Where you work

The location of your shop, office, or factory is juse as important to its success - and to the wellbeing of the people who work there - as the location of your home is to you and your family.

Some of the same principles apply. For example, the patterns of the flow of energy can affect a commercial location just as they do a domestic setting. So you would be unwise to choose a site where your business was likely to be exposed to potentially harmful energy or to road accidents and floods!

There are different considerations when it comes to shops, offices, and factories. The whole point of opening a shop is that you want people to come in to buy your products or services. So it follows naturally that it should be located where there is easy access and, preferably, where there are a lot of passersby. Typically, you will find banks, clothing stores, and all sorts of other such establishments on the corners of busy intersections and grouped together in particular areas to attract as many potential customers as possible. In that way, the guiding principle is different to the tranquility you would seek when looking for a private residence.

The location of an office, on the other hand, should be determined by relatively easy access. But it should not be exposed to the same level of hustle and bustle that you would expect outside the entrance of a shop. In other words, offices should be in a "quiet corner" of a busy area. Often, this means a side street adjacent to a major intersection or on the upper floors of a building above the shops at street level.

Most factories need space, room to expand and, usually, some open ground for off-site storage and transport requirements. They are noisy places and many produce fumes and waste. Not surprisingly, most zoning regulations separate factories from residential areas. They should have space of their own, where they have a minimal impact on others.

Disturbed energy

The energy at this downtown intersection will be very disturbed, particularly if the streets have two-way traffic. There will also be a lot of pedestrian traffice. Most of us are exposed to short periods of disturbed energy every day. That is not a problem, as long as we are moving around ourselves or just dropping in. This location would be most unsuitable for a house, for example, but would be ideal for a shop that aims to attract casual passersby: a clothes store, a sports shop, an outlet for theatre tickets, a bank, or a travel agent.

Even to this day, in determining locations of modern businesses or assessing the appropriate arrangement of furniture in the home, Feng Shui masters use the traditional implement of their art - the Lo Pan. This is the specialized compass of Feng Shui, fashioned by experts and meant to be used only by those authorized to do so. The design of the Lo Pan varies, but all have certain common features. There is a small metal needle at the center, used to locate the Magnetic North Pole. Two intersecting threads cross the entire board of the Lo Pan and by turning the outer rings of the board these threads can be used as coordinates to bring the board into alignment with the center are numerous concentric rings containing essential information on conjunctions of energy, planetary movements, magnetic correlations, and the Chinese calendar.