A guest post by Tom Carter
Angela Wilde’s new pocket-guide to Feng Shui, Heal Your Home, Fix Your Life! The Easy Guide to Love and Money offers easy tips of Feng Shui.
I am personally dubious of any self-help book with the word “easy” in the title.
However, as I have lived in Asia for almost a decade, I figured I should at least explore the Feng Shui genre before outright dismissing it.
While I have yet to report any results (positive or negative) because of following Feng Shui, I stand by my original premise that it can’t hurt and can only help.
As Wilde writes in the book’s introduction, “Lots of people can’t afford to have a complete Feng Shui consultation. They just want something that works, and fast.”
With this, she offers an efficiently minimalist A-Z guide outlined in handy alphabetical layout.
Curious about dried flowers (“Potpourri is definitely spiritually bad!”)? Just flip to the D or F sections. Wondering what herbs are auspicious? Turn to H (page 54) for a complete list of herbs and their respective powers.
book’s cover
Coming in at a mere 90 pages, the book is small and convenient enough to flip through for reference during house-cleaning day, yet the information therein goes a long way.
Did you know, for example, that by just boiling some cinnamon and basil together then adding that to a floor wash of nothing but salty water you will have instantly improved your wealth AND personal protection? Now that’s profitable multi-tasking!
Wilde also offers advice on speaking normal words in everyday life: “affirmations and even ordinary words should contain no negatives such as “no” or “not”. Overlooking the fact that this sentence itself uses the word “no,” it nonetheless is profoundly good advice and one I will attempt to incorporate in my day-to-day dealings.
For anyone interested in giving Feng Shui a precursory attempt before investing major time and money into revamping your lifestyle, Heal Your Home, Fix Your Life! The easy guide to Love and Money is a good starting point. Beginners will appreciate Wilde’s quick, A-Z reference layout and efficiently brief prescriptions.
Return to Part 1
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Travel Photographer Tom Carter traveled for 2 years across the 33 provinces of China to show the diversity of Chinese people in China: Portrait of a People, the most comprehensive photography book on modern China published by a single author.
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Years ago, before I went to China, I was in a spirituality phase and bought the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui. Those books can be useful. According to what I studied, a lot of it has to do with the Chinese Zodiac and depending on your animal sign you have to put your bed in a certain direction and your study/work area in another direction etc…
Can’t say I believe in that sort of thing any more, ley lines and birthdays and all that, but there are some universal principles that have become ingrained as habits. For example, I still don’t like putting a bed on a corner and always leave some space against the wall. And I don’t put a desk facing a black wall either. Some of it is just good interior design advice.
I haven’t studied it that much. You probably know more than I do. But I do have a book on Feng Shui that was published by Hallmark.