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Introduction to Feng Shui
Feng Shui or Geomancy has been studied and practiced by the Chinese for
several centuries. Through carefully observation, it has been noted that
certain surroundings have better positive influence than others do. Using
this knowledge, Feng Shui has been used to improve the surroundings and
thus improving the quality of life for its residence.
Over the years, it has evolved into its present day discipline, where
the aim of Feng Shui is to reach a state of complete harmony and together
with an in-depth sensitivity with the natural order of things.
Feng Shui is used as an approach in achieving the balance between the
occupants and their surroundings. It is an art used to improve the general
well being and luck of its occupants. This is achieved by making the
necessary modification of the design layouts that will involve certain
reorientation or changes to the design element of the clients’ homes or
work places to strike an optimal balance in harmony in order to enhance
their living and work environment.
Feng Shui is not about myths and superstitions but more of common sense
and intuition (sixth sense), it is about creating complete harmony to
blend in with the natural order of Heaven (天), Earth (地) and
you (人).
Feng Shui is all about understanding how your Ba Zi (八字)
can enhance your Personal Luck and well-being through
the modifications to the layout and orientation of the work place, home
and the surroundings of your environment.
Buying a Home
From a feng shui point of view you want
to avoid properties located on cul-de-sacs, the “dead end” of a
street, below street level or at the center of a “T” intersection.
Each of these locations present unique Chi flow problems for the
residents. Some have too much direct Chi flow and some not enough.
Landscaping can influence Chi also.
It’s considered inauspicious to have a tree planted in direct line with
the front door. This prevents Chi from entering the house (Chi is said to
enter at the front door).
Also, it’s preferable to have a
winding walkway to the door rather than a straight sidewalk. Meandering,
flowing Chi is softer and less harsh when it enters the house.
Ask the owner or realtor the reason the
property is for sale. It’s always preferable to purchase from owners who
are moving to something bigger or better. This would include retirement,
outgrown the size of the existing house or prospered and able to move on
to another upscale area. Try to avoid those that are on the market due to
bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce or death. I had a client that purchased a
house due for sale on the courthouse steps. The log home had been left
partially unfinished (seemingly small things like wires protruding for
lights and speakers in the walls, etc.) and seemed to be a good buy.
After moving into it the family
suffered from a serious auto accident, loss of job and financial lack.
They still hadn’t been able to finish the undone features of the home
when they called for a consultation. My advice? After their
experience…find a different house.
Next take a good look at what you see
when you first enter at the front door. If stairs, both up and down, are
directly opposite the door (as in raised ranch houses) it’s believed
that residents will have lots of ups and downs in life. If a single
staircase runs directly upstairs all the Chi entering will go to the
second level, leaving the first floor stagnant. It is also said that Chi
will run back down the stairs and out the door!
If you can stand at the front door and
look straight through to the back door it’s said that money will come in
one door and go out the other.
Slanted walls and slanted ceilings also
create problems. Slanted ceilings, in particular, are very oppressive and
thought to cause frequent headaches when sleeping beneath them. Slanted
walls can make ba-gua placement difficult and influence the eight areas of
life…thus complicating the lives of residents.
A bathroom located in the center of the
house is considered very undesirable because the center represents health.
Knowing the ba-gua positions can be
very helpful when checking out the overall floor plan. If, for instance,
the marriage/partnership area is missing it might be a house that
experiences frequent divorces among owners. I’ve heard from realtors in
my workshops that there seems to be such a pattern with some properties.
No house is ever perfect. Even those
custom built often disappoint the owners once they move in and realize
their own design errors. I have yet to visit a home that is feng shui
perfect (although some are closer than others). My experience and
professional purpose deals with what already exists and there are of
course corrections that can be made in most cases but it’s good to know
what to avoid if possible when looking for a new home.
The original
author is not known. It is not our intention to infringe upon copyrighted
material. If you are the original author of any of these articles, please
let us know so that we may provide appropriate credit.
Good energy, bad energy
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CREDIT: John
Giannini, The New York Times
Coincidence or bad feng
shui? The piercing angles of the Bank of China (left) point to the
Governor's Mansion in the foreground. Since the bank's
construction, three governors have "succumbed." Tung
Chee Hwa, Hong Kong's new chief executive, refuses to move in and
the mansion sits empty. |
HONG KONG - The
door swings open. I step in. "Hongcouver," cries the feng shui
master when I tell him where I am from.
Raymond Lo is not a tall man, squat, in
fact, and if I have noticed his belly it's because of the way he has his
shirt tucked in. He is wearing a business suit, and in ways, he could be
anybody in this busy working city. But around Hong Kong, Raymond Lo is
"very, very famous." His brochure notes an appearance on Good
Morning America, and one of the pictures on the wall is of him shaking hands
at a World Economic Forum.
This appointment is five minutes from my
hotel but I have never been to Hong Kong before and I am not exactly
Ferdinand Magellan when it comes to navigating.
I am in Hong Kong for a couple of
reasons. This is a holiday but it is also where my boyfriend was born and
raised. Chris' parents are ex-patriots who moved to Hong Kong from England.
Chris moved away after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the English back
to the Chinese, but according to him, not much has changed.
Chris picked the hotel. We are at the
recently renamed Intercontinental, which most still know as the Regent. It
is sleek and futuristic and minimally decorated. The staff here move like
West Point cadets. When we checked in, a hotel person reported unbidden to
us with a half-bottle of champagne and two freezing cold pears. The hotel is
on the water on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, which is the first piece of
geography I needed to know.
Hong Kong proper, now known as Hong Kong
SAR -- Special Administrative Region -- is made up of Hong Kong Island
(where the British raised their flag in 1841) and Kowloon, which is the
larger portion of Hong Kong on mainland China.
When Chris went to school, his family
lived on Hong Kong Island and he took a ferry to the mainland. Hong Kong
Island is only about 24 kilometres long and 19 kilometres at its widest. I
can see it from our hotel room and could probably swim to it were it not for
the ships.
Yesterday, we took the ferry to Hong Kong
Island. Moving with the crowds of passengers, we passed newsstands and
electronics shops and a dozen or so rickshaws (which you can pose beside --
no one hires them anymore). We went on to the banking district. The Hong
Kong Shanghai Bank Company (HSBC) is one of the places where Chris used to
work, and it is famous city-wide for its superb feng shui. But it was the
look of Jardine's Building on Connaught Road that grabbed my attention.
The firm Jardine, Matheson is one of the
original British firms to settle Hong Kong in the 1840s. William Jardine and
James Matheson were Scottish merchants who made fortunes importing tea from
China to England. In exchange, they traded opium to the Chinese; it is
widely believed the fictional family in James Clavell's Noble House is based
on the Jardines.
Most of Hong Kong's fortress-like white
colonial buildings, including the original Jardine House, have been torn
down and replaced by newer, taller buildings. Jardine's Building is one of
the unmistakable features of the new landscape. It shoots monolithically
straight up, 52 stories, but it is the hundreds and hundreds of small round
windows that make it look odd. The circular windows are intended as a
reminder of Jardine's nautical foundations, but the Chinese see it
differently. They call it "building of a thousand assholes." I
made a note to ask Mr. Lo what kind of feng shui is at work around here.
Feng shui, by the way, thrives in Hong
Kong. The two words literally mean wind and water but the idea, or
philosophy, has profound symbolic meaning. The journalist Jan Morris writes,
"You can hardly not come across feng shui in Hong Kong." Ms.
Morris writes about spending an afternoon with the feng shui master who was
consulted on the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Company's escalators. Apparently,
the escalators were the cause of some nasty feng shui energy and had to be
re-engineered to correct the problem. Likewise, two bronze lion statues
outside the building were not placed properly the first time and had to be
repositioned on a particular day at exactly 6 a.m. Lions, it is believed,
lock in power.
Interestingly, the practice of feng shui
was suppressed in China during the cultural revolution, which may explain
why it flourished to such a degree in British-ruled Hong Kong. "Every
hill, building, wall, window and corner, and the ways in which they face
wind and water have an effect. [The Chinese] concluded that if you change
your surroundings, you can change your life," writes Sarah Rossbach, a
former resident and expert on the subject. "The aim of feng shui is to
change and harmonize the environment," she writes. "Feng shui is
so extensive in Hong Kong that people joke the practitioners must be in
cahoots with building contractors."
The way Mr. Lo sees it, there is not a
building in existence that doesn't need correcting. With a brass compass the
size of a dinner plate, Mr. Lo tries to explain the mysteries of feng shui
energy in his almost-perfect English. "Architect does not understand
this," he says. "In a building, we are detecting the energy. Some
are good energy, some are negative energies. For example, very common,"
he says, "people can buy a house and it so happen that in the master
bedroom there is sick energy. Therefore, once they stay there for a month,
they will feel uncomfortable. It is essential for everybody, before they
move into an environment, that they check."
Stories of obsessive checking abound.
"Whole villages were sometimes abandoned," writes Ms. Morris of
Hong Kong's early settlements. "European miners had to be imported to
build the first railway tunnels because Chinese would not risk disturbing
the earth spirits."
More recently, an insurance company owner
tells me of the mistake he made in moving his 70 staff, mostly Chinese
employees, into a new building without a feng shui priest to first survey
the premises. Mayhem ensued. From his own office, the businessman heard
crying and wailing. "What is it?" he yelled, running to see. A
feng shui master, hired privately by the employees, was delivering his
analysis. "You," he said pointing at the first employee. "Is
your father still alive? He's still alive!?" The woman burst into
tears. "You," he said to the next, "Misfortune on your
family" and the person dissolved into tears. "Stop it," cried
the businessman. "Ah," said the feng shui master. "But very
easy to fix. You put desk here, facing wall. You put fish tank here, four
fish" and on it went, said the businessman, until the new office
surroundings looked like a furniture sale, with desks pushed against walls,
and window vistas abandoned for the sake of unblocked energy flow.
"For commercial buildings, even more
important," says Mr. Lo. "The boss must be sitting in the right
position. Wrong position, business go down." As it turns out, Mr. Lo is
well- acquainted with the "building of a thousand assholes." A
former client has an office there. But Mr. Lo is too discreet to discuss
previous work. He only offers this: "There are superficial things we
can see with our eyes but other things you cannot see. The energy is
invisible to your eyes. We measure it with a compass. We have formulas to
calculate." His one suggestion for Jardine's Building is that it change
its entrance to face a different direction.
"Every 20 years there is a big shift
of energy," he says. "HSBC is built exactly facing the most
prosperous energy, exact north." However, by the year 2044, HSBC is in
trouble, he says, and should also change its entrance. "If you look at
Hong Kong actually, the new elements are moving southwest. We have built a
new airport there. We have Disney World coming up in the southwest. Hong
Kong construction all moving in that direction. Government might not know it
yet, but that is the force of nature."
For the most part, Hong Kong itself is
blessed with excellent feng shui. It is only occasionally that a building so
aggravates the surroundings that a feng shui master's remedies are useless.
IM Pei's design of the Bank of China is one such building. Guide books warn
of its dangerous feng shui. "The diagonal cross braces are
negative," says a brochure. "Actually, you can say that the
architect did not know anything about feng shui at all," sniffs Mr. Lo.
"If you believe in feng shui, you would not build a building with so
many sharp angles. Sharp angle is death."
He carries on, "there is a
controversial story," and then asks if I am familiar with the
Governor's Mansion. The Governor's Mansion is opposite the Bank of China.
The Bank's angles pierce straight into the mansion. Mr. Lo says three
British governors have "succumbed" since the bank's construction.
Sir Edward Youde died of a heart attack; Sir David Wilson "fell off a
mountain," says Mr. Lo, and Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last British
governor, is still alive, but had "heart surgery and big fight with
China."
Today, the mansion sits uninhabited. Hong
Kong's new chief executive Tung Chee Hwa refuses to move in. Asia's
Businessweek magazine says Mr. Chee Hwa "doesn't like it." Mr.
Chee Hwa is a shipping magnate with "traditional Chinese values."
When I ask Mr. Lo what steps can be taken to correct the mansion's feng shui,
he shakes his head. It's a tough one. He fiddles with his compass. The
angles from the bank represent fire. To counterbalance, the mansion needs
earth. Maybe put rocks in, he says. Eight rocks in a pile. -
Julia McKinnell Saturday
Post 25 January 2003
Feng
Shui Your Home Office: Use the ancient Chinese practice of
harmonious arrangement to improve the chi, or energy, in your home office
- Do not sit with your back to the door.
This represents turning your back on your customers.
- Position your desk so you face your
business symbolically entering through the door.
- Use the color/animal symbol/number and
element in the corresponding direction. Notice the red bird symbols and
wood in the south part of this office enhanced by plant (wood) which ads
more fuel to the fire (south) of prosperity and fame.
- Who's Minding the Store? Maybe no one,
if you're a solo, home-based worker and you just have to have a
vacation. But with proper preparation, while you get a break, your
business need not miss a beat.
Veteran journalist Carol Memmott had been
working as a freelance writer for three or four years, never getting beyond
a certain level of demand for her work. She found herself "feeling, 'Am
I ever going to get anywhere?'"
Memmott decided her home office needed a
spruce-up, so she consulted a book that had a chapter on feng shui
(literally, wind and water), the Chinese practice of arranging your
surroundings for positive energy flow and harmony.
"I learned that in the feng shui
bagua (the octagon that assigns meaning to different areas of a space),
there's a wealth corner," Memmott recalls. The book told her that
"that was the worst place to have your trash can, and that's where mine
was. I moved it, and painted the room yellow -- it inspires creativity and
good feelings. I put in a bubbling water fountain to make the chi
(energy) move through the room."
CREDIT: Agence France-Press,
Thomas Cheng
Within two weeks, Memmott says, "I
received a call from USA Today" where she is now the book
editor. Memmott gives credit for her success to feng shui, and has applied
its principals at her new office as well: For example, given the location of
her desk, her back faces many co-workers -- bad feng shui -- so she
positioned a mirror over the desk to deflect negative energy.
In work settings as well as person
spaces, adherence is growing to the several schools of feng shui, including
compass, which uses a compass to determine the direction of what should be
the main entrance to a home or room; and black hat, a more Western version,
which uses the actual entrance as the main reference point. How strong is
the interest? Amazon.com lists more than 250 feng shui titles.
Angi Ma Wong has provided feng shui
consultations to movie studios, restaurants, a winery and assorted real
estate ventures, and has appeared on "Oprah." She strives to make
feng shui simple, and her new Feng Shui Desk for Success Tool Kit
(Pacific Heritage Books, $24.95, www.wind-water.com) allows you to apply the
principals of feng shui to your home office, desk top or even in a hotel
room if you're working on the road. Maintaining positive energy flow,
balancing the forces of yin and yang and maintaining the generative -- not
the destructive -- cycle of life are the major concepts of feng shui, she
says - By
Patty Rhule
GOLDEN
FENG SHUI TIPS FOR YOUR HOUSE
1.
There should be no shoes or slippers lying around outside the
main door of every house. Remove it if you can. Allow that space at the
main door to be free and clear. Now, allow me to tell you why. The chi
(energy) rides with the wind and will collect all the smell of those shoes and
slippers into your house causing sickness. These chi then travels about
in your house looking for water to stay but if there are no water fountains
or fishtanks, then the chi will be disperse by wind.
2.
There should be no television sets in your bedrooms: If you
cannot get rid of that habit then after watching the television programs,
cover it with a plastic table cloth. Remember it has to be plastic
and not simply cloth.
3.
There should be no mirrors opposite your bed or at the side of your
bed. Mirrors opposite the bed can attract a third party to the relationship.
Therefore, do not place mirrors anywhere you like and especially in
your bedroom.
4.
There should not be a dinning table opposite your altar table.
Some people are still not aware of this concept and still have that
in their dinning room. Shift the dinning table.
5.
If you have a fish tank in your house, be careful. A fish tank
placed correctly can bring about greater fortune as you will tap on the
"Divine Water Dragon's Den". But if you tap wrongly, it can cause
you to
have lawsuits, bankruptcy, work pressure, troubles and problems. If you
noticed any of these after placing the fish tank for approximately four months,
shift
your fish tank to another location.
6.
In your kitchen, ensure that opposite your stove there is no
refrigerator, washing machine, wash basin and
toilet. The fire and water
crash causing family members to have disagreements. The fengshui solution?
Remove one of them.
7.
Try not to allow children to sleep on mattresses on the floor.
Yes, this allows young children not to fall off beds but it also causes
young children to fall sick frequently. The reason is: chi is not able
to flow underneath the bed. Ideally, chi should circulate around the mattress
where our children sleeps to allow them to be healthy.
8.
For young children, try to have their back to the wall when
they write. It
is important there should be a solid wall behind a children's writing table.
This allows the child to have support so that he can
sit there and study longer rather than for only half an hour and then they
tend to move about because there is no solid wall behind their back. Adjust
your writing table.
9.
Do not allow children to sleep on double decker beds even if
it means saving space. The child sleeping underneath the double decker bed
will not have "fresh chi" and so his health might be weak. But if
due to
space constraints, then monitor your child's health if not add in a metal 6
rods windchime to break up the "stale chi" around his bed.
10.
Your bed should always have a solid wall behind you. This is
important if you wish to have a good rest. A solid wall simply means that
you can go into deeper sleep and therefore enabling you to have good rest so
that when you wake up in the morning, you will feel fresh and well rested.
This also allows you to be able to concentrate on your work better.
11.
There should be no beam on top of your bed, your stove, your
sofa sets or the altar table. The beam above causes chi to be pressured
thus enabling you to have pressures in life. Therefore, don't place
furnitures underneath it or alternatively level the beam. But make sure
if you choose the latter, it is important that you have enough height for
that space.
12.
If you have a lot of work pressure, maybe it's the marble table
that you have in your dinning room that uses you to have those problems.
Remove that marble table and change to a wooden one or alternatively
live with that work pressure!
13.
If your child usually falls sick in that bedroom: Then either change
them to another bedroom or simply hang a six rod metal windchime
as the metal element will break all the earth energies in that room. After
hanging, if the wind could not do the job for you then you
will
have to "chime" it yourself and then watch for the good results.
14.
Do not use a red sofa set: The colour red represent the element of
fire. And for fengshui, some places simply cannot have the colour
red in that sector. For example : the wealth area or some other sectors
which without a fengshui check would be unable to tell you where
it
is. A red sofa sets gives rise to heavy work pressure, troubles and
obstacles. Most
people simply accept that life is like that without
realising that THAT is caused by the bad fengshui of that red sofa !
Fengshui
Solution ? Change the colour of your sofa.
15.
Always open your bedroom windows at least once 20 minutes a
day to allow fresh chi to come in - Why should we do it ? We do this so that
it allows fresh new chi from outside to come into your bedroom, if not
you will be sleeping with stale chi every night. And if
that happens,
then how can you expect your life to bring in more good fortune to
come to you? So open that window and never mind if dusts comes in ! The
great good fortune that you can have will far exceeds the time you take
to clean off the dust!
Fengshui
tips for the Year of the Pig
HK geomancer predicts disaster in the US between June
and July
As the Year of the Dog has given way to
the Year of the Pig, Hong Kong fengshui master Alion Yeo has a few tips for
2007 which he shared at an ABN Amro Private Banking Hong Kong seminar
earlier this month.
In case you have not heard of him, Mr Yeo
claims to have predicted the stock market dive in May 2005, North Korea's
nuclear testing and to have advised that November was a good time to get
back into the market.
In 2007, he expects a major earthquake in
Japan between April and May.
He also sees market volatility in Hong
Kong from April to May and again in October to November.
There could also be a major US event, a
natural or man-made disaster, in June to July so be prepared for ripples to
the rest of the world, he said.
It seems that in every lunar year, there
are a couple of 'contradicting residence' stars that can be negative or
positive depending on a person's birth date.
In particular, those born in the Year of
the Pig and Year of the Snake could experience major changes.
Snake people are born in 1941, 1953,
1965, 1977, 1989 and 2001, while Pig people are born in 1935, 1947, 1959,
1971, 1983 and 1995.
Those who are negatively affected should
avoid 'ground-breaking activities' - which means no banging nails in walls,
no construction and no decorating the house, in particular in a
north-western direction, according to Mr Yeo.
Surely not a good sign for those caught
up in property speculation?
But the fengshui master offers some
remedies. To boost your luck, put a water pillar or water plant on the
entrance facing south-west. You can also wear a jade rabbit charm to avoid
bad luck.
Everyone born from February to August
will enjoy very good luck this year. But the rest need to be careful, Mr Yeo
said.
Though those born in spring - that is,
February to May - should avoid the wood-related business.
Those born in winter - from October
to February - need more fire, and can improve their luck by having red, pink
and purple colours. - 27 Feb 2007 SINGAPORE
BUSINESS TIMES
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