Sherri Silverman author of Vastu: Transcendental Home Design in Harmony with Nature talks with Living Ayurveda Course members about how to improve how energy flows and gathers in our homes and offices. Vastu Shastra is the “yoga of design,” and Sherri is a master and an artist of helping people bring more consciousness into the “what goes where” in their homes.

Listen to the conversation – and check out of Sherri’s online home course on Vastu: the Yoga of Design

Here is info on Vastu from Sherri’s websiteL

Vastu shastra basics: Vastu bring success and creates sacred space through harmony with nature.

Vastu homes, work spaces, and gardens protect and nourish, are harmonious and prosperous, and support abundance and health. They radiate a life-supporting, orderly influence into the environment. Vastu, the original green, sustainable design system, goes beyond your footprint on the earth and actually improves the eco-system. The same laws of nature and Vastu guidelines apply to the entire planet, including the southern hemisphere: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

Vastu shastra is the spiritual, scientific design system from India’s Vedic tradition. Vastu creates the peace and stability we need for greater success and joy in life. Vastu is perfect for conscious lifestyles in alignment with nature. If you meditate, do yoga, eat organic food, recycle, or use anti-aging skincare, look into Vastu (and find products you’ll love for sacred space and organic lifestyle at our shop online).

“Vastu” means energy or imperishable substance. “Vaastu” is the form or matter, including the space that fills it. The form and the space within the form are intimately connected and affect each other. The Sanskrit expression, “Vastu reva vaastu,” means that unbounded pure consciousness, the unmanifest source of manifestation, transforms into the material world. In other words, as Einstein said, energy becomes matter. These laws of nature, or mechanics of creation, are utilized in Vastu.

Vastu aligns homes and businesses with beneficial earth and cosmic energies and laws of nature. For best results, have a Vastu consultation from an authentic Vastu expert. Read about Vastu consultant and author Sherri Silverman, who helps clients worldwide with this grace-filled sacred and practical knowledge.

There are many names for Vastu architecture, garden, and interior design: Vastu Shastra (“shastra” means “sacred text”), Vastu Shilpa Shastra (“shilpis” are sacred sculptors), Vastu Vidya (“vidya” is “knowledge”), Vaastu, Vedic architecture, and Sthapatya Veda (“knowledge of architecture”).

Vastu comes from the same tradition as yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, and Vedic astrology. Vastu is the yoga of design, bringing balance, health, harmony, inner peace, order, and unity. Meditation gives experience of pure consciousness; Vastu enhances this and connects us with the source through proper design. Ayurveda, the science of life, is knowledge for health of the body. Vastu creates healthy buildings; this profoundly affects our health, happiness, and prosperity —- and the health of the environment. Vedic astrology or Jyotish gives knowledge of cosmic influences on our lives, emotions, relationships, prosperity, career, and health. Applying an expert Vastu consultant’s recommendations and remedies helps correct negative influences in all areas of life. It also increases and creates positive effects well beyond the merely decorative.

The main blueprint for Vastu homes is a square or rectangular grid pattern, the Vastu Purusha Mandala, for the mother wall. The Vastu Purusha Mandala represents the harmonious union of cosmic and earth energies, of masculine and feminine divine elements. This creates a lively, balanced wholeness. The Vastu Purusha Mandala is based on subtle mechanics of creation, the laws of nature.

Vastu recognizes five elements of creation that, when honored, enhance the flow of prana, universal life-force energy, within a building. Honoring nature is a sacred acknowledgement. Respect and care of our natural environment is a sacred contract – we have all seen the result of ignoring this.

The five elements of earth, air, fire, water, and space are energetically linked with particular directions. Earth, bhumi, is associated with the southwest; air, vayu, northwest; fire, agni, southeast; and water, jala, northeast. Space, akasha, is the expansiveness in the center of both the architectural form and each room. There are ideal placement of rooms, furniture, and other items to support such things as how well you sleep and how abundant your cash flow is.