Feng Shui: Mitigating EMF in Your Home

Last Updated on October 4, 2023

EMF and Feng Shui

Modern day homes have become inundated with digital sources of EMFs: at-home work and school setups, tablets and phones, smart meters and smart homes. The ease of asking Alexa or Google to turn on the television or lock the front door comes with an unseen consequence: EMF radiation.

Many people are turning to the ancient practice of Feng Shui to help create a more calming and functional environment in their homes. While Feng Shui normally refers to rearranging furniture and painting walls certain colors, it can also be applied to making your home “smart” and connected while also mitigating your exposure to EMF radiation.

Feng Shui has become a buzz word among interior designers and everyone who has been channeling their inner Marie Kondo. Even those who don’t research Feng Shui might be unknowingly using its principles to arrange their home in a way that feels nice to them.

So what exactly is Feng Shui and how can you establish a connected home while staying safe from EMF radiation?

Feng Shui: the Ancient Chinese Pseudoscientific Practice

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy that focuses on finding the balance of energy within your living space. This practice can be traced to Taoism: a Chinese philosophy that dates back to sixth century B.C. The root of Feng Shui is understanding the relationship with nature and how it affects your daily life.

The guiding principle of Feng Shui is to harness the energy forces around you to find peace and harmony. “Chi” is the term for universal energy. Everything, both man-made and natural, has some manifestation of chi. Chi can be expressed in many different ways, both through yin and yang characteristics and through the five elements of Feng Shui. You probably know what yin and yang looks like visually—black and white swirls, each with the opposite colored dot inside. Yin and yang is the concept of dualism, how opposites are often complimentary. In a home, you may see yin and yang manifested through dark floors and light walls or rich colors in a very sunlit room.

The five elements of Feng Shui are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. The elemental interactions are known as cycles, most commonly the productive and destructive cycles. Other ways chi can be manifested is through different shapes and colors. Each element has an identified shape and color that can represent positive or negative energy. For example, fire is associated with the color red and triangular shapes. When you decide what type of energy you want in your house, you can begin implementing different colors and shapes in your home to achieve the desired energy.

Additionally, by mimicking the natural flow of nature in your house, you can create a peaceful and harmonious living space that helps you regenerate and recuperate in the best ways possible. Understanding the best way to harness chi is important to creating a Feng Shui environment.

Just as energy can be blocked in nature, chi can also be blocked within your home. Imagine chi as water: when you open your front door, where would that water flow? Would it stop or pool at certain places? If so, these are areas that would negatively affect your chi. Furniture blocking pathways, clutter, dirty dishes or laundry, and dead plants are chi-blocking elements.

We consider EMF radiation a chi-blocking element, one that can also negatively affect your physical health.

Harmony within your home is interrupted by EMF radiation. EMF radiation is unnatural—it comes from man-made electronic devices. Exposure to EMFs has been linked to many adverse health effects, including DNA damage and oxidative stress, mental and physiological changes, and a breakdown of different processes in your body. More and more research is being conducted that focuses on the effects of long term exposure, and the results should be considered when interacting with our electronic devices.

Note that Feng Shui does address electronics briefly: it encourages people to move devices at least three feet away and never have them facing towards a place of relaxation. These tips seem to be completely outweighed in real life by the convenience of having your phone in a pocket or a TV in front of your bed. We fully agree with these suggestions, but we want to take it a step further with specific ways you can create a living sanctuary free from chronic EMF exposure.

Watch Video: DefenderShield Founder Dan DeBaun’s EMF Safety Home Tour

Setting Up your Home

The good news is there are ways to set up your house to mitigate the effects of EMFs on the Feng Shui of your home, its chi, and ultimately, your health.

  • Establish a sleep sanctuary where there are little to no electronic devices. Having technology and electronics present in the bedroom (a vital place of relaxation) is bad because the EMF radiation and blue light emissions can both impact the body’s levels of melatonin, altering the natural sleep cycle. Leave your phone out of the room (this will also prevent you from looking at it last thing before bed and first thing in the morning), keep Alexa, Google Home, and other smart devices out of the room. For those who are hypersensitive to EMF radiation, consider a “sleep switch” where you can turn off the branch circuit breakers going to specific rooms. To learn more about optimizing your sleep, check out this blog article.
  • Distance WiFi routers at least 10 feet away from any living space where you spend an extended period of time. As much of a convenience it provides, WiFi is bad for your health if you spend too much time too close to it (read more about the health hazards in this blog). The signal from a typical home router can reach up to 150 feet, so there’s no need to place it right at the heart of your home living space in order to get a working signal.
  • Consider using an eco-router or a router plugged into a Christmas tree timer to help reduce the radiation from WiFi. Even when devices aren’t using the WiFi network but the router is still on, it still sends signals out. Constant radio signaling means constant EMF radiation. By reducing signaling pulse frequency, eco routers can reduce exposure levels up to 90%.
  • Opt for Ethernet wiring over WiFi. Hardwired cables can run through your house, and with the appropriate adapter, you can hardwire phones, tablets, and other devices right to the Internet! Using a hardwired Internet connection eliminates the EMF radiation that WiFi routers emit from their constant signaling.
  • Determine if you have a smart meter on the outside of your home. While smart meters are not a primary source of EMF radiation in your household, they still emit radiation, so sleeping or working right next to one is not the best idea. Check out this blog to learn more about the potential health dangers of smart meters. Depending on where it is in your home (along a bedroom or living room wall), you can ask your utility company if they can replace it with a regular meter, or make sure that the smart meter is not on a wall that is shared with a bedroom or living space. If you are in an apartment or other living situation that does not allow you to change the location of the smart meter, putting aluminum foil and copper directly against the wall the smart meter is on can help avoid direct exposure. You can cover the foil up with wall art to seamlessly blend EMF protection into your home decor.
  • Create distance between couches and televisions so they are at least ten feet apart. Creating space not only allows for the flow of energy, it also ensures that EMF emissions from your TV don’t reach your body, and the high energy blue light won’t be as in-your-face.
  • Create an at-home work set up to stay safe while working. Wire everything: keyboards, mouse, and speakers—and get a wire organizer to keep your desk neat. Since clutter interrupts chi, organizing the wires on your desk will help increase the positive energy in your work space. In fact, having an Ethernet connection actually makes your computer run faster. Place your screen at least one foot away (farther if you can) and wear blue light blocking glasses. If you use a laptop, connect a wired keyboard to keep your hands and body away from the laptop processors, which emit a majority of the radiation. Use a lap shield if you keep your device close to your body.
  • We do not recommend covering all your walls with conductive paint or foil. This will create a Faraday Cage effect that will reflect any EMF sources within the space. Studies have also shown that this can cut you off from the Earth’s beneficial electromagnetic frequencies, called the Schumann Resonance. In terms of Feng Shui and being connected to nature, this is definitely not ideal. We recommend if you do have a 5G small cell site or a cell tower outside your house, you can place shielding along only the wall facing the tower.
  • Instead of barricading out all frequencies in your home, you can find ways to ground yourself to help reconnect to the Schumann Resonance and help the EMF in your body find a conductive path to the earth. Grounding is a way to reconnect to Earth’s subtle frequency. Find ways to get outside to allow yourself time to ground. Perhaps even set up an outside workstation on a patio when the weather permits. Concrete is conductive to the Earth’s energy, so standing on concrete provides the same effect as standing on the ground. Keep in mind that rubber soles on shoes are not conductive, and they block any energy from flowing to the ground.
  • Buy some house plants. Indoor plants are a Feng Shui staple because they add in the element of wood. Wood brings energy of growth and action into a space. Additionally, studies show that plants can help absorb radiation. While this is not ideal for the plants, it can help lessen the amount of exposure you have. There are other health benefits to having house plants, such as natural air purification, as well as having the ability to boost your mood, productivity, concentration, and creativity.

Because of the fast-paced world we live in, it’s essential to have a sanctuary you can go to for disconnecting and recharging, both mentally and physically. Implementing some Feng Shui practices, that can double as protection from EMF radiation, will help you live a happy and healthy life.

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Daniel T. DeBaun
DANIEL T. DEBAUN: ENGINEER, AUTHOR & TELECOMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVE

Daniel T. DeBaun is an internationally recognized and influential expert in Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF) and shielding electronic emissions, with a particular focus on the effect of exposure from mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and cell phones. Daniel’s concern regarding the health impact of electronic radiation emissions grew from over 30 years of engineering experience in the telecommunications industry, where he held a variety of leadership and executive positions at Bell Labs, AT&T, SAIC and Telcordia. Daniel is co-author of recent bestseller, Radiation Nation: The Fallout of Modern Technology, a complete guide to EMF radiation safety and protection. Daniel is also a highly regarded industry consultant, speaker as well as frequent guest national radio and television programs discussing EMF health issues.