Feng Shui Consultant Training Programs, Chakra Healing
Retreats w/ Nancy SantoPietro
Biography Marina Lighthouse
Balancing Act
A New Attitude About an Ancient Art
It’s a Wonderful Life. Remember the movie? The old Frank Capra Christmas classic? It’s about an Everyman who can’t catch a break (Jimmy Stewart in his most unforgettable role as George Bailey), beset with a host of everyday problems, who manages to overcome most them with a change in attitude and a little help from above. The one thing, however, that drives old George off a bridge, the symbol of his malaise, the running gag, the underlying symbol for the theme of the movie -- is an unglued knob at the bottom of the banister that comes loose in his hand every single time he attempts to use the stairs. Granted, old George Bailey has an angel on his side in the movie and winds up realizing just how lucky he really is, but he could also use a good Feng Shui adjustment. All he has to do is ask.
But how does one balance a busy life? How does one ask? Ask who? Ask what? How does one "get lucky?"
Kids, relationship, health, money problems, lack of time, stress, the boss is bearing down hard, a cluttered environment, hidden tension, and the front door sticks every time you try and close it. They all affect each other. Energy gets blocked and needs to be freed. Everything is working against and not in harmony with each other. Sometimes, life gets so overwhelmingly out of control that one doesn’t know where to begin.
Lighting the Way
If only George Bailey could’ve met Marina Lighthouse. No one understands or empathizes with this type of problem more than a person who helps people find real-life daily solutions to that very question.
Marina Lighthouse is an expert in the Art of Balanced Living, the Art of Placement—the ancient and revered Art of Feng Shui. But what is it, really, that she does? Is she some sort of New Age Interior Design Psychotherapist? What is gained or, more importantly, what needs to be lost as a person, a place, an environment comes into balance. What does that mean, anyhow?
What does where we live and how we live have to do with who we are and how balanced we feel? What elements cause and relieve stress in our lives? So what if the front door sticks or knob on the banister falls off every time you grab it? How is the energy blocked? What energy? What can one do?
These are precisely the hard-to-answer but urgent questions asked everyday by people, corporations, architects, business leaders, politicians, entertainers and hundreds more that this Los Altos resident comes in contact with.
Marina Lighthouse believes things, people, and places have energy and are connected in ways that are seen and unseen. One influences the other and all react in ways that can be known if only one would pay attention closely. She thinks a balanced life is a well-adjusted life and that luck, prosperity, success, and happiness can be prepared for and encouraged -- that an open mind, an open heart, and open channels to creativity and prosperity do much to manifest the same.
Through her very successful Los Altos business Harmony in Your Environment, Lighthouse helps corporations and small businesses, entrepreneurs and just plain folks identify and clear the energy in their lives.
Look and Listen
“The very first thing I do when someone calls me for a Feng Shui consultation is I arrive and observe, then listen deeply. I listen a lot. The client is talking. The environment is talking. Feng Shui is all about observing, noticing and feeling. There are blatant energies, subtle energies. Sometimes, living and working, we lose perspective on those. I observe subtleties, notice patterns. For example, a person will bump their shins repeatedly, then adjust and start to walk around a sharp coffee table. They may avoid that coffee table for years instead of just moving it. Moving the coffee table does more than create space; it eliminates the compensating tension a person doesn’t even know they’re holding and expending every time they encounter that table. It takes energy to avoid it 100 times a day. Suddenly, there’s more energy.”
According to Lighthouse, good Feng Shui is 90% about showing up and listening “By the way, just to be clear,” says Lighthouse, “Feng Shui is not about providing unsolicited advice to people about their relationships, homes, lives, or businesses. It’s about listening, looking, intuiting, observing, talking, connecting, and then, if need be, correcting.”
“I walked recently into a woman’s house and listened to her complain about her unrelieved kidney problems. Even her dog had developed kidney problems, she said. I listened and looked. I noticed an aquarium that was filthy and unattended. In the back yard was fetid, stagnant water from a backed-up drain. I noticed a pattern. We talked. I mostly listened. After awhile I made a few suggestions. Today her back yard is dry and tended, the aquarium is clean, her kidney problems are gone, and oddly, so are her dog’s. She’s feeling less blocked, less stagnant. Her kidneys filter better. She’s happier. Chi was blocked. Energy flows easier now. It was all connected.”
Sometimes, a Feng Shui adjustment to a person’s environment takes the form of a "cure" or response. There is something one can do to change or redirect energy. “It’s impossible to change the architecture of a house to open up the free-flowing of energy,” says Lighthouse. “However, a transcendental cure could take the form of an object that wards off or reflects bad Chi. The same lady whose kidney problems cleared up lived in a house where three busy streets intersected right outside her house. In fact, they all converged at her front door. Too much busy, hectic energy was directed at the house. An eight-sided Chinese Mirror, Ba-gua, was hung above the front door, deflecting the energy back outside.” Other Feng Shui responses or cures could take the form of wind chimes, a bamboo flute, hanging crystals, and other items found at Chinese specialty shops.
Authentic bamboo flutes are hard to find, and often clients have had trouble locating these items. In response she has inaugurated a helpful Web shopping site called www.fengshuishopper.com where people can find items related to Feng Shui and Chinese culture.
East Meets West
Lighthouse isn’t Chinese, but you wouldn’t know it from her home, which is adorned with tasteful Asian art, a reclining Buddha, and many beautiful calligraphies.
Marina Lighthouse is an intriguing blend of Western sensibility and Eastern mysticism. An artist by nature, a musician and healer by craft, a composer and singer, successful businesswoman and spiritual seeker, she simply believes “that we are all here to help each other any way we can.”
“In my opinion, the East is onto something,” says Lighthouse. “Asian culture has a more encompassing understanding of things, appreciating how energy works, how it flows. They pay attention to both the seen and unseen realms. They cultivate from the inside out rather than the outside in. Feng Shui takes this into account, and these days the West is becoming more and more attuned to that fact.”
A California native who grew up in the Silicon Valley when apricots were more plentiful than silicon chips, Marina Marinovich was taught at an early age about Chinese history and philosophy by her father, Ben Marinovich, a native of Korcula, the Adriatic birthplace of Marco Polo.
Studying the I Ching extensively, she also immersed herself in Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist theology. She was introduced to Feng Shui in 1991, enrolled in the Shelter for the Soul Institute and was certified as a practitioner in 1996. She met and began studying directly under H.H. Grandmaster Lin Yun Rinpoche, the spiritual leader of the Tantric Buddhist Black Sect Feng Shui, in 1995. They collaborated on a project to weave the precepts and theories of Feng Shui into a musical context. The resulting CD, “Feng Shui Tune Up” was heralded as the first of its kind in the field. Click here to listen.
She entered the Art of Placement, an international affiliate mentorship program, in 1998. Since then she’s traveled extensively giving consultations, and to Taipei to attend the annual Chinese New Year festivities
In January 2001, she became a partner with Feng Shui expert Deborah Gee of Nine Star Productions. The widely watched educational video “Creating Environments for Success and Well Being,” still airs on PBS.
2003 found Lighthouse in demand by Bay Area corporations as well as individuals for increased consultations and readings. Several large corporations, Hewlett-Packard, Mercedes-Benz, and Cisco Systems among them, all had various questions from office and staff environments to styling for cars.
In addition to answering and assisting corporations, bankers, doctors, and housewives, she gave a lecture to undergraduate students at the UC Berkeley School of Architecture on principles of Feng Shui in architectural design.
In 2004 she finished recording and producing a second CD in association once again with Master Lin Yun. The CD “The Heart Sutra,” a blend of music, chanting, and readings, is meant to be not only listened to but meditated upon.
Master Lin elaborates: “Of all the Buddhist classics that have been passed down through the ages, the largest is that of the Tibetan Canon and its collection of Wisdom Sutras. At the core of the Wisdom Sutras lies the perfection of Wisdom Heart Sutra.” The study of the Heart Sutra is a study in the nature of ultimate reality that the Buddha called “emptiness.” The sutra declares you to be Buddha and celebrates your unique expression of the ecstasy of nothingness.”
Trained in another ancient Chinese art, Lighthouse has also recently begun to consult and give readings to clients from the ancient Chinese Oracle of Mah Jongg. Predictions are accurate, uncanny, and very specific.
A planned Summer Lecture Series at East West Bookstore in Mountain View, California, in June, Improving Your Relationships Through Feng Shui, will offer information, education, and guidance.
The Key
For Lighthouse, her business as well as her life is all about balance. “Life itself longs to be in balance. People, their lives, their businesses, their relationships, their environments all want to be in harmony. The key is to listen deeply, take notice, and be open to fine-tuning that in one’s daily life.”
A life in balance, even old George Bailey would agree, is a wonderful life!
