Is Chinese Feng Shui directly applicable for us
and of practical use?
Can it help us to organize our everyday lives more successfully?
When we deal with Feng Shui , we must first understand that all the information given there comes from a 2500 year old Chinese culture and tradition. If you want to get a personal impression of this culture and tradition, it is best to look at films and photo books about China. You must first get an impression of the architecture, the houses, the slums, the palaces, the landscape and the people, how they dress, how they behave, what kind of feeling comes over to us! For this purpose, you should also watch the ordinary Kung Fu films that are still set in ancient China, because the confrontations in these films clearly express the Chinese people’s view of morality and honor.
While we in the West are used to the fact that in our action films the heroes still display a certain fairness, which distinguishes them from the criminals, in Chinese films it is completely normal for several fighters to attack an opponent in order to liquidate him. The goal is only to win at any cost, and the end justifies the means. You should bear this aspect in mind if you are thinking of commissioning a Chinese Feng Shui master to plan your company or home. This master also wants to win at all costs and according to his method. So this is completely normal.
When we have received new impressions from different sources, we have to consider whether we want to aspire to a similar way of life. Would you like to live and act like the Chinese in the movies? Or would you like to design your house in a similar way?
If we consider that we have all been incarnated countless times on this earth, then we have certainly lived in China before, and of course some of us still carry hidden memories of this foreign culture within us. So some people will feel strongly drawn there. Most Europeans will consider China and its culture more as a fascinating vacation destination and not to live there or to remodel a German house in this way.
So before we start redesigning our own living space according to the rules of traditional Feng Shui , we should have a good idea of how we really want to live! Probably not Chinese, but rather Western, but better than before!
If we approach the matter with a little patience and above all with a lot of sensitivity, then we can learn a lot from the Feng Shui books without having an exotic bell put on us, in which we don’t feel any better later than before all the changes and investments.
Practical example:
There are a whole series of small truths and wisdoms from Feng Shui that are generally applicable. For example, it is not pleasant to sit on a chair or sofa and have to look straight ahead at the edge of a protruding wall, e.g. the edge of a chimney. In this case, the easiest thing to do is to move the furniture and not make the chimney disappear through a plasterboard wall and lose living space in the process.
Of course, it would be possible to conceal the chimney by using a plasterboard panel and insert shelves into the wall cladding to the right and left of the chimney. But it would also be much easier to dispense with the cladding and simply install a suitable shelf on either side of the chimney so that this protruding edge is defused.
This example shows that some Feng Shui instructions make sense, but that you have to implement the simple instructions with your own feeling and expertise in order to achieve a pleasant result with as little effort as possible.
Let me give you another example:
Feng Shui demands that toilets and washrooms are not directly visible when guests arrive. Of course, this makes sense in traditional China, where toilets were outhouses and showers were just a trellis wall that reached from the knees to the shoulders. Since our modern bathrooms are designed quite differently and guarantee the desirable seclusion, it makes no difference at all whether this shower and toilet room is at the beginning or end of a corridor. You walk past it without paying any further attention to it. Of course, the door to a bathroom should be closed. Guests should not be confronted directly with a view of a WC when entering a home. So Feng Shui is right again.
The third example I would like to mention is the kitchen.
According to Feng Shui , the kitchen must not be next to the toilet and washroom. The explanation is above! The smell of an outhouse should certainly not permeate the kitchen! But for our kitchens and bathrooms with closed walls and sanitary facilities, this instruction is irrelevant. It is practical if the rooms with water connections are next to each other.
4. example food:
If you are inviting guests over for a social evening or perhaps even to discuss a business matter, then the whole apartment should not smell strongly of the kitchen and the food that will be served later.
If we welcome guests with a strong smell of food, they are automatically on the food level, i.e. preoccupied with their instincts and not particularly responsive to business.
Concluding a deal means going hunting and being successful. Afterwards, when you have brought the prey home, you can eat it. If you smell the already roasted prey first, the desire to make a deal, i.e. to hunt, is much less. Open-plan living areas in modern, generously designed western-style houses are therefore not very useful, either you can hear the strong exhaust from the kitchen area or you can smell the food.
From these examples, you can see that Feng Shui does indeed reflect simple contents that play a role in our lives, but we should not overemphasize these factors, but rather implement them according to our Western customs and draw our own conclusions from them.
© DHA Kyborg Institute
