about wealth and feng shui, it is a pretty broad umbrella, is what I want you to think of. And what I mean by that is if I were to ask you what makes someone wealthy, you might say, having all the money in the bank. But if you have all the money in the bank, but you don't have friends, you don't have a support network, you don't have opportunities, you don't have your health, you don't have, you know, A passion. You don't, you know, you don't have those things that genuinely make the money worth having, then you just have money, right? And I'm not knocking it. I love money, but wealth is all encompassing. And wealth is also the idea of, you know, it's the accumulation. Here's what I want you to think of. It's the accumulation of those resources. All right. So then let's jump to why the kitchen specifically represents wealth. The idea in Feng Shui stems from the belief was if you were able to feed many mouths and those bodies were strong because of the nourishment and they were able to go out and work and earn and they could bring those resources home, the universe was sort of seeing you as already abundant. So it was like, you know, sort of that infinite eight loop, right? It's just like the the idea of wealth was just sort of baked in. You also have the stove and the oven, which represent the hearth of a home, right? It's like bringing all of the resources that are important together. So in Feng Shui, one of the things that's maybe not so practical that we'll talk about is stoking your burners every day, not cooking on a favorite burner, but actually rotating through all the burners because they are suggestive of resources coming to life. your oven being clean again, so that you have a storehouse. for your resources that is prepared for abundance and prosperity. So all of these symbols start to kind of tie together and merge and they create this spot of wealth. Does that does that make sense?
Darshna Patel: It definitely, yeah. So essentially using all of your resources to support more wealth to come
amanda gibby peters: Mm.
Darshna Patel: in, not just going off of like your your cause we're so like habitual, right? We we like to use the same things that work for us. So it's it's
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yes.
Darshna Patel: basically tying in the idea of trying something new every day to get better to align more with wealth. Okay.
amanda gibby peters: Well, and I also the thing that I I one of the things that I love about rituals. So I'll I'll I'll share this. Something that people could do is if they have a stove, you know, and it doesn't have to be a gas stove. So it doesn't, you it can be whatever kind of stove you have. You just go once a day and you light the burners, you turn them all on and you see them lit and then you turn them all off. Like you don't have to wait until you're cooking. Like you can make this an actual ritual and do it for nine or twenty-seven days. But here's the sort of real magic behind the ritual. You are bringing an intention to a very specific action. So when you go over there and you're lighting the burners, what are you doing? You're thinking about stoking resources. You are putting yourself in the path of being aware and receptive of those opportunities. So it's not just, well, I'm going to go stoke the burners and everything's going to land on my doorstep. I often say functu will trigger opportunities, but you got to be a participant, right? So if an opportunity knocks and you say, no, I'm going to pass, That might not be like you called in something. This is how Feng Shui is working, right? So the ritual, the magic of it is stoking, focusing on your intention and doing it in a consistent way, that starts to change you, that starts to edify you a little differently.
Darshna Patel: Yeah, intention is everything. I always like
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I'm setting intentions every single day for everything that I do. when you were talking about I wanna kinda take it back to when you were talking about the enoughness piece that came up with finances of like
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: We were talking about it in terms of how we're kind of hoarding on the things that we have and that comes from like us not feeling like we have enough. Finances came
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: to mind and I think this really plays out a lot with people. So how does how does that tie into finances for us? And how can we what can we do to like kind of heal that part of us that shows up in our house in terms of feng shui?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Well, I would say, I mean, again, it's not the sexiest of exercises, but going through your space and looking for the things that suggest you're not enough. And, you know, if you s if you're someone who
Darshna Patel: What do you mean?
amanda gibby peters: loves reading books, I do. I love books. Yeah, like if you go and notice things that are saying, okay, you've got to work on this, you haven't done this, you've got this project, right? Like all the ways that Okay, your home holds all different versions of you. It's not just who you are today. So the version of you that thought, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna buy that starter kit and I'm gonna start this business, or I'm going to buy those cookbooks because I'm gonna totally go gluten free and you haven't. I bought this whole faceline and I'm going to like just give myself the most glowy skin, right? When you are surrounded by things of, you know, previous versions of yourself. That suggests you didn't follow through, you didn't do it, I didn't have enough time, I didn't have enough energy, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. The overriding message becomes not enough. Not enough.
Darshna Patel: So what are some examples of like things that we can maybe look into?
amanda gibby peters: Well, okay, so I would say like let's do something really easy. Okay, how many self help books do you have by your bed? How many of them have you read? How many of them have you actually implemented the ideas? And if you haven't, what are you gonna tell me?
Darshna Patel: So the so we would wanna keep
amanda gibby peters: I'm gonna get to it.
Darshna Patel: the ones that we use. That's that's the differentiation
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: is keep the things that were it made sense.
amanda gibby peters: Because think about it. So let's go, let's go a little bit deeper. Why do you have and I am going like true transparency? I do this too. I struggle with this too. But why do you have five instead of one? And please don't stop buying books. I love people buying books, but why do you have five instead of one? Because oftentimes we think the one thing's not
Darshna Patel: Well, I per this is the way I think.
amanda gibby peters: going to be enough. Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: This is the way I think with the books is like if I can even extract like just the gold from what I needed from it, then to
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: me that's enough. And like that's how I kinda go with things.
amanda gibby peters: Yes.
Darshna Patel: But what does that still count?
amanda gibby peters: Right. And I've and I that totally counts. But the reality is, like the real if I'm gonna hold a mirror up to everyone, that's not how a lot of people are. We buy usually out of desperation. We usually buy the book because it promises something. Just like we buy the lotions and potions because it promises something. We buy the clothes because we think it promises something. We bring something home to put in our home because we think it's going to promise something, right? I often talk about a lot of things that come into our home as counterfeit happiness. It has big promise, but then once it crosses our threshold, somehow we don't follow through or it doesn't hold that same spark. This is not to say anything's wrong with us. The marketing out there is fierce. Like you said, we are all sort of getting the same messages and we're not even having our own thoughts. But that's what you want to be mindful of because when people are like, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I don't think I'm enough, you got to start looking at what the things around you are saying. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: Has been this that's been the bane of my existence. Is it's the good enough that really kicks in.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: It's one of my recurring soul lessons. Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: Okay, let's talk about that. Yes, the good enough. Okay, so that's a great thing too. Like that's good enough, but someone's like, okay, I want to have like, I want to have a 5K launch, I want to have a 6K launch, I wanna, you know, I want to have a job that pays this, or I wanna have the investments, or I want to have the vacation, or I want to. And then I'll say, okay, well, where do you acknowledge and you know, invite wealth in? Okay. Now
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: If there's not a ritual around that, if there's not, I might say, okay, so let's start where I started. Let's bring in fresh flowers, to which most people will say, they don't last long enough. There's not a special occasion. I don't know where I'd put them. I don't know. That just seems kind of frivolous. And it doesn't matter whether you decide to bring the fresh flowers in or not. I,
Darshna Patel: Yeah. I think it's pointless.
amanda gibby peters: you know, that's up to you. But but here's the thing. That's a source of wealth. And you're using excuses. So that shows you where you're
Darshna Patel: Wait, how though?
amanda gibby peters: holding out on yourself because you're saying there has to be a special occasion.
Darshna Patel: Flowers.
amanda gibby peters: Well, flowers are a full expression of life. They're beautiful. They're not meant to last forever. They're very much about the present moment. Think about when people usually give flowers, when someone is sick or someone has died, or to celebrate something, right? So why flowers? Because they have such enormous energy. That's why. So when you go, I can't do that because there's not the right occasion, or I don't know, that feels really expensive. I again, the excuses don't matter to me, but I'm listening to where you're holding out on yourself when it comes to wealth. Because wealth isn't gonna land on your doorstep. Finding ways
Darshna Patel: So acknowledging yeah, so ign
amanda gibby peters: to have proofs of abundance. That make you feel a little uncomfortable because if you think you can handle a million dollars, but you can't handle a $20 bouquet, I got news for you. Like you have to be comfortable with wealth before you can really allow yourself to receive more. You have to be okay with saying, I can indulge, I'm deserving, I'm enough. I am enough. I don't need an occasion,
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: I don't need a special moment, I don't need an excuse. I'm enough. And the flowers are just one example of it. It can be a million things. It can be a million different
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: things. But the flowers are the easiest way for me to get people from point A to point B to realize because whether you again, whether you buy the flowers or not, doesn't matter. But I want people to see where they're interrupting wealth, where they're saying not yet. That's the real sort of reveal here.
Darshna Patel: How can what comes to mind for me is how can we kind of make sure that we're not in like diving into indulgence and just like, I want this too, and then I want this too, and all of these things. Where we're using our wealth in a responsible way as well. It's not just like kind of like going bananas. Cause if I was to go that route, I'd literally be in Europe right now. Like and I'd just be buying everything.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Well, so right. So most of everything that we've talked about today is actually reflecting on what's already in your space. The flowers are the only thing that I suggested of bringing in to suggest wealth. Most of it comes down to having a really honest conversation about what you have. Now you may have already audited all of your stuff, but most people live with a lot of ambiguity. Most people live with, I need to hold on to this because what if things don't work out? A lot of people say, well, if I get rid of this, then I'm probably just gonna have to buy it later anyway. Like we project our expectations literally by what we're keeping around us. So it's like, okay, where are you willing to see things a little differently? Because if you want to see things differently in your space, you gotta see things differently in your space, right? Like if you want to be a different you, something has to change. Like that's and so the most within reach way for most people is to start room by room, drawer by drawer, just you know, having an honest conversation. And sometimes it's not even about letting anything go. Sometimes it's just about, okay, I'm starting to hear what my space is telling me. Cause I think that this is just a door full of clothes. I think this is just a cupboard full of spices. I think this is just a basket full of blankets. I think this is just, but when you start to pay attention to what you really love, what really lights you up, what actually gets used, what actually sort of weaves into your life, you're gonna realize you have a lot of stuff taking up space from other things showing up in your life that you're really trying to call in.
Darshna Patel: Mm. I think that's kind of the foundation of this entire like message of everything that we were talking about is just if we just focus on that and we take inventory, now I'm getting it of like,
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: wow. The way Source has created the system is just
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: so like it's it's so complex, but it's so perfect at the same time. Cause now it's like, it's finally clicking in my head.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: so then our relationship with overflow, right? When it comes to abundance, And you're talking about buying things that we may think it's not necessary, but we're just allowing that to come in because we want to allow the goodness in life to come in. Is that right? Is that what you're kind of talking about when it comes to overflow or is that different?
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, but I wouldn't I wouldn't say that like what I don't want people to do is to walk away from this conversation and be like, okay, well, I've got to go buy, you know, the expensive lamp and I'm gonna go buy the really expensive sofa and I'm gonna go. That's that's not it. It is about how do I allow, like, have I prepared my space to receive the company of abundance and prosperity? Is my space clean? Is it cared for? Is it intentional? Does it represent me? Okay. And then if I feel like I'm wanting to welcome more wealth, then what is it that I can bring in that becomes the environmental metaphor for that? So for some people, it might be a bowl full of fresh fruit or vegetables, right? For some people, it might be the fresh flowers. For some people, it might be splurging on a wind chime and that you hang it outside. And every time they open their window and they hear that wind chime, they think abundance, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be tied to you buying anything. It could be also clearing out space and giving really good geography to the things that you really do love. Right. Maybe you have a chair that's, you know, a fabulous velvet, but you never sit in it because it's always covered with stuff. And so instead you decide to clear everything off of it and you put a little table by it. And now you have the space that you're like, my gosh, why didn't I do this sooner? You see this all the time when people go to sell homes. You know, they live a certain way. And then the realtor comes in and says, You're gonna have to take care of that, you're gonna have to do this, you're gonna have to do this. And they're like, gosh, why didn't we do this sooner? Like I love my house
Darshna Patel: Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: now, right? It's the same thing. So it's yes, to have overflow, you need to challenge yourself, right? Always I let me say it this way: investing in yourself is always a good way to get closer to wealth. So some easy ways to do it are buying the fresh fruit, are buying the fresh flowers. For other people, it's signing up for the classes and showing up and being held accountable to what you're learning. You know, for other people, it is travel, right? Being open to the rest of the world and different ways of thinking and being. The the the thing I often tell my students and people who are in my community. is you will never regret investing in yourself. You just have to figure out what that is for you where you are based on where you want to go. Right. And so
Darshna Patel: Yeah, I agree.
amanda gibby peters: it changes for everyone. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: I'm really big on that. And that's the only thing that's like where a lot of my money goes, anyways. but I also think it's important for us to do it from a place of complete neutrality, too. Cause I found myself getting into that state of I need this information, especially with books, with courses, with mentors, all of these
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: things. so yeah, that definitely makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah. That becomes another type of hoarding, right? Like that's another type of hoarding. And we do it. So, you know, with the things coming in, what you know, when people ask me about clutter, here's a really good filter. I'm like, just wait. Just sit on it. Like, you know, just give yourself a couple days breathing space to see if you still love it. A lot of times we are reacting on impulse. We're acting out of desperation. We're acting out of whatever's happened to us that day. But that is going to fade. So wait until you've kind of gone through a couple versions of yourself, right? Cause today I might be really hungry and tomorrow I might be really crampy. And the next day I might be in a really good mood. It's really great to give yourself a little breathing room so that you're not making those impulse decisions, that you're not feeling desperate and I need and grasping and white knuckling and all of that. It comes from a place of confidence.
Darshna Patel: That makes sense. Is there something that we can do to invite more flow in our day-to-day lives and what we're doing in the house? Like, you know, from waking up to, you know, brushing our teeth, having breakfast, and then working and then Is there some like a a trick
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that you like or something, like a little hack, a fun hack?
amanda gibby peters: I mean, I do think that wherever you are, wherever you sleep, that is a prime space to intentionally bookend your day, right? So what is it that you're seeing? Smell, think of your senses. What is it that you're experiencing before you go to bed? And then obviously experiencing as you wake up. Because that is going to bookend your
Darshna Patel: Right.
amanda gibby peters: day. So right there, a lot of opportunity to set the day right. you know, if I am, if someone's working on self-esteem or something, we might talk about working with the mirror in the bathroom as they're getting ready. As, you know, you can program a mirror, you can speak to it, you can tell it your intentions, you can write your intentions and put them in a red envelope and slide them behind the mirror. And then that mirror, what do mirrors do? They reflect, they double. So it's reflecting and doubling that energy onto you. So there's a way to be really specific with mirror work. I'd make sure that.
Darshna Patel: That's actually really cool.
amanda gibby peters: You know, you Yeah. Yeah. It's it's
Darshna Patel: Never heard of them.
amanda gibby peters: a simple way. Yeah. Well, it's a it's a very specific feng shui thing, but it's a way of letting your house start to collaborate with you. Right. So you set the intention, you get really clear, and then you let the mirror stay on for you while you go about your, you know, your life. And then every time you're in the mirror,
Darshna Patel: I notice that you
amanda gibby peters: you're in the way.
Darshna Patel: I notice that you've mentioned that with the water fountain with the red envelope. What is
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: it about the red envelope is just in everything that you're intending for? I think that's really fascinating.
amanda gibby peters: Well, so red envelopes are a symbol. They're a very traditional, you know, they're they're traditional in Chinese culture. At the lunar new year, a lot of times people will gift money in red envelopes. So red envelopes speak to fortune and prosperity and blessings. The red is symbolic well, it's a very yang color. It's very it has a lot of energy and power to it. It also is the color of blood, so it suggests life force. And you know, the shape of the red envelope is rectangular. So it's symbolic of a shield. So it's also protection. So one red envelope brings in a lot of energy. And then you put intentions in it and it amplifies all of that. So it's a way of saying, hey, this thing that I'm talking about, it matters. And it sort of
Darshna Patel: I just wanna put the red envelope in the bank account.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, well I mean there's yeah, you could, you could, but you can I mean there's a lot of ways that you can work with red envelopes and and truly it's you know, it's just again giving emphasis to something that matters to you. It's taking an intention and pairing it with an action.
Darshna Patel: How important are vision boards for feng shui like when it comes to feng shui?
amanda gibby peters: I, you know, I think vision boards are fantastic.
Darshna Patel: For manifesting.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, I I think vision boards are fantastic. I love them because I again going back to environmental environmental metaphor, whatever you're seeing as having a conversation with you. So I genuinely believe in like if you prioritize and frame goals, ideas, experiences, words, whatever it is, however you vision board, then you're, you know, you're saying this is important. And this is a container for this energy. It's accumulating that energy. So I think they're really fantastic. I think where people slip on a banana peel is when they feel defeated by the vision board. Like they put things that feel so impossible to them on there that it almost reinforces the idea that that's not going to happen. Right. So I mean, you want to dream, you want to think big, you want to do all those things, but you also want to stay plugged into. Does this still match? Do I still feel hopeful? Do I feel optimistic? Does this, is this even something I still want? And treat the vision board more as a living thing than just a one-time, okay, well, now it's up there and I'll change it whenever I change it all, right? Like engage with it, participate with it. Let it be a partner in you reaching, you know, your goals.
Darshna Patel: That totally makes a lot of sense. Awesome. We are coming up in an hour and I do value your time. So just want to make sure that we sort of wrap things up. But I did want to ask you a really juicy question towards
amanda gibby peters: Yeah. Yeah.
Darshna Patel: the end. And that is that what is it about Feng Shui that really stands out to you the most that you love that makes it so different than any other modality out there and methods? Like what is the thing that
amanda gibby peters: Mm.
Darshna Patel: you really love that stands out to you the most about Feng Shui? Cause I can tell you're really passionate about it and I really love that.
amanda gibby peters: Well, I yeah. Yeah, I love that we all, regardless of where we are, are in a space and that most people don't realize that there are all these opportunities immediately within reach. The thing I love about Feng Shui is it is a wisdom that has been around for thousands of years. So even though it's ancient, it has so much modern day application. And my favorite thing, my very favorite thing about Feng Shui is being in a space with people who don't know much about it, having conversations like this, and knowing, and people often tell me anyway, but knowing that people are going to leave and they're going to be very deliberate and loving and intentional. And mindful in their spaces, like there's this before and after because now they realize my house, my space, it's this power player. And I've just never thought it was on my team, and now it is. Like that is that's the piece of it that lights me up. It's why I keep coming back to it. You know, every time I get to be in a conversation with people who don't know enough, or as I always joke, like know enough to be dangerous. It's like I want you to really understand this because. We spend so much time focusing on all the things we can do and we don't think about what our house can do. So I love, you know, opening that door for people.
Darshna Patel: I love that. Something came in mind that I did want to ask you before we wrap up
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: is when it comes to moving, how do
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: we like how can we apply Feng Shui and the art of it and knowing like, you know, when it's time to move and move on versus being in the space that we are in?
amanda gibby peters: So there's this exercise that I learned from a teacher that I share with a lot of my students. And it sounds a little out there, but when you do it, you you'll see why I suggest it. so you know, usually people know that they want to move, and so that's a very specific conversation. But if someone's like, I don't know when it's time, there's this opportunity to write your space a letter, right? And say, you know, if you if you've named your space, if you've named your home. Call it by its name, but you know, here's what I love about you. Here are some things that we've been going through, here's some things that I hope to do for you. You know, just like literally write a letter. and then on another day, you're going to write a letter from your space, meaning you are going to just be the channel, but you're going to just start writing and your house is going to say what it needs to say to you. And if you can get out of the sort of abstract or stream of consciousness that it requires. You often are able to discern what your home wants because every space we're in is a living, breathing energy, right? Going back to the everything is energy. And your space has ideas, it has opinions, it wants certain things to be known. And we just don't usually make ourselves available to it again because we're so busy and so distracted. So writing the letter allows that to come through. And so if you're someone who's like, well, when do I know it's time to move? Ask your house. Ask your house and start to let it have that conversation with you because it starts to open you up to, you know, this again, this conversation that's already happening, you just haven't tuned in. That's a really direct way to start hearing what your house is saying.
Darshna Patel: I love that. And I also do believe that like we take our energies with us wherever we go.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: So it's important to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: kind of leave from that place of abundance, of happiness, of nourishment, because then that's just gonna carry on and grow on the other end of wherever you go.
amanda gibby peters: Yeah, yeah. And your house won't I mean I love every house. It doesn't matter what the situation is. I can always find Shui wins in it. And I genuinely believe that we're called to these spaces for very specific reasons. Sometimes it's our life lessons. Sometimes we're the one that's going to be most capable of taking care of the space. Sometimes it's just a chapter and a really long book. But that's the thing is that it is a relationship. And so treating it like, my gosh, you know, there's a good chance that this space is gonna be here long after I'm gone, having that respect, having that level of care, it changes the way you experience your space. And yeah, it's it you are able to go on to the next space and, you know, take care of it and, you know, steward it well. But more importantly, you leave the space that you were in better than you found it if you have those conversations.
Darshna Patel: I definitely came back here to my parents' house for I got a reason, because I've definitely healed a lot with my parents.
amanda gibby peters: Mm-hmm.
Darshna Patel: And yeah, I could definitely relate to
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: that. my god. Honestly, I feel like I need to listen to this episode like on replay. And everyone listening, please listen to this episode a few times because our brain really only takes around 20 to 30 minutes of information in a given moment. So we talked about so much where I feel like I even I feel like I had a session with you because I feel like I got so many
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: practical tips. And things that I could start implementing. And sometimes it's around
amanda gibby peters: Yeah.
Darshna Patel: asking ourselves like what is the most needle moving thing that I can do right now that creates that biggest movement and start working on that. So super, super grateful that you came on today to share your wisdom. And I definitely want everyone to know, like, if someone wants to work with you, what does that look like? What do you have available? and where can people connect with you?
amanda gibby peters: So I would say that the best places to get more of what just happened here is to follow me on Instagram, Amanda Gibby Peters. I have a book and it's only because I'm sharing tips every day. So it's right on my desk. Simple Shui for every day. yeah, so
Darshna Patel: Love it.
amanda gibby peters: I am sharing tips on Instagram right now. It's August. and I'm sharing additional information. So you can literally follow along and just like what happened today, where we were having conversations, I'm like. writing notes in the inside, right? So that you can write notes on the inside, but it's a really great way to learn a lot of concentrated Shui in a short amount of time. The other place is my podcast, House Therapy. I have over 200 episodes. I, you know, drop new episodes every week and they're about 15 to 20 minutes. So they're really short, but again, a lot of good information. So for people who are curious, like wait, I have so many questions. Those are great. sort of watering holes to pull up to. And then from there, I do have a course, the Simple Shui Course. And for people who complete the Simple Shui course, then there is a certification. But all of that is on my site at simple shui.com. but I would say get on Instagram, go listen to the podcast. You're gonna learn so much and you're going to be incredibly excited about things that you can do in your home. So yeah, those are those are great resources.
Darshna Patel: And Do you have one on one offers as well, like one on one sessions that you do? Do you do that? Or is it more of just this?
amanda gibby peters: I I do I do have like a ninety minute session and then a 30 day session, but a lot of times it depends on where I am in my teaching. So I would say if you want a one-on-one session, reach out, Amanda at simple shui.com and we'll definitely talk about kind of your needs and my calendar. Cause that's the alignment right there. But yes, I do offer one on one consultations.
Darshna Patel: Yeah. Amazing, amazing. I will have everything in the description box below so you guys can go check it out. And give Amanda some love because I feel like we received so much value today. I really definitely feel like I have a more of a personable understanding, like more of a realistic understanding of what Feng Shui is. And you made it so practical and so easy to understand and also implement and fun, which I love. Everything. So
amanda gibby peters: Yes. Yes. I w yeah, I want it to be fun. I want it to be easy. I want you to feel motivated. I don't want you to feel like your mom's telling you to do stuff.
Darshna Patel: Yes. Yes. I honestly the that's the way I live my life too and that I aspire to. So thank you so much for being on here and I will catch you guys in the next episode.
