feng shui

[fengshuiarch]

There are thousands of things in our natural and built environment that affect our emotional and physical condition. Some of these things we can see, some we cannot see. Some we can sense, some we cannot. Why can we not sense them? Because we have learned to or choose to ignore them. But ignoring them does not make the effect go away. Have you ever walked under a heavy awning of a building and felt uneasy? Did you move out from under it because of the way you felt? Even though you ‘knew’ it was not going to fall on you? What was between you and the awning that you sensed?

The space between us and all other things or people is energy. Has anyone ever walked up to you, got too close, and you thought “he’s in my space”. What is your “space” but your own energy field. You can feel the heat from a stove element without touching it. You can feel the wind on your face without seeing it. You can sense that someone has walked up behind you even though you do not have eyes in the back of your head. The energy of people and objects does not stop at the outer form that we see.

Our universe operates according to the laws of physics – so does feng shui. Some may say it is mysticism, but only because it is beyond their current comprehension of it. Some attach Chinese superstition or a belief system to it, but only because it is beyond their current comprehension of it in an effort to make sense of it. Read “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene or watch the Nova version of it. It doesn’t explain feng shui, but it explains our everyday world of energy.

Feng shui is based on observation of our environment. It ‘started’ when someone wondered why people in the same village had different levels of wealth, why some were healthier than others.

I got interested in feng shui my first year of architecture school. The way we were being taught, how to pick up clues in the surroundings to inform the design, seemed so arbitrary. We were judged on our creative interpretation of the context. When building with feng shui you respond to the things in the environment and FS is a system, based on centuries of observations, that is followed.

fengshuiarch

[SDR]

Ah, but the effect of the tree on the owner of the property. . .that's a bit more subtle, I expect ?

"There are many things. . .under the Sun" (to quote Bela Lugosi in "The Black Cat).


SDR

[csintexas]

[djswan]

and then there's rational fears.

Like the tape worm that crawled out of our cats - spam - the other day on to the rug near the baby crib.

I have never observed this before.

My fear was speculative based on here say from our friends and the little bit I have read about parasites or seen on TV.

I accepted the fear as rational, based on a good guesses with the limited facts I had on hand. And time was on my side I concluded, as observed by the slow movements of the tape worm and the fact the I was running faster than the tape worm could move.

My gag reflexes distracted my thought processes during this observation, and perhaps altered my percieved reality of the situation.
The tape worm wasn't going leap up and attack me, I deduced. And then my wife grabbed a spray bottle of bleach and a paper towel and took my fear away.

More knowledge less fear?

[SDR]

" I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate." [George Carlin, from "You Are All Diseased".]

[ArchiMotion]

[djswan]

I have just observed an amazing event.

I hear a bleating sounds and dog barks outside and the trample of kids feet. upstairs. My son is having a friend stay over. I run upstairs to see what is going on. Out the door, to see my wife holding a fawn whitetail that seams a bit upset. A co-workers Jack Russell is acting like a Jack Russell. It's appears to be chaos. I tell the kids to get the camera.
My wife tells me to help. The dog is too fast for me to grab. The co-worker and dog owner grabs dog and flings dog a good estimate 25 feet of so. Thinking the dog problem was over, I tell my wife to let the fawn go. She does. The dog fling bought about 2 seconds for the fawn, the dog was not fazed by the fling.
Off to the races, down across the moderatly traveled road, in front of the house, down to the river, was the fawn, the dog, myself and a co-worker and sounds of cars mixed with my wife's good advise that I couldn't decipher during my run.
The fawn's heading with the dog nipping at it's tail became apparent, when approximatly five deer spang from every direction, across the road, across the river, and across my path. It appeared that deer were everywhere at that moment in time.
The fawn escaped to brush, the dog nipping at whatever it could nip at the embedded fawn. The co-worker grabs dog and does not fling this time, and we walk back and all is well, time to tell, battery was dead in the camera and now the kids are fighting about pokemon.

It just happened not more than ten minutes from the start of this post.

How fun life can be.

[ArchiMotion]

[Madimel]

You should be the spokesperson for FengshuiArch. Your explanation makes more sense than him so far.

[djswan]

Karma is restored. I feel balance. Many thanks for the fine wisdom. Live long and prosper.

[fengshuiarch]

Dear Archimotion,

FS originated in China and therefore inextricably associated with eastern thought. Does that mean that westerners cannot adopt or understand eastern thought? No. In fact the trend seems to be just that, and easterners adopting western thought too.

Energy, physics – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Balance implies something static. I like to use the term ‘dynamic balance’, like the swing of a pendulum on a grandfather clock, the ebb and flow of the tide, or the wax and wane of the moon. That is what the Tai Ji (yin-yang) symbol represents.

Therefore, I do say that traditional feng shui operates according to the law of physics in our surroundings and how it interacts with the human form. Perhaps you have experienced another type of “feng shui”. There are many versions, even some ‘patented’ or ‘copyrighted’.

I understand your skepticism. I am a very skeptical person. The first book I picked up on FS did not make sense to me and I put the notion away for years. Then something piqued my interest again and I followed through with a lot of research, reading some more books, going to seminars touted by “masters”, etc. Some of it made sense, some of it I just couldn’t put together, and I wasn’t the only one wondering how to make this stuff work. It was a process that did take me to some dead-ends. And I was still skeptical until I met my current teacher.

"Now, if we order our space according to the elements of earth, water, wind, fire, … "

FYI, the “elements” used in FS are wood, fire, earth, metal and water. These ARE metaphors. (Most FS practitioners are taught to use these elements as actual objects.)

"Rather, if we see man and nature as one, we think of ways to design balance, and a sense of connectivity with nature in the same. Thus, by seeking out the positive and negative points of our space, we can find optimal locations for pieces of furniture, for our bed, our living room......the only problem becomes how to measure the positive and negative energy flows in the space. This requires a heightened sense of perception certainly and one that delves into the mystic. If we could have such an instrument to measure the vibrations of the space, I think the job would be much easier. But as far as I know no such instrument exists, and this is mystical thinking at best."

Anyone can learn this “heightened sense of perception” and your own body is the tool to “measure”. As I mentioned before, we usually ignore what our body tells us. The “rules” of FS are about how to respond to what the body tells us.

"No use in having sophisticated design theories and ideas based on mystic ideas that are so complex that nobody can understand them, much less prove them empirically. Such ideas are prone to failure when analyzed under the eyes of objectivity. This is why we have ideas such as Feng Shui being more in the realm of metaphysical, abstract, with superstitious applications…"

This is what some believe because they only have a cursory understanding of FS. And also because some practitioners chose to attach mysticism, religion and superstition to FS. Traditional FS stands alone as a system in itself.

"…If you do something which you believe will help you feel better, 90% of the time you will feel better. No medicine, no genuine cure needed. Our minds are powerful forces, and no use aligning the environment if our minds simply do not "connect". … So the physical becomes the key environmental ingredient needed to align the metaphysical part of the mind. … So it is a matter of perception, not of actual environmentally correct decisions. There is thus no perfect alignment in the material world. This is the problem with Feng Shui. It is rather the "perceived alignment" of the environment, as absorbed by our senses, that gives us also a feeling of internal alignment, thus bringing the benefits.
...it boils down more to common sense… "

The physical environment has a direct effect on our physical body. If we actually “listened” our bodies tell us what we need to know. Our minds “interpret” and “filter” what the body feels and that is where the dysfunction happens. Some of FS is common sense, but then common sense isn’t so common, is it. If something in the environment is having a negative effect on your body, and by extension your mood and your thinking, then you change/remove/block the energy of that thing that is causing the problem.

There are two factors at work here. One source of dis-ease is something physical in the environment. Another source is negative thinking which can cause dis-ease and/or perpetuate dis-ease caused by the environment. FS specifically deals with the dis-ease caused by the physical environment.

fengshuiarch

[ArchiMotion]

[csintexas]

So there is no physical property which can be measured. FS = Heaven

[solidred]

One might argue that China has been going rapidly downhill since it largely gave up Feng Shui and embraced, instead, first Communism and now Capitalism
They made the mistake of thinking that the rest of the world knows what it's doing...

[csintexas]

Yes I suppose one might. Is there any evidence which suggest this is true or are you just thinking aloud?