Sitting on or nearer to the floor will help you bring grounding energy to your body and your environment.
Beanbag chairs are a way to enjoy the luxurious, lounging element of floor seating, while still enjoying some support to the spine. In a beanbag chair, you are allowing some additional extension to your lower body by having less strain on the psoas muscle, therefore helping to maintain a higher level of circulation in a seated position.
“Floor culture” has been widespread across Asia for centuries. In Korea, sitting on the floor was a way to stay warmer due to the ondol, or underfloor heating systems. In India, sitting on the floor while eating is part of the Ayurvedic lifestyle, aiding in digestion, circulation, and portion control. In Japan, there is at least one room of the house with washitsu, a traditional style room that is adorned only with woven tatami mats across the floor, a simple low table, and some floor cushions. In modern times, we enjoy floor seating as a means to feel more cozy and comfortable in our own homes, and when welcoming guests. With an array of contemporary designs to choose from, one can maintain a modern look in their home, while still offering a relaxed and inviting aesthetic.
We hope you enjoy some of our favorite modern beanbag chair selections!
Keeping your home free of stagnant energy will help you live with lightness of being.
August is the fall of the summer, and autumn right around the corner. With luck, this summer you have spent countless hours bathing in sunlight, or adventuring in new territories. Now is the time to spend some time inside your home, take a look around, and begin to cleanse all the corners and surfaces to ready yourself for the last third of the year. Having a clean and pure living environment is clinically proven to increase brain activity, calm your nerves, and improve overall productivity.
The first step to minimizing clutter, and maximizing peaceful, clean energy in your environment, is to discard any of the following items from your surfaces and drawers.
Old Magazines + Newspapers – If you have stacks of old magazines and newspapers lying around your coffee tables or bookshelves, toss them into the recycling, and clear space for new projects and books!
Receipts + Bills + Documents – Have you already logged or filed necessary information from any receipts, bills, or documents you’ve been saving on your desk or in your kitchen drawers? Throw them all into the recycling bin! Anything that you truly need to save for your personal files or taxes should be neatly organized and placed in a file folder or cabinet.
Clothing – Take a long, hard look inside your closet, boudoir, or dresser, and remove anything you haven’t been wearing regularly (seasonal clothes aside).
Books – Do you have stacks of books that you have already read? Pick your top three, and donate the rest. Trade collections with your best friend, create a neighborhood “Take One, Leave One” bin, or find a coffeeshop with a bookshelf and leave them for someone else!
Medicine + Vitamins – Check the expiration date on all of your bottled medicines an supplements, and discard anything old, or anything that you are no longer in need of.
Makeup + Perfume – Cosmetics and toiletries expire also, and usually aren’t of the same quality after spending too much time laying around in a drawer. Go through everything an toss out those mostly empty compacts of powder or dried up mascaras!
Jewelry – If you aren’t going to invest in basic jewelry pliers or a small repair kit, it’s time to discard all the broken jewelry that you have cluttering up your drawers.
Old or Unused Electronics – Do you have a drawer for old cables, phone chargers, cell phones, or any other obsolete electronics? Get rid of all of that! Donate to your local Goodwill.
It is of utmost important to the balance of your mind and your home to dedicate an area of your space to setting intentions. Find a coffee table, bookshelf, or atop your mantle to place powerful items of significance, peace, abundance, and prosperity. Here are some things you can get started with:
An Altar Cloth sets the foundation for the space you are creating, reflecting all that is within you.
Salt is an important ingredient to place in a bowl on your altar, as it is protective, purifying, and represents the Earth’s energy.
A Chalice represents the Mother Goddess, or divine feminine energy, and is used to hold ceremonial drink, or salt water.
A Wand can be made from any organic material, and is used to direct and channel energies in and around you.
Candles are used to invoke and hold the power of each cardinal point, and are used to balance the masculine and feminine energies.
Bells or Singing Bowls call upon healing energies on your altar, clearing any stagnant energy, and can signify the beginning and ending of your personal practices or rituals
Powerful Stones like crystals and minerals each vibrate at their own frequency, and hold unique significance than can represent different feelings, intentions, and affirmations you would like to focus on.
One of the Five Arts of Chinese Metaphysics, fen shui, or wind-water, is a ancient traditional belief system that guides and governs the energy forces within architectural structures.
Closely linked to Taoism, feng shui practice discusses the arrangement within architecture in terms of the “invisible forces“ that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together, known as qi. In traditional Chinese culture, qi is believed to be the vital force, life force, energy flow, or material energy forming part of every living entity. Qi, in relation to feng shui, includes the orientation of a structure, its age, and its interaction with the surrounding environment, including the local microclimates, the slope of the land, vegetation, and soil quality.
The use of feng shui is dated back as far as 5000 BC to the Yangshao people that lived along the Yangtze River in China. Between 4700 BC and 2900 BC, the Hongshan people in Northeast China, who interacted with the Yangshao, adopted feng shui into their culture. Before the magnetic compass, feng shui relied on cosmography to set the orientation of structures. Early Chinese astronomers utilized a gnomon, or the part of a sundial that casts the shadow, as the first instrument to use circumpolar stars to determine the north-south axis of settlements. Rituals for using a feng shui instrument required a diviner to examine current sky phenomena to set the device and adjust their position in relation to the device. The magnetic compass was in fact originally invented by the Han Dynasty for the purpose of divination and feng shui.
In Western civilization, feng shui has become widespread, and is commonly utilized in interior design and architecture.
Bagua
In Yaodian, the cardinal directions are determined by the marker-stars of the mega-constellations known as the Four Celestial Animals:
East: The Azure Dragon (Spring equinox)—Niao (Bird 鳥), α Scorpionis
South: The Vermilion Bird (Summer solstice)—Huo (Fire 火), α Hydrae
West: The White Tiger (Autumn equinox)—Mǎo (Hair 毛), η Tauri (the Pleiades)
North: The Black Tortoise (Winter solstice)—Xū (Emptiness, Void 虛), α Aquarii, β Aquarii
You can use the bagua diagram in your own home, by using a compass, or the compass app on your phone, to check how you have intuitively placed things around your home, and re-arrange accordingly. Using the bagua diagram can, if anything, be an excellent way to decorate and arrange parts your home with intention!
Decluttering your home and work area can greatly increase mental clarity and inner peace. Your surrounding environment has a profound effect on the way you perform simple daily tasks, the way you process information, and the manor in which you exchange energy with others.
Having less around you will give the possessions that you do have more meaning. You will have less to clean up and organize around your home, and less to transport if you are moving or traveling. To live with lightness of Being begins with lightening your load.
De-cluttering can be extremely overwhelming. Where to start? It is immensely helpful to begin by tackling categories instead of trying to start with an entire room. Begin with clothing, then books, then beauty products, then kitchen items, etc.
Treat your belongings as if they had feelings; would you want to be thrown on the floor, messily shoved into a drawer, or chaotically crammed into the back of a closet? Give your things space to breathe, thus making them easy to locate and access.
Step 1: Make a mental inventory of everything you own, then compartmentalize.
Do you have to spend hours searching for a particular item? Do you spend even more hours organizing and reorganizing what you own just to keep it in a maintainable order? Do you have several versions or colors of the same items or articles of clothing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is time to downsize. Let go of guilt associated with buying or receiving a gift of something that you end up never using or wearing; just get rid of it!
Step 2: Be extremely mindful with future purchases.
Before you rush to the sale rack and start piling everything with a 50% off tag into your cart, ask yourself if you really need any of those items. Will the items prove to be completely useful? Will they bring you more joy than clutter? Do you already have another version or color of the item, or are the items you already own in need of replacing? Make sure that if you do buy something, that it is of the highest quality to your standards. This will ensure its longevity, and the likelihood that you wont tire of it after a short period of time.
Instead of buying new items, host a clothing swap or household item swap with your close friends, make it an evening of wine and exchanging gifts! You will discard so many items that need to go, and probably end up with some amazing and meaningful treasures in return!
Regularly practice expressing gratitude for every item that you own. Hold each item in your hand, and observe whether it sparks happiness, and whether it serves as a valuable tool in your daily routine. The more conscious and grateful you are of the belongings that you own, the less you will desire to own more.
You will save money by restricting your urge to purchase new items, and prevent the buildup of clutter. Save room in your life for spontaneity, gifts, and give yourself a budget for traveling instead! Life is about experiences, not possessions. It’s time to make scarcity of belongings turn into prosperity of living.
Step 3: Evolve beyond your nostalgia!
Do you have drawers of old concert or movie ticket stubs and wristbands? Maps and brochures from hotels and destinations you have visited? Notebooks full of recipes and notes, hand-written letters, or stacks of magazines you saved for one particular article? It’s time to let all that stuff go. Unless you are going to dedicate the time for making an organized scrapbook or other creative way to display your collection of memories, there is no use having such things lying around taking up space and making your environment appear cluttered.
Go through all those drawers and shoeboxes and decide what really holds value and use to you in this point of your life and your future.
There is something ethereal and elegant about surfaces bathed in white.
The pure and clean essence of white gently washes over us with grace and sophistication. We are reminded of far off islands like Santorini, Sardinia, or Mykonos, where one can walk on white pathways under bright white cupolas. One will feel as if they are spending their days in a spa, with a calming and serene sensations transmitted by the interior elements of their own home.
White allows your living space to be a blank canvas to feature accents of artwork, plant life, or colorful woven textiles. A room with a bright and neutral color palette can make a smaller space appear much larger and create a mood of openness. Windowless rooms can become seemingly airy instead of stifling. A palette of whites will make a space seem naturally cleaner and tidier, so even an unmade bed can appear intentional. With white, you can fluidly feature other patterns, textures, and colors without the risk of making the area appear cluttered.
Stroll through these lavish white interiors, and take a deep breath of the lively freshness that they invoke.
As the focal point of your living area, a coffee table should be a perfectly curated centerpiece that invokes the mood of your modern home, and ties the entire space together.
In your living area, you will often find that the coffee table catches your eye before even glimpsing any other fixtures. Whether you utilize it to store books and magazines, display artwork or sculptures, be a foundation for plants or flowers, or desire it to doubly function as a foot rest, the design and placement of your coffee table will define the essence of the space.
Explore this diverse selection of modern coffee tables to draw inspiration for your next purchase, or to reinvent your existing space!
For thousands of years in folklore and traditional medicine, stones have been used for healing, protection, and stimulating or moving energies.
All crystals and gemstones are living organisms, and contain a life energy of their own. They are evolving entities, growing in clusters that can take thousands of years to fully mature. Each stone vibrates at its own individual frequency, and each unique vibration that they emit are said to affect us in a vast array of ways.
Many crystals and gemstones are as old as our planet itself, and some even originate from unknown sources in our cosmos, such as moldavite, which was found inside and partially formed within the crater of a meteor that struck in Southern Germany about 15 million years ago.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the use of stones provides the most profound and permanent effects to treat the most difficult of diseases. Ancient healers contend that the density and solidity of stones represents a stabilizing effect. Wearing specifically prescribed stones near your body over a length of time is said to promote the healing of a chronic health condition, or promote evolutionary changes and development. Stones can be used in combination for a synergistic effect, just as the process of combining herbs when formulating an an elixir or tonic. Preparing stones through cleansing, clearing, and recharging is imperative. One can purify stones and crystals by submersion in salt water, smudging with Palo Santo or Sage, and soaking beneath sunlight and moonlight.
Originally discovered in Ethiopia, obsidian is a dark volcanic glass formed by the rapid solidification of lava without crystallization. It has been used for thousands of years for ritual ceremonies, pottery, and weapons. Place Obsidian near your entryway in a planter or on a table or altar to ward off anything negative from entering your home. “Wash” yourself on every length of your limbs and up and down your energy centers while concentrating on affirmations to free yourself of emotional attachments that are no longer serving you. Hold the obsidian near your heart center during breathwork and meditation to create an energy of grounded stability and peace.
Rose Quartz
Manifesting Love + Compassion + Tranquility + Balance
Rose quartz is most commonly found in Brazil, India, South Africa, and Madagascar. It has a blush tint due to its contents of titanium, iron, manganese and an aluminum boro-silicate called dumortierite. Traditionally, it is said to dissolve emotional wounds, fears, and resentments, promoting loving energy to circulate throughout your body and essence. Rose quartz can induce receptivity to beauty of all kinds, attracting love and restoring trust and harmony in existing relationships. Place rose quartz in the Southwest corner of your bedroom to attract abundance of love and balance existing relationships. Wear a rose quartz pendant in level with your heart energy center to create a flow of peaceful, loving energy in your life.
Citrine is formed when amethyst undergoes extreme heat exposure. Rio Grande do Sol in Brazil is the world’s largest supplier of natural citrine, but other mines can be found in the USA, Russia, Madagascar, England, France, Scotland, Spain, Brazil, and South Africa. Citrine will aid in increasing confidence, therefore making it a fluid path to manifesting wealth and abundance of all things. Set an intention of that which you wish to manifest, and hold a citrine near your solar plexus energy center. Place a genuine citrine in the Southeast corner of your living room and office, preferably both on a wooden surface and near a water fixture like a fountain or water vessel.
The concept of Zen Gardens originated in Japan, with the intention of cultivating the natural essence of an intimate, peaceful space of reflection.
With intricately stylized designs, Zen Gardens are amongst the most pristinely beautiful works of landscape art. You will glimpse rock gardens with pathways and ground sculptures of stones placed in carefully composed patterns, layers of mosses and pruned trees, water fixtures, isolated sand and gravel to rake in sweeping designs, and intentionally overgrown plant life arrangements.
In these selection of images, we hope you feel inspired to transform your garden space into a place of exquisite beauty and detail.
Breezy coastlines with ivory sands and endless cerulean horizons, the historic East End of Long Island has long been both a prominent seaside resort and summertime colony. Originally an area devoted to agriculture and fishing, the Hamptons have grown into an areas with residential real estate prices ranking amongst the highest in the nation.
In the Hamptons we see a widespread seaside style, with a predominantly luminous array of whites, and soft costal shades. The isle emphasizes minimalism with a sophisticated and airy essence, often with accents of linen, wicker and jute, timber floorboards, and a neutral color palette of home decor. We see a prominence of natural elements and textures,, inducing a warming and comfortable mood. Decorate your surfaces with driftwood and adorn your shelves in coral. The key is openness, lightness, and subtlety.
Paris, the city of love, and the global headquarters for gastronomy, couture, elaborately lavish design and architecture, the bohemian legacy, and world-class arts. Its timeless charm, historic monuments, and iconic architecture make it familiar and intimate for both first-timers and those well acquainted with its wonders.
Whether you only have a week to escape, or a few months to fully delve into the glamorous Parisian dream, we think you’ll marvel over these exquisite interiors!
Where have you stayed in Paris? Do you have favorite vacation rentals, Airbnb hideaways, or hotels not to miss? Submit comments, questions, and links to lovely Parisian getaways below!
