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Tuesday, July 28, 1998
Las Vegans seek positive results through practice of feng shui
By Joan Whitely
Review-Journal
Janice Wilson of Las Vegas says in all seriousness that she credits her latest career advance to the fact she had rearranged the furniture at home.
Wilson recently left a sales position with IBM to become director of sales for Convergent Communications. The job just "walked in the door," Wilson claims, after she applied the Chinese art of feng shui to the home she shares with her husband and two teen-age children.
"It's not superstitious. It is a little mystical," says Wilson of feng shui.
Feng shui -- which is pronounced "fung shway" and means "wind and water" in Chinese -- is the art of placement, according to Kristie Allan, a feng shui teacher. Allan visited Wilson's home for a consultation and recommended the changes that Wilson
executed.
What Wilson did isn't mysterious. Outside, she replaced a tree that had died and added some yard lighting. Indoors, she removed all business trappings -- desk, fax machine and the like -- from the couple's master bedroom, moving her home office to a downstairs guest bedroom.
"Your bedroom should nourish you," explains Wilson. By giving her work life such prominence in their bedroom, Wilson believes she was subconsciously manifesting her ambivalence at trying to juggle the demands of work, marriage and family.
Once she separated the two domains, she reports, she got the new job, doubled the value of her investment and retirement accounts by switching to a new broker, and started gaining publicity for a book she'd written, "The Gift from the Goddess."
The tree needed to be replaced, Wilson adds, because when it "broke" through storm damage, that supposedly impaired the family's finances. The exterior lighting is supposed to draw good "energy" to the family.
The cornerstone theory of feng shui is that a home environment reflects the occupants' personalities, state in life and outlook -- which all influence the future.
By balancing all elements of a home -- shapes, colors, materials of the house itself, the items inside and the outdoor landscaping -- the occupant maximizes his or her sense of comfort, pleasure and security, which leads to prosperity.
"In feng shui, everything is clean, orderly, in working order," says Allan, who teaches feng shui in monthly classes at Jo Ann Etc, a crafts store at 2160 N. Rainbow Blvd.
According to Allan, feng shui is based on physics, because it relies on the notion that everything in the material world is interrelated with energy. When a person likes a particular item of decor or furniture, it's because each has a unique energy, and the two energies resonate well.
When a house is designed and outfitted in harmony to the people who dwell in it, "positive energy just flows" through their lives, Allan teaches.
Feng shui also can be applied in the workplace. According to Armand Martine, owner of Armando's Salon, 4161 S. Eastern Ave., chronic turnover among his employees stopped after he made some feng shui changes to "ground" the shop.
Specifically, he installed marble flooring in the reception area, two angel statues to greet customers and several indoor water fountains.
Feng shui started from a centuries-old practice among the Chinese of researching the most auspicious place to bury a departed loved one, in the belief it determines the fortune of the deceased person's descendants. That history appears in a feng shui textbook written by Sophie Merle, a Las Vegas woman who worked as an interior designer in Florida.
At a recent feng shui class in Las Vegas, participants -- who just happened to be female -- discussed decorating problems in their homes and reported back on successful resolutions they attributed to feng shui.
Men are normally skeptical when their wives start experimenting with feng shui, Allan says after class. But most admit the home ambience improved with the changes.
"I love coming home now," says Julie Olson, who told about some feng shui for her yard and front door.
Olson's background: She lives in a duplex, oriented such that the front door is halfway down her side of the building. Routinely, vendors would attach their leaflets on her garage door rather than the front door. Olson is facing significant financial debts, she also notes.
In the belief she needed to dislodge some blockages in her life to entice good fortune, Olson moved away a garbage can that she had been keeping, for convenience, next to the front door. The can is now out of view, inside her backyard gate.
She painted the front door red, which symbolizes wealth in feng shui. And she trimmed shrubbery that was blocking the view of her front door and an adjacent window.
The result?
According to Olson, "I love coming home and saying, `I have a red door.' You couldn't see it before. ... (Also) I was amazed at how much light was coming into the house."
Instructor Allan points out that by removing garbage from the doorway, Olson also was presenting herself as more attractive to the world.
Olson made some indoor changes, too, to reinforce what feng shui believers would call the wealth and prosperity area of her home. Within several weeks, she won a much-needed $2,500 in a drawing.
Never, Allan tells the class, keep what she calls a "guilt gift," some item of decor the recipient doesn't like, but holds onto only out of respect for the giver. Any unwanted piece in a home not only takes up space, "it weighs on you, takes up space inside (the psyche)," she warns.
Skipper Flippin shares a home office with her husband. Both are real-estate agents. Flippin tells the feng shui class that whenever her husband is gone, she slides over to his desk instead of staying at her own.
Her husband's desk affords a nice view of the room and the hallway beyond. At her own desk, she faces a converted closet that houses their fax machine and office supplies.
The husband, in feng shui terms, is occupying the power seat in the room, defined as the spot from which a person can survey the entire room, and anyone entering it.
"You need to give yourself a view that's more nourishing than the (closet) chaos," Allan recommends.
If the couple cannot rearrange their desks so Flippin can gain a better view, they should screen off the closet with an attractive textile hanging, a piece of art or a standing screen.
"There's never a perfect house," Allan tells her pupils.
But there's always a variety of feng shui answers to any design or decorating problem. Above all, Allan exhorts, students must be true to themselves and the function of each space in their homes.
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