Dowsing versus Feng Shui
by Clif Sanderson

There’s no doubt that studying dowsing gives us a very wide vocabulary and the tools useful in apprehending the fields of energy which permeate the cosmos. But what I think is more important is that we can now define our work in relationship to past generations of dowsers and geomancers. It gives us a unique performer’s stage to overlook past and present ideas - those which echo with truth and reality; things so essential in these days of confusion. The melding of dowsing and feng shui is a very real practicality.

Here is my definition:
“Feng shui is the art, science and experience of prospecting for the intrinsic harmonies resident in any environment, be it physical, emotional or mystical.”
We are not talking here about the trinkets found in the crystal shops, not the articles found in women’s magazines right after the Monthly Horoscopes, nor many of the books written to serve the economy of the writers, but the profound knowledge, ground and filtered into more than 5000 years of hard, often troubled and confusing human observations.

True feng shui, known as the Form School, began during those centuries when communities consisted almost entirely of farmers or people of the land. Later on, when villages had become towns and cities with universities, and few people knew the skills of the land, Confucius and others developed the Compass School which required education, mathematics and reliance on the directing influence of the compass. Intuition and observation became of little importance. Today, we can use either approach, however, I favour the Form School, as it gives us freedom to exercise our native abilities to fit into any situation, given that there will never be two similar requirements, whatever the questions raised.

That is, using our generally Western biased mind, with its desire to know ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘when’, we find increased awareness of our surroundings and great pleasure from ‘knowing’ what to do, led by both dowsing and feng shui hand in hand.

For example, in 2003 I was commissioned by the senior architect of the BBC in London, to investigate why so many of the 4000 staff of the Head Office, in White City were unhappy to be working in that building - a seven-storey monstrosity shaped like a giant square donut. The empty space inside showed no heart, for all the world like the interior of a penitentiary. I made several recommendations and the Director General and the Financial Director of the BBC accepted my suggestions.

What was interesting to me, was that some of the staff were noticing the changes even before I did anything. Might I suggest that the combination of dowsing and feng shui, in this case was critical.

On another occasion I was invited to lecture on feng shui to the Moscow Institute of Technology. Without a brief I was given free rein to speak of any aspects of the practice.

Imagine my concern when towards the end of the speech, there was a rustle of chatting one listener to the other, however out of politeness I was allowed to finish.

As soon as I had completed the presentation, a group of the professors gathered around me, demanding that I expand on my statement that students, either in their home study room, or in an auditorium, will never reach their full potential if the ceiling over their head has a single slope (a classic feng shui rule). As the room I was speaking in did not have such a faulty ceiling, I was curious why they had got so interested. It transpired that they had, for a long time, noted that when otherwise accomplished students sat exams in one of their large classrooms, which had such a ceiling, they would invariably have much less successful results. Since this was, after all, the Institute of Technology, they immediately decided to form the intention to call in their own experts to have the ceiling remodelled!

These examples serve to illustrate the desire of feng shui to create an atmosphere of balance and harmony. A one-slope ceiling (or roof) is an incomplete geometrical shape; or perhaps an empty space needs to be ‘described’. There’s nothing mystical about that!

What might take us into the world of the sceptics (that is, to the depths of those who do not understand) might be applied when I was asked to help a (then) new shopping mall on the outskirts of Sydney. The developers were distraught because the foot-count was considerably down on the necessary predicted number.

Several things were ‘wrong’. The architects, in a flying expression of steel and engineering had created, in the exact centre of the open space in the heart of the shopping area, two escalators, one up and one down, a gigantic “X” – now you might say what does that mean? Well, doesn’t an “X” resonate with failure! Not only that, many people, and this is the sort of realistic aspect required of feng shui, are scared of heights and they would not feel safe on the open-sided escalators. I recommended that huge posters of delightful things (not selling points) disguise the construction.

As it happened there was also a ‘no-no’... since right next to the butcher’s shop, was a hair salon. This created problems for both shops because if a lady is going for a special hairdo, her mind is on the coming transformation, she does not want to be confronted with a mundane display of meat at that time. In this particular situation, the butcher’s use of knives also clashed with the gentle scissors of the hairdresser.
Usually we do recommend that hair dressing shops be free standing, as the continual use of scissors cuts the profits for the surrounding businesses. With one or two other adjustments the management described a large increase of sales.

Of course this practice works in mini, or private, scale as well. In your own house, do the doors hang in ways that allow easy access? Can visitors easily see your front door, or does the garage (i.e. the car) take precedence over their welcome?

Are you having difficulty selling your house even though the location and price are right? Very often only a small adjustment may be needed. Finally, feng shui does allow for a great deal of originality once you grasp the concepts.

In the southern German city of Kalsruhe I was asked to help a man with a family living in a row of semi-detached houses. His wife loved the area and the house itself, but was continually feeling that in some way her life was being restricted.

I asked him if she might be able to go and stay with a friend for a day... she was agreeable. The back garden area was a tiny square lawn with some bushes in pots. What I did was to ‘force’ the perspective. Instead of the square lawn we shaved the edges so that it tapered towards the back fence. We shifted all the potted plants, which had been casually arranged along both sides, so that the tallest ones were nearer the house, the shorter ones towards the back. We took some irregularly shaped paving stones and made a meandering path which got narrower as it went to the rear. She immediately felt the difference and as far as I know they lived happily ever after.

What I feel is that when we do our dowsing, for people who do not know anything about the practice, they can be very much helped by practical visible changes as seen through feng shui.
Oh, and please ask your friendly Chinese person how to pronounce feng shui correctly (-hint, a clue – it is not “feng schway”).

If you are interested, I am happy to answer questions as well as offering my Feng Shui Home Study Course in CD-ROM format. Fourteen chapters of this course include full explanations and more than 100 full colour examples of gardens, buildings and parks which represent beneficial and non-beneficial energies.

Clif Sanderson
clifsanderson@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.deep-field-relaxation.com