Feng shui in plain words
Feng shui can sound complicated, and done in depth it is. A full reading works from compass directions, the year a house was built, the land around it, the birthdates of the people who live there, colour, numerology and some fairly serious mathematics.
Most people do not start there. They start with a question. Where should I put this? What do I need to get rid of? Where do I even begin?
So here it is in plain words. Feng shui is a way of working with the energy around you and inside you. It is how you get along with your surroundings, the physical ones and the spiritual ones. You cannot control every part of your life. You can influence a great deal of it, and your home is a good place to start.
Chi
Chi is the word for the energy, or life force, in everything. You may know it as qi, or prana. The tradition says it is moving all the time, through the land, through houses and through us.
Chi likes to wander. It should meander through a room the way a stream moves through a garden, slowly and with nothing in its way. When it keeps running into obstacles, the tradition says you feel it in your life, and you are out of sorts without knowing why. Clear the obstacle and things begin to ease.
The exception is when chi moves too fast, down a long hall or straight from the front door to the back. Then you put something in its way on purpose.
Three ideas
If the rules feel like too much, these will take you a long way.
- Everything is alive. Everything we are and everything around us is energy, which means everything can affect us at any minute of the day. The chair you never liked is part of it.
- Everything is connected. What goes on inside you shows up around you. If you are chaotic and angry, the house usually is too. If you look after your own peace, the house tends to follow.
- Everything is changing. Life does not sit still. Just when you have it all under control, something new comes along to learn from. As your thoughts change, look around for what no longer fits them and make small changes to match. Change is a teacher, and feng shui is said to help bring you back to centre when the water gets rough, so you can reset and start again.
After 50 the third idea tends to matter most. A house set up for one stage of life can go on holding you in it long after that stage has passed.
The schools
There are many schools of feng shui. They grew from the same old knowledge and found different ways to read and balance chi. Two of the oldest are Form School, which reads the shape of the land and the building, and Compass School, which works from directions. You may also have heard of Flying Stars, Life Aspiration and Black Hat, which is sometimes called Western feng shui.
Feng shui is not magic. The tradition says it can strengthen a good stretch of fortune and support you through a hard one. That seems a fair thing to ask of a house.
From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.
