Heal Your Inner Child with Feng Shui - Guest Stacy Scott

Hey guys, welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view, taking out the myth and superstition. So if you're interested in learning Feng Shui, Chinese astrology, all things Chinese metaphysics, as well as superstitions and myths that connect it all, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys, I'm so excited to have a very special guest on today. I love speaking with other Feng Shui practitioners, especially when they have a very unique way of looking at Feng Shui. Well today I have on Stacey Scott.

Stacey Scott is an inner child healer and she also addresses trauma and the way we relate that to the way we live in our home. And I think the way she's looking at Feng Shui again is a pretty unique and I think revolutionary. So let's dive into this conversation about healing your inner child and healing trauma in our homes using Feng Shui. Let's welcome Stacey Scott from the sanctuary Feng Shui. I'm going to have you introduce yourself.

Stacey, how are you today? I'm doing wonderful today. Thanks so much for having me. So I am a Feng Shui practitioner and an inner child healer and Feng Shui for me is really more a meditation on how our subconscious comes out in our space. So I work a lot with trauma survivors actually helping them to create a home and a life that's really telling the story of who they are and who they want to become, rather than a story about their past.

I love that. So one of the things that struck me too is that it is very different than what we're hearing a lot about with Feng Shui. And that's what I love. I love to have on other practitioners that have maybe like a specialty that they incorporate with Feng Shui or just something very unique. They do with their Feng Shui.

So how exactly did you stumble into doing like trauma and working with healing the inner child. How did that come about? Yeah. So very, very personally, honestly, I grew up in a very cluttered and stale energy home. And it really felt like a lot of ways my relationship to my space was really disconnected.

There was really no safe space for me to go in the home. And I grew up with this kind of burning question on the back of my mind, my entire life of what was the meaning of home. How do we actually create a sense of security safety and utterly sanctuary? Like what does that even mean? So fast forward into my adulthood, I became an occupational therapist.

I have a doctorate in occupational therapy. And I started doing something really specific in OT. I started working in the home because the home is my whole life. And I was doing something specific at the time called home modification for aging in place. So I was going into seniors homes with the ability to install stair glides and grab bars to help promote a sense of safety and security and help them remain at home.

But what I was noticing was this really repeat question that I had been asking myself around the meaning of home and how home really kind of shapes our personalities and who we become, who we become as people. I realized that that actually wasn't a question that was solely me because I was going in with the ability to do grab bars and stair glides in these seniors homes. And what I had been equipped with as an occupational therapist was no longer meeting the mark. I was not helping these people in this very deep way in their homes because I was encountering so many different things hoarding issues and people were just telling me they didn't feel good in their home and my grab bar was not going to fix that. So fast forward a few years later that I became incredibly burnt out.

My nervous system was incredibly dysregulated. I was moving through my own trauma healing journey because I was finally really paying attention to my own childhood in the way it was still impacting me as an adult. And I very clearly heard in my brain one day after I had actually upped and quit my job, which was very scary. I heard in my brain very clearly one day I mean it was definitely a love note from the universe saying look at Feng Shui, you're a Feng Shui practitioner. And before I knew it, I was down a Google rabbit hole and it became the answer to the question I have been asking myself even as even as a child.

So that's really how I know that the home really plays such a pivotal and impactful way in not only how we grow up but how we view ourselves and how we kind of tell the world who we are. So that's how I really integrate trauma into the Feng Shui space and help trauma survivors basically heal through the home. That's amazing. We'll kind of come back around to how you actually work in a space and everything in just a second. I think you make an amazing point when you say that as a child, you know, like coming out of that.

I think a lot of children that come from homes that are tumultuous. They have a lot of fighting or issues or they kids don't feel safe at home. They do tend to gravitate towards like the one thing they can kind of control is like their room or a space within their home. And they tend to like rearrange a furniture a lot or try to create a space that their parents will feel is good. So yeah, I call a lot you you touch on so many examples and issues that I work on with my clients often and I call this basically, you know, for lack of better wording I call a generational trauma in the way it kind of flows down through the through the generations and is still impacting us in our homes.

Just this morning I had a client who we were talking about why she feels like her living room cannot be touched. And I said, is that because that's how your mom taught you. She goes, yeah, I like I can't even this room has to stay perfect. And I challenged her a little bit and I said, well, what if your living room becomes another family room instead of this kind of dead zone that you've created and she just went, oh my gosh, wow, that's going to be hard for me. But that's that's an example of generational conditioning that we were told we had to live in our homes in this very specific way and it's really now after the pandemic, none of that works for anybody anymore our lives are so changed.

And it's I see it as my job to help people understand that those rules of the home can all get thrown right out the window in favor of what they and you truly need in your home to not only heal, but also to thrive. Just tell us about the journey of kind of transitioning from the occupational therapists to doing fun, where did you kind of start out with your fun, which way journey. Well, like a very good at the time perfectionist and needed to be an A plus student I found an accredited program and it was six months and I threw myself in. And then you know I decided I this this feels so like me like it was it felt like wisdom I had been practicing for a very long time in prior lives because I just took to it literally like a fish takes to water or a bird takes to air I just intuitively could sense everything about people's homes and their floor plans. And so how really for me you know trauma healing came into it was actually myself I started doing cures and my body went into panic attacks.

And I realized I was asking my home I'm asking the universe to bring me some sort of abundance, but that my body was not able to let that abundance in I had so much resistance in the form of panic attacks in the form of. Feeling overwhelmed, which is really a freeze response in the body and it became very clear to me that for all the people out there that Feng Shui doesn't quote unquote work for I wanted to speak for them because I was someone that Feng Shui by the book did not work for and I knew in my heart that that didn't mean that it couldn't work for them or they weren't in the right place or for some reason they weren't good enough. It just meant that we were the Feng Shui was asking the universe to bring something in that their body was not yet willing to accept and that's how it just dawned on me like a ton of bricks one day. I need to incorporate trauma healing into this because this is my journey I am seeing this so clearly in my own Feng Shui life. And then immediately I started to see it in my clients lives when I started to shift my questions my mindset and my intuition to be more trauma focused.

Beautiful beautiful things started happening for my clients they also received beautiful things because of the Feng Shui the jobs money getting pregnant like all the beautiful juju that we all want from life. Yes, all the results that we as practitioners aim to achieve for clients yeah and sometimes you're right sometimes I mean I went and practicing a certain style of Feng Shui but for me my gear more towards like the classical in the formulas and all of that so I definitely know kind of shifting focus and I've definitely talked to other practitioners that have shifted focus you know with within their Feng Shui to really meet where they're at in life you know. Kind of going back to what you were talking about earlier you were talking about your client that had the living room that was in the pristine condition you know one thing I noticed you about. Looking at people's kind of gut reactions to their home tells you a lot about what's going on in their space you know if they tend to really hate a space or they really avoid a space you know really looking at why and and what is in that space that they're avoiding can be so impactful you know. That's exactly what I do with my clients instead of avoiding those conversations I literally dive in with them and I say unpack that for me because going through my own healing journey there is literally nothing that I can't look at and I can't guide a client through and I think a lot of people are just waiting for someone to say you know you got to jump but don't worry I'm going to jump right next to you and I'm going to hold your hand on the way down because this is scary.

There's a lot of fear and I didn't have anybody to help me through my through my own healing process I had support but I didn't have anybody who had been there who could tell me just keep going this is part of the process just keep going let it all fall away and I am so proud today that I get to say that I am that for my clients. I love that I love it so when you're working with a client how exactly walk us through the process of just kind of how that what that looks like when you take on a client and you they have all the questions you know they want to know what does that look like. Yeah so it really starts with a very detailed questionnaire I like to I joke with my clients I go for the jugular i'm going to ask you those uncomfortable questions about what was life like growing up for you what are some of the things that you find that you do in your home now that maybe mom or dad did. So it really starts off with a very detailed questionnaire and like a profile of the client which very much arcans back to my occupational therapy self that's what we're taught to do is ot is to really be sponges and to unpack and question everything even word choice because it means something. And then from there I go through the home with people you know we it depending if it's a two hour console or I off I am also a coach I work for three months with my decluttering clients so it always starts off with a fun she made consults I can see the home I can see how they react to the home I can see the colors I can see where they're kind of storing the things they'd rather not look at potentially in the form of clutter.

And then from there, depending on their needs we just we don't avoid any uncomfortable conversation I unpack everything for them. While guiding them lovingly and we take it from there we see what needs to be then gone in from an inner child healing standpoint what really feels like a sticky spot for them. And we go in and we do the inner child healing around it so we're healing both home and body at the same time which is why I think my clients have such explosive wins. Yeah that's very true so I do feel like no matter what style of fun show you practice or what you're doing there has to be that inner inner work also you know when we're not we're just looking at one aspect of it you know you know I think that concept and fun show we have an earthen man really comes into play because we still have to work on that man part of us. And work on what's going on inside and of course it then is reflected outside you know so yeah it all it all really goes together very interesting.

I do believe it's Stacy's background and experience as an occupational therapist that's given her this unique perspective when it comes to understanding the change in needs and functions of our home over time. Stacy's really get it communicating the fact that fun show isn't a static thing but rather something that can change literally physical you know within your space like she did with occupational therapy or emotionally to meet where we're at in life. I do have that awareness of like the functionality of home when our life evolves obviously what we need from home and how home can support us as a child is going to be very different than an adolescent. Versus a young adult versus an adult versus an adult with children versus a middle aged adult or an older adult. So I really love to stress to my clients that home is not this static thing home gets to grow and evolve with you.

And if you feel out of alignment with your home that actually gets to be a beautiful thing because that means you have grown. You have evolved and so we just got to pick up the slack a little bit in the home that being out of alignment doesn't mean you're a failure doesn't mean you're lazy doesn't mean you're on organized society loves to keep these. These labels on us that if you can't declutter your home you're lazy you have no will power you're on organized when I sit across from a client and I tell them that they are a powerful beautiful human being. The end that difficulty decluttering is a trauma response and not a moral failing. People just start crying because that is what society has done to them based on how we talk about decluttering and minimalism especially here in the States especially in Western countries.

So for example this is a really good example of that a couple years ago we decided to list our house so when you list your house of course you got to stage it and it looks like you don't live there. And I mean we literally take everything off the walls we took everything out of the floor we redo the carpet we paint it to kind of just freshen it up but in order to list it I never redecorate at my home and I think I felt like for a long time because we're kind of going back and forth should we sell should we not I didn't make it personal and it felt so if it first to feel good. It felt good to get everything I mean I literally boxed everything we put it on storage units I had minimal stuff and I got rid of a lot of that stuff too but at some point it started feeling cold and sad and I think as a society we really do put this. Kind of minimalism on this pedestal of you know this. This thing we need to attain you know but I feel like I'm more of a maximalist I like having my books hanging up like I like having you know all the things I like visual things and so to me it just feels a lot home you're a lot warmer.

When I look at you know the stuff and it's still organized and I still have kept a lot of the declutter that I did during that initial big sweep so I was able to maintain that but having it where. It's functional and it looks nice now and it makes me feel good just makes my home feel so much better. So I always like to tell my clients when it comes to the minimalism versus the new buzzword maximalism debate that human behavior is not a hierarchy it is a spectrum and we need to remember that because we do in the society place minimalism at the crem de la crem of society but unfortunately over the years. This idea of minimalism has you know it maybe it was rooted in. Earth consciousness and social justice I think it's kind of gotten corrupted and overtaken as another way for people to espouse their wealth and their degree of trendiness so really it's become a bit of a lifestyle technique.

Now when I work with my clients what your nervous system needs in your home to thrive might be minimalism it might be maximalism it might be something in between so we need to come to understand in this country that. That that our behavior in relation to our home and what we need from space to feel comfortable and thrive is going to constantly be kind of swinging on this pendulum based on our own personal evolution and our healing journey. So to create a hierarchy out of behavior where if you are you know quote unquote messy or quote unquote organized that's where a lot of the shame blame and pressure is coming from people because they feel like they're failing. When really their bodies are going into a deep overwhelming meaning they're going into this deep free space but they're shaming themselves at the same time of why can't I just xyz my home today. So this is where really the origination it is for at least in my world and the clients I work with of a lot of the shame blame and pressure that comes from not decluttering quote unquote enough because what is enough.

Yeah so I mean we see of course we watch Instagram or we see TikTok reals and we see these beautiful ecstastetically pleasing like minimalist homes and there they are beautiful and you're right some people probably do need that. To you know to organize but I do think sometimes having to that too much organizations almost militant if that makes sense and although I'd like to find my space for all my stuff. Yeah I do think some flexibility needs to be kind of put into place and we don't need to compare ourselves to those Instagram you know homes and whatnot. I think we forget to that home is meant to support us not the other way around so many of us feel like home is kind of has handcuffs on us and is dragging us along for the ride because we feel like we can never keep up. But home is really there to support you and you are in a deep and reciprocal relationship with space so.

When it comes to what your needs are it's really a deeper conversation about who you are and maybe coming back home to yourself in a way of how you are using home to for the gaze of others versus using home really as a supported and nurturing space for yourself and I feel like. Just now in our culture we are sort of willing to have that conversation because me talking about how minimalism was maybe not right for a lot of people just one year ago guarded me a lot of hate. But i'm so thrilled now that I can start to have this conversation with people which is probably why I think my Instagram in the last two weeks is exploded from 1700 to almost 12000. I think people are finally ready to have this conversation this deeper conversation about the meaning of home which as you know has my built my entire life around. To me I feel like there is this trend right now and kind of throwing away what we know and not trying to make our homes like we were talking about for kind of that gaze of others so recent times I think there's been a more growing trend of people getting back to nature and really kind of re exploring or rethinking traditional.

single family homes and thinking about alternatives like multifamily living or even a nomadic or van lifestyle which we see a lot on social media. So I think these options are really gaining popularity because the desire for more simpler or more sustainable lifestyle. And I do think we're starting to move away or at least question trends a bit more i'm really noticing in the collective that there is this deeper conversation going on about how we live. Which i'm sure will lead to greater conversation and chatter about whether or not a lot of us even desire that single family home in the suburbs. Because I think a lot of us grew up with that so it just became a bit of this well of course I have to have that this kind of keeping up with the Jones's mentality which is certainly and thankfully falling by the wayside.

So I do believe this will open up deeper conversations around well what do I need to live in how do I want to live i'm already seen an uptick in people. living abroad you know this this digital nomad kind of life a lot of countries are introducing specific visas for that digital nomad life like Portugal and I think Spain now too. So I think we're going to see a lot more conversation in the collective about how home really needs to. Unify us rather than divide us because the single family home in the suburbs not telling anybody they can't have that if that's their dream. But I think we need to come into a deeper conversation around whether or not that is actually what we need or whether that's van life boat life digital nomad life chosen family under the same roof life.

And i'm just so here for all those conversations i think what that is too is it's a deeper. Desire to come back into alignment with the energy of the land because as functionary practitioners we know. Functionary of your home is great but functionary originated because of the land looking at land forms looking at how that then you know the river carved the. This wavy line through the valley it was looking at our world not our built world that's how we live now. So I do believe this greater collective conversation is going to.

Reconnect us in a lot of interesting ways to the power of the land and if you don't like the energy of where you're living, you can pick up and move. Thank you so much Stacy for joining me today i look forward to maybe having your back on see where you're out of the future, so if somebody wants to get a hold of you i'll post all your links below. So the best way to find me is either on Instagram or tic toc my handles are sanctuary with Stacy. My email sorry not my email my website is sanctuary Feng Shui fng s hui but finding me on social media is a perfect way to start interacting with the wisdom that I share. Awesome in your videos are amazing love them and of course i'll put links below to everything in the show notes so people can follow you and get a hold of you if they if they need to thank you so much for joining me today.

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