There is a whole branch of Feng Shui which revolves around the natural and man-made environment called Form School. It takes into account both interiors and exteriors, how qi moves through these areas and the impact on people.
For the focus of this article, we’ll look at how to rank or prioritize potentially problematic exterior influences. For many situations, we can rely on common sense and mundane validations in order to judge a certain predicament.
For example, if living close to a freeway is considered bad feng shui, then just how far away does one need to be from the freeway, to say you are a safe distance away? Even if you are far enough away that you cannot see the freeway, or hardly hear it, there are still noise and pollution studies you can take your cue from in terms of the ideal distance to be away from it. The same would hold true for an airport. One could also consider the distance you would want to be from even a well-disguised cell tower.
There is a reason for the enduring real estate maxim, “Location, Location, Location.” People come to cultural or universal conclusions about the influence of exterior environments: what you can change and what you cannot change.
If your home is within a short distance from a lake and other large water courses, the question comes up as to how close you need to be in order to have an impact. A lake could influence individual homes and whole neighborhoods for miles around. With such large water sources, it is also common for the water to be aligned with more than one directional sector of your house. Sometimes the good direction cancels out the bad. And with common sense: The homes closer to the lake will be impacted more than the homes further away.
Do you have to live on the same block as a cemetery, or drive by it every day, in order for it to affect you? Normally, I would say that you have to be within about a quarter of a mile from a cemetery in order to risk being visited by the resident yin energies and spirits. But being so close to one that you see it from inside or just outside your house is going to be more impactful than when the cemetery is so far away you don’t see it. There can always be exceptions, and one such case was the circumstance with a client of mine. Her home was seemingly far enough away from the cemetery, but the entrance to it was aligned with a very long street that ends with the driveway of my client’s former home, many blocks away. From aerial views, one could better see and fathom the connection between the cemetery and her home, with a connected continuous street, albeit it very long street. In fact, due to the length of the street, we can consider the qi it carried could build in momentum.
For construction sites within a residential setting, you are not likely to be affected by construction going on beyond the house across the street, behind yours, or on either side of your home. And yet, if a sports stadium is being built nearby or a shopping center, that could affect entire neighborhoods.
In my ebook, Feng Shui Tips for House Hunters, I offer many examples of exterior influences you should just avoid if you can, but the proximity does matter. Even being 1/8th of a mile away from some of these objectionable features might be far away enough to not have a bad impact on you. It goes the other way as well, where a good exterior influence needs to be relatively close to benefit you, but the larger that feature is, the further away it can be to influence you. A mountain range may easily affect a whole neighborhood or part of a city. A tall building might only influence the smaller structures within blocks of it.
To sum it up: there are no hard and fast rules about the distance between certain exterior and environmental influences with their impact on humans. Rest assured that common sense as well as your other senses of sight, hearing and smell can factor into the conclusions you come to.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Architectural and Design Blog Series
