What the Chinese tradition of feng shui is. The rules and colours for decorating your home, from the kitchen to the bedroom, and your office, to unleash positive energy — Qi.
In Chinese, feng shui literally means "wind and water". Wind is the sky, the air that carries clouds heavy with rain, water without which no creature on the Planet could survive. The ancient discipline of feng shui is considered, precisely, indispensable, and is a set of practices for reading and interpreting landscapes, the shapes of buildings and the internal spaces within them, with the aim of avoiding negative influences of various kinds that can affect buildings and people.
The practice of feng shui is a tradition over five thousand years old, of Chinese and Tibetan origin, and has its Japanese equivalent in Ka-so. In ancient times it was called Ti-Li, meaning the art of "the black bird" — a symbol of the solar spirit, god of geography and astronomy — whose teachings formed the basis of agricultural and land-planning practices.
This tradition is still deeply rooted in both China and Hong Kong: when purchasing a plot of land or a building, the first expert to be consulted is a feng shui master; his opinion influences the property market, and even when a business suffers a setback it is quite normal to ask him for a verdict on any hostile energies set in motion by the type of architecture or interior decoration.
Feng shui reading practices are an integral part of the training of those working in architecture, and in ancient cultures, alongside the aesthetic concepts of "beauty" and "harmony of proportions" and the economic ones linked to the use of land and its characteristics, they became closely bound up with the practice of geomancy — that is, the respect for subtle equilibria (earth energies, telluric energies, and sky energies, cosmic energies) with the aim of making the energies of a place favourable to human settlement.
According to this ancient Chinese discipline, the relationship between the home and the person identifies the vibrational aspect of energy structures in which fields of subtle energy can be detected; these are recognised as forming a pattern through which a vital energy flows, connected to all forms of life. The space in which one lives and works, when analysed in this way, becomes a container that adapts to our personality and to the activities carried out within it, in accordance with the laws that harmonise the forms, functions and substances of all matter thus constituted.
Feng shui in the bedroom: the best position for the bedroom is as far as possible from the main entrance and from the street, beyond the median line of the building, ideally overlooking a tranquil natural landscape. If, on the other hand, the bedroom is at the front, a mirror hung facing the door, behind the median line of the house, will "push" the room back.
Feng shui attaches great importance to the layout of the bedroom. The bed should be placed transversally, with the headboard oriented towards the east. The optimum position is in the corner diagonally opposite the entrance, so that neither the head nor the feet point directly towards the room's doorway.
To respect feng shui in the office, the work desk should be placed at the strongest point in the room, so that the back is protected and the gaze can be directed towards both the door and the window. What lies in front of the workstation is also extremely important, as it increases Qi and is a source of inspiration. Desks positioned facing a wall should therefore be avoided.
The rules of feng shui in the kitchen teach how to lay the table, choose colours and foods for a formal or convivial lunch, an intimate dinner or a family meal — all in order to circulate positive energies in accordance with the cardinal points and to release negative ones from the environment in which the cook transforms food using the five elements: water, wood, fire, earth, metal.
Feng shui advises not placing mirrors in the bedroom due to their ability to disturb the energy field. Covering mirrors with cloths at night considerably improves the quality of sleep.
At their core, Western and Eastern architecture share the same fundamental concept: the achievement of balance. However, while Western architecture achieves this through the use of symmetry, Eastern architecture arrives at it through a dynamic process: a yin is never equal to a yang — they are always in a shifting relationship, now one dominating, now the other; the task is to balance these two forces.
In ancient times, feng shui was consulted to choose the ideal location on which to build a village. For this reason, the landscape had to reflect the presence of the four celestial or emblematic animals, which we can define as the guardians of the four directions: the dragon, the tiger, the tortoise and the red phoenix.
Water is an element associated with abundance, wealth, money and communication. A watercourse flowing calmly near the house — preferably from east to west — or a small lake to the south that, by reflecting sunlight, can enhance its beneficial presence, are therefore considered auspicious. Water must always be present in the rooms of the home.
by Mauro Bertamè