Science, spirituality, or just plain superstition? Kay Hill looks into the esoteric world of feng shui with the help of three practitioners and a willing guinea pig.

It’s easy to get a cheap snigger at the expense of feng shui. After all, it does seem laughable that just a hair’s breadth away from the 21st century, people in some of the world’s most technologically developed countries are starting to believe that a dripping tap will affect their wealth (unless they are on a water meter) or the pointing corner of a desk will be detrimental to their health (unless they walk into it). But the fact is that a significant and growing number of us are taking feng shui very seriously indeed.

It may perhaps come as no great surprise that actor Johnny Depp knows his ch’I or that Spice Girl Mel C has let feng shui practitioner Amanda Kenton loose on her how house – arty people are always keen to embrace the lastest trends. But the Brits who laughed when it was revealed that Ronald Regan’s appointments schedule was determined largely by Nancy’s astrologer may not be smiling when they discover that Rosalyn Dexter advised Tony Blaire to buy some goldfish after she was invited to feng shui 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street.

All over Britain, down-to-earth business people are calling in practitioners of this 4,000-year-old Chinese art to help them boost profits – from City dealing rooms to the new, Conran-designed myhotel in Bloomsbury and the trendy Chinawhite club in Piccadilly. Critics dismiss feng shui as a mixture of common sense, interior design and Oriental claptrap, and yet, like so many unproven alternative medicines, thousands of people are convinced that it works. One measure of its acceptance is that 55,000 people buy ‘Feng Shui for Modern Living’ the monthly magazine which advises, among other things, that planting red flowers along your garden border will stop noise neighbours…

In a nutshell, feng shui is all about creating a supportive working and living environment, but it goes beyond the aspects of colour and appearance that an interior designers would consider. Everything is based on the flow of invisible (and unproven) energy called ch’i which is said to emanate from all things and can become ‘stuck’ in a building from previous occupants. Mmmm… idFX spoke to three very different experts about their work and also saw them in action at the combined home and office of willing guinea pig Stella Soteriou, whose new company Junon handles the public relations for Turnell & Gigon and Sox Kamen.

Sylvia Bennett, trading with her husband Jonathon as Feng Shui Living, became interested in the subject while working in textile buying and colour planning in Hong Kong in 1979. ‘Our office manager employed a feng shui master and applied feng shui principles and he became really successful in both his business and his personal life,’ she recalls. It was the first step in a path which led her first into complementary medicine and colour therapy and then, after lengthy study with a Chinese feng shui Master, into setting up her own company in 1994.

A registered consultant of the Feng Shui Society, Bennett practises the most traditional, and she would say authentic, Chinese form of feng shui called Flying Star, which involves taking detailed compass readings and discovering the alignment of the planets, moon and sun at the time a property was built. These intricate calculations are, she believes, vital – and she is scathing of other forms of feng shui, such as the popular, if rather comically named, Black Hat school, which simplifies the ancient tradition and has less rigorous training: ‘Black Hat is based on superstition. Anybody who works with traditional feng shui denounces the Black Hat sect. It’s an easy option. The only way you can really learn is from a feng shui master.’ Indeed, it is worth pointing out that anyone can set themselves up as feng shui consultant, even if their only experience of the orient is sweet and sour prawn balls and fried rice.

Full of happy-ending anecdotes of children cured of eczema and rocky marriages saved, Bennett is convinced that science will soon prove feng shui. ‘It isn’t superstition – it’s a scientific fact that energy moves by virtue of universal forces. Feng shui is all about using organic elements to balance the energy. It’s a tool, not a magic wand.’

Bennett’s consultation, which began with much measuring and taking of compass readings, seemed business-like and professional, and, for the most part, was much like letting any interior design professional into your home. Not only did she suggest ways of improving the house, she also made useful suggestions about suppliers. Only when she began dowsing for negative energies did the atmosphere move from ‘Home Front’ to ‘X-Files’…

Representing the Black Hat school is Kenny D’Cruz, who owns the Feng Shui Partnership and writes a weekly column in a London newspaper. A former marketing consultant, D’Cruz came into feng shui via travelling and studying counselling. More guru than businessman, D’Cruz is happy to admit that feng shui has both psychological and spiritual qualities to it. ‘We create the reality in our lives from our subconscious. We are working through the spiritual to affect the emotional and then the physical. Feng shui harnesses the natural energy to work for the client rather than leaving obstacles in their lives.’

His background in counselling becomes obvious in his consultation – where Bennett asked a few simple questions about relationships and ambitions, white-clad D’Cruz‘s interview with Soteriou was intense, probing the most imtimate details of her life from childhood illnesses to sexual partners, religious beliefs to ‘How was your relationship with your mother?’. Watching him sitting lotus-style on the floor as she poured her heart was like intruding on a confessional. He is aware that to traditionalists such as Bennett his approach is worrying, but he believes they are too tied up with calculations instead of people: ‘I do quite often totally break all the rules because it’s not right for that soul’s journey. Those who insist on following rules do so because they don’t understand where the rules come from – they come from the Source and we need to follow the Source,’ he says, enigmatically.

Rosalyn Dexter, from the middle-of-the-road Compass and Form School, gave up a lucrative career in building design to work in feng shui, and has just published a visually stunning new book on the subject called Chinese Whispers. ‘To me, feng shui is a very powerful ergonomic design tool,’ she says. ‘There’s a lot of good old-fashioned solid design information to tap into, but the end result is much better than could be achieved by someone who is just an interior designer. Feng shui is basically the psychology of design with all the added extras in terms of the esoteric and the invisible.’

For Dexter, science, psychology and spirituality combine in feng shui. She is convinced that there are real and one day provable scientific forces at work, but she also trusts firmly in her own ‘animal instincts’ and warns: ‘We have put science on too much of a pedestal. In a way you cannot understand feng shui – what you have to do is open up your instincts and just trust.’

Both D’Cruz and Dexter admit that feng shui has a spiritual aspect, and Bennett’s assurances that it is simply science sits uneasily with her descriptions of ‘clearing’ stuck energy with essential oils and Tibetan bells. Even the BBC is puzzled – a major radio feature on feng shui appeared recently in its ‘Focus on Faith’ programme on the World Service. The tales of lives changed, careers revitalised and marriages mended which all the practitioners have to tell, are, while convincing, the same kind of stories you hear from born-again Christians, born-a-thousand-times Buddhists, those who have cheated death or even gone vegetarian. Radical changes of lifestyle nearly always produce similar stories.

So how did Stella Soteriou feel about being feng shui-d thrice in a day? Exhausted, of course, but also moved by the experience. ‘I liked Sylvia – she seemed really professional with her gadgets and measurements and she gave good décor advice, but I was sceptical about her “dispersing” the negative energy. On a scientific level I’m not too sure about it all,’ she admits.

D’Cruz’s consultation had, she feels, the cathartic effect of an afternoon on the psychiatrist’s couch, followed by décor advice that was really personal to her since he knew her so well by then. ‘It was mind-blowing stuff and not to be taken lightly,’ she warns. ‘On a psychological level it was productive. It could direct someone and make them feel secure so they could do the things they wanted to do.’

The consultants differed on a few specifics, like in which corner to put pairs of crystals and family photos and whether the bathroom door should be kept closed (Bennett) or removed altogether (D’Cruz). But in general, despite their different approaches, the practitioners highlighted the same things – the need to separate her sleeping area from her working area, to reduce clutter, soften sharp edges of the beams, get rid of lights about the bed, move pictures around, put flowers in the window-boxes and get rid of her dying roses. The observations may not have been earth-shattering, but Soteriou was impressed: ‘I’ll probably follow a lot of the suggestions.’

So is there more to feng shui than superstition? Much of what the three suggested was no more than sound interiors advice – Dexter herself says: ‘If you are smart with feng shui you get good design’ – and no one these days doubts the psychological power of colour. But when it comes into the realms of negative energy, the jury is still out.

The fact that people report that it works is no kind of proof – the placebo effect means it could work simply because they believe it. Nonetheless, there is no denying that the feng shui experts sound convincing – after nine hours of listening to them I caught myself lying in bed worrying about the bad ch’I beaming into my stomach from my pendant lamp! For those who have a few hundred pounds burning a hole in their pockets and a desire to explore the more esoteric aspects of design, perhaps the closing comment in Dexter’s book has the right advice: ‘By applying feng shui there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained.’