Introduction to Feng Shui-Chi, Yin and Yang

Chi can be positive or negative, good or bad. Positive chi brings health, wealth, abundant opportunities, and happy family relationships, while bad chi brings accident, bad luck, poverty, and sometimes even illness or death. The main goal of Feng Shui is to attract and create good chi and to deflect and eliminate bad chi.

Killing chi can be caused by natural or man-made environmental factors that create poison arrow. These lines of destructive force can occur inside or outside the house and are caused by straight lines, sharp edges and angles, and projecting corners of roads, buildings, and furnishings (even the blades of a ceiling fan!). Large structures that dwarf your house, or menacing natural features, such as an overhanging boulder, also create bad chi. Install a yin bagua mirror or other reflective material over your front door to deflect bad chi.

Chi can also stagnate due to clutter or lack of natural light go rocketing out of your house because of the wrong placement of doors, windows, or furniture. But don’t worry, there are solutions for all these problems.

YIN and YANG

The concept of two kinds of energy called yin and yang is fundamental to Taoism and Feng Shui. The idea that the universe is in a continual state of change, moving between yin and yang, seeking a state of balance, was first expressed in the ancient Chinese text called “I Ching”, or book of Changes. Yin and yang are relative terms used to compare the world around us, and every person, object, material, and process can be analyzed as more yin or yang when compared to something else. Yin is a dark, moist, soft, yielding, quiet energy, an energy of stillness and, taken to an extreme, lifelessness. Yang is a bright, dry, hard, active, lively (even noisy) energy.

Soft materials such as bamboo or wood are considered yin, while hard, shiny materials are yang. In terms of shapes, anything that has a stabilizing or grounding effect (a square, for example) is yin, while anything that could move (a sphere, for example), is yang. By following the principles of Feng Shui to balance and harmonize yin and yang energies when you furnish and decorate your home, you’ll attract the chi that supports the activities you typically pursue in different areas. This is common-sense Feng Shui: a bright, sunny (yang) room keeps you alert while you work, while relaxation or meditation is easier in a shady (yin) spot.