Heart-Minded Feng Shui

Why should sophisticated post-moderns take an interest in an esoteric system of placement 3,000 years old? A wind-and-water (feng shui literally translates as "wind" and "water") theory so complex, it disappears in a vaporous trail of mystery? Because feng shui works with astonishing ease and surprising results. It's an elegant antidote to lives abuzz with computers, cell phones, beepers, chattering faxes, and hectic schedules, which intervene between us and the natural world.

Chinese philosophers believe five things determine a good life: fate, luck, accumulated good deeds, education, and feng shui. We may not be able to control external circumstances, but we can control our immediate environment by reaching out to opportunity and fortune.

If your heart doesn't lift when you return home each night, you need feng shui. If you don't leave home in the morning refreshed, comforted, and confirmed in your innate worth, you need feng shui. Wherever you live, an efficiency apartment, house, a manse on the hill, home should be a sanctuary for repairing hurts and celebrating joys.

Feng shui uses practical means to alter the physics of space and infuse rooms with harmony. Thus, our lives improve because energies in the home are focused. Life opens up in remarkable ways. For example, a client resumed her social life after a five-year hiatus when we placed a four-foot statue of Kwan Yin, goddess of compassion, on the crest of a low hill overlooking her garden. I lit the figure with nine--the most auspicious of numbers in feng shui--votive lights. Illumined, Kwan Yin smiled down on guests gathered on the moon-lit terrace. The effect was magical. You can replicate this effect on a balcony, in an alcove, wherever sufficient space sets off a symbol of affirmative emotions.

In feng shui, everything in the universe is linked by ch'i, a universal energy, which, when flowing smoothly, that is, neither too fast nor too slow, conducts vital forces to work on our behalf. If you doubt this, consider where you thrived, did your best work, met people who greatly interested you. You felt energized in a particular way--this is ch'i par excellence. On the other hand, consider where you felt drained and lacking in vital energies. This is because you, your environment--home or office--were disconnected from the energy at the center of the feng shui system. When ch'i does not flow smoothly in life, difficulties grow, and one can suffer inexplicable reverses in professional, financial, and relationship spheres.

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