Hey everyone! It’s leave-clearing season! Can’t mention enough how much I need a break and time for myself. Juggling two jobs really isn’t easy. I promised the company that I am working for that as long as I’m in the office, I’ll focus on work there, and I can only work on my BaZi and feng shui consultations on weekday nights, weekends or when I’m leave. The whole company knows I’m doing this actually – even the top management – and I’m extremely grateful for having the opportunity to work in such an awesome place with wonderful colleagues. I know everyone’s waiting for the post on why I will never do consultations as a full-time, but that’ll have to wait for now. I did mention the reason in my FAQs, but I really want to go in depth and express some really personal thoughts and share my thought processes with everyone – but now’s not the time. Today, I’m going to talk about what every feng shui client of mine would ask, which is what a feng shui cure really is.
A lot of people have been asking me that what constitutes a feng shui cure especially when a practitioner like myself does not advocate or believe in feng shui items contrary to what’s being practiced out there. Everyone has pointed out that my views on this subject is drastically different, and it does lead to some confusion at times for the layman. Before I go on, may I just re-iterate my stand that feng shui items are really hogwash and it has absolutely no place in feng shui. I hope my readers really take what I say very seriously especially when I have be doing this for a while now. I know there are a lot of conflicting answer to such questions out there, but trust me on this and read on. You can also take a look at a very old article I wrote on whether feng shui items really work too.
Combining rooms to alter the structure of the house
The picture at the start of the post and above is from one of the audits I’ve done earlier this year. The tenant is finally done with renovations and voila~! Old HDB in Chua Chu Kang but with a brand new layout.
If you have not done so already, do check out the article I wrote on how I conduct my feng shui audits. As mentioneed, I don’t and will never believe in using items and charms as feng shui cures. Of all the books and Chinese classics I have read, there has been no mention of feng shui items being a remedy, and quite honestly I feel that it’s all hogwash with no theoretical basis. If feng shui items worked, I would have struck the lottery by now. The feng shui cures that are appled are based very strictly on the theory behind feng shui.
Some people who approach me usually get a surprise when the feng shui cure I propose involves combining rooms because it’s something they have no heard of before. The reason why I propose such remedies is because the structure of the house needs to be changed under the 8-Mansions method. The method of analysis I use is based on 《阳宅三要》, which is a Chinese classic under the 8-Mansions school, and it looks at three key areas of the house: 1) the master bedroom 2) the main door 3) the kitchen. I wrote an article for 99.co on this topic before to get more people ware of this.
When we talk about the master bedroom under this method, it’s not really referring to the master bedroom per se, but rather, the largest bedroom of the house. The reason why I get my clients to combine rooms is so that a new master bedroom can be formed, and the combined room becomes the new master bedroom. The client mentioned above took my advice and proceed with combining the rooms, and to my relief she really likes the new layout as it feels less claustrophobic and it helps her feel more well rested at home. I personally find the rooms in HDBs old and new a bit too small for my liking, and would very much prefer a bigger room. The feeling is just different.
What I basically did was to turn the house from a 六煞宅 into a 生氣宅。Under the old structure, the door is in the 巽 sector while the master bedroom is in the 兑 sector which are in conflict and have a 六煞 relationship. The technical term for the structure of this house is called 『风中见虎』。巽 represents the eldest female in the house, and because 巽 is Wood while 兑 is Metal, this clash between the important sectors of the house shows up as the eldest female in the house being harmed. Such a house is also meant for someone with 筋骨 problems and the tenant really did have a major knee injury a few years back and she’s going for surgery this year, so in a sense this house is fated for her. Think I’m making this up? See below:
I asked for her permission a week ago to use the pictures for a blog post and case study. I’ll take the opportunity to re-iterate something which I’ve already mentioned in my FAQs, which is that I do not have everything memorized in my head when it comes to feng shui and even BaZi, and I would be deceiving everyone if I said I did. I really don’t think it’s possible for anyone at this day and age to memorize everything, and like how lawyers and doctors need to refer back to their books, so do people like myself to make sure we are assessing things correctly. It’s the reason why I prefer calling myself a metaphysics consultant – if you see the word “master” on my website, it’s really because it ranks on Google much better unfortunately. I don’t like calling myself a “master” because the learning never stops. There’s really too much knowledge out there to acquire.
Back to my client’s house layout: When we combine the two common bedrooms together, the new master bedroom will now be in the North sector, resulting in the above structure which is way better than the original one. The end result is what you see in the picture above, where the house structure is now under 生氣宅。When it comes to HDBs and condos, this has always been the only feng shui cure I have proposed and the only one I will ever propose. Of course, there would be things like identify where the wealth sector is, but I wouldn’t classify them as cures, but rather what brings out the best in the house if so happens the structure allows the tenant to tap onto it. A lot more techniques can be applied in the case of landed properties, for example 楊公水法 which I applied for one of my clients whom I gave input for the design of his landed property.
I know some of you are wondering what’s the deal with 8-Mansions and what’s the theory behind it. It’s going to take a length of a thesis if I were to go into the theory of 8-Mansions but I’ll try to give a super condensed version. The name 8-Mansions basically refers to the 8 sectors surrounding the center sector, so in essence there are 9 sectors in total and you’ll always hear practitioners saying they need to superimpose a 9-grid square onto the floor plan of the house. The origins of this 9-grid square have to do with astronomy basically, and the reason why it is important in feng shui is because of the fundamental belief that whatever is reflected in the stars will manifest on Earth as well. The 9-grid square is used to divide the skies into 9 sectors so that ancient astronomers can track the movement of the stars, and with it, forecast weather and other geographical events. If you’re curious to know more, you can Google up 河圖 and 洛書 to read up on the history of how this magical 9-grid square (九宮) came about. This 9-grid square you keep hearing about is also used for the Flying Stars method (玄空飛星)。
You might be thinking, “what does all these have to do with the house I stay in”? It goes back to the theory of how our ancestors view reality was formed and the laws that it follows. You can perceive Earth’s geography as the macro view of things, and the house we stay in as a micro view of things which follows the exact same laws as the macro view. By enclosing ourselves into a space we call home, we form a little universe of our own. If I were to add a modern scientific element to this explanation, we are basically trying to explain Yin Yang and how it interacts by seeing it as what we call “fractals”. I know it all sounds very fuzzy and confusing right now, but to really appreciate this theory, you’ll have to really understand what our ancestors mean by Yin and Yang and why they see it as the building blocks of reality. You’ll also have to understand what fractals are.
This is the reason why feng shui will always be seen as a study of the environment and the laws governing the environment, and I will never see it as an art of placing ornaments.
There is a reason why I offer a house-hunting package for my clients, because there will be times where combining rooms won’t give us a desired structure, so basically nothing can be done to remedy the house. I’m always a bit anxious when people approach me after they purchased the house, because it’s not a pleasant feeling to have to deliver bad news, and on top of that tell them there isn’t anything I can do about it. If any feng shui practitioner promises you to solve every single flaw in your house, you should be a bit wary in my opinion. I hunted for the house together for the mentioned client in this post, but due to externalities and time constraints on her side, we had to settle on the selected unit which had a less-than-ideal structure, but fortunately we could make alterations to it.
The two cases below are clients who have bought their houses before approaching me, and thankfully the structures are still considered a good one although the kitchen placement could be better as the position is shared between two sectors which made me a bit uncomfortable. Under 《阳宅三要》, after we get the sector of the main door and master bedroom right, the next thing to do is to assess the kitchen, and having the kitchen in the North or Northeast makes a world of difference despite it just being a few degrees apart.
Yes, that’s my trusty brown messenger bag you see me carry everywhere.
If you’re reading this post, do make sure you go through my other posts on feng shui to hear my thoughts on the subject, especially on how one’s BaZi and the house they eventually end up in are interconnected, and how feng shui can help one transcend his or her BaZi chart as stated in 《八宅明镜》。The main take-away I want everyone to have is to throw away any preconceived notions of what a feng shui cure is and not be influenced by the commercialization of metaphysics. Feng shui has been simplified over the years to make it more accessible to the masses, but these simplifications comes with myths as well which everyone should be careful of. Hope you all found this post useful!
-Sean
