Architectural Approaches - Feng Shui and Energy Flow

Feng Shui & Energy Flow

Ch’i, or lifeforce, has been a recent rediscovery in our culture. It plays an important role in the process of shifting paradigms. At its worst, the old paradigm only produced an architecture of geometrical shapes, often just to impress others, without any consideration for how that structure interacts with its surroundings. Feng shui studies how life energy, whether as sunlight, air, water, or people, moves through a space. Practitioners design spaces so that this ch’i flow has a positive, rather than negative, affect on the way in which inhabitants feel.

Terah Kathryn Collins reports, in The Western Guide to Feng Shui, that there are three basic principles:

(1) everything is alive (buildings are dynamic living bodies),

(2) everything is connected (by ch’i),

(3) and everything is changing.

These points are remarkably similar to many indigenous views which also see all of matter composed of sacred substance. This position is also well-aligned with current reemerging ideas that view the Earth as a living being.

Nancy SantoPietro defines ch’i as an invisible force that flows through us and determines the difference between being alive and being dead. Here we encounter two different meanings of ‘aliveness’. The invisible force that SantoPietro refers to as ch’i is a lifeforce that animates organic life. The ‘aliveness’ of everything, buildings included, that Collins reports must be of a deeper nature. Even a dead carcass then, without any remaining lifeforce, would still be ‘alive’ in this deeper sense. Perhaps this ‘aliveness’ is on an energetic level, in that molecules are still vibrating, the mass of the body still contains potential energy, and its presence can still be ‘felt’ by those sensitive enough. Pyotr Uspenskii wrote in Tertium Organum that if it were possible for us to embrace hundreds and thousands of years and the entire planet all at once, then we might be able to ‘see’ the growth of minerals and metals.

Elizabeth Murray defines feng shui as the Chinese art of placement which strives for harmony with Nature. Achieving this harmonization, inhabitants are able to increase their feeling of vitality. Yet as Richard Feather notes, feng shui goes much deeper than simply placing mirrors and hanging crystals as its popularization might suggest. He believes that feng shui (meaning wind & water in Chinese) was developed originally as just good ecological design principles. Its greatest benefit today is to enhance our awareness of energy flow.

Tom Bender sees this flow of energy between us and the places that we create as that which brings these material things to life. He believes that places live within the community that we form around them, and that they continue living through the reverence that we hold for them. Denise Linn considers the house as a being in that it is composed of constantly changing energy. She believes that our homes are evolving through their connection with us and with the natural world. Every house is slowly deteriorating from the effects of weather and geology. Yet through the care of its inhabitants, a house is also being renewed and regenerated. So every house is constantly evolving. Linn goes as far as to say that our homes have consciousness that is nourished by how we hold them in our heart and that consciousness is sustained through love.