Inspired by feng shui, Dana Claudat has created her own method of designing a healthy home for mind, body and soul.
It may have taken an autoimmune disease for L.A.-based feng shui master Dana Claudat to recognize her calling, but after a two-week hospital stint, she had a realization. “I had been working in the art world and gotten really burnt out,” she says. “Not from partying or anything like that, but from stress and extreme meditations and cleanses. I was essentially addicted to wellness in an unhealthy way.”
The New Jersey-raised Stanford grad had tried just about every wellness option for her body but had never considered incorporating it into her home. “I came back from the hospital and was home a lot for the next six months, which made me see that I had this great bungalow in the Hollywood Hills that I had never really moved into. I had heard about feng shui and thought the positive energy aspects of it could help me heal at home.”
After getting professionally trained in the basic principles of feng shui—making sure your home has a connection to nature and an open flow of energy, and respects the connection to space and life—Claudat started applying them to her own home with flexibility and creativity. Soon, her house came together, her life came together, and she got out of debt. After working for a few years for free for friends (and developing a Tumblr blog with a cult following), she perfected a methodology of feng shui and design she’s used to help numerous clients better their lives by bettering their homes.
“Instead of working with people as though they’re a template, I look at each person as an individual and adapt the work to them,” she says. For one set of clients who had just purchased a home with a screened-in porch, she encouraged them to keep the area as a creative space instead of knocking it down to expand the house. While they initially resisted the idea, they took her advice and now use it more than any other area of the home and feel creatively inspired. For another client who was successful in business but not in love, Claudat suggested she remove all work from her home and do a makeover of the bedroom so that it attracted more masculine energy. “I saw that client a few years later and she was married and pregnant,” says Claudat.
Now, Claudat still consults on projects that entail a full home makeover (for those interested in just a single room or a whole office redo, she’s happy to refer her students), and the bulk of her time is spent teaching others through her group programs and professional training, available to all online virtually. fengshuimagical.com
Photography by: Stephanie Day
