Feng Shui consultants are often bombarded with questions about whether a person’s house is facing a favourable direction or where they should place their aquarium or which direction should their bed face?

All these are valid feng shui questions. Unfortunately, there is no right way to approach the subject.

People often get their priorities wrong. Due to the amount of information on feng shui available nowadays, people are easily confused and distracted by the little details that they miss the bigger picture.

The issue can be summed up in this age-old question of location versus direction; which is more important?

To answer this question, we first have to understand the fundamental concept of a property’s location and direction.

When we talk about location, it generally refers to the place where the property is situated and its overall environment.

Meanwhile, the direction refers to the directional points of a property in accordance to its layout. When we evaluate the feng shui of a property as a whole, we need to prioritise which of these we should look at first before moving on to the other.

Logically, this would imply location comes first and this is the most important step that most people tend to overlook in terms of feng shui.

Location first

Before we look at the layout of a property, we should in fact look at its surroundings. In ancient times, when feng shui was very much about where to place a grave, the first thing a feng shui master would do was to look for a good location. This process could sometimes take years as the feng shui master has to explore the land on foot in order to seek out superior formations.

Thankfully, with a little help from modern technology, feng shui consultants nowadays no longer have to spend years to do this, although onsite assessment is still required. The first thing we have to look out for are mountains. Mountains are considered the source of Qi — the beneficial energies we want to harness in order to benefit our household or business premises. The next thing to look for would be water — and this encompasses natural water features such as streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. Water serves as the conduit in which Qi is carried, so to spot one in the landscape is usually a good sign.

Of course, there are many other factors to take into account, such as the shape and characteristics of the mountains, or the nature of the water — is it sentimental, aggressive or stagnant? Additional features also need to be considered but the fact is, the external environment is highly important.

Think of it as your resource, and your property is the device you use to harness this resource. If the resources are poor or do not exist, then it wouldn’t matter where your property sits or faces because there is simply no resource to harness. Having said that, you should always set realistic expectations as there is no location in which the feng shui quotient is 100% positive.

Once we have the location identified, then we can begin to look at directions. As mentioned previously, your property is equivalent to a device which you use to harness the resources around you. We can fine tune this device in order to maximise its potential in harnessing the resources available, and the direction is the key to unlocking this potential.

Function of direction

There are many ways in which we utilise directions in feng shui. The most basic function it serves is in giving you information on where problems will arise and how they will arise. Sometimes, you can even determine when they will arise. For example, if you have an unfavourable feature that produces Sha Qi in the West, you will know that this will affect the youngest daughter in the house — as the West, based on the Trigrams, represents the youngest daughter. In such a scenario, we can come up with some remedial measure. If there isn’t a youngest daughter in the house, then there is no cause for concern.

Directions also serve to demarcate the property into various sectors which can be used as reference points for the implementation of various feng shui formulae such as Flying Stars and 8 Mansions.

Always remember to take stock of the surroundings in your location first, before worrying about the minor details involving directions. This offers a very valuable insight as to how feng shui is evaluated by a professional consultant. There are many other things that a professional feng shui assessment will take into consideration to come up with a conclusion. Hence, while this may help you at least get a basic understanding on how to approach feng shui, you may want to seek professional opinion in order get a full picture.