In a world where our surroundings often reflect the state of our inner selves, Laura Vida stands at the intersection of spiritual psychology and design. As the founder of Interior Alchemy and a renowned Feng Shui expert, Laura has dedicated her life to exploring the profound connection between our physical spaces and our consciousness. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about how our environment shapes our beliefs and emotional well-being, Laura believes that by creating spaces with soul, we can elevate our health and manifest our heart’s deepest desires. In this Mystic Mag’s interview, Laura reveals the secrets behind her transformative approach, offering insights into how aligning our spaces with our true selves can lead to a more fulfilled and purposeful life.
As a Spiritual Psychologist and Feng Shui Expert, how do you perceive the connection between our physical spaces and our inner emotional states?
The goal of feng shui is to attract nature’s life force energy into our spaces to nourish and uplift the occupants. You can think of your home as a living vision board, projecting what you want more of to the Universe.
The problem is, most of the time, we are not aware of what we are asking for. In feng shui, every area of the home represents a different area of life. Maybe we are used to living with a glitchy front door, or our entrance features overgrown bushes. This points to stunted opportunities and potential mouth/jaw issues. Energetically, our front entrance is the “mouth of Chi” showing beneficial opportunities where to enter the home. Physically, it also relates to the mouth and emotionally to your ability to be open and receptive.
You speak about spaces reflecting our consciousness. Can you share an experience where transforming a client’s environment led to a profound shift in their mental or emotional well-being?
Staying with the front entrance analogy, I worked with a woman who was a former educator who was looking to redefine her career in a new direction. When I pulled up to the house, I had the hardest time locating the front entrance. Finally, I walked around the house to where I thought the entrance should be and found a door hovering in the wall. Strange.
I kept walking and found a back door. During the home tour, I inquired about the entrance door I saw. She replied, “Oh, we kept having problems with the door sticking, so we just removed the landing and boarded it up.” Interesting.
Not only did the woman confess that she suffered from TMJ, but that she seemed to have lost her voice and direction in life. After the remedies were given, both physical, spiritual, and emotional, I left. Three months later, we reconnected, and she told me she reopened her front door, added the landing back, and painted the door a beautiful deep plum color. She also created a flagstone pathway and added potted plants to the door stoop. Her life had completely transformed! Her TMJ healed, and she started a coaching business focusing on executive functioning for adults and children with ADHD. It was taking off!
I’ve been practicing for over thirty years, and in every circumstance, my clients’ lives improve because feng shui works! However, sometimes we get the desired job or relationship only to realize it’s as draining or dead end as the last. This is because of limiting beliefs that are still playing out. Once limiting beliefs are cleared and then feng shui adjustments are implemented, the real lasting magic happens!
What type of services do you offer?
I offer Interior Alchemy feng shui consultations over FaceTime (so I can see around the house) or in person. I also provide spiritual counseling for people ready to look deeper into plaguing patterns so they can be released. Both are available individually or together. You can read more about what I offer on my website: www.lauravida.com
Interior Alchemy is a fascinating concept. How do you integrate spiritual psychology and Feng Shui principles to create spaces that not only look beautiful but also resonate on a deeper, soul level?
We’ve all been in beautiful spaces that feel cold and uncomfortable. That can be because, at the energetic level, we are picking up on chaotic energy, stagnant chi, or even natural anomalies that are not in harmony with the structure. I am also a geomancer and dowser, so I look at all levels of a property—seen and unseen. But, most importantly, our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, dictate our lives. Imagine the power you’d feel when your home is in harmony with the earth and your beliefs about yourself and your life align with your highest intentions. That’s when creating your reality, from both inside and out, is made conscious, and what you attract is intentional, powerful, and aligned with your soul. When we’re aligned with nature, we are aligned with our soul.
Your work suggests that our surroundings mirror our beliefs. How do you guide clients in identifying and transforming limiting beliefs through changes in their home or workspace?
This is so true, and it goes back to the example of the Vision Board. I can read a house and know what is happening in someone’s life. For example, things like hanging images too high represent goals out of reach. Then I use principles of Spiritual Psychology to help identify where we are still stuck on old paradigms, and why. We reframe the beliefs by seeing how things happened for our soul’s growth and unraveling areas where we’ve been caught in the past. Sometimes, it happens in a session, and in other circumstances, it can take a few sessions and some homework—and then we hang the images at the right level and reach our goals!
In your practice, how do you balance traditional Feng Shui principles with modern design aesthetics to create spaces that are both energetically aligned and visually appealing?
I believe it’s imperative to learn the tradition of a practice before any changes are made. And there’s a lot of traditional remedies I use. But if you’re hoping you’ll get rich by hanging a crystal in your money corner, that probably won’t happen! It doesn’t work like that.
However, traditional feng shui remedies don’t always work in modern design or lack meaning for non-Asians. I have been an interior designer for over 30 years, and I’m known for incorporating a harmonious, organic, and uncluttered aesthetic. Every element in a space affects us—from color to material to shape. It can either support and uplift or drain and disempower you. In understanding how we are affected, we can create in alignment with our soul.
