ABOUT FENG SHUI

Feng Shui is an ancient discipline that originated in China. While Feng Shui has been practiced with high standards in Asia for centuries, only within the last decade or two has it become somewhat widely known in the West. However, the most popular ideas about Feng Shui in the West reflect a New Age or pop version of the discipline, not authentic Feng Shui. Classical or authentic Feng Shui is not:

Authentic classical Feng Shui dates back to the end of the Chou dynasty (1122-255 B.C.) in China. It entails assessing the energy (Chi or Qi, pronounced “chee”) of key features of an environment — including physical features, directional orientation, location and surroundings. The goal is to harness good energy and minimize bad. While this concept may sound offbeat, the presence of Qi in people has been recognized by Western medicine — and perhaps more importantly, insurance companies — when it comes to the science of acupuncture. And beginning with Albert Einstein, physicists have been looking at the acknowledged yet unseen energy forces — gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force — and trying to understand the single unifying principle that governs their actions and interactions. Their explanation, the Theory of Everything, also called string theory, proposes that everything in our universe is composed of tiny vibrating strings of energy that expand, contract and interact.

In a sense, Chinese Feng Shui practitioners recognized these ideas centuries ago. The discipline arose when Chinese sages recognized numerical patterns in the different levels of Qi. That complex knowledge was coded and recorded in ancient texts during the T’ang dynasty (618-907), texts that are still being deciphered and interpreted. As practiced today, classical Feng Shui methodologies are rooted in these texts. Mathematical formulas and calculations are at the core of any authentic Feng Shui assessment.

The art of authentic Feng Shui involves the application of well-defined principles and theories to individual situations, resulting in very personal analyses. For example, it’s not possible to generalize about certain directions representing specific life aspirations (health, family, career, etc.) Classical Feng Shui recognizes that energy in the environment changes over time – think of the change of seasons – and therefore interacts differently with an individual over time. A skilled classical Feng Shui practitioner knows how to read the energy map of a structure. S/he also recognizes each person’s individual Qi. These two forms of energy interact – an individual absorbs the quality of the Qi of the environment s/he occupies, and that alters the individual’s Qi. Therefore, the individual, the individual’s home or office, and the surrounding environment are all part of Feng Shui. Again, the goal is to tap into favorable energies and reduce unfavorable energies.

The fundamental tool used by practitioners of authentic Feng Shui is a Chinese luo pan or compass. The Chinese luo pan is applied in both of the two major systems of Feng Shui, San He and San Yuan. San He is the oldest form of classical Feng Shui. It focuses on the physical environment: location and orientation of the building being analyzed, its relationship to surrounding geography such as mountains and waterways, as well as to roads and other manmade structures. San Yuan examines and measures the quality of Qi affecting a building in a specific time period.

A skilled classical Feng Shui practitioner will provide guidance on how to achieve one’s goals or remedy existing problems in the present, and also will help forecast what opportunities and challenges an individual or enterprise may face in the future.