You can’t live without Ch’i.

You can’t live without Ch’i so when you’re feeling low on energy and the space around you feels flat, think about what you can do to cultivate it. Cultivating good Ch’i is at the heart of good Feng Shui practice.

We can’t live without Ch’i because Ch’i is the energy of life that flows through all of creation

The existence of ch’i was first documented some 3,000 years ago in both China and India.  Ch’i (Chinese), Prana (Indian),  Ki (Japanese), Pneuma (Greek), Ruah (Hebrew), to name a few.

“In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours healing was accomplished by moving energy.” Szent-Győrgyi

Szent-Győrgyi was an Hungarian Nobel Prize Scientist who discovered that energy generated by electrons in motion was what kept things alive and healthy for as long as possible.  Anything to promote good ch’i had to be beneficial.  Szent-Győrgyi followed his own advice and died in 1986 age 93.

Power to the people

The Chinese recognise the body to contain channels (meridians) that function like ch’i power lines, delivering ch’i  to our organs and tissues.  The purpose of a practice like acupuncture is to keep these power lines open.  We can also increase the circulation of ch’i through conscious breathing techniques like qigong.

Ch’i also circulates through our living and working spaces. The Chinese call the practice of rebalancing environmental ch’I, Feng Shui.

A contemporary approach to Feng Shui blends ancient wisdom with modern wellbeing practices to achieve balance, calm and joy.

In Feng Shui our buildings represent our ‘outer bodies’ while the rooms within correspond to organs and the walls, doors and windows are like the tissues of the body.  Vital energy enters through the front door known as the mouth of ch’i and makes a tour, passing through internal doorways and escaping through open windows.

Whether a person or a room, the more ch’i they contain the more vitality is present.

When the path of ch’i is blocked our body gets sick, shuts down, and eventually dies.  So it is the ‘outer body’ atrophies from neglect, which is why it’s equally important to attend to the quality of environmental ch’i before it has a negative effect on you and yours.

Difference between your ch’i and the ch’i in your bedroom

“What distinguishes inanimate objects like rocks from birds and bees and leaves is the level of energy, or the ‘excitability’ of electrons within those atoms of energy that make up the molecules in matter.  The more easily and often electrons can transfer between molecules, the more “desaturated” matter becomes, the more alive it is.  What enables this transfer to occur is oxygen…”  James Nestor, Breath

Ergo the best way to keep your body alive and healthy is to provide it with a constant supply of the powerful electron acceptor, oxygen, through practices that encourage slow, deep breathing.  You’ll notice you sleep better, evolve faster, and live longer when you do.

The best way to keep your home and workspace alive and healthy is to encourage it to breathe and that breath to penetrate every nook and cranny.

The longer you spend in a room – or a favourite spot within it – the more important it is to attend to it.  Your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual vitality will improve when you do and be beneficial to everyone housed there.  They don’t have to believe in Feng Shui first because ch’i will attempt to course through their body – and their surroundings – whether they like it or not.

Keeping ch’i circulating and removing any pockets of stagnant energy always pays dividends.  It’s particularly so when your life circumstances are in a state of flux, which is true for most of us at this time.  To negotiate challenging transitions with an upper hand, Feng Shui advocates making space for change.

If this sounds too much like hard work then be prepared for a bumpy ride.  It is better to remove unnecessary hazards in advance than face consequences you had not bargained for.

Feng Shui is an environmental science

Every ancient culture had their version of environmental science – Indian, Native American, Celts, Scandinavians, Ancient Greeks & Romans, to list a few.  Which is why there are many schools of Feng Shui, which can be confusing unless you know what school you’re in.  All schools of Feng Shui have a common purpose however – to enhance the spaces around you that correspond to your health, wealth, work, relationships, creativity, career, personal growth, travel, and peace of mind.

The effect of ch’i isn’t limited to what you can see.  What your rooms contain. How the furniture is arranged.  The colours, shapes and textures used in decoration. The affect the sun has on the building as the earth orbits. The property’s relationship to its setting. Etc. Etc.

Feng Shui also investigates the ‘empty’ space around us because it’s filled with psychic ch’i – the invisible mental and emotional residue people leave behind them.

Imagine walking into a room where people have been in dispute.  Or an empty room in a deserted building.  Negative ch’i lingers like smoke and heavy vibes accumulate, leaving an imprint which permeates the walls and furniture.

Feng Shui then is how we appraise the quality and quantity of ch’i in our Environment and knowing what to do to improve it.

Feng Shui is a well-being and self-care practice. It augments the benefits of existing well-being practices like meditation and yoga, which can quickly be eroded when returning to a space starved of good ch’i.

Imagine you are a flower.  An orchid planted in a rose bed will not fulfil its potential as well as if it were planted in an orchid bed and receiving all the right conditions for it to flourish.  It’s the same for you.

Feng Shui creates the ideal flower bed by aligning the space (Environment) in which you are growing with your desires and intentions (Vision) and removing any weeds that block your path (Enterprise).  Hence Eve.

If only it were as simple as keeping the toilet seat down, a remedy often cited in Feng Shui.  Our life accomplice ch’i requires us to understand the symbiotic and dynamic relationship between people and the space they occupy.  Who you are and what you need to live well does not exist in a vacuum.  It varies from one person to another and one family to the next, and will change as you grow and evolve.

To dismiss the space in which you are becoming as unimportant is to live in a time warp. You remain physically anchored to the past that has been and gone while struggling to create a future in which your inner and outer environments are not aligned.

Where you live has its requirements of you as it strives to fulfil its potential.  It will provide for you to the same degree to which you attend to its needs.  By staying attuned to what those needs are and doing what is necessary to improve the flow of ch’i can only serve you.  By creating harmony, balance and flow in your Environment is to nurture your Vision and boost the Enterprise that constitutes your life.

About me

I am an Intuitive Feng Shui practitioner, creating homes and working environments aligned with the vision they have for their life.  Trained in the Western School of Feng Shui and with Denise Linn, USA, I’ve been a consultant since 1995. www.marynonde.com