How Does the Art of Feng Shui Work?

Published January 30, 2020
Modern interior design living room

How the art of feng shui works is not a mystery but is based on ancient principles of form and placement. These principles are used to free up spaces so beneficial chi energy can flow through these areas unencumbered.

How Chi Energy Is Connected to Feng Shui

Chi energy is believed to be the life force of all living matter. The chi energy is made up of two opposite energies, yin (female) and yang (male). The goal of feng shui is to recreate this ideal balance in homes and other structures.

Why Chi Energy Needs to Be Balanced

In nature, chi energy maintains a balance of yin and yang energy. However, this energy can become imbalanced due to natural disasters and various changes. In the structures that are manmade, this balance can be disrupted or blocked.

What Clutter Does to Chi Energy

Clutter is one of the most destructive forces of chi energy flow in a home or building. Clutter serves as a damn that blocks chi energy from entering and moving through a space.

woman sitting in messy office

Why Decluttering Is Vital to Good Feng Shui

When chi energy is blocked, it will accumulate and instead being vibrant and healthy, the chi energy becomes stagnant and unhealthy, much like a stagnant pool of water. Decluttering a home or other space is the first step in freeing chi energy so it can move freely about your home.

Why You Want Chi Energy to Flow

Since chi energy is the life-giving force that feeds all life on Earth, you need this energy to flow through your home or office. Chi energy provides a constant influx of new energy to course through you home and prevent the energies from growing stagnant. Stagnation of chi energy can bring financial hardship and losses. It can also be the cause of illnesses.

How Does the Art of Feng Shui Work With Chi Energy?

With the goal of feng shui to restore chi balance, there are several methods for achieving this goal. These include a few feng shui rules that assist in freeing up the chi energy and provide a way to activate what are known as elements.

Split Faced Woman

Five Elements

There are five elements that provide energy to feed life (chi). These are water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. The five elements fuel each other in what's known as the Productive Cycle. This cycle maintains the balance in nature and chi energy (yin yang).

Productive Cycle

The productive cycle starts with water (rain from heavens) that feeds wood (plant life) that fuels the fire element the residue of the burned wood is ash that creates the earth element that creates metal (minerals/rocks). Metal draws or attracts water and the cycle starts over again.

Feng Shui and Resetting the Productive Cycle

The element productive cycle of life maintains the balance of yin and yang. If this cycle gets out of balance either in a destructive cycle where elements destroy each other or an exhaustive cycle where element deplete each other, then feng shui can assist to restore the productive cycle.

How Productive Cycle Is Reset

Imbalance is the cause of productive cycle issues. Too much of a specific element or the introduction of a conflicting element can throw everything out of alignment. When you know the proper element needed for a room in your home or office, you can determine a feng shui remedy to restore chi balance.

Elements and Balanced Chi Energy

In Classical feng shui, a compass is used determine the sectors of a home or building. Simply put, sectors are the main eight compass directions. Each of these sectors (compass directions) is assigned a specific area in life to govern. Each sector also has an accompanying element.

How Elements Work

Whenever the chi energy in a sector is in balance, the element is activated and properly balanced with no conflicting elements overpowering it. If a sector is afflicted, meaning the chi energy is out of balance, then a feng shui remedy must be applied.

Why Activating Elements Works

If an element is missing in a sector or overpowered by another element, one possible recommendation from a feng shui practitioner will be to activate the element for that sector. If a conflicting element is the culprit to the chi imbalance, the client will either add a different element or remove the afflicting one unless impossible.

Colorful Crystal

Why You Should Care About Feng Shui

There are many reasons why people care about feng shui principles and work to achieve chi energy balance in their homes and offices. The main reasons is how chi energy affects each area of your life.

Affects on Areas of Life

You can easily see how inauspicious sectors can influence and impact your life. If your health is suffering, you can use feng shui to correct the northeast (health) sector of your home. The same is true for any other area of your life.

Making Feng Shui Adjustments to Improve Life

In feng shui, a practitioner will not only assess your home, but will discuss any issues you and your family are currently experiencing. The practitioner will use several formulas to calculate other aspects of feng shui that can negatively and positively affect your life and then make recommendations.

How Beneficial Chi Energy Affects Your Life

When you apply feng shui principles to your daily life, you increase the amount of auspicious and beneficial chi energy you receive. Imagine living in a home that is cluttered with boxes, equipment, piles of dirty clothes, dishes in the sink, floors not vacuumed and layers of dust and cobwebs.

  • What kind of feelings do you think you'd have day-after-day in such an environment?
  • Do you think your psyche would suffer?
  • Would your attitude toward life turn negative?
  • Do you think such an environment would promote health and well-being?
Messy apartment counter tops

A Feng Shui Home and Chi Energy

Replace the previous vision with an organized and clean home where clothes are clean and put away in drawers and closets, bathrooms sparkle, floors shine, rugs are vacuumed, sinks are clean, dishes and pots are clean in cabinets.

  • Do you think your psyche would be happy in such a home?
  • Would your attitude toward life be positive?
  • Would you find such an environment healthy?
  • Which home would you prefer to live in?
modern kitchen

Feng Shui Makes a Difference

With the two scenarios of homes, it's easy to understand the benefits that feng shui principles bring to a home just from a visual perspective. Now imagine that vision filled with energizing chi that continuously flows into your home. This is how feng shui works and how it gives you the energy needed for a happy, healthy and productive life.

Always a Feng Shui Remedy

There are many ways chi energy can be blocked, or a sector be afflicted. The good news is feng shui always has a remedy for these problems that are usually easy to implement to correct chi energy and bring it back into balance.

How Does the Art of Feng Shui Work?