It was in February 1999 that the idea came to me to build a hotel in Bali. I had bought a piece of beachfront land the previous year, intending to keep it for a while as an investment, and suddenly realized what a perfect opportunity it would be to walk my talk and put all my feng shui and space clearing skills into practice. 

I designed the hotel, my then Balinese husband, Rai, helped me build it, and we had a huge consecration ceremony in July 2000 to open it. It’s called Dancing Dragon Cottages, and at that stage it consisted of 5 individual thatched cottages, a restaurant, swimming pool, front office and staff rooms.

SUCCESS

It quickly became the most successful hotel and restaurant in the Amed area of East Bali, which is the newest tourist area to be developed, located at the opposite end of the island to Kuta. Even after the Bali bombs, the hotel never made a loss or had to put the staff on half-wages as most of the other hotels in Bali did. The interesting thing is that apart from placing a link to the hotel on the home page of my spaceclearing.com website and a regular ad in the local freebie newspaper in Bali, I've hardly done any other advertising or promotion because I've been too busy travelling and teaching to do it. Word of mouth recommendations, some great write-ups the hotel’s received in foreign travel guides, and curious passers-by intrigued by the look and feel of the hotel and its unusual signage (“Unique Feng Shui Boutique Hotel”) have ensured a constant stream of guests.

Royalties from my books continued to arrive so over the next few years I bought more land and built another 5 rooms as well as a 2-storey 100-seat conference centre with every facility I have ever wished for in a meeting room and never been able to find… natural light, ocean views, marble floors, octagonal shape, a beautiful thatched ceiling rising to a 21-meter high pinnacle, and whisper-quiet air-conditioning with the option of doors opening to admit fresh sea breezes (a circulation of fresh air is vital for meditation and other forms of spiritual work). That’s the upper floor and the lower floor is designed to be used as a yoga space or converted at the drop of a hat to a restaurant, entertainment area or wedding venue.

Architects know very well how rarely the finished result fulfils every objective of a design but in this case it turned out to be all I hoped it would be. It's the best workshop space I’ve ever taught in anywhere in the world, and I've worked in some pretty expensive and exotic places in my time.

Not only that but I’ve discovered it’s the perfect venue for the hotel’s gong ensemble to give performances, ending with their famous surround-sound finale. In this, the audience moves to the centre of the room and sits with eyes closed while the 30-piece orchestra walks around the perimeter, playing their gongs, cymbals and drums as they go. It’s a sound that connects directly to the ancient spiritual powers of Bali, resonating through one’s entire body of energy (as you can tell, I love it – can never get enough of it, in fact!).

BUILDING IN BALI

The process of designing and building in Bali is quite an experience. The main building laws are that nothing can be built within a certain distance of the beach or be higher than the tallest coconut tree in the area. A few people have got round the last rule by planting a coconut tree on the top storey of their building but this is generally frowned upon and is not commonplace. Traditionally the Balinese only build their homes with one storey for the simple reason that the head is deemed to be the most sacred part of the body and the feet the most profane, so the don’t like having anyone walk about their head. This, incidentally, is also the reason why they carry offerings on their heads and leave their shoes outside their homes before entering.

The first time I hired builders in Bali was nearly my last. They were lazy, stupid and sloppy in their work, arrived late, left early, didn’t do anything right and demanded to be paid well for their non-efforts. All I had asked them to do was some minor repairs to a place I was renting. Fortunately Rai stepped in, told me to sack the lot of them, and sent me a new team from his village made up of people he had known since birth and grown up with. They were a pure delight to work with. Initially very shy of having dealings with a foreigner (I speak fluent Indonesian not one of them could speak English), they immediately impressed me with how much heart and they put into their work and what pride they took when I was happy with the results. They arrived on time, left on time and did a fair day’s work. We got on great. When I decided to build a hotel, they got the job.

Still, it was a steep learning curve for both me and them. They were surprised to learn that I preferred electric cables concealed inside the walls rather than tacked to the outside (having electricity was such a status symbol in their village that the wiring was always made as visible as possible). I quickly learnt that lunch hour was not a good time to visit the site because all I would find was 40 sprawled bodies fast asleep in the tropical midday heat. They discovered I liked my buildings with no sharp corners, and I quickly learnt the Indonesian word ‘bongkar’, meaning ‘knock it down and start again’ (which they cheerfully did quite a lot of in the early days).

And so it went on, until we pretty much understood each other perfectly. I always remember one day when I went on a shopping trip to town, returning to find them all standing around waiting for me to inspect their day’s plastering. They all hung back in a group, watching my reactions intently and a letting the foreman step forward to meet me. As soon as they caught the first hint of the “What the heck have they done now?” expression on my face, they all fell about laughing, telling the foreman, “Told you so! Told you she’d want the corners rounded!” They were never shy with me again and started thinking for themselves much more from that point on.

HOTEL DESIGN

Designing the hotel was the most fun part of the whole experience. Initially I thought I’d build something very simple and rustic but on my first expedition to order building materials I discovered the price of marble was a third what it costs in the West and that was that. With marble floors, marble bathrooms and decorative marble inlays suddenly a possibility, my design ideas quickly moved from basic to boutique. And oh, the colours of the marbles - rich creams and gorgeous terracotta reds were my favourites. I once joked that we shipped so much marble to our end of the island that it must have caused it to sink at least a few centimetres into the ocean. We used tons of the stuff.

My intention was to incorporate into the design every Western and Balinese feng shui principle I could, as well as every guest comfort feature I had ever wished for in hotels I had stayed in.

LAND ENERGIES

The first step was to determine the nature of the land itself. There is strong dragon energy on the site, which is what attracted me to it in the first place, and it is located on a hillside made of volcanic rock. The pathways were designed to follow the contours of the energy of the land so that taking the main path from the reception area to the beach feels like walking on the dragon’s spine.

The cottages were then placed so that all guests would have a degree of privacy as well as magnificent ocean views. They were also positioned so as to avoid any noxious earth lines crossing bed and sofa placements.

THE ROOMS

A sacred tenet of Balinese architecture is that all bed-heads are aligned towards the powerful mountains that run across the centre of the island so that people align to their spiritual source during sleep (their Gods reside in the mountains). All 3 million Balinese people adhere to this principle but it’s rare to find it in any tourist accommodation. I guess they figure we don’t know or don’t care. Knowing that most of my visitors would know and would care, I decided to incorporate it into the design of every room, as well as positioning the bed according to the most potent western feng shui principles, with a solid wall behind the head and a view of all the external doors and windows in the room. Guests are always telling me what a wonderful night’s sleep they have there and how refreshed they feel when they wake.

Other feng shui design features include bedroom furniture positioned so that guests wake up to a balanced view every morning and the lines are harmonious and flowing. The bathrooms are designed so that the entrance is well away from the bed and the toilet is not the first thing your eyes are drawn to when you walk in.

Many hotels in Bali have low ceilings and tiny windows, making the rooms gloomy and claustrophobic. They also have large gaps between the top of the walls and the roof that allow insects to come and go as they please. I decided to add extra ceiling height to create a feeling of creative expansion (the walls are 3 meters high), installed large windows to make the rooms bright and sunny, and sealed the ceilings so that guests need not worry about insect invasions.

The corners inside rooms are all rounded in order to create a feeling of peace and well-being, and to reduce the need for space clearing (stagnant energy hardly gathers at all in rounded corners). There are no sharp corners on external parts of buildings either, which adds to the harmonious ambience of the environment.

Electrical wiring and lighting in the room is designed to minimize the effect of electromagnetic fields so that guests can deeply rest and revitalize their energy while they sleep. The fridge and air-conditioning are deliberately located far away from the bed.

Unlike other hotels there is no clock radio on the bedside table. The reason for this omission (apart from the fact that there is very little need to know the time in Bali anyway!), is that clock radios emit very strong electromagnetic fields, which numerous studies have concluded can have a damaging effect on a person’s immune system. That’s why people who sleep with clock radios next to their bed generally wake up feeling tired.

Sleep is a time of spiritual reconnection. To obtain the most beneficial sleep it is ideal not to have a telephone in the bedroom at all, and if there is one then it is best to place it well away from the bed to minimize the effect of you being shocked awake if it rings. I therefore installed two phone sockets in each room – one next to the bed for those who prefer to be able to simply reach out and call for room service, and another socket over the other side of the room for those whose priority is the most restful sleep. It’s a simple matter to unplug the phone and move it from one place to the other.

There are many other features, but these will give you a flavour.

THE RESTAURANT

The restaurant, of course is located in the Prosperity corner of the property (where else?), and has earned a reputation for providing the best catering in the East Bali area. Training the chef and kitchen staff was as much of a learning curve as working with the builders, but it’s all turned out beautifully in the end.

THE FUTURE

It’s now 8 years since I had the idea to build a hotel and it’s been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career. I often marvel at how it can all have been created from a piece of barren scrubland such as the one you can still see right next door (the land I bought and haven’t developed yet).

And now, to give a surprise ending to this article, I’ve decided to sell it all and move on. The hotel and conference centre are up for sale and looking for a lovely new owner. I plan to use the money to build a new meeting place for my students, somewhere more accessible than Bali so that I can meet with them more often. An exciting new phase of my Space Clearing work has begun and moving back to the West is an important part of it. I shall miss Bali, the hotel and the gong performances, it’s true, but hey, I’ll still be able to visit whenever I want and hire the meeting room for my workshops and gong extravaganzas.

I've never sold a hotel before but I'm expecting it will take a while. With this in mind, I'm staying actively involved, continuing to keep the property in an excellent state of repair and making sure staff morale remains high. Next week, as it's low season, I've arranged for a staff outing to Bali's second biggest temple, which most of them have never been to as it's just a bit too far for them to afford by themselves. It's a sure sign that the spiritual culture is still intact here when you ask 37 Balinese people what they'd most like to do and they unanimously vote to make a pilgrimage to a temple!

Enquiries about hotel accommodation: info@dancingdragoncottages.com
Enquiries about purchasing the hotel: karenkingston@dancingdragoncottages.com

ALL ARTICLES BY KAREN KINGSTON

What is Space Clearing?
Why It Feels So Good To Sleep In Your Own Bed
It's Spring Cleaning, but not as you know it...
Practitioner Level Space Clearing
What's Your Clutter Ratio?
Understanding The Unseen Worlds
A Feng Shui Hotel in Bali