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| thebodymindandsoul - mind - feng shui - the language of feng shui The language of feng shuiIf you are a scientist, a doctor, a mathematician, or an architect, your professional language is an essential part of your tool kit as without it, your job can be difficult, but to anyone who is not in that profession, it is likely to sound completely bewildering. Like any other subject area, feng shui has its own language that to the casual observer can appear to be rather strange and irrelevant. Anyone who picks up a book on feng shui, will soon begin to struggle with what appear to be conflicting concepts and strange ideas. Words like Balance, Energy or Chi crop up all the time, as do Yin and Yang, the five elements, not forgetting the dragons and tigers who are usually accompanied by a whole host of other animals as well as various mountains, fairies and flying stars. Like any language, the words themselves are just the carriers of meaning; without the meaning they have no value. Anyone who makes a serious study of feng shui seeks to develop understanding of how people are affected by the space in which they live; not as a scientist would measure it in purely terms physical terms of atmospheric pressure, temperature, and humidity, but as the human side of people can experience it. We have all been in places where we don’t feel comfortable, and know immediately when we are in such a place. Feng shui can offer a way to evaluate why a place has such an effect on people. As might be expected, this is an extremely complex process, and the language needed to support it can also be complex. The system of yin and yang is used to describe the concept of opposites. Up and down, in and out, light and dark, hot and cold, man and woman, the list goes on; everything we experience has two aspects. If someone is too hot, then introducing cold into their life can create a more comfortable existence or a better “balance” as it might be expressed in feng shui language. The five elements, of wood, fire, earth, metal and water are intended to encapsulate energetic characteristics such as growth, expansion, contraction etc. and so can be used to describe the times of day, the seasons in a year, a life cycle, and so many other cyclical processes. To give an example, children can be seen as in the growing or wood phase. Older people are likely to be in a metal phase, or contracting. Typically, older people control the younger, so the concept of how metal controls wood is easier to understand. A young person would not enjoy living in an old peoples home as the “elements are conflicting”. The word dragon can refer to a body of land, such as a mountain range. Once this connection is made, much of the mystery disappears. It also becomes easier to visualise what a real fire breathing dragon would look like; we still see them on the news from time to time, causing havoc in the local population and “eating” children who get in its way. Just be aware that there are other meanings of the same word, so context becomes important. Feng shui is a study of how people can
be influenced by the world around them. It is a complex, multidimensional
subject with its own language to support it. If it all sounds
weird at first, just take time to learn the language and you
will find that understanding follows. |
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