Feng Shui: An Introduction

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice that involves placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. Feng Shui follows the philosophy where all aspects of one's life must be in accord with the patterns and forces in nature. Feng Shui puts much emphasis in the home as the quality of life is largely affected by a person's living environment.

On top of the more known four elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- Feng Shui has its fifth element, metal. These five elements and their representations are used strategically within the home in the form of lighting, furniture positioning, types of materials used, creation of sounds and smells. Balancing these elements and following their natural order can promote health and wealth in people's lives.

If you wish to apply the principles of Feng Shui, you need to have a basic understanding of Qi. You must have heard of Qi (sometimes called Chi) in acupuncture. Qi is the energy or life force that permeates everything and connects everything to each other.

Feng Shui is about harnessing the beneficial Qi. For example, the arrangement of furniture in the home can either allow Qi move freely or block it entirely. It is important to have energy paths throughout the house and it is equally important to identify and destroy poison arrows that promote Shar (bad) Qi. These poison arrows are the sharp corners found within the house, edges that are hardly noticeable but are pointing right at specific parts of your body like your stomach (causing ulcers or indigestion) or the head (giving you headaches and cause you to become irritable).

The Chinese have been practicing Feng Shui for more than 3,000 years. The term Feng Shui literally means "wind water", two of the most fundamental forms of life's energy. It grew from people's observation of the fluxes and flows of the land and the fortuitous placement of one's home and physical arrangement of everything inside that is harmonious to the forces of nature, all of which have bearing on a person's health, prosperity, happiness, fame and career.

Feng Shui is not limited to help you decorate your home. It is also concerned with promoting good health and preventing illnesses. To begin applying Feng Shui in your life, you need to de-clutter your home. Clutter represents stagnant energy. When the clutter is removed, Qi can move freely through the room. Without the clutter, you are effectively providing space for more new things or new opportunities in your life.

Clutter is anything that you aren't using at that very moment and which is in a place where it doesn't belong. Remove what you don't need and clean the house thoroughly. Learn how to let go of things you don't need. Either throw them away or if they are still usable, give them away to the Salvation Army. Clutter creates stagnation, and this is manifested as feelings of depression, lethargy, apathy, or a sense of being stuck and unable to move on with your life.

Get hold of a Bagua map and place it over a diagram of your home. Doing so would help you identify the exact location and the aspect of your life that is directly afflicted by the clutter. The different corners or guas of your home correspond to different areas of your life, like north is to career, west is to creativity and children, south-east to prosperity, and so on, with the center pertaining to health. Actually, even without the map, you could easily see where you are stuck if you only think about it. Then, you can readily pinpoint the areas of your house that need clearing.

There is a plethora of reading materials about Feng Shui. Some are basic and simple for beginners and there are the more complicated and detailed for the more experienced. Whatever your motivation is, you could find the necessary guidelines, tips and pieces of advice on how best to arrange your physical surroundings to enhance each area of your life.

You would also learn of tools that can amplify your good fortune and remedies needed to counteract the negative effects of things that you cannot change in your home and the immediate surroundings. You may also like the idea of using bells or wind chimes for the pleasant sound they can bring into your life or lighting incense to lighten up the atmosphere inside.

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