Chapter 1: FENG WHAT?

I once met a woman who set off travelling around the planet with little more than the ticket to her first destination in her pocket, but she had one extraordinary skill – the ability to read palms – and no matter where she went, she was never short of a place to sleep or food to eat. She would pick a local restaurant or hotel, meet the manager, and offer to do palm readings for guests in return for

food, shelter or a small wage. When I met her she had been doing this for three years, had already visited more than a dozen countries, and was having the time of her life.

I have found that Feng Shui has this same universal appeal. When people discover how much their home can affect them, for better or for worse, they are usually fascinated to learn more.

Feng Shui

The rising popularity of Feng Shui in recent years has been extraordinary. I first discovered a passion for working with energy in buildings in the late 1970’s and began teaching Feng Shui publicly in 1993. When people asked me then what I did for a living and I told them, their common response was a puzzled look and a “Feng WHAT?” Nowadays they generally nod wisely and the conversation simply glides on. Just about everyone has heard something about it these days.

Feng Shui is the art of balancing and harmonizing the flow of natural energies in our surroundings to create beneficial effects in our lives. These natural energy flows were well known and understood by the

ancients, and knowledge of them still exists in some cultures today. In Bali, for example, which is my home for half of each year, the people still live in total harmony with both the seen, physical world and the unseen energy world. Daily offerings at hundreds of thousands of household shrines throughout the land and an endless procession of indescribably beautiful and very highly evolved ceremonies in the island’s 20,000 communal temples ensure that balance and harmony is maintained. This, to me, is Feng Shui at its best – not just a set of principles applied to an individual building for a specific result, but a whole island of three million people in tune with the sacredness of the land and living Feng Shui as a complete way of life. I have a tremendous affection for the place.

My Approach To Feng Shui

My own approach to Feng Shui is rather different to that of other practitioners because I work directly with the energy of each space. Over a twenty year period, I have developed the ability to see, hear, smell, taste and sense energy in enhanced ways, so to begin a consultation the first thing I usually do is go around the entire inside perimeter of the building, taking an energy reading with my hands. The history of events is recorded in the walls and furniture in the form of subtle electromagnetic imprints, and through reading and interpreting these I can detect everything of significance that has ever happened there. Traumatic or repetitive events become more deeply embedded and have a correspondingly greater effect on present day occupants. I am also able to find areas where the energy in the building has become stagnant and discover what needs to be done to improve its flow.

Whenever I come across clutter, its energy field is unmistakable. It presents an obstacle to the flow of energy and has an unpleasant, sticky, unclean feel to it, like moving my hands through unseen cobwebs. This is what first made me realize that clutter causes problems in people’s lives. It also has a distinctive musty, pervasive odour which I can smell if I walk into someone’s home, even if the clutter is hidden away from sight. Actually, if I tune in, I can also smell it in a person’s aura (the energy field around their body) if they stand near me, because they become imbued with the smell of it. But don’t worry about this if you ever meet me in person – there is so much clutter in the world that I don’t tune in too often!

The good news is that after clearing clutter, this unwholesome, stagnant energy and accompanying odour quickly disappears.

The Feng Shui Bagua

One of the most interesting aspects of Feng Shui, and one which I will be focusing on a lot in this book, is the Feng Shui ‘bagua’ grid. This can be used to locate where each aspect of your life is located in any building you occupy.
As an example, there is an area of your home to do with Prosperity (you can find out later in this book exactly where it is). Many people read about Feng Shui or attend a workshop on the subject, get very excited about it, and then rush to put it into practice without realizing they need to clear their clutter first. They hear they can

hang a mirror in their Prosperity corner to attract more wealth. But what if that area is cluttered with junk? Sadly, putting a mirror where these is clutter is more likely to double their financial problems than resolve them.

This book focuses on just this one aspect of Feng Shui – clearing clutter – which is so vital to its successful application. It is the first book ever to explore this subject in depth in this context, and is intended as an ideal starter for those new to Feng Shui and an invaluable tool for those who have studied it for a while.

Space Clearing

This is the name I coined many years ago for the branch of Feng Shui that I pioneered and have become best known for. It is the art of clearing and consecrating energies in buildings, and is primarily what my first book was about.

For your life to work well, it is vital to have a good flow of life force energy in your home and workplace. Feng Shui teaches many ways to improve this energy flow and Space Clearing is one of the most effective. It is a simple yet powerful 21-step ceremony to clear the stuck energies which accumulate in buildings over time and cause you to feel stuck in your own life. The results are impressive, and many people choose to make it part of their regular building maintenance programme so that the space is energetically as well as physically clean and clear. There are very few buildings in the world which are so well designed that they don’t need regular Space Clearing, and Feng Shui always works better and faster when done in conjunction with Space Clearing. There are three main causes of stuck energy, which Space Clearing addresses:

• Physical Grime
• Predecessor Energy
• Clutter

Physical Grime – By this I mean all types of dirt, dust, filth, grease, gunge, crud and general grot. Low level energy always accumulates around dirt, hence the old adage, ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’.

Having a good clean-up is an essential part of Space Clearing.

Predecessor Energy – Everything that happens in a building is recorded in the walls, floors, furniture and objects in the space. This builds up layers in much the same way as grime does, except that we cannot see it, and it affects us in profound ways. For example, if you move into a home where the previous occupants were happily married, it is likely that you, too, will find marital bliss there. If, on the other hand, you or the previous occupants have been unhappy, divorced, ill, gone bankrupt, put on weight, or any of a million other things, those energies remain in the building and will generally cause history to repeat itself. These lingering frequencies create stuckness of the kind you would certainly want to clear.

Clutter – Any kind of clutter creates an obstacle to the smooth flow of energy around a space. This in turn creates stuckness and/or confusion in the lives of the occupants.While the Space Clearing ceremony to clear predecessor energy can easily be accomplished in a few hours, the cleaning and clutter clearing aspects can take some folk a while longer. In fact, it is fairly common for me to hear from readers that they glided through the early chapters of my first book, came to the clutter chapter, and there the bookmark stayed for six months or more until they had done enough work to read on!

These are the kinds of letters I get:

“I have now cleared out most of the clutter and am ready to do the Space Clearing ceremony. I feel that in the last six months I have not only sorted through every cupboard in my home but also through every part of my life. I already feel healthier and happier than I have felt in years.”

“I read the clutter chapter in your book and am now on my fourteenth rubbish bag and still going strong. My husband is astounded because he has been nagging me for years to do this.” “I thought one skip would do it but I am now on my third. How did I ever let things get to this state?”

“Your book inspired me to clear out my junk room and have a car boot sale. I made £300. That inspired me to clear out my garage, and I made over £600. I have used the money to take my first holiday in years and I’m sending you this postcard to say ‘thank you’!”