Was one of those things, “Chair Dance”?
For another fun look at Feng Shui, check out the episode of Bullshit! that deals with it (I think they discuss bottled water in the same episode). Basically, they exposed feng shui “experts” as the charlatans they are. Three independent feng shui folks (who all charged a freaking shitload of money) made recommendations on the same house. Their recommendations and their reasoning were basically all at odds with each other. …
It’s just design. A “Feng Shui expert” might be nine parts bullshit, but he or she could probably make a bachelor’s apartment better that it was. So could a Western interior designer.
Am going to have to politely disagree with that one.
I love design, and I think feng shui is an interesting enough design concept. I wouldn’t adhere to it (and in fact a lot of my taste runs counter to feng shui traditions), but I think it does have plenty of aspects that are worth considering. I try to avoid the more spiritual aspects of it due to lack of interest on my part.
I do have a question about exposure and response prevention therapy, if that’s okay. I don’t know very much about it. I’m having a hard time getting my head around how doing the opposite of feng shui is any less obsessive than following feng shui in the first place. I could see it more if a person were from a feng shui culture, because then doing the opposite would be challenging, but if feng shui has no inherent meaning for you, what meaning does the opposite of feng shui hold?
Well, you hit the nail on the head as to what I was referring. But the reason for the vague use of energy is it also refers to how sound moves through the building and the intended purpose for the flow of human traffic energy. The reason you say ‘energy’ in a vague way like that is that it’s a lot easier to explain to anyone who isn’t hopelessly pedantic, than trying to discuss every type of energy that will flow through the building.
I had a girlfriend who believed in all of that “energy flow”, crystals, and new agey stuff. While I reject the reasons behind feng-shui, I do think her apartment was very nice to be in, aesthetically pleasing.
There’s, I guess, from what she says, many different kinds of feng-shui allowing quite the variations in decoration and layout. One book may not be the be-all of information, allowing you to pick and choose what you want to do and still not bring the wrath of evil spirits down upon you.
As an aside: we don’t date anymore, despite her intelligence and cuteness. It’s just not good to be in a relationship where you’re rolling your eyes at your partner’s belief system.
Good Feng-shui makes things much easier should a high speed chase (ala’ Ferris Bueller) occur thru your house or property.
I LOVE the apartment building with a hole in it!! 
It has a wonderful aesthetic quality; it’s just fun to look at. And about that chair dance… the advice came straight from Carmen Electra, how COULD it be the wrong thing to do, seeing as how she’s the fount of all knowledge? 
Well, here’s how it works for me. Any system that claims to influence the outside world through some kind of “magical thinking” or “magical behavior” will have inherent meaning for me as soon as I find out about it. It doesn’t matter if it came from China or Siberia or Mars. So the idea of doing something that’s the opposite of what feng shui advises (and it doesn’t matter in the least if we’re talking about the genuine thing or tips that came from an article in the Enquirer about it) is incredibly scary to me.
ERP is all about identifying what scares you most and then confronting it, immersing yourself in it, never avoiding it, and keeping yourself from ritualizing in order to try to neutralize it. What makes feng shui concepts work so well here is that they honestly do seem to be set up as a recipe for OCD in the first place-- it’s all very structured, and clear advice is given about what not to do. Since almost all of my OCD is mental at this point, feng shui provides a wonderful opportunity for immersion in the things that scare me most (magical thinking, in this instance.) If I only cared about systems of magical thinking that originated in America, feng shui wouldn’t be useful, but I can latch onto ANYTHING!! 
So, it’s all good.
But I seriously do think that for OCD folks who aren’t yet at a stage where they’re doing ERP, feng shui could be a VERY bad thing, because it’s tailor-made for obsessions and compulsions if you try to follow it. (And I honestly wonder how much the entire structure has to do with OCD anyway.) In a non-Asian context, I think this is actually much more likely, because there’s no underlying cultural reason to be following feng shui; it just makes the OCD jump up and down and yell yippee skippee, unless used as a deliberate part of ERP.
Please elaborate - this was in a Hong Kong newspaper article about advice from geomancers.
As an aside, in the same article they sent some professional geomancers to the UK, and they analysed various buildings in England. The top feng shui scorers? Georgian townhouses in Bath, with a “near perfect” interpretation of Feng Shui. Which to me adds weight to the opinion that it’s actually some sound aesthetical rules (since Georgian architecture in turn is based on an interpretation of classical Greek design), mixed up with pure nonsense and couched in mystical terms.
The problem with the notion that it’s pure nonsense couched in mystical terms or merely aesthetic rules is that you are judging the interpretation of another culture, not the other culture itself. The other culture taken as a cohesive whole makes a lot more sense, but we take little bits and pieces of it. Divorcing things from their cultural context make them seem like nonsense. Most aesthetic rules are based off of certain mathematical ideas of form, from color theory to how curves work together, or in a graphic design sense, how the line causes your eye to follow the work.
I never really understood why people feel the need to denigrate part of a cultural concept that doesn’t apply to their lives.
I think you miss my point, such as it is. I am arguing that feng shui is very real for those who believe in it. So real, that if you want to have dealings with cultures in which it is stongly believed, you need to empathise with that culture and how their beliefs pertain to their behaviour - and in particular, you should not denigrate these beliefs to their adherents. Traditional Chinese design and architecture is stunningly, aesthetically beautiful, and the principles are embedded in the culture - but based on cockamamie beliefs; conversely I’m saying this particular set of beliefs are rooted in aesthetics, not the mumb-jumbo that they have acquired over the years.
However, that doesn’t mean I or you personally have to believe in it. I understand what dragon lines are, but I don’t believe in them. Do you believe in dragon lines? If not, what are you saying here?
As for the pick-and-mix cultural acquisitions of western new-agers, well, if that’s what you’re saying is crap, I agree with you.
i’m gonna have to go with feng shui on this one.
when you are extremely nearsighted and been exposed to the 'bloody mary in the mirrror" horrour, you tend not to have many mirrors around; let alone one you can see in a bad blur from your bed.
i find “move your stuff, change your life” an easier feng shui book to deal with. the book mentioned in the op will make you head spin, causing the rooms you are working on to roll all over the place.
I dont know, there is this greek organic yoghurt that stew leonards carries that sort of draws me to it … that stuff is killer good!
I’m no fan of the belief that the stairs in one’s house should not run down directly to the door, because that lets energy/money flow out of the home. In the middle of the night, when the house is on fire and full of smoke, I’d have more immediate priorities.
Actually, what really bothers me isn’t the original feng shui embedded in Asian culture. It’s the popularized version of it that has filtered over here. I’m sorry to say that I think some people pushing it are, IMHO, taking advantage of OCD folks. It just appeals to us TOO perfectly, and if we aren’t in treatment, it’s exactly the kind of thing that gets us into trouble. Now, whether the popularizers actually know this, that’s another question… I don’t see any true evidence that they are really aware, to be fair. All in all, though, I think there needs to be more information out there about this issue. Well, at least we have Monk, I guess. :rolleyes:
To actually answer your original question, I do agree that Feng Shui seems like culturally-validated OCD. As a matter of fact, I once wrote a paper arguing that superstition was an outgrowth of OCD tendencies. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” knocking on wood, throwing spilled salt over your shoulder, avoiding certain numbers, various luck rituals that involve turning in circles, and so forth. All of these things strike me as control rituals.
It seems to me that almost all humans have some tendency toward OCD beliefs and behaviors, so people can “catch” someone else’s ritual to the point that it becomes a well-known superstition.
But I too have some OCD tendencies - not enough to seek treatment, except when my PPD made it worse, but enough that I have to occasionally do a little self-therapy that sounds like what you’re doing. So maybe my view is skewed as well.
(I did get an A on the paper, though!)