Feng Shui is a method of determining the flow of energy around and through buildings. In Chinese, Feng means wind and Shui means water. It is based on an ancient Chinese idea that good health requires a positive energy flow through our environment and through our bodies. Just as acupuncture uses needles to improve the flow of energy through our bodies, Feng Shui uses small adjustments in our environment to improve the flow of energy through our homes and workplaces.
Feng Shui is more than 3,000 years old. It was first developed to design the graves of the dead rather than the houses of the living. Over thousands of years, it has become a highly complicated art and science. It has many rules to achieve the goal of improving the flow of energy by working with nature rather than against it. Today Feng Shui is often used to determine the best site for a house, the layout of the rooms in the house, or the position of furniture in the rooms. To apply it fully, you need to work with a Feng Shui expert, but here are some simple guidelines that can bring positive energy into any building.
If you are building a new house, it is important to choose a good location. An ideal location would have a mountain at the back and the sea or other water in front. However, a fast-running stream is not good. The site for the house should be square. Do not build your house in a dead-end road. This will block the flow of energy. Also, be sure not to site your house near a graveyard or a butcher since death destroys the balance of energy.
Once you have chosen a suitable location, use the natural landscape of the site as much as possible. Do not change the flow of underground water and keep the natural levels of the ground as much as possible. Your house should be roughly the same height as surrounding buildings because a house that is too high or too small will disturb the harmony. Inside your house, design high ceilings to allow energy to circulate freely around the rooms. Avoid long corridors since energy gets trapped in long narrow spaces. Most importantly, be sure to allow as much sunlight as possible to enter your house. If you are trying to make an existing home better, here is some more general advice that draws on the principles of Feng Shui as well as common sense. Open all the windows in your house frequently. It is astonishing how many houses are full of old stale air. Just getting some air into the house will make everyone feel much better during the day and sleep better at night. Keep your garden tidy and do not place any objects near your front door. In fact, untidy rooms and objects on the floor in any part of your house will decrease the energy flow.
Feng Shui has become very popular, especially in the United States. Many of its principles sound like common sense, but some of its ideas seem highly unlikely. For example, some experts have written that a house pointing northeast will cause stomach problems and that a house pointing northwest will cause infertility. There is certainly no evidence to prove this and no reason why it should be true. If you are building or remodeling your house, it is certainly worthwhile finding out more about Feng Shui, but remember to follow your own instincts, too.
Man did not always live in cities. For most of history, people lived in small nomadic groups and survived by hunting and collecting wild fruit and plants. They followed the animals or food source from place to place. It was only when people started farming, about 6,000 years ago, that they began to stay in one place for longer periods of time. These places were the start of the first towns. But it took thousands of years before these small towns had grown into cities. Large-scale urbanization took place mainly in the 20th century. In 1900, only 15% of people lived in cities. By 1996, this number had grown to 50%. The world’s urban population increased from 600 million in 1950 to over 2 billion in 1986. This number is expected to double by the year 2050. The largest migration in the history of mankind is taking place now. Hundreds of millions of people are taking part in the migration from the countryside to the cities of the developing world.
Life in a city seems natural to most young people today. After all, 84% of the world’s youth live in cities, but they are living a totally different life to what people experienced in the past. Cities offer convenience, but they also have many problems. Cities cover only 2% of the Earth’s surface, but they produce 75% of the waste. Social problems such as crime and unemployment are much more common in cities, especially in the developing world. In Rio de Janeiro, the murder rate in 1995 was an incredible 67 per 100,000 people. Less space in cities means smaller houses and overcrowding. In Lagos, an average of 5.8 people live in a small room. Pollution is also a huge problem. Mexico City is the most polluted city in the world. The air is so dirty that when children are asked to paint a picture of the sky, they paint it grey.
Even in cities in developed countries, construction technology is being questioned as more people suffer from sick house syndrome, noise and other construction-related problems. As our cities continue to grow, we need to think seriously about these issues and develop a vision of the places where we want to live.