I did a thing

So I did this…

If you noticed recently that I’ve been including more Fengshui wisdom in my posts you may be interested to know that I just completed a certificate in Fengshui Consultancy at IAP career College in the United States via online study. This was a subsequent step in my process of advancing on the path of Yijing and Fengshui studies, but I want to share a little more information specifically about what we are up to here in Kaifeng and how it will play into the future of this newsletter.

First, I’ve been interested in Fengshui for many years, but always found the classical texts to be inaccessible since I had no formal training and did not know where to look to find good information.

For whatever reason this changed recently when I had a dream where the words “Yin Zhai Lun” were spoken. I mentioned this in another article, but after awakening from the dream I searched this term and discovered the Yin Zhai is the ancient school of Fengshui associated with burial. My interpretation of this was to read the texts of this tradition and research the genre. I’m not a superstitious person, but I’m willing to entertain lessons in dreams and other portents and omens because even if they don’t come from any mysterious force, they could be my mind processing information I hadn’t previously put together and allowing me to discover something which may be helpful.

I came to Kaifeng already with the intention of finding a Fengshui teacher and as it would happen a teacher named Mr.Song has an office where he practices and teaches Fengshui, Yijing studies and divination pretty much right around the corner from us so we’ve become his students and there is a chance that in the future you might also have a chance to study with him in some capacity if you want to.

In my own studies I began deeply reading the Form School of Fengshui which is the oldest tradition, based on landform based gemomancy and originally designated for burial, but later used to help people decide on landforms to build abodes for the living. I’ve specifically been reading the Zang Shu/Classic of Burial which was written by the Daoist Gu Pu. It is the easiest book in the genre and also the oldest currently extant text of the genre. After finishing Zang Shu I’ve been working through a Qing dynasty compendium annotation of the text that views it through Neo-Confucian principle study and resonance theory. This text while being principally about burial is actually very useful if you want to understand how Qi works in landforms and is essential reading for later texts such as Han Long Jing and Yi Long Jing which are frequently used for Fengshui for the living.

The studies we’ve engaged in with Mr.Song are mainly based on Bagua analysis and balancing the energy of a living space, in other words very consistent with how we view Fengshui in the West.

We visited his office today and did a small incense offering ceremony to the three sages of the Yijing, Fu Xi, Zhou Wen and Confucius along with having a chat about seasonal rituals to perform to purify our house throughout the summer. Marylin will follow up with an article about this subject soon since she understood the subject a little better than me.

In terms of my studies at IAP, my goal is to understand what North American people think of Fengshui in order to have baseline knowledge so that when our studies become sufficiently advanced here we will be able to communicate with a Western audience. At the same time I’ve also been looking into environmental psychology and continuing with my study of form school.

One thing I’ve been doing is looking at historical sites in Kaifeng from the perspective of water flow and direction since many old compounds are designed to interact with the branches of the yellow river that run through the city. My goal is to understand how Qi moves in the enviornment, where it collects, and how humans have availed themselves of it for the several thousand years of development around this area.

Right now is the start of this particular journey, but my Daoist and Martial Arts teacher Hai Yang Shifu deeply influenced me years ago when he said “if I want to study something I never do it half way, I will either study it completely or not study at all,” so this is the attitude I’ve been taking with Fengshui so far. Every waking hour that isn’t dedicated to work or family is spent studying and the Consultancy course, which usually takes six weeks to finish, I managed to finish in four days and get almost 100% on the final exam, so you can see I’m treating this with a lot of gravity.

Neidan and internal martial arts are still my main thing, but I hope you won’t mind if Marylin and I share about our Fengshui experience as we go forward. She studied Garden design based Fengshui in University during her undergrad, so she’s a bit ahead of the curve compared to me and I think you will be able to take benefit from her upcoming articles.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you in case you were interested :) :)