Everything In Its Place

In feng shui, what you see is what you get.

That’s what practitioners of the ancient Chinese art of placement say, perhaps not exactly in those words. They’re more likely to put it this way: What you see around you every day is what you’ll manifest in your life.

A chaotic home environment will lead to chaos in important areas of your life; a balanced, harmonious environment will foster a life of balance and harmony.

Believers use feng shui principles to enhance their prosperity and creativity, their careers and their love lives. But the real value is more altruistic. When you bring your home and yourself into balance, you’re more able to go out and help the world.

“You can’t fix anything out there until you take care of the home,” says James Allyn Moser, founder of the Feng Shui Warehouse. The catalog company sells a variety of items, from fountains to windmills, whose purpose is to stimulate good energy, or ch’i, in and around a home.

The company also is a clearinghouse for feng shui information. This spring it hosted the first International Feng Shui Conference in San Diego, its home base.

One of the speakers was Terah Kathryn Collins, a San Diego resident and author of “The Western Guide to Feng Shui” (Hay House, $12.95).

She opened her talk with an anecdote which suggests that with feng shui, you should be open to the unexpected.

When she first became interested in the subject, she was in an unhappy marriage. After attending her first lecture, she felt inspired to rush home and begin improving the love and marriage area of her home. She placed a beautiful silk flower arrangement and symbols of her relationship into the area, expecting the relationship to improve.

Within a month, she had moved out of the house.

“It was such a beautiful lesson about how energy, how ch’i, moves. I had a particular idea of what I thought would happen when I enhanced the love and marriage area. What happened was such a surprise to me.”

Since then she has remarried and enjoys a supportive and loving relationship.

With that anecdote in mind, here are some tips from her book for enhancing a home’s love and marriage area. (Looking into the house from the front door, it’s the rear right corner of the house.) Collins says the following items can be used alone or in combination:

Posters, paintings, collages, photos and figures of your significant other.

Pairs of things, such as lovers, doves, hearts, etc.

Items in the colors of red, pink and white.

Quotes, affirmations and sayings pertaining to love and marriage.

Not everyone attracts love or marriage with such feng shui adjustments.

Jan Moulder, who lives in the East Central neighborhood in Spokane, began working on the feng shui of her home in mid-April. She’s 44, single and never been married. “I’m finally reaching a point in my life where I’m comfortable with that and I’m not looking,” she says.

Her feng shui adjustments have helped in “developing my relationship with myself, deepening that,” she says. “It’s the most important relationship I can have.”

Moulder called Spokane interior designer Katherine Allen to help her work on her spare bedroom, which had “always ended up being a junk room,” she says. “This room had been bothering me.”

Allen incorporates feng shui in her practice and got Moulder started on an ongoing process. “You don’t just do one room,” says Moulder. “You find one thing and get that all organized, and then (something else) is out of balance.”

The former junk room is now her favorite room in the house, a place where she meditates, reads and writes in her journal. “I feel totally at peace with this room. It used to be a place where I stored chaos.”

Recent training in transformational hypnotherapy followed by the feng shui adjustments have enriched her life. “I feel I’m becoming more whole, more rounded,” says Moulder, a housekeeper and artist.

And there have been other unexpected developments in her life as well.

Moulder made major changes to the room - moving bookcases in, creating a floor plan - on a Sunday. The following Tuesday, a longtime friend told her he was attracted to her. While romance hasn’t ensued, Moulder finds the timing curious.

Three weeks ago she was approved for a low-interest home rehab loan, which will allow her to add insulation, storm windows and other improvements.

She’s happy with the changes she’s made thus far. The house, she says, “feels so much more grounded, whole, functional.” And, she adds, “I’m starting to notice more harmony in my life.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FOR MORE INFORMATION Interior designer Katherine Allen plans a couple of workshops this fall on attracting relationships and increasing business prosperity using feng shui principles. For more information, call 448-7762. The Feng Shui Warehouse is planning to hold its ‘97 conference in San Francisco. For information or to order a catalog or the Feng Shui Journal, a quarterly newsletter, call (800) 399-1599.