The Power Of Placement Tradition Chinese Art Of Feng Shui Bring Order And - In Some Cases - Good Fortune Into Homes, Businesses

Linda Brown hung a red and white painting in the “marriage corner” of her bedroom and began sleeping on pink pillowcases. A week later, her estranged boyfriend called to propose.

She placed a red and green talisman in the “wealth corner” of her living room, and immediately a rental house she’d had on the market sold for $10,000 more than her original asking price.

“It’s spooky,” says Brown, a Spokane artist and antiques dealer. “I have to believe (in) it because I’ve seen it happen a couple of times.”

Feng shui, the traditional Chinese art of placement, sounds like pure superstition. It blends mystical cures and rituals with common sense design principles to produce implausible-sounding, but often delightful, results.

Not surprisingly, feng shui seems to work best for those who are already open-minded and optimistic, true believers in their own ability to create good fortune.

When Brown consulted feng shui adviser Keith Coolidge, she was hoping to improve both her finances and her love life. She took Coolidge’s advice and her life changed dramatically. She married a month or so later.

Brown isn’t certain why feng shui appeared to work, but, she says, “sometimes I think it’s the power of positive thinking that goes along with it.”

The principles of feng shui, which derive from differing schools, are at least 2,000 years old and based on the I Ching, the Chinese book of fortune-telling. The goal is to enhance the flow of vital life energy, or chi, through a building, and banish a negative energy called sha.

Feng shui consultants may begin by examining a building’s placement on a lot, but they primarily work on the interior. They start with simple housecleaning, clutter-busting and repairs, and then rely on a grid called a bagua to help design the space.

In the living room, for example, the bagua is placed over the front door. This grid divides the room into eight areas, corresponding to family, wealth, fame, marriage, children, helpful people, career and knowledge. The belief is that properly placed furniture, artwork, plants, mirrors and colors can enhance the various areas of life.

William Spear, a feng shui consultant in New York and London, has written a new book called “Feng Shui Made Easy: Designing Your Life with the Ancient Art of Placement” (HarperSanFrancisco, $15).

He points out that real estate investor Donald Trump, architect I.M. Pei and businesses such as Virgin Airways are also experimenting with feng shui.

“Very well-known fashion designers, businessmen, people in the arts and ballerinas have achieved huge success by looking at something they recognized as profound wisdom,” Spear said in a recent telephone interview from his office in Litchfield, Conn.

Casinos, he says, use a form of “power feng shui” to extract cash from gamblers. Blackjack tables, for example, are usually positioned so that a player sits with his back to the door, the most vulnerable position in the room. Mirrored tiles are often placed behind the dealer, shattering the player’s image into broken pieces.

Spear recently worked with the head of a large advertising agency who was consistently missing out on major contracts. Spear rearranged the man’s reception area. He immediately landed Coca-Cola and four other big contracts.

Soon, the client called Spear back. “I’ve got so much business I don’t know what to do with it,” he said. “I need you back to expand my office.”

Here in the Inland Northwest, interior designers are beginning to add feng shui to their bags of tricks.

Barb Rathbun, owner of The Open Door bookstore in Spokane, hired interior design consultant Katherine Allen Morel to redesign Rathbun’s store.

Morel applied feng shui techniques and business began to improve. Rathbun’s feng shui-related merchandise - books, water fountains, wind chimes and do-it-yourself feng shui kits - sells particularly well.

“I think it’s becoming really popular,” Rathbun says. “I don’t have anybody who thinks it’s crazy.”

Morel also performs one-day room makeovers with a feng shui influence.

She recently rearranged Vickie Taxter’s Spokane Valley house, transforming a private refuge into a welcoming space.

After Morel paired a couple of navy leather chairs in the relationship corner of her main living area, new men began appearing in Taxter’s life.

Morel also moved her dining table into the center of the room. Soon afterward, Taxter began inviting friends to congregate around it.

“That recluse part of me is changing,” Taxter says.

Morel’s feng shui techniques have apparently affected other clients’ lives, too.

One woman languished in a staff job until Morel advised her to place a red, flowering hibiscus in her “wealth corner.” She was immediately offered a management job.

Spokane artist Kathy Hubbard felt stymied during the process of applying for a Ph.D. program. Morel hung strands of red embroidery thread from a corner of her bedroom and suddenly Hubbard took off. She has since gathered the recommendations she needed from around the world, and submitted her application on time.

“I think it’s real,” Hubbard says. “I think it’s energy that’s there all the time. She taps into it.”

Morel isn’t quite sure how to explain her clients’ results.

Feng shui consultants, after all, aren’t long on explanations. Spear, for example, says, “It’s like asking how the universe works.”

But Morel says, “I think it’s a matter of intention. All the research has pointed out that what we think is what we attract.”

Through Morel’s version of feng shui, a homeowner imagines a positive goal, and then arranges her house in ways that remind her of that vision. Perhaps the experience is similar to that of Olympic athletes who use positive visualization to help win gold medals.

“I expect miracles,” says Morel’s client Kathy Hubbard. “I expect to be successful. I don’t think there are any coincidences. I live life in anticipation of things to come.”

Skeptics, of course, abound. A number of clients don’t bother to mention the finer points of feng shui to their husbands.

Even Coolidge, whose clients seem to have amazing tales of success, says feng shui doesn’t work perfectly.

“I keep trying to win the lottery with feng shui,” he says. “No luck so far.”

Spears advises people not to get carried away. “I repeatedly say, ‘Don’t put your life in feng shui, just put some feng shui in your life.’ ” Loretta Bonnier Anawalt, a Pullman poet, didn’t take feng shui very seriously. Her friend Coolidge recommended that Anawalt, frustrated about the chances of publishing her poems, move her home office.

She balked for months, but finally switched her office from the south to the north side of her house. That was three years, and 1,200 poems, ago.

Her first book, “Dreamprints,” is due out at the end of the year.

For more information about feng shui, call Katherine Allen Morel at 448-7762 or Keith Coolidge at 326-6347.

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