by Sue Bluze

Created on: May 21, 2007   Last Updated: July 22, 2008

Feng Shui offers a variety of tips and tools to improve your life when decorating your home or office. Feng Shui is an ancient art developed over 3,000 years ago in China. It is a way of balancing the energies of the environment to assure health, wealth and good fortune for people living or working in that particular space.

"Feng" [pronounced Fung] means "wind" and "shui" [pronounced shway] means "water". In Chinese culture gentle breeze and clear water have always been associated with good harvest and good health, thus "good feng shui" came to mean a good luck, prosperity and fortune, while "bad feng shui" came to mean hardship and misfortune and bad luck.

Feng Shui is based on the on the idea that the land is alive and filled with energy. The theories of yin and yang [light and dark, good and bad], as well as the five elements; which are some of the basic aspects of a feng shui analysis, come from Taoism.

The main tools used in a feng shui analysis are the Compass and the Ba-Gua. The Ba-Gua is an octagonal map or grid containing the symbols of the I Ching, the ancient oracle on which Feng Shui is based. It is one of the easiest methods used to ascertain the Feng Shui of any given environment. The feng shui compass is used to access deeper information about the site or the building. It consists of bands of concentric rings arranged around the magnetic needle.

Getting started with feng shui can be easy when you start with the feng shui basics and gradually move on to the more complex feng shui levels. To help you get started, here are some helpful feng shui steps for beginners for which you don't need to know how to use the Feng shui compass:

1. Clear Out your Clutter, get rid of everything you do not use or love. Clutter clearing is a time and energy consuming process that will feel like therapy, but it will help you "lighten up the load", so to speak. Do not skip this step, as it is an essential one in creating a harmonious, clear energy in your space. Don't do the whole house in one go it will be far too daunting. Tackle it a drawer or a shelf at a time if you need to. Start at the top of the house and work downwards in a methodical manner.

2. Have Good Quality Air and Good Quality Light in your space - these two crucial elements are very important for good Chi, or energy. Open the windows to let fresh air in. Clean the windows inside and out to let more light in, introduce air-purifying plants or use an air-purifier. Allow as much natural light as possible into

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