Does your space need trauma clearing?

This week's Torah portion, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), opens Moses's 37-day farewell address to the Israelites, always read on the Shabbat before Tisha B'Av. Last week, on the 4th of Av, our home experienced the kind of sudden trauma that stops time. My daughter's rescued kitten—alive one moment, gone the next after our dog's protective instinct turned tragic—died in my husband's arms while my daughter sobbed and I found myself screaming at a grief that felt much bigger than one tiny life.

In that moment of raw shock, my body knew what my mind couldn't yet process: trauma gets trapped in spaces the same way it gets trapped in our nervous systems. I immediately reached for sea salt and frankincense, heading straight to our wealth corner where it happened. Later, while brewing tea to calm our shaken household, containers of star anise and fennel tumbled from my hands one after the other—the first could have been an accident, but the second felt like a clear message. So I looked up their spiritual significance and discovered that star anise offers protection and strengthens kinship connections across the veil of death, while fennel provides purification and courage to overcome obstacles and fears.

The space where trauma occurs holds the energy of that moment until we consciously clear it.

Moses understood the power of place in processing trauma. His farewell words weren't delivered just anywhere - he chose a specific location: "beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab" (Deuteronomy 1:5) to create sacred space for processing forty years of collective pain. Just as Moses knew the people needed to process their trauma in an intentional place before they could enter the new land, we too need to tend to the places in our homes where trauma has occurred. According to the Ramban, Moses spoke "from his own initiative" yet with divine inspiration, translating God's eternal truths into human language his people could actually hear and integrate

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Like Moses, we must create intentional space—both physical and temporal—for our hearts to process what they cannot yet understand. It's about creating conditions for healing to become instinctive.

ROOM OF THE WEEK: THE CENTER

The center of your home—what feng shui calls the heart of the bagua—governs balance, grounding, and your family's overall wellbeing. This is where all energy converges and radiates outward, making it the most crucial area to tend when your household has experienced shock or trauma.

Like the center of a wheel that allows all spokes to function, your home's center coordinates how energy flows to every other area of your life. When this space is cluttered, neglected, or holding traumatic energy, it affects everything downstream—your relationships, your career, your health, your peace of mind.

Unlike rooms with walls and clear boundaries, your center might be a hallway, an open area, or simply the middle point when you overlay the bagua map on your floor plan. This makes it both powerful and easily overlooked.

DAILY ENERGY FOCUS

Sunday (Yang/Sun) 

CLEAR your center area completely. Remove everything that doesn't actively support circulation and flow. What's the first thing you notice about how this space breathes differently?

Monday (Yin/Moon) 

TEND to your center with gentle attention—soft lighting, calming scents, or simply wiping down surfaces with intention. Notice how this nurturing care affects the whole household's mood.

Tuesday (Fire/Joy) 

AMPLIFY the warmth and light in your center with candles, bright flowers, or meaningful objects that remind your family of joy. Create that indefinable quality that makes you pause and wonder how your home feels so alive even after difficulty. Fire numbers (9) will find this particularly inspiring for lifting everyone's spirits.

Wednesday (Water/Flow) 

OBSERVE how energy moves through your center throughout the day. Are there pathways that feel blocked? Corners where sadness seems to pool? The flowing energy of water asks: What needs to move through this space for healing to begin?

Thursday (Wood/Growth) 

ADD one living element—a plant, fresh branches, or flowers that represent your family's resilience. Growth requires both deep roots and flexible branches.

Friday (Metal/Structure) 

ORGANIZE your center with clear intention. Remove broken items or anything that no longer serves your family's highest good. The structured energy of metal asks: What boundaries does your family need to feel truly safe right now?

Saturday (Earth/Grounding) 

REST in your center for ten minutes without trying to fix anything. Simply be present with whatever you feel—grief, gratitude, exhaustion, hope. Earth numbers (2, 5, 8) may find this especially centering after trauma.

BAGUA MAP BY ROOM

Before we look at how your center affects the rest of your home, consider this: Connection vs. Boundaries: Where are you craving deeper relationships and community right now? Your family bonds, friendships, or support systems that help you through difficult times? And where do you need stronger boundaries and more independence—perhaps protection from others' opinions about how you should grieve, or space to process without having to take care of everyone else's feelings?

Once you identify these areas, you can use your center to support both needs—either maintaining and deepening the connections that sustain you or creating clear energetic boundaries where needed.

In BTB feng shui, align your front door with the bottom of the tic tac toe board below.

┌─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│   Wealth        │    Fame         │ Relationships   │
│   Corner        │   Corner        │    Corner       │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│   Family        │    Center       │   Children      │
│   Corner        │                 │    Corner       │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│  Knowledge      │    Career       │ Helpful People  │
│   Corner        │   Corner        │    Corner       │
└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘
          ↑               ↑               ↑
      Front door typically aligns somewhere along this edge

Center Area: 

Your center space is called "Tai Chi" in Chinese—literally meaning "supreme ultimate"—because it affects all family members equally and influences every other area of your home. After trauma, this becomes your family's energetic heart monitor. How does this space support or challenge your household's ability to find balance together? Consider whether this area represents your family's core stability and grounding or if it's become a place where scattered energy and emotional chaos gather. The center craves earth elements—warm yellows and golds, square or stable shapes, ceramics or crystals, sweet scents like vanilla or cinnamon. When your center feels solid and nurturing, it sends healing energy to every corner of your home. When it's neglected or holding traumatic imprints, that instability ripples outward affecting relationships, career, health, and peace of mind.

Not sure how to read your space according to this map? Click here.

CLOSING INSIGHT

According to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, this Shabbat is called "Shabbat Chazon" because God shows us a vision of the Third Temple even in our mourning. Sometimes the most broken spaces in our homes—like the most broken places in our hearts—are where the deepest healing wants to emerge. Moses didn't avoid difficult truths in his final speech; he named them clearly so his people could finally move through them instead of around them.