Feng Shui practitioners sometimes talk shop and debate concepts and practices from distinct schools or traditions. For example, some Feng Shui Schools teach that a house will manifest unique energy based on when it was built, while another School will interpret a house based on when the occupants move in.
When it comes to any house or building and every School of Feng Shui, there is a concept called “sitting and facing.” This is just another way of saying the front and back of a house or building. The Sitting side is the back and the Facing side is the front. Many applications and interpretations are reliant on first identifying the front from the back.
And while you may think this is a “no-brainer,” it is actually not always obvious what is the facing or sitting side of a house. Some of these distinctions require training. For example, the front of a house is not always on the side of the house with the main entrance. Some people actually have their main entrance on the side of the house. And some houses actually face their “backyard.” One classic example is the beach front home which has a main entrance on the street side, but the major views and architectural emphasis is facing the ocean.
There are many things to learn and observe when it comes to the sitting and facing of a building, including a residential apartment complex. Once we have established the facing side of a residential building, does that mean that every individual apartment faces the same direction as the whole building? There are some practitioners who will say yes. And this is consistent with the practice of viewing every room in a house as a miniature version of the whole house.
The difference, however, is that with a single family residence, it is one person or one family who occupy the space so it can truly be viewed as one comprehensive energy field.
With an apartment building, you have several or numerous individuals or families within the building, but they otherwise have their separate lives. The tenants of an apartment building may have almost nothing to do with each other except for some issues that affect more than one unit in the building, like a plumbing problem for the whole building.
A popular way to interpret individual apartments within a building is to give each apartment its own sitting and facing, which is often different from the sitting and facing of the whole building. It is very common for individual apartments to have balconies and views which face away from the building they are in, on all four sides of the building. You could have a west facing apartment in a south facing building, for example.
I have found this to be a true phenomenon: that the individual unit has a distinct energy from the rest of the building and can have its own orientation. This can be taken for granted and one can proceed mechanically in assessing the dwelling. But if we stop for a second, we can ponder the amazing phenomenon going on, which is that the qi (energy) of the space has intelligence or consciousness.
That qi-energy can recognize that it is part of a whole, but also separate. That qi-energy is in a special relationship with the humans and animals. The fact that the qi-energy recognizes the different lives and karma of individuals, is truly amazing. This is just one more indication that the physical materials making up the structure and the energy encased inside is not just “space” or “air” but a living, breathing, Gaia-esque body of consciousness. This just underscores the very personal relationship we have with the spaces we occupy and its origin is all-knowing and based in spirituality.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Feng Shui Theory Blog Series
