by Keith Hornback

Created on: June 27, 2009

One New York restaurateur, guided by a Feng Shui practitioner, very carefully placed a laughing Buddha on a well-chosen partition in the dining room of his new restaurant. Next, he taped special coins beneath the tables throughout the restaurant, all this in an effort to balance the flow of energies in the upscale eating establishment. A common practice in the east, scenes like this have become more and more common in the west. Are you one of the skeptics, inclined to dismiss the practice but admitting you know little about it? You are not alone. Please read on as we delve into feng shui's origin to answer the question: Is Feng Shui a valid guidance system for modern living?

Origin of Feng Shui

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language feng shui is defined as: "The Chinese art or practice of positioning objects, especially graves, buildings, and furniture, based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects." Some have associated it with geomancy, a method of divination involving figures or lines of geographic features.

Although lumped in with many so-called 'New Age' philosophies, there is nothing new about the roots of feng shui. While the various experts are in disagreement on an actual date of origin we know the practice is at least a couple thousand years old and already in the mainstream during the West Han dynasty, 202 BCE to 220 CE.

Among the Oriental concepts developed back then was belief in the balance of yin and yang (darkness and light, hot and cold, negative and positive) as well as the idea of ch'i (literally 'air' or 'breath'). These, along with the five elements of wood, earth, water, fire, and metal, form fundamental parts of the theory of fng shui. Indeed, the Chinese words feng (wind) and shui (water) reveal that nature itself is concentric to the philosophy.

They believed that influential lines of energy (ch'i) ran through any and all landscapes, whether in nature or in one's home. If these lines are discordant or disproportionately weighted to one side or the other (yin or yang) the result is a lack of energy and harmony, bad luck, unhappiness and possibly worse scenarios. By pinpointing the locations where the energies of sky and land are brought into balance one can maximize the health, wealth, and welfare of those living or working in any particular location. This balance is achieved by changing the landscape or building to harmonize the energy. These

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