All for car recovery

The most timid step into the world of Feng Shui (pronounced Fung Shway) instantly reveals a misty landscape of incongruously juxtaposed features and ferny trails leading in every conceivable direction with hundreds of sign posts in many different languages - all claiming to lead to the top of the mountain of wealth,health and happiness.

Which is to say there are numerous branches of Feng Shui, each with their own principles, rules and traditions and a whole lot more practitioners with their own take on one or more of those branches.

As happens with a lot of traditional teachings(think Yoga or Zen Buddhism for example), that come to America, the teachings transmogrify into something the originators of that practice would not recognize or even want to be associated with. And it becomes very difficult indeed to distinguish the snake oil vendor from the well intentioned but not well educated, from the rare person who actually really knows what she's talking about.

So what are we, who don't intend to spend the next decade demystifying Feng Shui or to hire a Feng Shui Master, to do? We recognize the value of harmony, we want health and wealth. Is there something we can do along the lines of what this five thousand year old practice claims to offer?

Indeed yes.It's called common sense and aesthetic sense applied to ones living spaces. I realized this when I began studying Feng Shui and discovered that I'd been practicing it for decades. I've been designing gardens and landscapes throughout America and sometimes abroad for over thirty years and the two fundamental principles of both landscape design and that ancient Chinese study have to do with practicality and aesthetics.In short, if the space isn't attractive it isn't right and if it doesn't work well it isn't either.

If there is some unattractive element - a concrete slab or a misplaced rock in the landscape, dust bunnies or old magazines in the living room, something needs to be done about it because every time we encounter some little thing that bothers us,that's bad Feng Shui - it takes energy.

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