Dear Cosmos Community,
As a feng shui consultant with a background in fine art, I am passionate about using feng shui for both personal wellness and home design. Feng shui looks at the flow of energy in your environment to achieve harmony and balance for your life. I curate and create modern images to help people understand this ancient and sometimes esoteric practice. My wish is to modernize feng shui, to make it contemporary, practical and chic, without losing its grounding in its centuries old traditions.
As a first generation Taiwanese-American, this practice is deeply personal to me and I use the philosophies of feng shui to connect deeper with my Asian-American identity and my relationship to my Taiwanese family. With a deeper understanding of the philosophy of feng shui, I am able to link it to the Chinese traditions of my childhood, like why my parents used red envelopes, red strings, and crystals all over our house!
Red envelopes are not just used for giving money for Lunar New Year. They are also used in specific feng shui cures.
My style of feng shui, which follows the Black Sect Tibetan Buddhist (BTB) lineage, seeks to balance the five elements in nature: wind, water, fire, earth, metal. These ideologies align with the Buddhist traditions I also learned from my Taiwanese family. The five elements apply to the energy of the individual and home and can also be applied to major life categories, such as wealth, fame, love, family, health, creativity, self-love, path in life, and helpful people.
These red images represent the FIRE element and relate to the fame and recognition area of your home. Placed in the right location, they can be used to activate and enhance this aspect of your life.
Feng shui has influenced my New York City life, too. While activating a feng shui adjustment to boost the career area in our house, my husband was recruited into his dream job. Feng shui helped my kids stay calm during the crisis of the pandemic as we followed simple, but powerful meditations. It guided me to say good-bye to our home where we lived for fifteen years and propelled a shockingly fast sale of our home. And finally in our new home, I found ways to create balance and harmony through textiles, color, and design using feng shui principles.
The EARTH element was infused by adding soft, warm tones to the living room along with square shaped accents in the rug. This element relates to health, love, and self-knowledge.
The WATER element was painted into the walls of the dining room with black, wavy lines. This element relates to your path in life and career.
I want to help you apply feng shui in your life. Together we can make simple but powerful adjustments to help you and your space manifest the change you are seeking. Book a session with me to see how feng shui can influence you! :)
Helen Chen
P.S. I’d love to offer an exclusive 20% discount for my feng shui sessions to the Cosmos community along with a free curated set of feng shui cards. My Feng Shui Services can be found here, and you can read more of my home tips and ideas here!
A free curated card set -- these cards represent a feng shui grid that we use to analyze your home and the areas in your life you wish to improve. I will hand-make and curate a set just for you!
Mary Choe | Certified Life Coach | https://marychoe.com/
I'm a somatic coach who helps BIPOC changemakers transform the way they do mission-driven work. Burnout and trauma don't have to be inevitable. We can do this work in a way that is sustainable, nourishing, and joyful! I offer sliding scale pricing.
Contact Mary here for a free 60-minute Discovery Call | Join Mary’s Facebook community for BIPOC Changemakers here!
Emerging Asian American women writers: Sign up to read at a Winter Community Reading!
At our Fall Book Swap, we met so many of you who identify as writers who are fighting through the barriers of the publishing industry. How can we share our writing if we’re not given the chance? So, here’s to chances!!
This winter, we want to organize Community Readings for emerging writers in the community to read their work in front of a supportive audience of Asian American women. We want this to be a chance for you to share your story and your voice. We want you to see that your story matters to the community. Please SIGN UP by clicking the button below if you're interested in reading:
💌All experience levels welcome - you do *not* need to have a published book/writing or MFA!
💌All genres welcome - poetry, fiction, non-fiction, genre experimental, etc!
Nominate your favorite Asian woman-owned small businesses and creators to get featured in the Cosmos Community 2021 Gift Guide, coming Dec 6!
It's our favorite time of the year - GIFT GUIDE SEASON!!! Together we can give love and visibility to the Asian women-owned small businesses and creators who work so hard to make dope stuff for the community. Submissions close tomorrow, Nov 16!
**Nomination Guidelines**
✅ Asian women-owned small businesses + individual creators + brands all welcome
✅ We're especially interested in nominations for: Southeast Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander women creators; queer Asian women creators
✅ Self-nominations are very welcome :)
curated by Karen (@themokstories)
Rina Yang, cinematographer for All Too Well
Much to my embarrassment, I spent the weekend lying on my floor in a plaid shirt watching Taylor Swift’s short film All Too Well, sorting through memories of the two older men I dated in my mid twenties until I realized I was too young and cool for them! This ended up being quite fruitful, as I discovered Rina Yang, the wildly talented Japanese-Korean-British cinematographer for All Too Well and a bunch of other awesome music videos and short films!
Photo Source: Reform The Funk
Do you think “Asian American” represents your identity?
Y’alls responses to this question from our experimental “Should We Redefine Asian America?” reading group are so vulnerable and thoughtful, clearly declaring that we are not a monolith, and unafraid to question why we still use the term “Asian America.”
A community member in my small group paraphrased a conclusion from The Loneliest Americans — we only use the term Asian American to explain ourselves to white and black folks. Does that make “Asian America” less valid, worth disposing of?
If you haven’t shared yet, I’d love to hear your perspective! You don’t have to be in the reading group to share :)