Feng Sui Makes Life Better: yes or No?

[buddy1]

I just read a book about the ancient art of feng sui-which is really poular here now. According to its proponents, judicious arrangement of your house will make for better energy flow ("chi") and better living for the inhabitants...also will pay big dividends at resale time. So I have a few questions:
-first, has anybody redecorated/rearranged their house according to feng sui principles?
-is "feng sui" systematic: that is, will one FS "expert" have the same ideas as another?-how are you sure you've got the correct "chI" flow anyway?
-what does having good "chi" mean for you?
-has anybody done a study to see if the claims of FS are true?
Obviously, I want as much "chi" as possible-how do I get it?

[tracer]

-what does having good "chi" mean for you?
-has anybody done a study to see if the claims of FS are true?
Obviously, I want as much "chi" as possible-how do I get it?
Shouldn't you first be asking "does chi even exist?"?
The answer, apparently, is no:
http://www.skepdic.com/chi.html

And as for Feng Shui itself:
http://www.skepdic.com/fengshui.html

[Chas.E]

I worked in an office with a guy who somehow convinced the boss to let him do some feng shui modifications to the office. Since the boss wouldn't let him move furniture, he mostly hung up little crystals and banners that he said were intended to "deflect" the chi as it moved around the room and make it "circulate" properly. But they all seemed to be hung at eye level at places where you constantly bonked into them.
The guy eventually quit, and the first thing we did was rip down all the stupid crystals and banners. The room immediately seemed a lot larger because you didn't have to go around watching your head. The mood of the office rose immediately.

[erislover]

Well, I just read my own cards (tarot) and they said that I should utilize more feng shui in my room arrangement. QED

Plus, well, it is a chinese tradition and they are always right about that kind of stuff. Aren't they?

[Ventani]

while I don't believe in "chi",
I have my house set up so things flow nicely.
I like it.
There's a few simple things that Feng Sui teaches that make me less irritable:
not putting shit in front or behind opening doors.
balancing modern devices like the computer and TV with pictures and art.

[China Guy]

You can't prove it doesn't work.

Feng Shui geomancers won't necessarily see the same thing or proscribe the same treatment. A lot of time it's stuff like put in a fish tank. an apartment I lived in in Hong Kong one year had a "taoist" style knife made out of old coins over the front door to change the chi.

It's like having a mojo.

I don't have any of that fengshui stuff around, nor have I ever had a geomancer come in and do my office or house. Maybe that's my problem though?

[tracer]

China Guy wrote:

You can't prove it doesn't work.
Actually, yes, you can.

Feng Shui makes certain testable predictions. Your general mood is supposed to be better if your home is arranged according to Feng Shui principles, right? Well, then, you can perform a double-blind placebo trial to see if these predictions have any merit.

You let a bunch of people (who don't know what is or isn't valid Feng Shui) volunteer to have their homes altered. Have half of their homes altered by real Feng Shui geomancers, and have the other half altered by someone claiming to be a real Feng Shui geomancer but who will in fact only rearrange their furniture randomly. The fae Feng Shui-ist is the placebo. And you don't tell the volunteers whether they got the real one or the fake one. This makes the test a "blind placebo trial."

After a few weeks, or however long it's supposed to take Feng Shui to work, you interview the volunteers and ask them questions about their mood. To make it a double-blind placebo trial, you don't tell the interviewers which of the volunteers are in the placebo group and which volunteers are in the real-Feng-Shui group. You assign each volunteer a random "subject number" or something that can be correlated separately.

After correlating the data gathered by the interviewers, if there is a statistically significant difference between the moods of the two groups, then you say "Feng Shui works." If there is no statistically significant difference between the moods of the two groups, then you say "Feng Shui does not work." And in that latter case, you will have proven that it doesn't work.

[Violet]

I felt disoriented (& dizzy) when I tried this, so moved everything back. I think we want simple solutions for whatever, IMHO.

[Stones speak.I am silent.]

Feng Sui Makes Life Better: yes or No?

NO!!!!

All this nonsense is giving me a headache.
Like "What's your Sign?" and Nostradamus.

We make our own destiny. We make ourselves effective and comfortable. We pick our own loves, lives, problems. It's not Shakespeare's star-crossed world. Or fung sui. The idea that the world around us has human influences is so sad. So many people turn their lives around because they think the world "likes" certain letters to add up to a magic number. Sad.

[rjung]

I think it's like astrology: feng sui makes life easier for those folks who actually believe that stuff works.

Me, I'm a skeptic who arranges things in any dang way that pleases me.

[Neutron Jack]

Originally posted by tracer
You let a bunch of people (who don't know what is or isn't valid Feng Shui) volunteer to have their homes altered. Have half of their homes altered by real Feng Shui geomancers, and have the other half altered by someone claiming to be a real Feng Shui geomancer but who will in fact only rearrange their furniture randomly

This will tell us whether there's a difference between:

1) Feng Shui practicioners
2) Random furniture arrangers

Well, heck, I'll bet that (1) does better. They won't do stupid things like put dressers in front of doors. I'd rather do the comparison between:

1) Feng Shui practicioners
2) Experienced furniture arrangers (interior decorators?)

This is similar to dowsing tests, where we have to tell if they're finding the water via dowsing, or finding it by looking at where the grass grows greener. If they do better than random, that doesn't tell us which method they used.

[RickJay]

Originally posted by Chas.E

The guy eventually quit, and the first thing we did was rip down all the stupid crystals and banners. The room immediately seemed a lot larger because you didn't have to go around watching your head. The mood of the office rose immediately.

See, it worked. It was a two-stage process. :)

[Neutron Jack]

Originally posted by tracer
You let a bunch of people (who don't know what is or isn't valid Feng Shui) volunteer to have their homes altered. Have half of their homes altered by real Feng Shui geomancers, and have the other half altered by someone claiming to be a real Feng Shui geomancer but who will in fact only rearrange their furniture randomly

This will tell us whether there's a difference between:

1) Feng Shui practicioners
2) Random furniture arrangers

Well, heck, I'll bet that (1) does better. They won't do stupid things like put dressers in front of doors. I'd rather do the comparison between:

1) Feng Shui practicioners
2) Experienced furniture arrangers (interior decorators?)

This is similar to dowsing tests, where we have to tell if they're finding the water via dowsing, or finding it by looking at where the grass grows greener. If they do better than random, that doesn't tell us what method they used.

[Jen Jen]

I have a friend who is starting to get into Feng Shui. She wasn't having much luck with her love life and then she realized her cat's litter box was in her relationship corner. She promptly moved it and BAM, she got lucky the next week.

[Dave Stewart]

I have had the flu for a month. My secretary (who is Chinese) thinks that it is because I overlook from my window in my office a set of small pyramids constituting a roof (pointy=bad). She recommends I get a plant to shield the effects. And some fish, to eat the bad chi in the air.

I didn't move into a large apartment building in front of a hill with a big square hole in the middle of it. The hole is to facilitate a dragon coming down from the hill to drink water. I moved into another building in front of a hill without such a hole. Maybe my flu is a side effect of the dragon's irritation.

Maybe I should just gets some rest and see a doctor.

[Futile Gesture]

Feng Shui is just interior decoration with a dollop of mystic cods-wallop added. Interior decorators who go for it realize that it boosts their perceived value ("We're not just fixing your room, we're fixing your life!") and thus profits. Their clients, IMHO, are either

-those unwilling to address the problems in their life. Feng Shui gives them an illusion of doing something positive while avoiding the real issues.

-idiots with too much money and too easy a life. Feng Shui gives them an imaginary problem to worry about and spend their money on.

That's not say that Feng Shui has no value. A fair bit of the interior design is interesting, but I like we can jettison the chi and crystals nonsense.

[Smitty]

Douglas Adams had an interesting take on it:


I want to talk about Feng Shui, which is something I know very little about, but there’s been a lot of talk about it recently in terms of figuring out how a building should be designed, built, situated, decorated and so on. Apparently, we need to think about the building being inhabited by dragons and look at it in terms of how a dragon would move around it. So, if a dragon wouldn’t be happy in the house, you have to put a red fish bowl here or a window there. This sounds like complete and utter nonsense, because anything involving dragons must be nonsense—there aren’t any dragons, so any theory based on how dragons behave is nonsense. What are these silly people doing, imagining that dragons can tell you how to build your house? Nevertheless, it occurs to me if you disregard for a moment the explanation that’s actually offered for it, it may be there is something interesting going on that goes like this: we all know from buildings that we’ve lived in, worked in, been in or stayed in, that some are more comfortable, more pleasant and more agreeable to live in than others. We haven’t had a real way of quantifying this, but in this century we’ve had an awful lot of architects who think they know how to do it, so we’ve had the horrible idea of the house as a machine for living in, we’ve had Mies van der Roe and others putting up glass stumps and strangely shaped things that are supposed to form some theory or other. It’s all carefully engineered, but nonetheless, their buildings are not actually very nice to live in. An awful lot of theory has been poured into this, but if you sit and work with an architect (and I’ve been through that stressful time, as I’m sure a lot of people have) then when you are trying to figure out how a room should work you’re trying to integrate all kinds of things about lighting, about angles, about how people move and how people live—and an awful lot of other things you don’t know about that get left out. You don’t know what importance to attach to one thing or another; you’re trying to, very consciously, figure out something when you haven’t really got much of a clue, but there’s this theory and that theory, this bit of engineering practice and that bit of architectural practice; you don’t really know what to make of them. Compare that to somebody who tosses a cricket ball at you. You can sit and watch it and say, ‘It’s going at 17 degrees’; start to work it out on paper, do some calculus, etc. and about a week after the ball’s whizzed past you, you may have figured out where it’s going to be and how to catch it. On the other hand, you can simply put your hand out and let the ball drop into it, because we have all kinds of faculties built into us, just below the conscious level, able to do all kinds of complex integrations of all kinds of complex phenomena which therefore enables us to say, ‘Oh look, there’s a ball coming; catch it!’

What I’m suggesting is that Feng Shui and an awful lot of other things are precisely of that kind of problem. There are all sorts of things we know how to do, but don’t necessarily know what we do, we just do them. Go back to the issue of how you figure out how a room or a house should be designed and instead of going through all the business of trying to work out the angles and trying to digest which genuine architectural principles you may want to take out of what may be a passing architectural fad, just ask yourself, ‘how would a dragon live here?’ We are used to thinking in terms of organic creatures; an organic creature may consist of an enormous complexity of all sorts of different variables that are beyond our ability to resolve but we know how organic creatures live. We’ve never seen a dragon but we’ve all got an idea of what a dragon is like, so we can say, ‘Well if a dragon went through here, he’d get stuck just here and a little bit cross over there because he couldn’t see that and he’d wave his tail and knock that vase over’. You figure out how the dragon’s going to be happy here and lo and behold! you’ve suddenly got a place that makes sense for other organic creatures, such as ourselves, to live in.

[grimpixie]

I once read a story about a couple who were into Feng Shui and were about to buy a house together. They looked around and found one that they liked, and so they called in a Feng Shui master to come and "check out the chi" of the place. He said "No good" as the door of the house opened right onto the street and charged then £200.

So they looked some more and found another possibility, but again were vetoed by the master who charged another £200. They were in the process of looking for a third time, and were hoping to find a place with "positive energies" this time round.

My immediate thought was "Not likely - you think "El master" is going to give up on an easy source of cash??". I think rjung hit the nail on the head - it works if you want it to.

Gp

[hedra]

Sigh. This is gonna be long.

Okay, I studied Feng Shui a lot for my Master's degree, going to some major old sources, and looking at PhD dissertations on the topic, etc., etc. I was using it as a proxy cultural marker for people to self-identify locations as Chinese or not... it definitely is in use, according to my research, but that's not the question.

As for what I see as the main question - does it work? Well, yes, if you do the fundamentals, NOT necessarily the cultural overlay. The fundamentals are sound psychological and siting theory. (The overlay also relies on psychology, but you'd have to have the culture be a part of your psychology for things like octoganal mirrors to really help you out...)

For example (reeling off the top of my head - all of these are fundamentals beneath some of the 'rules' of F/S):

Don't place your house on a floodplain. Analyze the environment before you site your house. South-facing houses in northern climates are generally more comfortable. Having a wind-break to the north and west is a good idea (in northern climates). Having the mountain heights on the west be slightly lower than on the right (tiger and dragon - can't remember which side is which) means that you won't have an orographic dry spot - you'll be protected from some orographic-uplift rainfall, but you'll still get some from the higher side - good for gardening, not flooded. NOT having clutter all over the place is a positive way to live. Having a place to drop your stuff when you walk in the door makes coming home pleasant. Having an attractive approach to your space, especially along a curving route, makes coming home more peaceful (you technically cannot 'race' home on a beeline if the path curves). Not being at the end of a long straight street is less distressing (especially if cars are on the street - people tend to drive onto your lawn when drunk if you are at the end of the straightaway...). Narrow constricted long hallways tend to make people anxious or hurried (hospitals and schools are often trying to 'fix' this problem with design changes). Certain water forms are not a good idea to have behind your house (like, say, rapid straight rivers that tend to flashflood). Slower bending streams and rivers are nicer to have near your property (less flooding, though still some, but bonus - when it floods, it nicely deposits enriching silt on your farmland, assuming you HAVE farmland! - oh and old Chinese houses don't generally have basements, so below-ground flooding isn't an issue). Being able to move easily around your furniture without barking your shins or having to contort is nicer than not. Having comfortable places to sit, with adequate light, available table space, and room for guests is good. "Dead" areas in the house (places that collect junk and aren't used well) contribute to stress (looking at useless mess constantly isn't good for you, in other words). Large dead trees really near your house are a bad idea (heck, they might fall over or drop limbs, think of the insurance claims!!). The square or rectangular courtyard house shape is the most effective use of land when yard size is limited (epeepunk found a reference on courtyard homes that demonstrated that - if you build a house of the same square footage on the same land, where the house is a fairly large portion of the total ground area, you can have a nice usable interior courtyard with a courtyard house, or a thin, narrow, hard-to-use rim of land around the central non-courtyard building...).

There are also a lot of other fundamental good-building-practices included, buried under the muck of a few thousand years of cultural overlays. Feng Shui building methods have been a stand-in for regulating building practices for a long time. Kind of like a voluntary 'code' standard. And prety much anything that seemed to work, over time, got included under the heading of F/S.

Originally, Feng Shui was developed as purely an aesthetic system. Way back when (I'd have to look up my source, and all my thesis books are packed up... very early in the use of Feng Shui...), anyway, there were HUGE arguments at court about how to squash all the hocus-pocus/luck stuff that started being added by the 'common folk'... it was never intended to be a system to increase fortune, improve health, or make your family lucky in any way. Feng Shui was designed to make your home or office or city or whatever attractive. PERIOD. However, it was the 'common folk' experience that if you had a really nicely tuned aesthetic home and property, sited well, your fortunes didn't tend to have some of the problems of your neighbors... hey, if you aren't on the flood plain, your house isn't going to flood!! (duh!) Add a few thousand years of competing schools of philosophy, plus the general cultural tendency to mystify any process you can 'own' (loads of secrecy in the trade, and lots of stuff done to make it hard for folk to figure out why you did what you did, so the next guy can't copy your success)... and folk histories and practices... and astrology, and all sorts of other cultural ideas... well, you end up with some mighty convoluted mishmash of things that no longer make much sense, but 'seem to work' enough that people swear by them.

If you apply the fundamentals, yeah, your life will be nicer than if you don't. However, most people apply the fundamentals anyway, if they are at all self aware. And most people recognize their 'trouble' spots as well! (Can't count the number of times people have said to me 'can you check my home for Feng Shui stuff, and oh, I know it is really cluttered...' They already know fix number 1.)

I do feng shui analysis - and I'll do the whole hocus-pocus version if you want (natal number and all)... but the fundamentals are:

1) get rid of your clutter.
2) make sure your home is pleasant to enter, and that your space/furniture makes it easy to shift from 'work' mode to 'home' mode.
3) do something to wasted spaces to make them interesting, brigher, and less prone to gathering dust or junk.
4) if a space tends to make you feel a certain way (like tired), adding some contrast may help - colors, furniture, windchimes, etc., may increase your energy there. Call it chi/qi or call it standard interior design theory, but just adding some 'life' to the space (such as a fish tank, plant, or something that moves or makes sound) can liven up a space.
5) if a space is uncomfortable, change it - add detail to long hallways to visually break up the space, add mirrors to widen a space, close doors that you used to leave open, open doors that you used to leave closed.

Any good home-organizer/interior designer could tell you the same thing. An aesthetically pleasing space is just nicer to live in, period. Same for work spaces - example: the fastest cure for cube-anxiety is adding one of those rear-view mirrors to your monitor so you don't feel like you have to glance over your shoulder every time someone walks by (um, by the way, that's a classic Feng Shui 'magic fix' if you can't move your desk to point toward the door/opening).

A lot of practitioners will give you different fixes, but most are seeing the same problems - they just have different opinions on how to fix them. And some are lazy and selfish and secretive, and will just say 'forget that house, give me $200', instead of telling you what they think the issue is, and how to solve it - most problems are readily solvable, unless your house is under a cliff overhang or on a floodplain...

If you want good chi, get off your butt to keep your house orderly and uncluttered, make it as aesthetically pleasing, and useful, and comfortable, and appealing a space as you can. Take care of your yard and your house plants. Make boring places interesting. Do that, and you don't need to bother calling an expert in. Keep your home healthy and beautiful and feeling like a safe, comfortable sanctuary for yourself and your family... Then your chi will be fine.

[tracer]

Dave Stewart wrote:

I have had the flu for a month. My secretary (who is Chinese) thinks that it is because I overlook from my window in my office a set of small pyramids constituting a roof (pointy=bad).
Uh oh. Her Chinese new-age advice directly contradicts the usual Ancient Egyptian new-age advice, which states that pyramids made things better.

(I have an office mate who seriously believes that produce placed inside a pyramid will spoil more slowly than produce places inside a container of non-pyramidal shape. He says I should "test" it by putting a grape under my own home-made pyramid, but if the grape doesn't spoil more slowly than a normal grape, that just means that my piramid wasn't "perfect" enough. :rolleyes: )

[hedra]

Oh, and for Dave - according to the standard 'mucky' F/S, pointy doesn't equal bad unless it is pointed at you directly (the angle edge or point, that is) - overlooking a 'fire shape' isn't enough to constitute bad all by itself. Actually, if your natal number indicates that you are an earth person (rather than, say, metal or wood), overlooking a fire shape is ideal for you! Fire feeds Earth in the generative cycle. But if you are a wood person, it will sap your energy, and if you are a metal person, look out!! (Hey, your secretary is probably not a F/S expert, no more than most of us are interior design experts - and given the complexity of some of the rules, most people won't get it 'right' by winging it, or even by reading a book or two...) Oh, and being higher than the element is considered positive in many cases, too.

(Lessee... grapes would be wood energy as a plant, but metal energy as a shape, so putting grapes under a pyramid should just make them turn into raisins real fast?)