This Offbeat Life
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Feng Shui for the Traveler

by Leslie Strom

I don't want to imply that I understand the ancient discipline of Feng Shui beyond the rudiments, but if you start out with some good information, your fortune can change in very specific ways and very quickly. Feng Shui is the ancient art of reading the energy and symbolism in your home in order to improve it. I took up a variety of Feng Shui practises in December, and... well, it works. You can practise anywhere, including on the road, at your desk, in hotel room. Here's what I took as proof:

In one seven-day span in April, I hit an interesting streak of luck. I went to the big annual Media 100 dinner in Las Vegas with about 200 people in attendance and won the huge software door prize worth about $600. The next night we went to another event, the Product Bash, where I won another huge software door prize, worth about $600. The next week in Seattle I went to an Adobe software presentation with about 500 other attendees and - you guessed it - won one of the two big door prizes, valued at about - you guessed it again - $600. Not only that, but two people sitting within a few seats of me won prizes. What had I done to radiate all this good fortune? I blindly followed instructions in a handful of Feng Shui books. Can anyone do this and get the same results? It's worth a try. Of course, if your life is just fine, you might just stick with what you have.

There are two schools of Feng Shui, a pragmatic practise (furniture arrangement, enhancing devices like mirrors and chimes), and an esoteric practise (symbolism, candle-lighting, bell rituals, etc.) which also enhances your ch'i but in more abstract ways. Feng Shui masters say you need both kinds. For most Westerners, it's best to lay the groundwork with the pragmatic.

First: Line up your resources

Just before Christmas I purchased Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui by Karen Kingston, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life by Carter & Fessler, and the Feng Shui Candle Lighting Calendar for 2001 by Tina Ketch (see sidebar). I recommend them highly. Read at least one of them.

You'll want to make a map of your living place, so get some graph paper and do that. From this you will make a bagua map, which tells you the attributes the various areas have. (Behold the scruffy sketch of my own apartment) Consider this map - if your love life is crummy, look at the area to the far right corner as you stand at the door looking in. Is it cluttered? Do you have negative symbolism there? Dregs of bad relationships that you've been tuning out for a long time? How about your fortune, your health, your reputation? Look at the corresponding areas in your home and you may find some uncanny correlations. For me, my prosperity area (SE corner) had a toilet, sink, bathtub AND kitchen sink dragging ch'i down the drain. Likewise, my travel & career (N) area was well-organized and well-used.

You might also get a bead on a New Age bookstore or someplace which sells things like crystal faceted balls and relevant publications. I use the East-West bookstore in Seattle, but there are web sites with supplies as well.

Next: Clear the clutter

This will take some time, and reap you immediate benefits. Don't mistake this for Spring cleaning - it's similar but the motivation is completely different. Every item in your life gets a close inspection, from kitchenwares to towels to CDs. You can't resort to simply exiling things to a closet or the basement; you must eventually deal with everything. This process took me four full days, where I got rid of three large pieces of furniture, three quarters of my clothes, half my kitchen stuff, half my CDs and videos, half my books and most of the stuff I had stored in my filing cabinet. I found happy takers for the more valuable stuff, had Salvation Army over three times, and made a special run to the dump. If you do this step right, you'll wind up with only things you love surrounding you, and a lot of empty space, the void that will attract the things you really want and need.

Then: Arrange your furnishings

Once again, consult your books, but a lot of this just makes sense. Sharp pointy things that project into the room are harmful ch'i, furniture you have to dodge (like the ottoman in the "Dick Van Dyke Show") is going to block ch'i, stuff like that. Consult the books for advice on color, materials, forms, cures and other influences. You might find it helpful to make detailed notes on your bagua map.

After that: Remedy the bad ch'i you're stuck with

Like the aforementioned four-drain vortex of financial ch'i death I was faced with, I couldn't exactly get rid of my bathroom and kitchen fixtures. The best I could do was apply remedies. In this case, I taped red ribbon around the sink drains, keep the toilet seat down, and laid on as much purple as I could find (towels, soaps, scrub puff, bath beads, you name it). I hung a little crystal ball in front of the bathroom window. If I were really diligent I would keep the place much cleaner than I do. The other "remedy" would be to move all together.

Ch'i responds to things in a fairly equal fashion. If you apply Feng Shui enhancements to a grubby disaster, you'll enhance it all right. Martha Jordan put an eight-sided mirror under her phone to attract more clients, in a room full of post-divorce junk and burdensome stuff. She got the client phone calls, but they were clients she didn't want. Too much enhancing of a grimy prosperity area might get you a windfall of money with strings attached or wealth of a nature you don't want. So don't just go running amok with crystal balls and purple paint.

Finally: Try the more esoteric stuff (like this isn't?)

This part is likely to make you feel a little silly, but it's also the part that will work for you. Consider it an unquestioning practise. In other words, just do it. My friend John, pal Donna, and my mom all tried pragmatic Feng Shui with good results. John in particular found the perfect job after he Feng Shuied his townhouse. I enjoyed greater household order, but took to whining that nothing miraculous was happening like it was for everyone else.

Then I tried candle lighting rituals as outlined in Tina Ketch's Feng Shui Candle Lighting Calendar. It's a nightmarishly convoluted thing to figure out, with variables like one's birthdate and gender, color and height of candle, orientation of the house, day of the month, hour of the day, and place in the house. But once I got it written down on the calendar, I was diligent about lighting the candles at the right place and the right time. This is when things began happening. The fun part was lighting a candle in my love area, and getting a phone call from an old boyfriend the next day, or lighting a candle in my career area and getting a new client the next day. All the software prizes came to me after I lit candles in my career and prosperity areas.

Share it, take note of the changes, laugh all the way to good fortune.

I've been passing along Feng Shui tips and books and suggestions and getting a bunch of snickers and "if you say so" looks. But hey. It works for me, it works for billions of Asian people, and at the very least, you'll wind up with an orderly house which has a magic all its own.

Leslie Strom hasn't tried spinning a chicken over her head, but only because chickens have ch'i, too.