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| Feng Shui And The Burbank Police Department | ||
| Last month I met with Lt. Ed Skvarna at the Burbank Police Department. He invited me to join a panel discussion regarding how feng shui applications might be used in the future to improve police force morale. He's working on a thesis and I was both surprised and pleased that a Police Department would be taking feng shui into consideration. I invited my feng shui colleague Simona Mainini, who is also an architect, to join the panel. And Chris Shaul, a fellow consultant and teacher from the American Feng Shui Institute, also participated. Several other police force professionals were in attendance and we brain-stormed for two hours. Lt. Skvarna asked us to create a list of political and social trends which could increase mainstream awareness of feng shui as well as specific events which could easily take place in the near future---and whether or not it would effect how the police force operates. Just as one example: if someone was elected to a high office in city politics, who happened to also be an open advocate or adherent to feng shui, this could conceivably influence public policies or legalities regarding the real estate industry or city planning. One of the officers at the panel delighted in telling us about how he has been studying the I-Ching for decades. In a moment, my pre-conceived notion of him as a "good ol' boy" vanished. He was now a "mystical warrior---to protect and to serve!" Also in the group was a city Judge, ( an expert in Japanese martial arts) who stated that he would in fact take feng shui into consideration if it ever came up in court. As an example: if someone committed a crime, after living in a house with a track record for producing criminal activity, he may be more lenient or forgiving, considering whether or not the person had any control over their environment. Sound amazing? Well, all the police officers confirmed that there are "known addresses" in their community where they can count on certain houses to produce predictable problems for any occupants who live there. Without knowing it, the Police Department has been documenting feng shui case studies. For those of you who are relatively new to the phenomenon of feng shui, it is in fact possible to make predictions about certain house types being prone to: violence, drug-dealing, robbery, arson, rape, getting hurt by guns or knives, prostitution, and a whole variety of illegal or harmful activities. Throughout the panel discussion, the Police officers were also being educated about how feng shui can and should be used in the design phase. I emphasized that not only could we help create positive, productive work environments for police employees, but also in the most utopian sense, build houses which would INHERENTLY have good feng shui This can improve the quality of life and potentially reduce the crime rate! Maybe our next President should put feng shui in the national budget..... FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: I have heard that storing things under the bed is bad feng shui. Is this true? A: This notion is generated from people who are obsessed with ridding America of its clutter and the idea that chi (air currents) should flow smoothly around and under the bed.. Actually it is perfectly fine to neatly store things under your bed. That can be a good way to reduce clutter in other parts of your room. And for people who live in relatively small spaces, the bed itself may occupy the majority of a directional area where a certain element is needed. If that is the case, then placing a remedy under the bed may be the only option. Some remedies you do not need to see in order for them to work. They just need to be physically in the right location. Q: I have heard that feng shui remedies work best when you put a conscious intent behind them. A: The answer to this question is yes and no. First the "yes" part. Absolutely anything you do in life will flow more or succeed better if you apply your meditative mind and positive projection. This transcends feng shui and is very true. It also effects your personal chi inside of you. Now for the "no" part. Feng shui works, like nature, whether you believe in it or not. Poor feng shui most definitely effects kind wonderful people, who are unaware that their environment is the cause of such problems. Many skeptics have applied feng shui principles with no conscious intent for anything to work, perhaps even to prove it is nonsense, only to be surprised with the results. The idea that a feng shui remedy will work better with conscious intent is indicating that there may be a placebo effect. Real feng shui remedies work regardless of how much intent you infuse into your efforts. In fact, if it all exists within your mind, then why bother with remedies at all. Q: I keep hearing references to the southwest direction being associated with love and partnership. Is this true, and how can I activate it? A: The Black Hat school of Feng Shui (developed over the last twenty years), has arbitrarily associated the KUN trigram with a fixed location in your house to represent love and marriage. It has been assigned to the back right-hand corner of your house, regardless of what direction this really is. Further confusing the issue, some people have assumed that this also means the southwest direction is associated with love because the KUN trigram represents southwest. I can say with confidence that the back-right hand corner of your house is not necessarily a "Love" area, nor is the southwest location in your house a Love area. This is a mistake on top of a mistake. The KUN trigram is actually associated with an elderly woman, a mother figure, and currently it can bring on sickness, loneliness, and miscarriage. On a yearly basis alone, this KUN energy travels around the house and is not in a fixed location. The REAL southwest location of your house does have a partially fixed energy associated with it, that influences the elderly woman in the house. We can say she is in charge or she can even out-live the man in the house, if the southwest direction is an EXTENDED area of the floor plan. (Remembering that not every house is a square or rectangle, with equal dimensions.) Based on this information, I would say that the southwest section of your house may have very little to do with romance after all, unless it happens to have the SUN energy residing there. You can only know this with calculations on the house, including when it was built. You can also track the annual influences. For instance, this year the SUN (Soon) romance energy is residing in the south, and next year it will move to the north. If you happen to spend a lot of time in that area of the house, you will naturally pick up on its influence. I have found this to be extremely accurate. |