Life is stressful enough without allowing physical environment - air quality, lighting, noise, and other controllable factors - to intensify day-to-day stress. Especially in Fall and Winter is where you experience less daylight and more mood swings.

The great thing about environmental stress is that in most cases we can control what is in our environment that is causing stress. Take these five steps to eliminate environmental stressors that might cause stress and tension in your work and home life.

1. Increase your activities during natural light. Natural light elevates mood and helps maintain a regular internal body "clock". Especially during fall and winter we experience a substantial decrease in natural daylight. If you're indoors, try working next to a window and allow as much sunlight as possible to enter your space. If you work in an office without windows try buying a natural sunlight lamp (http://www.wackyplanet.com/natsunlam.html). These lamps can help with Seasonal Affective Disorders as they provide a natural sunlight spectrum for health and well being. Prolonged exposure to artificial lighting in any setting can be an environmental stressor.

2. Ban tobacco smoke. Constant exposure to tobacco smoke and its toxins can be a persistent environmental stressor and lead to respiratory problems and other symptoms.

From a Vastu perspective, if your home is not in proper balance, those things that you desire most in life can elude you causing sadness, disappointment, and lost opportunities. Relationships, like other areas of your life, can be compromised when your home is not in balance with natural forces that permeate world and our Universe.

In nature all five elements (earth, water, fire, air and space) are in balance. When building, very little attention is placed on importance of creating a structure that benefits well-being and happiness of inhabitants or that brings in support from solar and magnetic energies. Have you ever experienced walking into a home that made you feel uncomfortable for no apparent reason? Or entered a home where you felt wonderful and relaxed? It is subtleties in our world that have great impact on us. Some people are attuned to environment and can sense this harmony or disharmony more readily. But for most, we are not as aware of impact our surroundings have on us. We are conscious of symptoms of disharmony – unhappiness, stress, arguments, and discontent, but rarely if ever do we consider that underlying causes could come from our environment.

Vastu Shastra is architectural science that can create maximum harmony in a relationship through a unique process of balancing five elements in your home. It allows for beneficial energy to be readily available to support your desire for peace, happiness, and fulfillment.

Here’s how it works: As a part of this earth, we live in a sea of electromagnetic and stellar influences. Every shift produced in atmosphere has potential to affect our actions. Every particle of energy is linked to next particle. According to Vastu, sun produces different qualities of energy on its path from east to west and can influence our daily life. Each of five elements is associated with a direction and each direction has a particular influence on us. Different aspects of relationships are most optimally supported in a specific direction. When there is stress caused by finances, sexual imbalances, overwork, inability to communicate, children, and health challenges, relationships do not thrive.