1. Addition cost in the purchase of the property

Additional relevant information costs money.

It is standard practise to have a building surveyor to check whether the house is safe for the occupants. So that, when you occupy the property, it is fit for purpose.

Calling in a feng shui consultant is to check whether the house will not create family problems – disharmony between the members, addition financial issues etc. Why did the previous owner sell the house in the first place?

For a business property like a retail shop, a feng shui consultant can identify whether the premises will add to the business. Will there be plenty of customers coming in and spending money. Also, to check whether the relationship between staff, suppliers and customers will be good.

Or, will it be a constant drain on resources with an extremely quiet shop with no customers and a bad reputation.

A feng shui consultation costs money but it is like an investment, making sure that your new home (or shop) is safe and adds to the purpose of moving in.

2. My religious beliefs state that only God can help me.

I therefore do not need any help including feng shui.

Where do you draw the line about help? Using a car is about getting help in transportation. Feng Shui is not about religion or religious beliefs. It is about understanding the energy on the earth and using it for our purposes – like have homes for us to live in harmony. Or, buildings for us to work in.

3. Eastern mumbo jumbo; is it relevant to the people in the West?

Feng Shui was developed some 40 centuries ago with the rise of the Chinese Civilisation. It is about understanding how nature works. It is about being able to get a better living. The Chinese, with their earlier start to continuous civilisation, has a number of inventions that are in common use today – paper, porcelain, compass, fireworks/heavy artillery, noodles/pasta, printing, bureaucracy or government, to name a few. We use these inventions because it adds to our lives.

4. What is the basis of Feng Shui, – it is not scientific as we know.

We live in a scientific age. Everything needs a logical explanation so we are told. However, there are many things in this age that cannot still be explained by science even though it is in our lives every day. For example, the exact detail how the information in DNA helix coil is transformed to the relevant protein is still not known but it happens all the time.

Chinese science comes from a different basis. It still works on logic but the main tenet is about energy. This is a totally different approach to Western Science. As I have worked as a scientist, the basis of science is about observation and reproducibility. Can it be repeated consistently? The theory or the words, is built around the observations.

For example: Gravity has been present since the start of the planet Earth. Everybody on Earth lived on the surface because of gravity. The scientist Sir Isaac Newton put the theory to this observation. Until that point, there was no explanation of how gravity worked but it was there, working all the time. The point that I am making is, a phenomena which is consistent and reproducible but it cannot be explained by western science, is still a phenomena that occurs. Western science is only a tool.

Feng Shui is a Chinese Land Management system based on the observation of people who worked in the lands. They observed how nature interacted with people and with time. From these observations, the rules were developed. In this present day, you speak to any farmer, they will know the best place to keep the various types of animals, where and when to get the best sustainable yields for the crops etc. Isn’t that land management?

Feng Shui is about living in harmony with nature. It is about the study of both time and space. It is about the 4 dimensions that we live in.

5. I have not heard about it or not many people use it

There are many things that you might not be aware of. It is definitely not a in mainstream media. It has its own niche.

Feng Shui is mainstream in the Far East. Not only are houses designed with this Chinese system, but estates (both business & residential), shopping centres and cities.

6. I have read a few articles on world of feng shui, they appear to contradict each other.

Feng Shui is an old subject, it started some 4,000 years ago. As a result, there are many ways to do the same thing for example – prepare an omelette or drive a car.

The main result is that, it works or else this subject would have faded away a long time ago. Feng shui has a number of different organisations or schools that teach and practise the subject in different ways.

An analogy: The UK and USA are democratic countries but how they govern the each country is different. The USA has a President as the executive, Congress, Senate and the Judiciary. The UK has a Prime Minister, House of Commons and House of Lords, Judiciary and a Constitutional Monarchy. They are different systems but both are democracies.

7. Successful companies do not use it.

Feng Shui is used by many businesses in the East. Many of these companies are now trading in the West – Americas and Europe. One example is the HSBC and their former headquarters in Hong Kong is used as a case study of Feng Shui.

Secondly, the casinos in the Asia and the West (Europe and North America) have being built with Feng Shui from the initial designs.

There are a number of successful companies whose buildings have incorporated. Examples include Trump Towers in New York, Tesco in the UK. A number of companies use it but do not say this use it because it offers a competitive advantage.