Why do we study and practice Feng Shui?

We want to improve our lives. The expression “as above so below” asserts that everything around us is a reflection of who we are, what we think, and how we feel. In fact, everything around us has an effect on our experience of the world. Hollywood movies, billboard advertising, social media and other exposure creates a construct for our awareness of Self, instilling in us a projection of who we believe we are, and we feel supported or limited by the world around us and our experience of it.

Feng Shui – An Emerging Discipline

No longer regarded in the realms of ‘superstition’, Classical Feng Shui is now an emerging discipline that combines the brilliance of scientific inquiry with the mindful intuition of tasteful space design and landform affects. Chinese scholars have relied on it for thousands of years to support their placement of homes, burial sites, and entire kingdoms. Today, Feng Shui has practical applications in our homes and neighbourhoods, offices and businesses, even towns and cities.

Embracing the Nature of Change

Consider how you feel when you wake up in a new place, perhaps on a tropical vacation – uprooted from your natural habitat, you may find that you have fresh insight into your life’s circumstances once removed from the confines of your home and family life. Once the exterior has been stripped away, there is a clean slate; a new space ready for our new creation. Similarly, environments with a diverse or uniform range of expression, such as a conference, community space or celebration, can offer us opportunity to creatively inspire, relate to, and fine tune our projected identities and communities.

When we wake up in the morning, our first moment of awareness is defined by the room around us. If we feel comfortable and supported in a warm, dark and quiet place with peaceful pictures and cozy bedding we may wake feeling joyful, inspired, and happy to be alive. On the contrary, if we sleep poorly, wake up feeling tired, cold, anxious, or worried, these feelings may be due to the computer beside the bed, the late night news, clutter in the room around us, or the temperature of the room.

We are natural creatures, and as such are deeply affected by our natural environment. Taoists value natural life and view it as precious, seeking ways to live a good, healthy and long life. Exploring and understanding the mystery of life and its relationship with nature, to discover life-nourishing and enhancing techniques is the goal of becoming one with the Tao. This concept of unifying and connecting with the one-ness of all through our interactions with it is at the heart of Feng Shui.

“The movement of Tao is to return
The way of Tao is to yield
Heaven, Earth, and all things
are born of the existent world
The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao”

Verse 40 – Tao Te Ching (translated by Jonathan Star)