How to Enhance Your Everyday Life With The Help of Feng Shui

In its fullest expression feng shui is a complex, multi-disciplined and multilayered subject. Its practice is a broad spectrum including cosmology, astrology, clutter and space clearing, interior design and placement, colour, five elements theory, yin and yang, geomancy an the in-depth study of the IChing - the ancient Chinese Book of Changes.

Despite its seeming complexity feng shui is really quite simple to implement, governed by fundamental principles that once understood can lead you through the maze of confusion to the ultimate goal - harmony in both your home and life.

Why Feng shui?

It has been said that the ‘home is the metaphor of the self’, the most intimate and telling external expression of our internal world. Understand our home is a master key to understanding who we are as we all unconsciously and intuitively place artworks and personal objects of significance around our homes, which represent what is important and inspiring to us. Feng shui allows us to witness ourselves through the eyes of our home and often a spring clean externally is synonymous with shifts within our internal landscape.

In the ‘digital era’ in which we exist Feng shui reminds us to slow down and reconnect with both our personal living space and ourselves. As human ‘beings’ and not ‘doings’ the practice of Feng shui encourages mindful and contemplative space for reflection.

It seems a broad statement for those living in the western world to consider Feng shui as the ‘psychology of our homes’ but on an intuitive level we know it makes perfect sense. Feng shui is the journey of self-discovery as reflected by our living spaces.

‘Meet it, and you do not see its beginning. Follow it and you do not see its end. Stay with the ancient Way in order to master what is present’ - Lao Tzu

It’s all about the chi: How feng shui works

Feng shui is based on the same principles as quantum physics: everything in the universe is connected and made of energy on a subatomic level. Between Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and developments in Quantum Theory, science has begun to prove and accept what mystics and philosophers have been saying for thousands of years: that everything in the world is energetically connected. Therefore, everything in our homes has a corresponding effect on our lives whether its’s positive or negative because we are energetically connected to them.

We don’t have an exact word for this invisible energy known as chi or qi in English. The closest description is probably life force or vital energy. Many cultures around the world are aware of and honour it’s existence. It is known in India as prana, in Japan as ki and in Egypt as ankh. It is the vital force or energy that permeates all things: Feng meaning wind and shui meaning water because the breath of chi carries both. Getting to know chi - identifying it and understanding how it moves, how to balance it, transform it and direct it is what Feng shui is all about. In truth it is the philosophy of the cosmic dance between heaven and earth.