Feng Shui Explained
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010Feng Shui can be awfully complicated, but it can also be relatively simple. It all depends on how complicated you are willing to get with respect to transforming your home or other space into a Feng Shui friendly area. You can do something as simple as move a little bit of your furniture around and add a wind chime, or you can get really intricate and use all sorts of different tools and ancient gizmos in an attempt to get the “Chi” flowing in a positive way throughout your home or other space.
What the heck is “Chi?”
You’ll hear this term often within Feng Shui, and maybe even see it spelled different ways and pronounced in different ways too. “Chi” basically refers to the energy that occurs naturally within nature. Ancient Chinese renditions of Feng Shui – and some modern Feng Shui renditions – are an attempt to harness the naturally occurring “Chi” and manipulate it into something beneficial. You may have heard someone claim that something or someone has “Bad Chi” or “Good Chi,” and this is a principle that is utilized in Feng Shui. A good energy flow within a home will result in “Good Chi” and will result in the residents generally being happier and living together more harmoniously. The trick behind Feng Shui is trying to figure out exactly how to manipulate the “Chi” in order to achieve maximum results.
There is more than one style of Feng Shui.
The term Feng Shui encompasses many different forms and styles of what was once practiced in ancient times. You may find that some Feng Shui specialists and professionals actually have a bone to pick with other forms of Feng Shui, and this can be a little confusing for someone who doesn’t know much about the principles beyond the fact that sometimes furniture gets moved around to let energy flow better within the house. Depending on the books you read and the people you talk to, you may find claims that Feng Shui can accomplish a variety of goals:
• You can find a suitable romantic interest.
• You can enhance the lives of the residents within your home including children and pets.
• You can improve your health.
• You can attract wealth and success.
• You can transform an unhappy family into a cohesive unit.
• You can achieve a higher status among your peers.
Perhaps these claims are more than you bargained for, or perhaps as you read these you’re thinking, “Wow, great, where do I begin?” Just be aware that different schools of Feng Shui claim to do different things; so don’t be surprised if one Feng Shui book contradicts another Feng Shui book when it comes to the steps you are supposed to take or the results you can expect. You can think of it as similar to a religion by comparing it to something like Christianity: Denominations all fall under the category of Christianity, but the various denominations can have some very different ideas. Just to be clear, this does not mean that Feng Shui is considered a religion; it’s merely to clarify how you will find varying opinions among the many different schools of Feng Shui ideals and practices.
Different schools of Feng Shui utilize different methods.
Although there are more schools of thought when it comes to Feng Shui, the major players within the field can be categorized into three different schools of thought.
Traditional Feng Shui concentrates mainly on the power of symbols and the shape of the items within the environment. The direction (north, south, east, and west) of items within the Traditional Feng Shui school of thought may or may not be a factor when considering recommendations for a more harmonious home.
Black Hat Sect Tantric Buddhist Feng Shui incorporates the ideas of Traditional Feng Shui along with elements borrowed from Buddhism and Taoism. This form of Feng Shui was actually created by a Feng Shui practitioner in modern times and is a popular version that involves several different methods all rolled into one.
Intuitive Feng Shui takes Traditional Feng Shui and then molds it into something that is more easily swallowed by Western society. There is less of the Chinese mysticism and symbols within Intuitive Feng Shui and more of a regard for the decorative and architectural preferences of people living within modern Western society.
The three major branches of Feng Shui all stem from Traditional Feng Shui, but the differences can be both minor and major. Since all three forms of Feng Shui are relatively common – and there are still more forms as well – there is no limit to the contradictory information you can stumble upon when researching Feng Shui principles for use within your own life. The advantage to the variety among the branches of Feng Shui, however, is that if one particular school of thought does not appeal to you then you can try a different one. For example, if having Chinese symbols throughout your home is not appealing to you then you might instead implement the principles of Intuitive Feng Shui.
