Demystifying Feng Shui

So many Americans have little or no knowledge of Feng Shui. It is the Asian art of placement so energy, or better known as chi, is allowed to comfortably move about. Many American have a difficult time understanding or believing this energy exists, you can’t see it. Lets look at the human body as an example, blood run through our veins within body and is circulated through the heart, but what makes the heart pump. Each and every one of us has a similar energy to chi running though our body. We cannot see it, if we do not eat we can feel the energy slow us down. Chi is an energy that is in the environment all around us. Energy works in the environment very similar to how it works within our body. You cannot see it, but it affects how we feel and how we act at times.

The art of Feng Shui is very complicated it but let’s take a look at it from a very simplified perspective on how it works with our homes. You may not believe as many Feng Shui practitioners do, that there is good energy and bad energy in your home, but lets look at some of the simpler thing you should do to achieve good Feng Shui and why from a westerner view they are good design. First look at where you place a house along a road. It is bad Feng Shui to build a home on an outside corner on a road because it forces bad chi towards your home. I would say this is bad design from my western perspective because if a vehicle is traveling too fast down the road and cannot make the corner there is a good chance it will come through the wall of your house. We all know of a few of these homes in your town. So you can see the bad chi in this situation. Feng Shui like good design practices has a way to fix this bad chi by building some type of protection like a stone wall or a row of tree to prevent the house from being hit or damaged. By building this wall or screening you have diverted the bad chi from coming at your house or diverted the cars energy from hitting the house. Now you can see that Feng Shui is really just good common since design when looking at it in its simplest form.

Let look at another example with in your home know. It is bad Feng Shui to line up the front door with the bad door. The good chi or energy move in one door and straight out the back door. Looking at this from a design perspective you’ve divided your home into two pieces and created a throughway straight through your home or a wind tunnel if both doors are open. Good design would have you meandering through your home to enjoy it not beline through it.

These are just a couple simple example that points out this ancient art of Fung Shui, is really good design practices. that takes into account both the phyical and phycological aspects of design.