What Is Feng Shui and Does It Work?
Being at one with your surroundings is a nice idea. But is the study of Chinese Geomancy – or Feng Shui, as it’s better known – anything more than an outdated pseudoscience?
No one believes in classical Greek physiognomy anymore, so why do they believe in this ancient Chinese approach to harmonising themselves with their environment?
Isn’t Feng Shui just a case of shuffling your furniture around a bit until it feels nice? If so, why do we need to call it anything?
Riluxa delves into the history, concept, tradition and usage of Feng Shui and asks, ‘does it have any place in contemporary interior design?’
The History of Feng Shui
The practice of Feng Shui has been around way longer than the IKEA advert that brazenly mocked it back in 2008 – roughly 6,000 years longer, in fact. That makes Feng Shui more antiquated than Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen’s fashion sense yet, potentially, more valuable than the IKEA catalogue. *Shock horror!*
Yes, the use of this ancient Chinese method of harmonising oneself with one’s surroundings goes back all the way to 4000 BC and the Yangshao and Hongshan cultures of China who, we’re assuming, had some pretty luxurious homes replete with all the latest bamboo get-up.
It actually started with a bit of stargazing, which is nice. That’s right, astronomy was used to find connections between humans and the universe – stuff like when the sun shone most in certain areas and so on. And Chinese architecture was actually designed around that, using the part of the sundial that casts a shadow, the gnomon.
(Obviously, we now know that good housebuilding means South-facing, all the way, but back then there weren’t even compasses, so you know… fair play for figuring out a bit of a system!)
More qi, vicar?
Bet you always thought it was spelled ‘chi’, didn’t you? (That’s certainly how it’s pronounced - Ed.) Well, either way, one of the central concepts of Feng Shui is qi, the traditional Chinese notion of a vital life force that forms part of any living being.
Heavy stuff but, if you’ve seen those Shaolin monks breaking breeze blocks with their foreheads, you know there’s probably something to it.
The practice of nurturing one’s qi is called qigong and it’s an essential practice of Feng Shui, which aims to design and position buildings in ways and locations that maximise their qi – their life-giving properties, in other words.
Yin and yang
Polarity or duality is another major part of Feng Shui – the sense that everything must be balanced in order to create a constant sense of harmony. The Chinese express this as yin and yang.
In Feng Shui, this translates to things like bright areas for warmth and shaded areas for cool. Or balancing the focal points of a room like security (e.g. the corner furthest from the door) and freedom (e.g. the door in the opposite corner).
The overall goal, at least in terms of home design, is to align the building and its interior perfectly between yin and yang force fields.
Which might all sound a bit Star Wars, but it sort of also feels a bit like common sense, when you think about it.
You want the bathroom at the opposite end to the kitchen. You want the living space closer to the earth and the sleeping space closer to the stars. Right?
Form and Compass branches of Feng Shui
There are two main branches Feng Shui – one that predates the invention of the compass and, you guessed it, one that comes after.
The Form branch is all about how the shape of the environment (flatlands, mountains, rivers, volcanoes, etc.) and how their yin and yang balance out to find the ideal location within which to position a building.
The Compass branch is all about how the main points on the compass and their intersections – so N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW – have their own unique qi. So, in interior design terms, what you put in which part of the house all depends on what vibe you want it to have, roughly speaking.
Is hiring a Feng Shui consultant worth the money?
There are three ways of looking at Feng Shui.
The first is that it’s a load of old rubbish and not really anything more than a bit of common sense in terms of how elements of the home work in conjunction with one another.
If that’s how you feel, there’s no way you’re even going to think about hiring a Feng Shui consultant, architect or interior designer. But you might have a quick browse at a few Feng Shui guides just to see what looks nice.
The second is that you’re convinced that there’s something to it and you’re a bit of a have-a-go Joe or Josephine, so you might give it a whirl yourself.
This is what they call ‘Symbolic Feng Shui’, which is the type that’s been made popular by authors like Denise Linn and Lillian Too. You can learn this pretty easily from books and achieve an impressive sense of Feng Shui balance without too much effort.
Then there’s what you might think of as the platinum level, heavy duty, serious, no-messing-about type of Feng Shui. This is the stuff practised by people who believe it’s the difference between a life of complete peace and harmony and one of chaos and disharmony.
And, hey, if you agree with them on that, you’d be putting your whole interior design project in jeopardy if you didn’t hire a Feng Shui consultant, so you know... don’t do that!
Where can I study Feng Shui?
If you’re somewhere between a casual fan of Feng Shui and a serious believer and you want to really delve deep into the practice, you can actually study it at many institutions around the world, from the New York Institute of Art & Design to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
How do we feel about it?
It wouldn’t be for us to say one way or the other whether we think Feng Shui is a valuable investment, really.
The truth is, our business is making homes look, function and feel perfect – so we’re open to all different kinds of design concepts, frameworks and belief systems, Feng Shui included.
What we can say is that, having delved into it at a somewhat deeper level than this little overview (hey – we had to keep you entertained: this is a blog, not a text book! Ed.) there’s definitely something to the idea of creating a sense of balance in your interior design.
Should a bedroom make you feel sleepy? Absolutely. Should a bathroom make you feel fresh? Definitely. Can you organise such factors based on the principle of a six-millennia-old Chinese philosophy? Quite possibly!
Scandinavian mass furniture manufacturers aren’t always right about everything, you know. Go with what your heart tells you. (That’s not Chinese philosophy – that’s just Riluxa philosophy.)
If you want to learn more about Feng Shui, read this article written by Kate from SwankyDen: How to Feng Shui a Living Room.
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