Unknown Speaker 0:00
Those are the things that you have to keep in mind. You have to make sure that when you come home, your home nourishes you the way a good mom would.
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When, if you are a good mother, you had a good mother, nourishment is not just giving you food. Nourishment is giving you hugs. It's saying nice things to you, making you feel appreciated, right? Giving you know, life if you want to go through the five love languages, um,
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a good parent doesn't just use one or two. They use all of them. And a good home, a home with good Feng Shui, they it would also give you good feedback at every step. Oh,
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I
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Oh.
Unknown Speaker 1:20
Welcome to the lettuce loves you, the Podcast where we explore belonging and nourishment through the perceptions of body, Earth and community. I'm your host. Jeanell Innerarity, for over 25 years, I've been helping people come home to themselves through somatic or body based practice, dream work, nature, connection and relationship with self, other, humans and spirit.
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I want to get beyond belonging as a buzz word and beyond nourishment as a fitness strategy, and get to the heart of what it really means to belong and what it really means to be nourished.
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Each of my guests has a unique take on these ideas, and I hope you'll take home a greater sense of what belonging and nourishment mean to you.
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I hope you benefit from listening to the lettuce loves you, and if you do, it would mean a great deal to me, if you would like rate and share the show so that more people can discover it and get the same benefit. Now let's dive into today's episode.
Unknown Speaker 2:45
I'm so excited today to be speaking with Moni Castaneda. She is a feng shui consultant, an author and a speaker, and she has integrated her modern, Western architecture training with ancient feng shui knowledge to create the nine steps to Feng Shui system, a step by step method to study and practice this art. And Moni helps her clients decorate and beautify the inside and outside of their homes so they can live the life they love in a home they feel proud to show and that comes through so strongly in her work. I just finished, Moni, your first book, and I'm so excited to talk to you about the book that you are just releasing as well. And welcome. Welcome to the lettuce loves you. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited to be here and grateful. Excellent. Well, I'm I'm so excited to talk to you. I have so many, so many questions, so many things I want to dive deeper into.
Unknown Speaker 3:42
First thing is just so that people are on the same page with us. What is Feng Shui? And how do you say it properly? How do you pronounce it, right? So, yeah, Feng Shui, the words feng shui, mean wind and water, which are the forces that shape the world, and wind represents in life those intangible forces that move society and that move the life of a family and a person in particular, right? And the water part it
Unknown Speaker 4:16
is related more to the physical surroundings. It's very interesting. In Feng shui we consider reality to be fluid, like a liquid, right? So wind and water. Wind represents more of the spiritual influences in life and society, and water represents more of the physical influences as to how you say it a Fung Shui is the agreed upon pronunciation in the United States. People in the UK say feng shui. Other people combine it and say feng shui, right? None of these pronunciations that we're using is really exactly how a Chinese person would say it. And then you have to access.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
For the dialects in the different provinces of China, but in the United States, Feng Shui is the agreed upon pronunciation,
Unknown Speaker 5:09
yeah, and so thank you. Feng Shui is the ancient East Asian or the placement that teaches you what to pull the word so you can be happy, healthy and successful.
Unknown Speaker 5:22
Thank you. And I, I love so much your approach to this. And I'll say, when I was, I don't know, eight or nine years old, my mom took me to a class on feng shui. It was like this continuing education, like a little, like a little community education space that had all different classes. And, you know, people with different crafts and abilities, would teach these little mini classes. And my mom took me to this class, and she was so excited, and I was so excited and super fun. And we walked out with this book, with all of these complicated maps and compasses and things that like it didn't translate to our daily lives. And I think my mom was a little disappointed, because she had hoped for kind of more interior design, kind of information, and it was sort of like what happens in the west of your home and what color and mirror took place there, and it didn't, it didn't land, and what I love. And I had that book for years. I held on to that book, and I kept looking at it and thinking like somehow something would click. And I was a longtime student of Tai Chi, and I was, like, deep into that practice and and Taoist principles. And so I had these little inklings of what the book was trying to say, but it never really landed. And when I read your book, it landed, and part of the reason it landed, and I'll say so, the book that that I read of yours, the house of many gardens, is your coming book, but I just read room by room, Feng Shui secrets for a happy life. And so such a beautiful book. And we'll talk about your coming book soon. And what I love with it is it was like oral history. It was like this,
Unknown Speaker 7:00
like you just sat down with me with a cup of tea, and you said, here's the story of my grandma's house. Here's the story of my parents house. Here's what I do in my house as an adult, and here's what you can do in your house. And by the time you got to what I could do in my house, I was in the story. So can you tell? Ready? Right? Yeah. Can you tell? I know. I know what you just said, that you felt like you were sitting down with me to have a cup of tea. I just love that, because that was the idea behind the book.
Unknown Speaker 7:31
And what was your your process in like you share so intimately, and you share so personally, as if you're just sort of, oh, this is what just popped into my mind, and then it weaves into and this is why putting a plant here or a mirror here makes sense in the big story. And it was, it was nourishing, yeah, of course. So because I teach Feng Shui and actually train people to become feng shui consultants, in the past, I had written a series of manuals, you know, they're full of illustrations and photographs, and this is how you do this, and this is how you do that, right? And my followers, when they got those books, they were like, Oh, these are pretty cool books. I love studying feng shui, but they didn't put it into practice, you know, when I asked them, so what are, what have you done? You know, show me the transformations you have made in your home. And they're like, oh, you know, I'll do it this summer. I'll do after Christmas, whatever, right? And I was like, there's a, there's a disconnect here between loving the information, actually doing the thing, right? And, and here's another thing that I want to go back to something you mentioned before about the contest, right? So there are three ways to practice feng shui.
Unknown Speaker 8:43
One way, which is called compass school, they use astrology and numerology
Unknown Speaker 8:50
to determine what they call your heaven luck, the that is something that was preset before you were born. And when they do that, you know, they're very concerned about what direction does your front door face? This is the direction your bed should be in and things like that. And
Unknown Speaker 9:08
what happens is that they subdivide your floor plan of your home into eight directions, and they tell you four of these are good for you, and four of these are from bad to disastrous for you. What happened when people brought that to the west? You know, by the way, compass school was brought to the United Kingdom by CEOs that had been sent to work in Hong Kong. When they came home, they brought campus school with them. And so it didn't translate well, because people in the West, they became obsessed with the negative directions, and what they started doing is just avoiding those rooms all together, you know, so somebody who told you that your kitchen faces Southwest, and that's a bad direction for you, now we want to go in the kitchen, right? And that's kind of like a fear based way to do that. And the second way to do feng shui is there's a school called the Black House.
Unknown Speaker 9:59
Or black sect school of Feng Shui, and that is a school that is associated with the Buddhism, with a specific type of Buddhism. So lots of things they do, they have to with the rituals, the symbolism and the imagery of the religion. And it's just that mesh well, it doesn't mesh well with our interior design.
Unknown Speaker 10:21
It makes your own look like huh, instead of Wow.
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The third way to practice sunshine, which is what I do, is it to practice this art as one of the branches of ancient Chinese medicine. So other branches are acupuncture, herbalism, massage, Qigong and then feng shui, right? So those are the five branches. And so that's what I do. And so to answer the question, more specifically, about the book, it all started with Marie Kondo and her book untidy enough you remember that? Yeah, everybody went crazy, and they started putting everything in their trash. It didn't spark.
Unknown Speaker 11:00
And so one of my students that was training to a feng shui consultant, she told me, You should write a book like this one. And somebody else had told me I needed to write an emotional book, because all of my previous manuals were how to but none of them addressed the why, you know, why is it important to the function? Why she should be doing feng shui. So my my students, suggested this. And one of the things, I don't know if you read Marie Kondo's book, but one of the things you did, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 11:31
yeah, she did. And she was talking about scenes from her childhood. So for example, I remember that she was the middle child, and she kind of got neglected at home, and when she was in school, she would stay in the classroom during recess and organized the cubicles right the little cubbies where the children store the things. And so
Unknown Speaker 11:54
I think one of the reasons and the her book was compelling was because of these stories. And my students said you should write a similar book and tell the stories of your childhood, because you have very interesting stories to tell. But here was the problem, right? I grew up in a dysfunctional home. It was very dysfunctional, and I remember my first thought was, I don't want depressed people. I don't
Unknown Speaker 12:18
want to bring them down. I don't want them to be triggered and but she insisted, you know, so I spoke with my editor, and he actually suggested I write all the all that came to me. Right? He looked at that, and he recommended that I take out 40 to 60 pages,
Unknown Speaker 12:38
a lot, right? Yeah, but he told me, like, you need to take out these pages because they're just talking about things you went through that are not necessarily connected to the home, you know. He said. He said, only keep the stories that teach a lesson about what to do in the dining room, what to do in the living room. And so I saw the sense in that, you know, and then I decided to take those parts out.
Unknown Speaker 13:03
And when I started writing, you know, I came up with the idea for the book. I really wanted to contrast, because the two holes, right? Because I had two childhoods. Childhood was in my parents home, you know, where I was neglected and actually abused,
Unknown Speaker 13:21
and where I was very unhappy, but there was this other childhood that happened in my grandmother's home and in my grandmother's home. Nobody ever got angry at me, nobody got frustrated. I was never abused in any way. You know, it was full of all the my the extended family on the side of my mom, they thought my brother and I were God's gifts to the world, and so I had these two experiences, right? And my memories of the events that happened in the bad in my parents house and the good in my grandmother's house, they're intrinsically tied to the space.
Unknown Speaker 13:55
And I remember that sometimes I would leave my grandmother's home and I would go into my parents home and think, why can't they do it like my grandmother does, you know? Why can't they have a proper
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foyer rod?
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Why can't they have a mirror close to the door so you can check your hair before you open the door, right? And other things like,
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why can't they have pretty things, you know, like my grandmother had, and of course, you know, later on, when I started studying in Feng Shui, I saw the deep meaning that these things had.
Unknown Speaker 14:32
The way my grandmother arranged her living room, for example, was she was such a sociable person, and she looked forward to people visiting unannounced. She prepared
Unknown Speaker 14:44
to receive unannounced visits. You know, this is, of course, before the time of cell phones, and the Ecuador is a visiting culture. People visit each other in their homes. And so my grandma was always ready for a visit, and her home was full of beautiful things. And my parents home, I.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Was designed to discourage visitors. And so whereas the the bedrooms for my aunts and uncles in my grandmother's home were designed to enhance their self esteem
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in my parents home, they didn't want any of that, you know, because when when people are abusive, they don't want to empower you in any way. And so, like, the contrast was so huge,
Unknown Speaker 15:26
and I remember being embarrassed of my parents home and and just wishing so much that they could just do a few more things like my grandmother did. And so I decided to write the book, you know, to express the importance of good Feng Shui versus bad Feng Shui. Because in goods, in homes with good Feng Shui, good things happen, and in homes with bad Feng Shui, not so good things happen. And you know, after over 20 years of practicing feng shui, I can also see that in the homes of my clients sometimes, and this is really interesting, people who had a difficult childhood, they have a terrible time setting up a living room as they have bad memories of the living room.
Unknown Speaker 16:12
And
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that was the idea, you know, to give people a profound connection. I wanted people as they read the story of my grandmother in her home to think about their grandparents,
Unknown Speaker 16:25
the stories about my parents. I wanted them to think about their parents. And so when I'm sharing the things that we have done, you know, because my husband came from a broken home, and I came from a dysfunctional home, and we managed to raise a happy family, and so we wanted, I wanted people to to see that it can be done through feng shui, that feng shui can be a healing tool, that it didn't learn how things should be done. You know, my my grandmother, had this phrase of knowing how to live. She would always say, people need to know how to live. They need to learn and and I saw so clearly. You know, if you do things right in your home, you're going to reduce arguments, you're going to increase your self esteem. You are going to be more sociable. You know, if you think about it, if your home is a mess, you are very unlikely to invite people over
Unknown Speaker 17:17
you feel in your home, the more confident you will feel to have people over, and that makes a huge difference in a person's life. The Chinese have a saying that goes like this, everything in your home is talking to you.
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Make sure they have nice things to say.
Unknown Speaker 17:34
I love that. I love that so much and and I'm so curious, because you touched on Marie Kondo, and you touched on your experience growing up in these two very different environments. And one of the critiques, I think, of both Feng Shui and Marie Kondo is this
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elitism. Is this sort of like, well, you can't afford to get rid of things that don't make you happy if you don't have the money, and you just need the things there. And so can you talk about that confidence piece and what it means to have maybe
Unknown Speaker 18:05
five really beautiful things versus a lot of functional things that make you feel crappy? Yeah, so there's a there's a very strong connection between clutter and lack of beauty, and I've seen people will not declutter for good until they start adding beauty into their homes. And, yeah, you know, it is a it may be, it is a matter of privilege to say, hey, I don't like my hammer,
Unknown Speaker 18:34
and buy a prettier hammer. You know, that was the question. What is a pretty hammer? In Feng Shui, we don't say, live only with the things that give you joy. We say to you, live with two categories of things, the things that you use and the things that you love.
Unknown Speaker 18:52
And so I'm never I don't think gonna feel excited about a rake,
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but I need to have a rake. You know,
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two huge red maple trees in my property, and so I need to be able to manage the leaves, you know,
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and so I need to have a rake. And I don't think I could go to the store and actually find a rake. I love
Unknown Speaker 19:16
to find one that has a pretty color, as opposed to another one that doesn't. But I'm never going to fall in love with a rake, but some people would, you know, and and so the idea is that you first let go of things that you don't use and on it right?
Unknown Speaker 19:36
That costs you nothing. You know, if you have anything in your concept, for example, that you have a toaster that you don't ever use, ever, ever you haven't used it in five years. There's no point keeping it there if you don't make it to the thrift store. A person who doesn't have the money to go to the store and buy a new toaster can go get that one, and they're going to be blessed. So things you don't use.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
In your home, they have the potential to let other people so the first part of
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beautifying your home costs you nothing, letting go of the things that are trash, you know,
Unknown Speaker 20:12
or the things that that are just you don't love, and the things that you don't need
Unknown Speaker 20:19
and and then the the roads open up, the more beauty you put into your home, the more comfortable you feel with life, the more clear your thoughts become, and then you are able to
Unknown Speaker 20:37
make more money. You know, I have seen it again and again and again, sometimes a person will say, I can only because I do my services and I do them monthly, because feng shui takes a while. You know, home wasn't built in a day. And sometimes people will say, I can only afford this for one month. But in that month, the funds can come to them. You know, things just open up opportunities and come to them. I have had an experience. For example, I was doing a Feng Shui with a lady that was a realtor, and this was, this was way back, but it was a really bad year for real estate. She was really right. And so we're there decluttering her office, and she gets a phone call for
Unknown Speaker 21:23
the biggest listing she had gotten in her life. Wow, that the moment that we were working on seeing her things. Wow, yeah. And so I have seen that happen so many times. You know, when you start moving things in your home, things start moving for you in your life. Now, I don't start with decluttering. That's a very interesting thing. I used to start with the cluttering. When I first started, I would tell people, you know, the first thing to do is you need to get rid of the things that you don't love or use, and then we'll work on everything else. But over time, I saw people would get really, really upset. There was just not ready to declare. So in the nice steps to Feng Shui system that I developed that we know where I apply my knowledge of architecture and my knowledge of Feng Shui to make sure that at the end, you end up with a happy life and a home that you absolutely love.
Unknown Speaker 22:14
Decluttering is Step seven. The only things that I ask people to declare during step three, which is making sure there's a good flow in the home, are the places where it is dangerous to have clutter. So if you ever met somebody who clutters their staircases, that is dangerous, if you're learning your Hovis, that is dangerous. And the the entrance, you know you could be tripping on things as you come home. So I only insist on decluttering those spaces when we're doing step three,
Unknown Speaker 22:46
and then when we are doing as we move along. You know, when we get to step seven, we focus on decluttering more, but by then, it's super interesting, because people have been decluttering all along and add beauty to their home. This, all of a sudden feel like it's easy to let go of things. And here's another thing you know, like as much as I love Marie Kondo and and her her book, and then this idea that they should live with things that spark joy. What happened in the United States is that people get so excited. I
Unknown Speaker 23:21
don't know if you remember when the when her show came on next week. I've never seen her show, but I
Unknown Speaker 23:28
launched, yeah, there was actually a backup of trash collection services. Wow, I think some, some city had said the trash had
Unknown Speaker 23:43
increased seven fold, and that's what they were backed up, and they couldn't keep up. You know, I said there are people watching her show, and so
Unknown Speaker 23:55
what I like to say is decluttering starts at the store,
Unknown Speaker 24:00
not buy things you that you don't need. You're not going to have to deal with clutter later on. And so I think part of it is our consumer society,
Unknown Speaker 24:10
that we are. We have all these, these methods for constantly buying things, for constantly bringing into the homes. You know, you push a button on a website, then a box shows up. You know, you go to the store, you you're coming back home, you stop by another place. But we don't have systems or methods to do the opposite, you know, to let things go. And so when, when you buy something at the store, ask yourself the question, Where will this end when I'm done? Right? Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And so, for example, it may be that you're buying a cotton top, and you when I'm done with it, that may mean that I donate it. If it's a really high if it's a very good brand, I might sell it if, if, when I'm done with things, they're pretty much rags. I.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
I'm going to use that for cleaning, and then it's going to go in the trash. But you gotta think, when you buy things, what is the end for this object?
Unknown Speaker 25:09
Yeah, you know, that's that's a core principle in permaculture. So that's part of my background. Is this garden design that's very holistic, and this idea that like everything, you have to think about how everything is in the full cycle of its life, and how it fits into the whole picture, and that things aren't disposable. A lot of people who are deep into permaculture commit to no organic matter ever even leaving the property. So it's like, if you have food or plants or anything, it has to be composted and reused on site. And the same with fabrics. And I love you talk about that using natural fabrics as much as possible. And that you said plastic doesn't hold key or chi, there's another pronunciation,
Unknown Speaker 25:54
right the life force. And so something that is made of plastic in Feng Shui is considered to be dead in terms of g that in terms of life force, you can restore some of that life force through beauty. So for example, you can have a lamp, and the lamp is made of plastic, so the plastic itself has no chi. But if the lamp is beautiful, you restore the the tea, restore the energy through beauty. So beauty is so important, right? But a plastic object, you know, is, is not really something that you want. If, if you're thinking of buying anything, first try to see if you can find it in a natural material, something that has has not been processed in that way, you know. So if you're going to get a bowl for your cat's water, see if you can get metal or you can get glass before you get plastic, right? And and with clothes, you know, polyester has become so,
Unknown Speaker 26:50
so prevalent anymore. Just about everything you find has polyester in it, yeah. And so one thing that we do, you know, we try to buy things that are mostly cotton or bamboo, and in some cases, linen or silk. And we try and buy things that are such good quality that when we're bored with them, they can still be donated.
Unknown Speaker 27:13
It's important to be mindful. It's important to think about the future of our planet. And some people tell me, and I don't know you have encountered this, you know, with with your work and your process, that people will say, why does it matter? The kind of impact that I can make is it's not going to make a difference in the world.
Unknown Speaker 27:33
Me composting, me reusing can have an impact. And the usual answer for that is, well, you alone are not going to have an impact, but millions and billions of people believe is there going to be an impact? But the feng shui answer would be, yes, it does make a difference for you, because people live with reverence for the planet. There's a soul transformation in you where you can become a much happy person, a much happier person, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. What I have seen, you know is, I know people who use the CO Marie method, and they use it every year, and every year they produce the same number of trash bags because
Unknown Speaker 28:18
they have not changed their purchasing habits. And
Unknown Speaker 28:23
so
Unknown Speaker 28:24
I like to make this difference between the simplicity movement and the frugality movement. The frugality movement says, live with less. You know, just utilize as little as you can, consume as little as you can. And it is a system of restriction, right? But the simplicity movement teaches that you take out of your life anything that doesn't create joy inside of you. You know, not, not an object that that sparks joy, but you don't include in your life anything that doesn't spark joy inside of you, and so, for example, you start taking out the activities that don't mean anything to you. A good example of this is a parents that over schedule their kids, you know, like she has to go to ballet and she has to do piano, she has to play sports. And you end up with a with a schedule that is full every evening of the week. You never have family dinners together anymore because you are so focused, right? And so in that case, you know maybe you choose one or two things that your child really loves for them to focus on that and you take out the rest. So the simplicity movement is about making sure that your energy, your money, in your space, caters to your passions, instead of just everything, right?
Unknown Speaker 29:45
Yeah, absolutely. And so that brings us more specifically to the nourishment and belonging theme. And you, you said, and I read this, you said,
Unknown Speaker 29:57
nourishment is more than food. I.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
House can nourish you or deplete you, depending on your feng shui, and you're talking about that as well with the sense of belonging to the space and to the land and to yourself and to your family, and making sure that everything in your space reflects that sense of belonging in in the place that you live and and to the earth and to kind of the flow of life. Can you talk a little bit more about how you came to that? Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 30:31
a lot of people today, you know, they're complaining about how much the home drains them, especially moms, right? Like even little children. It's like some of my clients have told me my home is like another toddler
Unknown Speaker 30:45
simply asking for something that is needy
Unknown Speaker 30:49
of the nagging the and yeah, you know, home can become that. And the idea is that with Feng Shui, the more beauty you add to your home, the more you simplify your home. You put your home on autopilot, so the home no longer drains you, and the home starts nurturing you. So you come home and you are nurtured by the beautiful flower bed in your front yard. Then you walk to your door and you are nurtured by your beautiful door and the beautiful planters on the sides. You open up that door and you are nurtured by the gorgeous rug you have in the foyer and the entry table with a beautiful painting and a lamp and a flower arrangement right as you go down to your living room, every way you turn your home is telling you you are doing well. That is what nurturing from this, you know, and so for a lot of people, they set up their home to be abusive. So whenever they come home, the home is like, you are an organized you are unclean. You know, you you can't handle anything, you you can't even take care of the home. You're never going to realize your dreams. You know, you can't even mop the kitchen, you know, how are you going to start that business, for example, and so you need to make sure that the home is constantly telling you good things, and is how you make your home nurture unit. And also in the sense, you know, for example, your when you sit in your
Unknown Speaker 32:17
sofa, on your sofa, you should feel embraced, right, not punished
Unknown Speaker 32:25
when you sit on your dining chairs. Same thing you know you feel you should feel loved
Unknown Speaker 32:31
like, like you're on time out
Unknown Speaker 32:34
and so and remember this, your chairs, the kinds of chairs you have in your home, shows how you treat yourself.
Unknown Speaker 32:42
Who treat themselves? Well, they have comfortable chairs. Yeah, I've been to so many homes, you know, where you try and lean back on the dining on the dining chair, it actually hurts your back.
Unknown Speaker 32:56
This was heavy design for some grandmother that wanted people to keep good posture at the table,
Unknown Speaker 33:02
which is not a bad thing to keep it with posture, you know. But nothing in your home should treat you poorly
Unknown Speaker 33:10
in terms of
Unknown Speaker 33:11
in terms of looks, in terms of the hidden message, right, you know. So this applies to how people choose art. Some people put things on their walls that make them feel constantly afraid.
Unknown Speaker 33:25
I have a relative like he's he's into expressionist art, and so you walk down his hallway and it's terrifying. You know, you have all this, these faces suffering around you, you know, like,
Unknown Speaker 33:40
like that painting, the famous painting called The Scream, you know what I'm talking about.
Unknown Speaker 33:45
He collects her from this artist that paints in that style. I was like, come on, you guys, this makes you feel like there's no hope for the future. Those are, those are the things that you have to keep in mind. You have to make sure that when you come home, your home nourishes you the way a good mom would.
Unknown Speaker 34:04
When, if you are a good mother, you've had a good mother, nourishment is not just giving you food. Nourishment is giving you hugs. It's saying nice things to you, making you feel appreciated, right? Giving you gifts, you know, like if you want to go through the five little languages um,
Unknown Speaker 34:22
a good parent doesn't just use one or two. They use all of them. And a good home, a home with good Feng Shui, they it would also give you good feedback at every step.
Unknown Speaker 34:34
Oh, I love that so much. And you do, you just talked about all of the types of nourishment, but you do talk about food nourishment, specifically in your book, and things that you cook, and ways that you've developed ways to cook for kids, which is always a challenge of how to make nourishing food that kids want to eat. And I found myself thinking, Are you going to write a cookbook? Have you written a cookbook? Is that coming? Actually,
Unknown Speaker 34:58
my husband is.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
And I wrote a book called How to eat to stay healthy in the United States, because when I moved to the United States in my late 20s, I gained 25 pounds in one year. Wow. I've heard that story from a lot of people coming from all different places in the world, yeah, because I didn't know what high fructose corn syrup was, you know? Oh, corn syrup, that must be natural, and so we wrote this book, or mostly I wrote this book and he added his two cents to help people choose good foods, right? And maybe that's a topic for another podcast interview. But I also my kids, because I don't work with recipes, because when I was very young, I was in a macrobiotics group, and I learned, I trained as a microbiotic chef, okay? And so I knew the cooking processes from that. When you know chefs processes, you tend to not use recipes because it's just easier and faster to see, open the fridge and see what's there, and then you put something together, right? And so my husband had told my kids, you have to film her, because she has no recipes. You know, you want to make sure you feed yourself and when you're by yourselves in college.
Unknown Speaker 36:09
And so they decided to that I would teach a cooking class in our home, and they will film me, so a class, and they put it on on online, you know, it's an online course. And then we also created a little book, you know, that is an accompaniment of that, or on how to cook simple meals that are more delicious than junk food, because that was my idea. You know, foods, if your foods are not more delicious than junk food, your kids are want to, want to eat out. And so when, when I asked my kids when they were little, I would ask them, What do you want to go eat today? And they would say, home.
Unknown Speaker 36:46
And I say, you know, if it's outside of the house, where would you like to eat? And they said, your food in the front, in the front yard, you know. And and so, yeah, part of life, you know, is, is adding
Unknown Speaker 37:00
everything that pleases the senses, you know, so the beautiful home pleases your your eyes, fabrics and surfaces that are beautiful, that like really smooth or or soft to touch. You know, cozy things in your home make you feel embraced. Um, if you control the sounds in your home. You know if you have good insulation from sounds aside that might be disruptive, if you have good music in if you have a good light, you know it all needs to please the senses, and you also need to please your sense of taste. So cooking, delicious foods that are healthy is also part of your feng shui. And the kitchen in Feng Shui is considered the room that is associated with wealth,
Unknown Speaker 37:44
and it is a factory. The function of your kitchen is to produce foods, right? So health is made in the kitchen,
Unknown Speaker 37:54
and then family relationships are strengthened in the dining room. Families Together are stronger powers. There's so many studies of how well children do in college and in their professional lives,
Unknown Speaker 38:09
or as entrepreneurs, when they have family dinners, because parents that are making time to have dinner with their with their kids, they have other things in place too, right? Actually, the number one predictor of college success was family dinners in one study. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 38:25
one thing that happens in our modern homes in the United States is that people eat at the bar
Unknown Speaker 38:32
on bar stools,
Unknown Speaker 38:34
so and the the bar and the stools, that's when you go to meet strangers, right? You don't want to treat your own family as strangers,
Unknown Speaker 38:44
yeah, or, you know, like, like you might go to have breakfast by yourself at the Waffle House, right? So you have, like, your partner and your kids, and you're at the other side of the counter, so you're the server at the Waffle House. And so the the idea that you need to sit down to have meals with your family that's kind of getting lost for many families, has been so important for strengthening families.
Unknown Speaker 39:07
So everything you just said makes this actually even more interesting to me, because we feature an herb or edible or medicinal plant in every podcast episode, and I asked you what your favorite herb was, or your favorites? Yeah, your favorite Herber or culinary or medicinal. And you said, what my favorite also, I mean, it's hard to choose a favorite, but it's my same favorite, and is a dandelion, wow. And so everything you do really, I want to presence this, because everything you just said makes that fascinating to me, because at least in North America, and I think in a lot of places, the dandelions like the enemy, it's this weed. It's a weed, right? It takes over the bone. It's it's like the thing to get rid of, and it's.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
It's one of my it's one of the most nourishing, mineral, rich, phytonutrient plants out there. So can you tell me why you love this plant so much and so and but I want to comment, you know, like here on commercials for pesticides, they show you,
Unknown Speaker 40:14
yeah, that pesticides, herbicides, herbicides, yeah, they use the dandelion. So, yeah. You know, I was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador, the city of Quito is 9200 feet above sea level. To give you a reference, Denver is about 5200 feet above sea level. Where I grew up, it's 9200 feet above sea level. So when you're even though I was in Ecuador, when you're at that altitude, is most of the time it's cold and it's hard to get anything to grow in color, right. And so you were lucky. I mean, as kids, you know, we would go play into the field. We felt so lucky if we found a dandelion, right? And someone found a dandelion, you know, how you blow that dandelion to make the seeds from everywhere. We would fight over it, and
Unknown Speaker 41:03
they would try to blow me before the other kids caught up with them. Wow. The chance away from them and every single family in Ecuador in their patio, they're going to have a pot with a dandelion. And when you intentionally, intentionally
Unknown Speaker 41:21
and so, and they will ask you, would you like some dandelion tea? And people will have dandelion tea at least once per week, and they probably also have other heirs, but dandelion is always there. And so I was so shocked to to come to the United States, you know, to move here, and to see that they're,
Unknown Speaker 41:40
they're advertising pesticides and killing a dandelion. That's like, what's wrong with these people? And then you go to the store and you pay $10 for a little box of organic dandelion tea from France. You know they're spraying on their lawn, and then they're paying top dollar for French dandelion.
Unknown Speaker 42:00
I know I'm done the lion, the you can use the root, you can use the leaves. And so it helps with digestion. It helps your liver function, your kidneys, your heart and your
Unknown Speaker 42:12
circular your circulation, right? It's also over there, you know, it's, it's also believed to help with diabetes and stuff. It improves skin conditions, is good for your bones, right? And so there's so many things that then the lion is good for, and then, you know, it's treated like a weed, is treated like something you have to get rid of. And this is one of the things that I talk about in my new book, The House of many gardens, Fauci secrets for home landscaping, is that because, you know, in Ecuador, there's a lot of indigenous people. You know, the the Spanish conquistadors came, and then they mix with indigenous people and but there's a lot of of still, we have 20 indigenous tribes that preserve and their customs from before the Spanish people came.
Unknown Speaker 43:00
And there's a lot of you know the they're the wisdom keepers. They have this really strong connection with the land. So one of the things that indigenous people of Ecuador taught me was that if you go on a walk, or if and you find an herb or a mushroom or anything that you know is medicinal. That's the earth telling you that you need it.
Unknown Speaker 43:24
Something spontaneously starts growing, something you didn't plant, starts growing in your yard, or in your flower beds or in your garden, something that you didn't expect to be there. That's the earth telling you that you need it.
Unknown Speaker 43:40
Yeah, and so we need dandelions very desperately, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:46
yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:47
yeah, it's, you know. And as I said, herbalism is also one of the five branches of Chinese medicine. Now, some people consider herbalism just herbs, but
Unknown Speaker 43:59
for other people, it extends into eating, you know, like the way of eating, to make sure that you're balancing yin and yang, to make sure there's vitality, to make sure you include the five elements, you know. So there's all this, this whole complexity around how you live your life and how you eat your foods, that is super, super important. And
Unknown Speaker 44:18
here's the thing you know, when times are uncertain, when you don't know what's going to happen in politics, or you don't know what's going to happen with the economy, a connection with The earth will keep you sane
Unknown Speaker 44:34
on anything. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 44:42
Are you there?
Unknown Speaker 44:48
Hello, can you hear me? There? We are okay. It froze, okay. So is
Unknown Speaker 44:55
it okay? Do.
Unknown Speaker 45:02
Yeah, okay. Can you hear me? Yes, I think it's back. Okay. So
Unknown Speaker 45:09
you said when you don't know what's going to happen, and that's all that I heard. Yes, you know, when there's uncertainty. And you know. So a lot of people, they worry about climate change. Other people worry about politics. They worry about the economy, you know, so what? What if there's a recession and things like that, and
Unknown Speaker 45:29
these external things that you cannot control, if you put too much attention on them, you're going to make yourself sick with worry. The one place that you can control is your home.
Unknown Speaker 45:39
If you take control of your immediate environment, the inside and the outside of your home, to make it harmonious, to make it nourishing, you're going to be in a much better place to face any of the other challenges. And a connection with nature is something that will keep you sane, and every single family like even if you live in a little apartment on the eighth floor of a building. You need to have in your home at least one thing that you plant that you can eat, because that reminder that you can put something on dirt and the thing can grow to feed you, that keeps you in touch with the essence of wealth, which is a connection with the natural world. You know your stocks can evaporate in the day, like happen, like what happened in the Great Depression, right? But your connection to the land make sure that you stay fed. And so even if it's just like one tomato plant that you have in a pot in the backyard, maybe it's just a planter with herbs that you have on a window, you know, on the window basket,
Unknown Speaker 46:43
or just
Unknown Speaker 46:47
a little can with a cilantro plant on your window sill. These things keep you connected to the earth, and they remind you that you are being taken care of, because the universe was designed with the principle of over abundance, right? There's a lot more than what you need to survive.
Unknown Speaker 47:09
I could not agree more. So what you're saying is so close to my own heart, and I wonder if that's what you go deeper into in your new book. Do you want to talk a little bit more about your book? Yeah. So, unless I was telling you, like my book, room by room, Fauci secrets that I just finished, love it. Yes. Thank you. And so, and that was family stories of three homes and four generations, you know. So I also share a lot of stories of what we have done with our kids. Um, but in that book, I only talk about the rooms in the home, I didn't talk about landscaping, and I didn't talk about plants, and I didn't talk about laundry and bathrooms very much, and that kind of thing, right? And so before
Unknown Speaker 47:52
the events that I relate in the room by room book happened, we lived in a home that was just gorgeous and beautiful and just perfect.
Unknown Speaker 48:02
And
Unknown Speaker 48:04
we called it because it was painted green. We called it the greenhouse. And so I wanted to call the book the greenhouse, but that would be confusing, because people could think it's a book about greenhouses, right? I call it the house of many gardens, because that's what was more characteristic about them. The house, it was a large estate. It had been built with Adobe, which is our bricks made up there. So it was a very old home. And the Feng Shui, and I can tell now with my knowledge, and when I look at my memories of that time, it just had, just about perfect feng shui, you felt like hugging those walls. There was a single sharp corner in the whole home, because, you know, there are these. They're about 12 feet wide at least the the walls, you know. So when they finished the corners, they made them round it. And I remember as a child, actually hugging the corners, you know. I remember rolling around the corner instead of walking around, instead of taking a turn to go down the hallway, I would roll on the wall, right? It was so beautiful. And then the the window sills, they were so deep that you could actually have a garden in each window. Wow. Window sill, right? And is this your grandmother's home? It was my grandmother's home, but we lived with her. So at the time, my father had gone on a trip to Canada. My father wanted to migrate to Canada at some point, so he had left. And while he was away for a year or two, my mom, my brother and I moved in with my grandmother in this house, and
Unknown Speaker 49:38
it was a time of pure happiness. So I lived in that home from when I was two years old to five years old, and most people don't remember anything about that time in their lives, but I remember everything because it was full of magic and mystery
Unknown Speaker 49:53
and and so, for example, I remember what the stones were like on the pavement. Isn't that everything?
Unknown Speaker 50:00
For the child you know, between the ages of two and five, to remember, I know it all, I think because it's so sensate, it's so it's so embodied. So it makes a lot of sense, yeah, well, it does make a lot of sense to you. To remember, it must be very space oriented. I remember chasing after lizards,
Unknown Speaker 50:22
and so I remember the stones because they were underneath the lizards that were running on them. And then I remember them the flower beds because of the bunnies. And I remember the
Unknown Speaker 50:36
the fences because offenses. You know, in in Ecuador, traditionally, you don't ever leave a fence alone. You have to have a garden alongside a fence, or you have to have some flowers that attract butterflies or hummingbirds along the fence. And that's just the thing that everybody does all over the place, you know, like, if you because a lot of people have these metal fences, right? If you don't plant flowers next to it. It looks like a prison. And so it's just the thing people do over there, right? And so, because I was chasing butterflies and hummingbirds, I remember all these places. Or because,
Unknown Speaker 51:10
you know, maybe my brother was climbing a tree, or we're trying to get some fruit from one of the trees, I remember the trees and everything we did under the trees. Remember the yards. I remember the the the place where they wash the clothes, because of them, the lines for and I remember the the sheets right on them, because the ladybugs were attracted to the sheets when they were drying. And so it's such, um, all these memories are of wonder and happiness in that home. And I want people who read the book to connect with their own memories, or when they were children enjoying nature, because you can disconnect the enjoyment of nature
Unknown Speaker 51:49
in early childhood from family relations, you know, so like when you ask people you know, their their most beautiful memories as children, people will always have nature and relatives, Like, for example, when they went fishing with their grandfather, or when they were helping with grandmothers vegetal garden, or when they were playing with the cousins, you know, when they were jumping rope in the patio and stuff like that. And I want people to have that sense of wonder, to recover, reconnect with that sense of wonder before they start designing their landscaping, because today, what I see is there's two approaches, especially in the United States, to landscaping. One of them is hire a landscaper and don't be involved with it. And that results in gardens that are beautiful to look at, but they are not gorgeous to be in, like just the showcase. And then the other kind of extreme is like, I'm going to do everything myself with no guidance. And people, they just go, you know, spring is coming, so they go to nursery or the home improvement store, and they're like, I love this, and I love that, and they just buy all sorts of things. They don't take the time to study what conditions the plant needs, right? And so many times they plant something in half shade that needs full sun.
Unknown Speaker 53:08
A lot of people they they don't stop to consider what's going to be the final height of this plant, you know, so I've seen
Unknown Speaker 53:15
they would. They planted beautiful flowers in front of their porch, but then they planted these evergreens in front of the beautiful flowers that were really little when they bought them, and then two years later, the Evergreen has completely covered the flowers. And so thinking about final height, you know, like, where is it safe to plant a tree so that it won't threaten your house, for example, is a big one and and so I want people to connect with this sense of wonder. And then I want him them to plan ahead a little bit, not too much, you know, because if you plan too much, you get an artificial feeling. But just, you know, consider plants grow. What is this fully grown? What's it going to look like? And also things like, what kinds of flowers do I want to have, you know? And if I have cats, are there certain flowers I should avoid? If, if I have those are the certain plants I should avoid. If I have children, you know, what do I need to be careful regarding them. And I also want them to think, if I want to have flowers,
Unknown Speaker 54:23
how many months out of the year do do I want those flowers to look gorgeous and beautiful? There's some flowers, and I've seen it,
Unknown Speaker 54:32
and I've done this myself too in the past. You know where you go to the storm, there's just these gorgeous flowers, and you buy them, and you plan them, and the flower only lasts a month out of the whole year, right? And the reason you bought the plan was that you love the beautiful flowers, and so all these things have to be taken in consideration, but for a place of love, from a place of really wanting to enjoy those spaces, so that you're not just thinking of, okay, what is this going to look like? What.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
I'm done with my gardening, but how am I going to enjoy it when I'm inside of it? Right? And we have two cats, right?
Unknown Speaker 55:11
And
Unknown Speaker 55:13
they're the cats of my children. So the children didn't want it to be indoor or outdoor, indoor and outdoor cats, the cast that we had before, you know, the my husband, I had before we had the kids that were indoor and outdoor, but our children felt I wasn't safe, so when they got their kittens, they wanted them to stay inside. So I bought a catio. You know what a CaTiO is, like a larger chicken co right? And then through a tunnel to the pet door so that the cats could have some time outside. But this carrier was only big enough for the cats. It was not big enough for people, right? And so when that one needed replacing, instead of buying another cardio, we built one, mostly the kids, right? And one of the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to make it big enough so that we could spend time outside with the cats, nice, right? And that it makes such a difference.
Unknown Speaker 56:11
Everything that you do in your home, you need to ask the question, How am I going to enjoy this when I'm inside? It's kind of like the caddy, right? Because before, like, we'd go, we're, we're big believers in grounding, you know, and going outside and stepping on sand or dirt or grass or lying down on the grass. And so we would be outside, you know, and enjoying our grounding. And the cats would be in the catio, but we were disconnected, right? And so building this new CaTiO, and in the process of building, it was beautiful. And now being able to go in there with the cats, and the cats having a little more room to jump and run, you know, and climb, it's such a huge experience. And it's the cardio is maybe six by eight in a surface, right?
Unknown Speaker 56:58
And that spot of our backyard has become such a source of happiness. And if you can do that with every corner, every spot in your home is is has the possibility to give you that sort of happiness. That's amazing. Another thing that we have done is we have built a tree bench around our biggest maple tree in the property, because the space under trees is a space,
Unknown Speaker 57:23
you know,
Unknown Speaker 57:25
there's a there's so many things that we are finding now, maybe in the last 10 years, there's been so much research about trees. In Feng Shui, trees are considered the people of the vegetable world,
Unknown Speaker 57:39
yeah. And in the indigenous communities of Ecuador, they teach you that you have to establish a close relationship with a tree.
Unknown Speaker 57:48
And the children of indigenous people, they'll never make when they grow up, you know, they'll never make a big decision without going back home and consulting with a tree. Isn't that I love that so much. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 58:03
yeah, I think, I think we should all adopt that.
Unknown Speaker 58:08
And if you don't have a tree, maybe there's a city park where you can go make friends with a tree, right? But actually, in Feng Shui, the the trees are the symbol of wealth,
Unknown Speaker 58:20
and they're also messengers to heaven. So when you sit under a tree, they're actually like in a full spiritual circuit.
Unknown Speaker 58:31
And if you you can try it, you know, if you feel confused, if you feel out of sorts, um, go sit under a tree for a little bit, you'll start feeling that almost right away,
Unknown Speaker 58:41
yeah. And I'll say, I think
Unknown Speaker 58:44
that's true, if you have experience with it. And I've heard, in an extreme example, I knew someone who worked at a camp for inner city kids from New York City who would go to this camp in the country in the summers. And it was, it was, I'm not sure if it was state funded or nonprofit funded, but it was paid for. And some of those kids would get to camp, and they've never seen a tree before, because they were so deeply in the city, they literally never seen a tree before. And I've seen this with people who spend a lot of time in the city that that going into nature feels threatening. It feels unfamiliar and and so
Unknown Speaker 59:25
maybe we can start to wrap up a little bit with that sense of, how do you form that connection? How do you start with, you know, I have heard of kids that were shocked to see a potato. Yeah, them of the potato was a cheap yeah chip, you know, or or fries, junk food place, and that's such a disconnection. It's so negative, right? People were not designed to live in boxes. People were designed to be in nature most of the time. And now we.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Leave these slides where most of us are disconnected. I think, you know, when I give lectures and I ask people who's spending more than an hour a day outside
Unknown Speaker 1:00:10
and and that's what we need. You know, we need to be outside. We need to breathe fresh air. Actually, not even fresh air, but outside air.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:20
Outside Air has things that you can never reproduce inside a home or not easily, right?
Unknown Speaker 1:00:27
And
Unknown Speaker 1:00:29
also plants, you know, plants clean up the air and, and there's a lot of articles now about NASA in the the plants that have been found to clean the air and produce oxygen and take out all the toxins formaldehyde, and not just carbon dioxide, but all sorts of other pollutants. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:00:49
people need to have a connection with nature
Unknown Speaker 1:00:52
in order to be happy and healthy and satisfied. And if you don't have that, you're going to be in trouble. So one of the things that I do in my particular brand of Feng Shui is that I try to create inside the home a feeling of being in nature,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:06
so that you're seeing beautiful things. And so maybe you have a plant, maybe you have a cell, a salt plant, maybe you have an aquarium. Maybe have pets. You know, some connection with the earth is super, super healthy for the person. If you can do that, say, for example, that you live in Manhattan in a little suite on the 21st floor and but there's always a park. You know, there's always Central Park. Maybe there's a friend that has a yard. Maybe every so often, you can go out in the country and go for a hike.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:38
But even in your home,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:42
even if you don't have a yard, you can have gardens. You can have a window garden, right?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:49
And so even that's just one plant, and now they have systems, you know, with UV lights, that you can have so you can actually grow plants in a place where you don't get a lot of natural light.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:00
But it is important to recover that connection with nature, and I think it is vital for the future of the planet that people create a close relationship with trees. A lot of the problems seeing today, pollution, warming, floods,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:16
all of these things will be fixed by having more trees.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:20
Yeah, trees are the answer.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:23
I love it so much. So. Monique, how can people find you?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:28
Well, my website and blog is nine steps to Feng shui.com
Unknown Speaker 1:02:33
and that's the word nine spelled, yeah, yes. And they can also get there by typing space arrangement.com you didn't know how to spell function. Just type space, arrangement.com
Unknown Speaker 1:02:45
and there you're going to see, you know, on the menu, you're going to see a link that says free and low cost resources. So if you click on that, and then you'll have access to my books, and you will have access to
Unknown Speaker 1:03:00
links to join my social media or go to my Facebook group all sorts of things,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:06
beautiful.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:07
Oh, I have one more question that
Unknown Speaker 1:03:13
somebody sent in to me in advance, and I want to see if we can catch it here that
Unknown Speaker 1:03:21
often when people are looking at the ancient texts, sometimes what what made sense hundreds of years ago or maybe 1000s of years ago in China, doesn't really translate to somebody's modern life. And so somebody sent me a question, knowing that I was going to talk to you about looking at bedrooms and how there are these really specific ways that are said, like, the man's side should be like this, and the women's side should be like this, and, and, and then it's like, very regimented and and gendered. And I'm curious how you take the ancient information like that and make it make sense for modern people, how do you make that translation? So you have to go back to the basics. And what I did is I went to the nine principles of healing that I use in all the branches of ancient Chinese medicine. And then I asked the question, how would you apply this to Feng Shui? Right? So a person needs a sense of wholeness, they need balance, they need vitality. They need to be in tune with nature. They need to live in harmony. They need to
Unknown Speaker 1:04:28
create good stories for themselves. They need to have relationship with language and symbolism. They need to simplify and declutter. They need to set healthy goals for themselves. And then they need to live life from a position of power. And so all of these principles are applied to Feng Shui, specifically to your question of the bedroom, right? You have to remember, or you have to consider, if you've never heard this before in ancient China, in people that had resources in the families in their homes.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
Of families who had resources. They had separate quarters. The husband and the wife had separate suites.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:08
They didn't share beds. And actually probably sharing the bed was considered like a sign of your you're not rich. You have to
Unknown Speaker 1:05:17
so we can't live by those principles today. One reason they had separate beds and bedrooms was that they have concubines, right?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:27
So you have to look at things in context,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:31
in a in the context of a man wants to make sure he has descendants, and so he if the first wife didn't produce the air, right, in this fair, then you're going to have concubines and continue to have kids, right? And grow the family that way. But in today's family, the most important thing for a couple is a sense of equality, of importance. So this is not equality in the sense that men and women are equal.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:59
Or
Unknown Speaker 1:06:02
how could I say it? It's not in the sense of women's rights, precisely right, because women's rights are about contesting something that has been done before. You know, like it may have these rights women don't. So let's get that kind. It's kind of like an opposition, but in Feng Shui, is more equality of importance. And so whoever your partner is, you know, if you have a husband, a wife, if you're a same sex couple, if, even if, you're in a trouble, right? And then the main ingredient of an healthy relationship in a marriage is equality of importance, because if you try to nobody is equal to anybody else. And if you you like, if you focus too much on equality of people, you know, they're the same, they're equal. You start splitting hairs and splitting resources, and that's the way you step in divorce, right? And so the idea is that there's an equality of importance. And so you can have, say, a husband that goes and makes a multiple six figure income and a wife that stays home and take care of the baby,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:14
they are equally important. Their functions are equally important, right? And if you think about it, the thing the woman is doing is a lot more precious than the thing the man is doing, right? But in our society,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
often, you know, like, if you as a new mom, you go at a party, and you start having a conversation, and people find you just had a baby, they look for somebody else to go talk to, right? And because you're not doing something interesting that could benefit them. And so we have all these situations in our society, right? And so the the essence of equality of importance is that it doesn't matter how much money of the partners makes. It doesn't matter how much prestige they have in society. It it even doesn't matter how much of the workload they take on, right? Um, they are equally important, and they both have a say in the relationship, and they both need to be respected equally, even though they are not equal,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:14
different, different needs, different needs, and that the the needs are equally important, but they're not the same, yes. And so the thing is, with most women, they're okay with thinking my needs are as important as the needs of my partner,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:29
but also your desires are as important as the desires of your partner, right? And so I was working with a couple. They were very wealthy, um, the husband just got himself some new, fancy golf clothes for $8,000
Unknown Speaker 1:08:45
but he had an issue with the wife spending $2,000 in a bag she loved,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:51
right? So that's an example of, you know, like thinking somebody's desires are more important, you know, like means to play golf is more important than carrying a pretty bag. But when? And I'm not saying you know, so in another circumstance, it would be an issue. If money is scarce, it would be an issue either way, right? But for a couple that is thriving financially, if you allow the the one partner to get something luxurious, then it should also be okay for the other partner to get something luxurious, even if the their partner doesn't understand the reason for them wanting something.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:27
So that's what equality of important is, and it's that and gentleness,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:32
general city are the main qualities that we look for in Feng Shui. For a successful couple,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:40
beautiful Well, thank you, Moni, is there anything that you didn't touch on that you really want to leave people with?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:48
Well, you know my book, which has been published on Amazon, right? So Amazon has territories and countries, so if you go to your version of Amazon.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
And you type my full name, which is Monica Castaneda and feng shui secrets, you will find both the room by room and the house of many gardens. And I have promotion right now that I have reduced the price of the Kindle version to just 99 cents, so everybody can have the opportunity of tea, of enjoying these books and learning from them. Amazing. Oh, well, I hope everybody runs out and gets these books. They're so fabulous, and I could talk to you for a long time. I'm really excited about what you're offering. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us here on the list. Thank you so much for inviting me to now.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:58
Thanks for listening to the lettuce loves you. Don't forget to like, review and share this podcast so more people can benefit. Your one small action helps us get these reflections on belonging and nourishment to the people who need to hear them. And I appreciate it more than you know.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:15
I have more free offerings at Eco that's eco spiritual education. Eco spiritual education.com. Forward slash free stuff. This podcast provides educational information about traditional edible and medicinal uses of plants. This should never be construed as medical or dietary advice. Always consult with a medical provider before making dietary changes.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:41
The music you've been listening to is tu bisfa by bacha Levine, used with permission and a lot of gratitude. Until next time, remember the lettuce loves you. You belong to the earth, and life really does want To nourish You. I
Unknown Speaker 1:13:21
Oh.
