Wind and Water: Maui Resident Shares Her Passion for Feng Shui

By Morgan Y. Lapp

Tara Shupack has lived on Maui for 15 years after living in Maryland for the majority of her life. She moved to Maui to be closer to her family and to have and environment to raise her children that was safe and healthy. She works as a Mortgage Loan Officer and loves to spend time with her two daughters. In her free time, one of her favorite hobbies is the practice of feng shui.

Feng shui translates to “wind and water” and is an ancient Chinese practice of organizing a space and furniture placement to create the best possible flow of energy. It was first noted to be practiced in the 4^Th century B.C.E. with Chinese farmers who migrated to the yellow river valleys, but could have been a practice long before this time.

Shupack was first introduced to feng shui by her mother, who was also interested in the practice. She found feng shui to be interesting and wanted to know more. Shupack has educated herself on the practice and has even taken an eight week course to become a certified Feng Shui Practitioner. “One thing I love about it is that when your space is feng shuied you feel more comfortable in it, I like to feel comfortable and like I’m not being blocked,” said Shupack.

She shared her knowledge on feng shui, stating that it cannot only be used in the home, but also in businesses and outdoors spaces. Shupack mainly practices feng shui in her home. “When something is off in my life and I am having trouble with it I like to go to that area of the house and arrange it as an intention to fix that part of my life,” she said.

Feng shui is organized into nine different quadrants, all equal squares, each one representing a different part of people’s lives. “Look at your house and each square is related to a specific part of your life, from the front door facing in you map out the squares,” Shupack said. “The back left corner becomes the wealth and prosperity area, the middle back becomes fame and reputation, the back right is love and relationships, the right middle is creativity and children, the very middle is health, the middle left is family, the front left square is knowledge and information, the front middle is a career area, and the last area is a helpful people and travel area, this is the same in every house.”

Shupack shared stories of her experiences with feng shui and some of the times it has worked for her. She mainly uses feng shui as a way to cope and keep the energy in her house flowing without any blockages. There have been multiple instances where feng shui has made a difference in her daughter Hannah Lewis’s life. After Hannah left for college, Shupack noticed that she was having problems with the relationships in her life. Hannah’s room took up the love and relationships section of the house, so Shupack decided to clean it out. She took down posters, scrubbed the room and made it a clean, soothing area. She hung up her wedding photos and added an ornament of two lovers to the bedside table in the far corner of the room. No less than a week later, Shupack’s daughter had met her current boyfriend and all of their relationships grew and became stronger. “Although Hannah was no longer living in that space, it was still full of her things and the energy is still connected to her,” she explained.

Shupack has had experience practicing feng shui in other people’s homes. She says that she enjoys helping others but that it can be very different from your own home. “A lot of it is based on intuition and being able to feel what’s going on in the space,” she said. “When I go into someone’s house I will see something in the house and wonder if that’s going on in their lives, and usually I find out that, yeah, that is going on in their lives.” Most of Shupack’s house is feng shuied although one would never notice unless they also practice feng shui. “This mirror is placed here [in the career area] to open up the wall,” she said. “It faces the mountain to bring in the energy of Haleakala.”

Shupack gave more examples of parts of her home that were feng shuied sharing the garage. She stated that the garage was difficult because it is an area that can easily become messy and cluttered. She decided to take one corner and make it her own. She cleaned the corner up and organized it to get any blockages out of her wealth and prosperity area. “I keep the space clean and kind of an alter there for my intentions,” she said.

Feng shui can be used in businesses as well. In Chinese culture, having a feng shuied business can be very important and really change it for the better. “It might be something like you go into a restaurant and you see a fish tank,” she said, “and it’s all dirty and gross and half full of water, they might not be focusing as much on their finances and business and then at a point in their life when they decide, ‘okay, I want this to be more successful,’ that’s usually the time when the fish tank fills up and gets cleaned and now they’re attracting in good energy.”

Shupack’s interest in feng shui has created a hobby for her that she will use her whole life. It’s a passion that she loves to share and help others with. “If you look at it as coincidence then it is,” she said. “But if you continuously watch these things happen, you start to feel that it really works.”