Feng Shui Dynamics

What is Feng Shui
Feng Shui, a Chinese art of design and placement, is a form of Acupuncture for the environment, your home or workplace. Feng Shui is also called “the language of symbols”, “the art of happiness”. The purpose of Feng Shui is to balance Life Energies, to balance the Qi (pronounced chee) and harmonize environments. Working with subtle energy flow is very much like our lungs breathing.


Basic Feng Shui Principles
The purpose of the study of Feng Shui is to assess the environmental qualities of a location and determine whether or not there are “beneficial” or “adverse” energies present and ways to alter any adverse qualities or ways to enhance, harness or augment the Beneficial Energies. Environments may either be natural or manmade.


Feng Shui strives to direct the Qi, increase or decrease Qi levels, or maintain high levels of Beneficial Qi.
When we are in Harmony with the energies within the earth and within the landscape and our immediate environment, then our life is empowered. This Harmonic Interaction leads to good health, prosperity, good relationships, happier attitudes, longevity, family and community cohesiveness and political stability. Employing Feng Shui principles gives us a comfortable, safe and re-energizing environment for ourselves and for all the people who visit our home, building, work place or natural settings. Qi energy flow encompasses not only our small unit of environmental sites, but includes the entire world!


Feng Shui Assesses:
  • Qi of the natural environment: qualities of light, air, soil, water, vegetation
  • Qi of the site
  • Qi of the location (surrounding the site)
  • Orientation of the house (apartment, townhouse, office building, pagoda, burial ground)
  • Shape of the lot
  • Shape of the house/building
  • Roadways & waterways
  • Materials in construction of house/building
  • Five Elements
  • Yin & Yang Qualities
  • Regarding the interior space:
    • Floor plan
    • Qi flow through interior space
    • Architectural shapes
    • Angles of the house & rooms
    • Furniture placement
    • Colors, windows, doors, stairways, roof, artifacts etc.
  • life forms:
    • people, animals, nature

All these factors mark health effects on people, animals and plants living within their influence. Either the effects are healthy and life enhancing, or they are toxic and impair our immune systems and life opportunities.

When the house or building is laid out according to excellent Feng Shui, Qi will reach every corner of the house or building, fill the entire property, flow through every room and the Qi will invigorate every aspect of the living space in the same manner. Fresh, clean air cleanses, purifies and invigorates. If the house or building is poorly lain, then the reverse may happen: Qi becomes stagnate, blocked, compromised, curtailed and limited and thus impacts on all aspects of the lives of the occupants and life surrounding the site.


Feng Shui and Kan Yu
Feng Shui means gentle wind, calm water. Feng Shui is the colloquial expression for an ancient geomancy practice, Kan Yu, which means environmental kindness. Kan Yu is the classical Chinese art of divination which follows the dictums delineated by an ancient saying:
"Raise the head and observe the sky above,
lower the head and observe the environment around us."

This saying depicts the trigram of Heaven and Earth with humankind in the middle, three strong, parallel — Yang lines of equal length. The same principle of Heaven/Earth and humankind in the middle is used in Japanese flower arrangement, which is called akebana.

Kan also means time theory and Yu means geographical theory. Kan Yu addresses the flow and change of Qi through a landscape over time and concerns itself with the location and orientation of a site, whether it is a house, building, room, garden, pagoda, city or burial site. Proper location is dependent on the complex interaction of location and direction of topographical and artificial features which have been charted over time.
Kan Yu concerns itself with observation of surrounding features and understanding how the Qi flows in terms of time.

The ancients believed that energy flows periodically in cycles of hours, months, years, centuries. The purpose of this energy flow is to Balance and Harmonize environments. The degree of Harmony in any place is solely dependent on the balance of Yin and Yang Qi. Qi may be a “subtle energy” and invisible to the naked eye, making it difficult to detect by conventional means, however, Qi is an energy which brings good nurturance and influence to any living organisms within its environment.

Feng Shui is both a scientific practice and a living art form
The essence of Feng Shui is about living consciously with Mother Nature. Ancient masters acknowledged that in order to produce a prosperous, healthy family and lifestyle, certain factors on the land and in the home were to follow a specific order in alignment with the forces of Nature. To make one’s life “sweet”, honoring and being in tune with Nature is vitally necessary. Humankind are designated caretakers of the Earth. Proper gratitude, care and maintenance of the Earth is considered correct.


Feng Shui History
With a tradition that dates back 8,000 years ago, Feng Shui was first practiced by ancients Chinese people who were mainly agriculturists. The ancient Chinese were natural ecologists who looked at their living environment and assessed it according to Natural Laws and principles based on the precepts of the Li Shun, known as the Book of Rites which has as its cornerstone: 1) concern with Divine Order, 2) Harmony of Heaven and Earth, and 3) ways in which human beings can safeguard balance with Nature. Thus the foundation of Feng Shui was laid.

In its inception, Kan Yu was allocated to the Emperor and his ministers. Ordinary people were not privy to the inner knowledge. Regardless, it is natural selection of all peoples, in all cultures, to assess their environments for suitability of soil, vegetation, water source, cultivation and presence of animal life. People have always been interested in knowing where is the best site for building a home, erecting a tent, having protection from the elements, where they can obtain clean water for drinking, choosing a burial site and so forth. Emperor or not, the ancients practiced environmental Feng Shui.

Feng Shui is about living in Harmony with the natural environment and tapping into the goodness of Nature to benefit all of humankind. You can not create good Feng Shui for just yourself. Your Feng Shui practice must be considerate to those around you, as well as it must be in accord with Nature. We may call the early Chinese, natural ecologists.

The ancients appraised wind, feng, and water, shui, as powerful forces. When wind and water are out of control, natural disasters such as destruction of crops, famine, land slides, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis etc may occur. Too much rain or too little rain have dramatic results, as do, too much wind or too little. When humankind abuses the Earth and natural elements, disasters come upon them. This direct correspondence of human action and external outcome is supported by the findings of Quantum Physics. (See the film, What The Bleep Do We Know, for a clear visual presentation of Quantum Physics principles.)


Feng Shui Priorities
The main priority of good Feng Shui is creating Balance and Harmony in our internal and external environments. The creation and stabilization of excellent Feng Shui is the ultimate expression of good harmonious Earth Qi.

The first thing a Feng Shui practitioner must do is assess the Qi of the Earth, the Air Qi and the various qualities of Qi presenting within the interior space of the house or building. Qi (pronounced Chee) is the Vital Life Force, and the underlying principle in Feng Shui practice.


The Nine Feng Shui Principles of the Tibetan Buddhist Black Hat Sect

In addition to the major Feng Shui assessments delineated above, there are nine areas of concern.

1. Satisfy the Four Conditions which refers to positioning must be relative to the entranceway, not a compass direction. For example, the bed, desk, stove or principle seats must be in the “command position” . The command position is the area in the respective room which has the widest angle view of the entrance (“the mouth of the Qi) and is not in direct alignment with the entranceway.

2. Explore the Predecessor Law which refers to the ownership of the property, building, house before you occupied it and to the experiences which have taken place and given shape to the environment.

3. Strive for Harmony & Balance which refers to harmonizing and balancing the Yin/Yang Qualities and all energies both externally and internally. This includes structure, furnishings etc. and the necessity of bringing Nature into the interior space.

4. Trust Your Intuition refers to connecting with the inner energies which resonate to your spiritual self. Doing this will open and lead you to choices which are correct for you.

5. Reduce Clutter refers to the constant need of reduction of excess and unwanted, unused artifacts and internal baggage, all of which reduces Personal Qi.

6. Like Attracts Like refers to the “Law of Attraction” which stipulates that energy magnetizes other energy of the same type. In our personal lives we are big magnets that attract the same type of energy that our body sends but in the form of people, opportunities and the life events that shape our lives.

7. Raise the Percentage refers to adjusting “missing areas” of the shape of the lot or the shape of the house in order to produce a balance structure such as a square or rectangle. This also holds true for individual rooms.

8. Use the Nine Basic Energy Adjustments which are: lights & bright objects, mirrors, sound, Life Force items, heavy objects, color, movement & mobile objects, power & energy objects and water.

9. House Maintenance is crucial. Without house maintenance the Beneficial Qi becomes stagnant and destructive.


The Nine Feng Shui Geomancy Principles
1. Assess the Qi quality of the site and building.

2. Assess the Earth Energies and the environment: plants, animals,
people and how they are interacting.

3. Determine the compass directions of the site and building, both front and back; the compass directions to entrances and areas of the rooms and assess their “directional qualities“.

4. Determine the Yin and Yang qualities of the exterior and interior.

5. Determine the presenting Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) of the construction of the building, the elements surrounding the building and elemental balance within the individual rooms.

6. Determine where the “heart or center of Qi” in the house/building.

7. Assess the construction and architectural features and shapes of the building. Different building materials, the shape and architectural features have impact on the occupants and the environment.

8. Determine the date of the building construction and the correlation to the cycles of earth energy influences. The age of a building holds many subtle and unseen influences. This is blended with new ‘incoming energies” and the changing yearly cycles. Determine the history of the building and assess the energy influences.

9. Assess the people and their interrelationship with the environment. Different environments are suitable for different people’s temperament, age, gender, lifestyle, occupation, etc.