In a tiny office

You get a tiny officd of your own. There is a door and a window and on one wall there is shelving. You need to arrange your desk and desk chair, a visitor's chair, and a filing cabinet. That's all you have room for. You can only think of five realistic options, but which one is best?

Eposed position

The energy pathway from the door to the window will pass directly across your chair. The effect will be to make you feel uncomfortable if you spend long periods in that position, probably without realizing why. This will be made all the worse by the fact that your back is exposed and you cannot see who is entering the room. You will feel even more constricted by facing the wall.

More vulnerable

The energy pathway is the same, but now you have put your back to the door. You can see out of the window, so it is less claustrophobic, but your back is even more exposed and vulnerable and the back of your neck and head are directly in the current between the door and the window.

An improvement

You have a better sense of who is coming into the room, which is also more welcoming to visitors. But you are still cut off by the wall in front of your desk, your back is unsupported, and you are sitting in the current between the door and the window.

Out of the current

In this arrangement you have moved out of the way of the current between the door and the window and you have a clear line of sight to the door. Your back is relatively supported, although part of it is exposed to the window. You should draw the blinds across that part of the window. The position of your visitors is not satisfactory, but this is a temporary location for them.

Better backing

The visitor's position is still a problem, but in this arrangement, your back is in a good position, you have space in front, can see the door and you sit out of the energy current. Make sure the wall shelves do not extend over your head.

Out in the open

Some offices still consist of an army of desk, lined up in formation on a wide open parade square, with everyone forced to work under the constant pressure of overhead strip lighting. This is not an office that is likely to promote the health of its employee, create an environment for clear thinking, or win genuine respect for the management.

If you are given a desk in the middle of the floor, your back will be on an open "corridor" along which people are passing. Your back will be vulnerable to bumps and your nervous systme will always be on the alert. With desks in front and on either side, chances are that both your creativity and your concentration will suffer.

If this is your only chance for a job, you may have to accept it. But for your own sake, don't plan on staying there for long!

If possible, don't work in an office that has a bathroom/toilet opening directly on to the main work area, either. This arrangement stems from office managers wanting to keep an eye on staff spending long periods in the bathroom/toilet. This kind of attitude is still around: it is bad for staff morale and a very poor arrangement from the Feng Shui point of view.

Water is always a problem in the world of Feng Shui. It is better to have a completely separate area for anything involving water since it can have such a potent effect on the surroundings. If you want to have a sink in your work area or a place for making tea and coffee, the best advice is to consult a Feng Shui expert before installing the facilities.

A photocopier sets up a considerable disturbance in the energy field and, particularly if it is a large one and in use a great deal of the time, should be put in a room of its own or in an area separate from normal offices and desks.

Applying Feng Shui to an office workstation

The problem of the open-plan office has been recognized to some extent, and people are being offered workstations with some privacy. Supposing you are lucky enough to get a space beside the window. Your space is marked out with partitions. You have to fit in a desk and desk chair, a visitor's chair, a filing cabinet, and a computer stand. Think of the partitions as walls and the entry space as the door (except you could change the door position) - assume the flow of energy will be basically the same as in a normal room. Use The Five Animals template and the information to determine the best location for the various items.

Desks and doors

Many people work in offices where there are several desks, either in rows or facing each other. This almost invariably means that some of the positions are more favourable than others.

In line with the door

The two desks in line with the door could hardly be in a worse position. A Feng Shui practitioner would warn you that the people sitting in those positions are not likely to stay in their jobs for long. More likely than not, they will leave your employment although they may not be consciously aware that the reason is related to the poor location of their work areas.

A favorable far corner

The only two people in this room with favorable work spaces are the two at the far corner opposite the door. The two in line with the door will have the same problem as in the preceding arrangement, and the person with a desk along the wall beside the door will always have a sense of insecurity, since it is not possible to see the door from the desk.

Back to the window

In the office, regardless of whether other people share it or not, the person who has a desk with their back to the window is violating the basic instructions of The Five Animal template. If, instead of a window, they are sitting with their back to a mirror, they will be constantly subjected to reverberating energy.

Perpetual target

Here the door opens directly opposite the desk at the far end of the room and the persom acts as a perpetual target for energy slicing through the room. The desks on either side of the room are spared that, and all have the support of a wall at their backs.

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.

Garden energies

Energy flows through and around gardens just as it does in other environments. affecting those in them and near by. Shapes affect that flow. If you construct a conservatory/green house, it changes the shape of your home. The ideal Feng Shui home is a complete rectangle, so if you add a conservatory/green house to one side or to the back, and thereby change the shape of your home into a slightly lopsided figure, you are going against Feng Shui principles. If at all possible, try to construct the conservatory/greenhouse so that it extends fully along one side of a complete rectangle. Or, if your house is already shaped like an L or a U, then you can construct the conservatory/greenhouse to fill those vacant spaces and complete the rectangle of your dwelling.