What Is Feng Shui ?

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. It is a complex body of knowledge that reveals the ways to balance the energies of the environment to assure health, wealth and good fortune for people inhabiting it.

Feng shui, pronounced in English as "fung shway", also known as "Kan-Yu" which means 'The Law of Heaven and Earth’. "Feng" means "wind" and "shui" means "water", literally translates as "wind-water". In Chinese culture gentle wind and clear water have always been associated with good harvest and good health, thus "good feng shui" came to mean good livelihood and fortune, while "bad feng shui" came to mean hardship and misfortune.

Feng Shui is based on the Taoist vision and understanding of nature, particularly on the idea that the land is alive and filled with energy. The ancient Chinese believed that the land's energy could either make or break the kingdom, so to speak. The theories of yin and yang, as well as the five elements, which are some of the basic aspects of a feng shui analysis, also come from Taoism.

Early feng shui relied on astronomy to find correlations between humans and the universe. The goal of feng shui as practiced today is to situate the human built environment on spots with good qi. The "perfect spot" is a location and an axis in time. Some areas are not suitable for human settlement and should be left in their natural state.

The main tools used in a feng shui analysis are the Compass and the Ba-Gua. The Ba-Gua is an octagonal map or grid containing the symbols of the I Ching, the ancient oracle on which Feng Shui is based. It is one of the easiest methods used to ascertain the Feng Shui of any given environment.

The feng shui compass, also called Lo-Pan, is used to access deeper information about the site or the building. It consists of bands of concentric rings arranged around the magnetic needle. "Lo" means "everything" and "Pan" means "bowl", which can be interpreted as the key to mysteries of the universe.

Feng Shui offers a variety of remedies and enhancements to improve people's lives and rectify inauspicious situations. It is extensively used in both home and business environments all over the world. Although some levels of feng shui are easy to understand and apply, the "core" knowledge takes years of study. Just like traditional Chinese medicine, feng shui knowledge is very deep and complex.