If your heart doesn't lift when you return home, you need Feng Shui

We did start our stint with Feng Shui with the Yin Yang and the five elements and now that we have our basics right, we may question the reason of the whole process. Why should sophisticated post-moderns take an interest in an esoteric system of placement that is 3,000 years old so complex? The simple answer being that this wind-and-water philosophy (feng shui literally translates as "wind" and "water") works with astonishing ease. It's an elegant antidote to lives abuzz with computers, cell phones, beepers, chattering faxes, and hectic schedules, which intervene between the natural world and us. And this is how -

Chinese philosophers believe five things determine a good life: fate, luck, accumulated good deeds, education, and Feng Shui. We may not be able to control external circumstances, but we can control our immediate environment by reaching out to opportunity and fortune. If your heart doesn't lift when you return home each night, you need Feng Shui. If you don't leave home in the morning refreshed, comforted, and confirmed in your innate worth, you need Feng Shui. That's the gist of this science. Wherever you live, an efficiency apartment or a mansion on the hill, your home should be a sanctuary for repairing hurts and celebrating joys.

Feng Shui uses practical means to alter the physics of space and infuse rooms with harmony. Thus, our lives improve because energies in the home are focused. Life opens up in remarkable ways. For example, a lady resumed her social life after a five-year hiatus when she placed a four-foot statue of Kwan Yin, goddess of compassion, on the crest of a low hill overlooking her garden and lit the figure with nine (the most auspicious of numbers in Feng Shui) lights. The illuminated Kwan Yin smiled down on guests gathered on the moon-lit terrace. The effect was magical. You can replicate this effect on a balcony, in an alcove, wherever sufficient space sets off a symbol of affirmative emotions.

In Feng Shui, everything in the universe is linked by Chi, a universal energy, which, when flowing smoothly, that is, neither too fast nor too slow, conducts vital forces to work on our behalf. If you doubt this, consider where you thrived, did your best work, met people who greatly interested you. You felt energized in a particular way - well, that was Chi par excellence. On the other hand, consider where you felt drained and lacking in vital energies. This is because you, your environment, home or office, were disconnected from the energy at the centre of the Feng Shui system. When Chi does not flow smoothly in life, difficulties grow, and one can suffer inexplicable reverses in professional, financial, and relationship spheres

Next time we shall start talking about actual placements and arrangements. Till then, you can take good care of yourself with the Feng Shui number primer.

Feng Shui Numbers Primer

1 is considered both lucky and unlucky. As the first of all numbers, it is associated with the energies of birth and other beginnings, but its ideogram looks like a bar across a door, which is inauspicious in Feng Shui.

4 is considered very unlucky because it sounds like the Chinese word for "death" and is therefore associated with loss, death, and misfortune.

5 is lucky because it is the number of the Chinese elements: fire, water, earth, wood, and metal.

8 and 88 are both very auspicious numbers. 8 is associated with prosperity and creativity and resembles the infinity symbol. There are also eight immortals and eight triangles of the I-Ching or Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese system of divination. Eighty-eight resembles the Chinese pictograph for "double happiness."

9 is extremely auspicious and considered incorruptible. It is associated with heaven, longevity, and fullness. It is also the centre number of the Ba Gua, an octagon-shaped compass based on the eight triangles of the I-Ching, with the yin-yang symbol in the middle, used in Feng Shui.

13 is considered fortunate because it is the number of lunar months in the year.