Health

A Question of Balance

Good health is, like good feng shui, a question of balance. We all know that moderation in all things will tend to prolong health and life. Moderation applies equally to the Chinese Elements; where there is too much or too little of one, the qualities associated with that Element tend to suffer. Yang Metal, for instance, is associated with the lungs, so weak yang Metal can coincide with breathing issues; weak Wood with poor eyesight. And so on.

And of course it’s a bit more complex than that. Holistic healing encompasses among many other factors, diet, lifestyle and heritage as well environment and indeed the quality of clinical and medical care.

The Dark Side.

We all recognise environments that are unhealthy. The cavernous subway between Waterloo and South Bank comes to mind. It’s too dark and too wet and there are too many long draughty passageways. Houses can feature similar weaknesses in miniature: leaky drains, over-hot conservatories, high water tables. A series of Chinese geniuses over millennia have worked out formulae for both recognising and healing such things. My luo pan (that is Chinese compass) will tell me things my eyes won’t.

A Snapshot.

What’s more controversial is my use of the Ba Zi or Four Pillars of Destiny, sometimes misleadingly called a Chinese Horoscope. The ba zi is a snapshot of the prevailing Elements at the moment of someone’s birth. This tells me a great deal about the person I am dealing with – physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally – and about the decisions they are most likely to have taken in life. My view (which you don’t of course have to agree with) is that life is a series of decisions and that if we can identify poor decisions we can unmake them. Since the Elements recur cyclically we can run a ba zi forwards or back to find these moments. I sometimes call the ba zi a map of our most likely mistakes.

Healing Water

While I am not about to make wild claims, feng shui is essentially the same model as acupuncture. I apply needles to the home and landscape in the form of water and ornamentation, and to the person in the form of words. There are many accounts of my use of ba zi as well as mediaeval Chinese formulae in my Diaries. That may be the best place to start, otherwise email me via the Contact page.