For most of my life, I have been fascinated by built structures, especially private homes. How they feel, how they function, and most importantly, what they do to the people inside them. Two homes can look very similar and yet affect those who live there in different ways. One home is supportive, while the other is draining. Why?
Answering this question has shaped my life’s work. It led me to classical feng shui, an ancient body of knowledge that gave language to something I always knew: our homes have a profound influence on us, and this influence is shaped by principles that go far beyond appearance.
When these underlying principles are ignored, the imbalance does not just remain in the structure of the house, it shows in the lives of people who live there.
Writing became a natural extension of my work with private clients. I am the author of two published books, and for nearly twelve years I was the sole writer on feng shui and spatial environment for About.com, where my articles and the weekly newsletter reached millions of readers. Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis found one of my articles while researching feng shui and asked to use it as the text for Feng Shui for Your New Home, a piece he composed for the opening of the National Opera Center in New York. My work has been featured in ELLE Decor, Psychology Today, Domino, Business Insider, and other publications.
What I know for sure is that every home has its own anatomy, just as the human body does. The relationship between its parts determines its overall health. When one area is out of balance, the effects are never confined to that one place. To understand what is happening when people are not doing well in a home, the space must be read as a living system shaped by many inner and outer factors, from its floor plan to its placement on land.
Hello there
I am Rodika
I consult, teach, and write about creating homes that help you live well. I also train professional consultants to do this work.
This is why a beautiful home can still feel wrong, why a major renovation can sometimes make things worse, and why a seemingly small structural change can transform the way an entire home feels.
I train professional feng shui consultants and have taught at the University of British Columbia and Hollyhock. Teaching has required me to make explicit what years of practice have made instinctive: how to look closely, distinguish symptoms from causes, and translate complex principles into clear decisions.
My formal education is in theatre arts theory and journalism. I later trained in classical feng shui and geobiology, and continued my studies in building biology (baubiologie), permaculture and psychology. Each has deepened and expanded my understanding of the relationship between people and place.
For more than twenty-eight years, I have maintained a daily meditation practice that feels like home to me. It sharpens my perception, helping me notice what is not clear and resist quick conclusions until the whole pattern can be seen.
I was raised in Europe, educated in the United States and live in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the edge of the ancient rainforest.
My work is to read the anatomy of a home.
"I was trained to see what mostly goes unnoticed."
I examine the floor plan of the home, its interior spaces and exterior surroundings, the positioning of house on land, and the relationships between all its parts to understand what may be working against the people who live there.
Classical feng shui is the foundation of this work, but I do not use it as a fixed formula or a set of decorative prescriptions. I draw on several methods to understand each home as it is, identify the source of imbalance, and determine what changes will make the biggest difference for the people in that home.
The purpose is not to make the home look a certain way, it is to help the home better support people in it. Sometimes the answer to why certain difficulties persist is in particular aspects of the floor plan, sometimes in the relationship between the house and the land, and sometimes in a complex combination of factors.
Once the source is understood, many solutions are possible. I discuss a range of options with my clients; together we create a plan that best suits their home and the way they live in it.
Every home I read teaches me something.
Some of it stays only here.
what the
house knows
newsletter
Every home I read teaches me something.
Some of it stays only here.
What the
House Knows
newsletter
