Feng shui lessons from a design master
I was clearly in over my head. When I signed up for an online course in feng shui, an ancient Chinese practice of using design to enhance health and prosperity, I somehow missed the part about its being a “master” class. My fellow students included three women whose homes already had been feng shui-ed by our instructor, Judith Wendell, founder of Sacred Currents, a Manhattanbased consulting firm.
I, meanwhile, was a complete novice. And I was still struggling with the basics — including how to place the “bagua,” a template that is used to divide a space into nine zones — while my peers were ticking off “the producing order” of the five elements.
But I wasn’t the only one in trouble; my New York City apartment was too.
Ceiling fan over bed = bad. My desk pushed against a wall in the living room so my back was to the doorway = bad.
A diagonal wall in my bedroom that meant a section was missing from the “wealth” zone = very, very bad.
I had them all, as well as “fighting doors” (my bedroom door knocked against my closet door when both were open). My kids’ bedrooms had the same affliction, which, it seems, could portend discord or even “hidden adversaries.” Yikes.
Fortunately, Wendell, 68, a consultant for more than two decades, was empathetic, calm and pragmatic. She was fully aware that most of us have to make the best of the flawed spaces we live in, fighting doors included.
The course was a way to drum up business during the quarantine after in-person consultations with clients had fallen off. She speculated that there might be interest in such a class, given that so many of us were spending all of our time at home during the lockdown, with ample opportunity to cast critical eyes at our surroundings.
She was right. Eleven of us signed up for the weekly class convened over Zoom.
Each class began with a medi
tation exercise, intended to sharpen our awareness of our surroundings. From there, Wendell moved on to topics such as the five elements (water, wood, fire, earth, metal) and showed us photos and diagrams of landscapes, houses and rooms, pointing out arrangements that adhered to the tenets of feng shui and the “adjustments” that could be employed where spaces fell short.
Wendell was always quick to suggest workarounds to compensate for problematic features, such as beamed ceilings, which many of us consider charming but, apparently, can exert “downward pressure” that could be “damaging to a relationship or impact health.” And if I couldn’t see myself embracing some of the remedies recommended in the textbook — such as hanging bamboo flutes (on beams) or crystals (to fix a confusing or tight spot on a floor plan) or red paper firecrack
ers (to prevent burglary and accidents) — others were easier to envision. Careful placement of a mirror turned out to be a solution in so many situations that one master reportedly called it “the aspirin” of feng shui.
Some people have found aspects of feng shui easy to ridicule. And Wendell, who has a degree from the long-running BTB Master Feng Shui Training Program, is well aware of this. At the start of each class she shared a cartoon poking fun at feng shui, which is pronounced “fung shway” and means “wind and water.”
It became broadly popular here in the 1980s, after relations between China and the United States opened up, though immigrants from countries where feng shui spread very likely brought the practice here well before that.
Some of its tenets seemed like plain common sense. The concept of yin and yang was a reminder
that rooms need a balance — of rounded and straight-edged objects, for instance — and never too much of a single color or pattern, although Wendell said that some rooms might call for more yin than yang, and vice versa. A home or place of work should not be overly cluttered.
But while many of us declutter to foster an atmosphere of calm, feng shui says clearing out extraneous stuff will help welcome the chi, or cosmic energy.
My biggest takeaway from the course was the idea of the “command position,” which enables you to see the doorway of a room without being directly in line with it. The command position gives you a feeling of control and empowerment.
Three-quarters of the way through the course, I started to get the hang of some of the basics of feng shui, though I realized it would take years to acquire any
thing approaching a complete understanding. I was sorry when the last class arrived. Wendell invited each of us to make an appointment to call her to discuss anything we wanted.
I emailed her some cellphone shots of my apartment and nervously waited for her reply.
Wendell could offer advice only “from afar,” she wrote. She had criticisms and recommendations (including adding mirrors in the bedroom and kitchen so we could see the reflection of people coming in those rooms and thus gain command of the doorways).
She did, however, have high praise for the old black-and-white family photos and etchings by my artist grandfather that I had grouped on a wall of our bedroom. In a stroke of dumb luck, I had hung them in the “benefactors” and “creativity” zones of the room, exactly where they belonged.