Feng Shi

It is exciting to see how the field of Interior Design is broadening it’s understanding of traditional design concepts. There is much to be learned outside of the European influenced field, from traditions around the globe. This particularly interests me because of the way it helps us understand each other as people of different cultures and traditions.
Unfortunately, Feng Shui has been more associated with the trends of the “New Age” movement, and it has taken some time for it to be associated with legitimate Interior Design. Feng Shui is the study of how to arrange your environment to enhance the quality of your life. Although the reasons for, and the results of, successful Feng Shui application to a building can seem very psychological and even emotional, the reasons are not due to any “hocus-pocus”. Yes, the experience of Feng Sui is about joining the seen and the unseen forces of nature, but it is also based on principles that are reasonable and full of common sense in any day and age.
Feng Shui, translated as “Wind and Water”, observes and balances the seen and unseen energies of the things around us. Like wind and water, you and your environment are two forces of nature. Your desires, goals, talents, attitudes, and feelings~ like the unseen force of wind; are constantly interacting and influencing each other. Just like the interaction between the wind and water, when you and your home blend in a harmonious way, the effect is comforting, welcoming, and positive. In an environment with those qualities, your health, prosperity, and very happiness thrive. Is this due to a sense of well-being brought on by the pleasing characteristics of our environment, thus bringing a sense of contentment and empowerment that overflows into other aspects of our lives? That is certainly possible. To artists, the idea that the colors, shapes, balance, and continuity of the visual world around us affect us deeply makes total sense. We know how powerful color alone can be to the human psyche. The practice of Feng Shui takes this even a step further. The primary goal of Feng Shui is to bring you and your home into harmony so that you are not just surviving your life, but that you are living in harmony with all that is around you, in part because you have made a intentional decision about the nature of your surroundings.
The philosophical foundation of Feng Shui is as relevant today in our Western culture as it was thousands of years ago in China. The ancient Chinese had an understanding of Physics and Psychology that is astounding! And really, you could say that Physics is the “head” of Feng Shui, and Psychology is the “heart”.
There are two primary schools of Feng Shui, the Form School and the Compass School. While cut from the same philosophical mold, they appear to be quite different. When you start reading various books on Feng Shui, it is confusing to see how differently it is approached. Form School Feng Shui basically focuses on the arrangement of “forms” or objects in and around a building or home, and how this arrangement helps to achieve optimal Ch’i (vital energy) flow. This type of Feng Shui is more of a fine art than a strict science, and is flexible in meeting peoples needs, and in honoring personal tastes of clients...while still improving the flow of Ch’i.
Compass School Feng Shui relies mostly on the use of a luo pan, or Chinese compass, and the birth information of homeowners to assess the environment around them. Based on numerical findings, the Compass school is especially useful when you’re building your own home and can choose where to place elements like doors, windows, etc. For someone with an already build home/office/room, this can be restrictive and a bit more inflexible. Also, for our Western minds and religious backgrounds, this can seem more on the edge of “hocus pocus”, and less on the side of practical scientific thought. There are many subgroups of both these types of Feng Shui though, and the combinations assure that there is something that can work for everyone. In terms of Western homes, life style, and mind-set, Form School Feng Shui techniques can produce excellent results. In terms of my home and office, it‘s what I’m trying to integrate.
It would be easy to write volumes on all the aspects of Feng Shui. Briefly I’ll talk about the “interior” work, or awareness learned through this amazing practice. I will then try to share as basically as possible the specifics of placement, etc.
Feng Shui, at it’s best, teaches you to see the things around you in a whole new way. You learn that your emotional life and spiritual life are intimately connected. This is not a new concept to someone with an active or vibrant faith or religious background of any kind. To some people, the idea that happiness and our environment are two forces of nature “who” are intimately connected is a brand new idea though. The realization that our homes can literally strengthen or weaken our health, wealth, and happiness brings with it a significant shift in perception. When we open our eyes we can no longer view our homes as just “things”, or our belongings as just inanimate “stuff.” Our homes, and all the possessions within them, suddenly come alive and are intimately connected to the quality of our life. We see that our difficulties are not separate from, but actually held in place by, our homes. Thus, the vital connection between the people and the “beings” they call home can begin to happen. As a holistic art and science, Feng Shui is meant to balance and harmonize our inner and outer domains. There are basic principles that make up the foundation of Feng Shui, and provide us with guidelines for living. When we integrate these guidelines into our lives, we see and interact with the world in a new and powerful way.
One principle in the Feng Shiu philosophy is that every person, place, and thing is alive with vital energy called Ch’i. This concept is totally all-inclusive, changing our physical existence from a world “that” is largely inanimate, to a world “who” is completely alive! When we see our world this way, as being made up of animate “beings,” we make very different decisions. Indiscriminate destruction of our natural world, as well as our amassing huge quantities of “stuff”, possessions we don’t need or have any emotional connection to, change when we no longer believe it’s all just “dirt” or “stuff”. Everything that lives with you holds certain memories, associations, and feelings in place. That’s why it’s so vial in Feng Shiu to assess what your material possessions are alive with! What are they “saying” to you? The quality of your inner life is constantly influenced by what you’re keeping alive in your surroundings. They may carry a mixed message that is “mixing” up your life and personal growth. The associations we have with certain objects can help us stay stuck in a place emotionally that we want to move away from. We need to assess each belonging of ours and see what our association is. If the association feeds us in a healthy way, then it’s a keeper! One of the primary Feng Shui goals is to surround yourself with “environmental affirmations”, the things “who” are alive with life-affirming thoughts, feelings, memories, and associations. When we design our environment to reflect our ideal state of conciousness, we are opening the pathways for happiness, health, and prosperity to take up residence with us.
Another principle of Feng Shui is that every person, place, and thing is connected by Ch’i. The energy that connects us to our personal environment extends to include our entire planet. Energetically, there is no such thing as isolation. In the study of Physics, we know this to be true. Although our emotional connections are usually strongest with the people, places, and things that are close by, we are essentially in relationship with everyone and every thing on earth, in a physical sense.
The quality of our relationships does not stop with people. We are also intimately connected to every single thing that surrounds us, in some way or another. The goal is to be conscious of every thing we’re connected to, which means every thing we own. If we lived in a cave and had two or three actual personal belongings, this would be easy! Imagine being consciously aware of each and every belonging you possess, it makes my head spin! So...to honor our connection with all these things, we need to let go of excess, and organize the rest. The reason this is so vital is because our things, and the presentation of them, and the care we give them, reflect our inner world and hold in place the conditions of our lives. External order and harmony reflect internal order and peace, while external clutter and chaos reflects an internal mess! This doesn’t mean that we live with a tooth brush and one mug! But, our material well-being has room to grow in an orderly environment. Letting go of possessions that are unwanted and unneeded creates opportunities for the things we want and need to come into our lives. So, in short, we need to live with what we love, put safety and comfort first, and simplify and organize.
If we believe that every object in our home has living energy, then where these objects are placed is very important. Windows, doors, lighting, color, the combination of certain textures, etc. will all affect the healthy energy flow. Besides an understanding of energy (Ch’i) flow, the most important tool to use in Feng Shui is the Bagua Map. You correlate the structure of your home, and each room individually, with a map, or a format made up of nine boxes. Imagine a tick-tack-toe board with nine boxes, and you have the visual of the map. The word Bagua literally means “eight trigrams.” These trigrams form the basic building blocks of the I Ching (the Chinese Book of Changes) and are each associated with (among other things) blessings such as health, wealth, love, and creativity. The Bagua Map, or map of the eight trigrams, charts where each of these blessings is located in your home. Ultimately, the Bagua Map leads you to the discovery that all parts of your home and your life are of equal importance.
The Bagua Map can be applied to any fixed shape, including buildings, rooms, and furniture (like a desk top). Using a floor plan or a “birds-eye-view” of the building, you lay the map on top of it, so to speak, and see what areas are out of balance. Each area on the map correlates to an aspect of life: Wealth and Prosperity, Fame and Reputation, Love and Marriage, Children and Creativity, Health and Family, Knowledge and Self Cultivation, Career, Helpful People and Travel. You learn the specifics about what elements strengthen each area, and then you learn how to enhance where those areas happen to fall in your home. The specifics of how to use the map are easy, but detailed. I could write pages on the map alone. Suffice it to say that when you lay the map on your home, and then on each individual room, you see what “areas” are being affected by elements that are detrimental to them. When you compare this discovery to the specific “issues” in your life, or the areas that need improvement, etc., it is shocking to say the least. My husband and I realized that the Children and Creativity area of the entry way of our house has had a dead and semi-rotting plant in it for about two years. Pathetic, yes, but it was up out of eye sight, and we’d just forgotten about it. It got thrown away as soon as we made the discovery! As vital as the Bagua Map is to implementing Feng Shui into our homes, and lives, that is not all you need to know. We need to study and find out what are the specific things we can do in each area of the map to change situations, and energy, to enhance our lives and homes.
Feng Shui teaches us how to recognize the Yin and Yang in all objects. It is the true balance of these two extremes that brings a deep sense of comfort and “rightness” to our surroundings. Usually we don’t even recognize what it is that feels so right about a certain space. Yin is associated with curved shapes and small, cold, dark, wet, or ornate settings and items. On the other hand, Yang is associated with angular shapes and large, light, hot, or open settings and items. Every item in our home is either Yin or Yang, or if we are extremely lucky, some of them may be a combination of both. Either way all the spaces around us need a healthy balance of these things.
If we are to balance the Yin and Yang, we must have an understanding of the five elements themselves. The elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water...and that these are basically the building blocks of everything physical on the planet. These things manifest in countless ways and combinations around us. Just as every item in our home is Ying or Yang, they are also associated with one of these elements. For example...a marble tabletop is associated with Metal, a mirror with Water, or plants with Wood. Every color has an association to these elements as well...red with Fire, blues and greens with Wood, or yellow with Earth. The darker a color gets the more “Watery” it becomes, such as black, navy blue, and dark brown. On the other hand, the lighter a color gets, the more it becomes associated with Metal. There are countless ways to balance each of these elements in each area of your home, and you can learn what elements are needed in what areas to enhance that “issue” or need in your life. I have personally read a number of books, and each book has a slightly different take on the above elements. But, you can get a great idea by reading and comparing several books, about how to mix and balance the elements in your home and life.
In learning more and more about Feng Shui, there was a part of me that just saw the “sense” in it. Understanding that everything around us has energy to emit, and that there are ways to inhibit and enhance this natural, healthy flow of energy seemed practical and full of wisdom. It has been a tremendously fun, exciting, and eye-opening experience for my husband and I to read books together...looking around our home and seeing things that made us say, “That explains it!” I’ve been mapping rooms, and trying to reconfigure furniture plans, he’s been working on “Feng Shuiing”, as he calls it, the yard and external of our house. As Bill Murray would say, “Baby steps...”... and they are. We have been amazed at the difference a few small changes have made already in terms of the basic comfy cozy feeling of our home, and we are looking forward to getting our whole house in balance. Please know that this paper does not even scratch the surface of how to implement Feng Shui into ones life. I couldn’t begin to do the subject justice in just a few pages. If your interest has been peeked, there are tons of books out there that will make it clearer, and easier to follow. If you are an artist, it is really very simple and basic to our instincts and to the sensitivities that I think are just part of our nature because we are so in tune with our surroundings on an emotional level. And if you are not an artist, it is easy to learn! I’ve included a small list of books that I’ve read that are really wonderful. There is nothing more fun than passing on the title of a great book! Enjoy!

BOOKS:
Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, by Karen Kingston
Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui, by Karen Kingston
Feng Shui Design, by Sarah Rossbach
Feng Shui Made Easy, by William Spear
Sacred Space, by Denise Linn
Feng Shui Do’s & Taboo’s, by Angi Ma Wong