Feng Shui and Mental States

Whether we’re talking about mood disorders, personality disorders, or full blown mental illnesses, classical Feng Shui can often predict when a person might succumb to these problems based on the calculating energies of their personal space. We can’t say that bad Feng Shui causes these problems for people, although it can certainly trigger or exacerbate a pre-disposition towards a variety of mental illnesses. What has amazed me over the years is the fact that Feng Shui can even be this specific or nuanced, although the correlations have become more and more obvious after seventeen years in practice.

As a comparison, there are no ancient Feng Shui texts which describe an environment that can produce AIDS. AIDS is a modern health crisis. But there have always been circumstances which could predict that an occupant might have blood-related problems or even a sexually transmitted disease. Most people with a casual interest in Feng Shui still have no idea how specific or predictive it can be, with this as just one example.

Neither are there ancient Feng Shui manuals which describe the varieties of personality disorders or mental illnesses which plague millions of people. I had to dig a little deeper and discover my own modern interpretation of these ancient formulas. As an example, there is a certain house type which we learn about in Feng Shui classes where we identify the occupant and being very vain and self-absorbed. Other attributes can include someone who is not close to their family and prone to addictive behaviors. Usually the description ends right there. But what I’ve described is just one manifestation of narcissistic personality disorder. This doesn’t mean that all people who are vain are narcissists, but when other factors collide it can certainly point in that direction.

As well, there are certain house types that pair energies related to sadness and depression right along side anger and rebelliousness and accidents. This could easily be an environment that attracts or triggers bipolar disorder or at least someone prone to more extreme mood swings.

There are Feng Shui texts which describe the circumstance of “insanity” but they do not elaborate or qualify if they are referring to schizophrenia or other psychotic behaviors. Anyone familiar with these clinical terms may also know that people often suffer from overlapping dysfunctions. For instance, a person might have obsessive compulsive disorder in conjunction with other problems like attention deficit disorder, or not. This is what makes mental illness so hard to diagnose and treat, because of the wide range of variations in the complex human psyche. With Feng Shui, we can identify some of these tendencies and help people avoid a house type that would further exacerbate a pre-disposition towards these illnesses.

Just like any other problem indicated in a Feng Shui analysis, the remedies to improve the situation boil down to altering the chi of the room with organic elements (like metal, wood, fire, earth or water) or by changing the yin-yang relationship within the space. Finally, there are some spaces that cannot be fixed and are best avoided altogether. Although inconvenient, we always have the power to move when a space cannot be fixed.