Feng Shui is the mystical art of balancing your environment and surroundings so that you can better achieve your potential in any area of your life. It is about aligning yourself with the forces of nature, instead of going against the flow. It's an ancient system for recognizing when and how your surroundings are affecting you, and knowing how much to alter them.

Even though there are numerous schools of feng shui, opinions, and methods for going about these improvements, all feng shui remedies fall under three major categories:

The first category is to simply AVOID THE NEGATIVE.

The second category is to CHANGE WHAT YOU CAN ABOUT AN ENVI-
RONMENT, WHICH YOU CAN'T AVOID.

The third category is to ALTER YOUR OWN POSITIONING WITHIN THE NON-IDEAL ENVIRONMENT, BASED ON YOUR OWN PERSONAL ASTROLOGY.

In this Part 1 section, we will discuss the first category, AVOIDING THE NEGATIVE. Following are some examples of what you may want to avoid altogether, and why.

1. In feng shui terminology, a negative force or influence is called "sha." Some masters will openly say, 'Run away from the sha, don't challenge it.' This means that you should, wherever it is possible, remove yourself from a bad environment, especially if trying to change it will be too difficult, costly, or only be partially effective.

As an example, if you live one block away from a noisy freeway, there is little you can do to combat that onslaught of forceful energy. Better to choose to live elsewhere. If you had two bedrooms in your house, and one was distinctly more positive than the other, then it would be more effective to simply sleep in the more positive room, than to try to fix the room with problems.

Obvious negative influences include the following:

• Any environment which affects your five senses in a disturbing way. If you see something ugly but can take measures to avoid looking at it, then do so. If your office overlooks the tops of buildings, offensive billboards, or dilapidated structures, then you should place a screen or plants or some furnishings in such a way as to block the bad view.

• When house-hunting, if you discover something that could be a potential problem, consider long and hard whether or not it would be easier to avoid it altogether instead of putting up with an unpleasant situation, such as: chronic bad smells, loud noises, eyesores of any kind, creepy or unsettling feelings about the space itself or your neighbors.

Non-obvious negative influences include features which you would not necessarily know are bad for you, unless you were already familiar with some feng shui concepts about environment or how energy ( ch'i) moves through space.

• Houses very near cemeteries are more likely to be visited by ghosts.
• Houses with really odd or awkward shapes can make occupants irritable.
• Houses on triangular shaped lots make occupants more accident-prone.
• Houses built right into mountainsides can become moldy or damp on that
  side of the house, more "yin" in general which drags down the health of the occupants.
• A chronically dark house makes people depressed. . A house built OVER a cliff on stilts is psychologically unstable.
• A house with heavy low beams over the master bed can cause sleep distur-bances and health problems.
• A one-story house sandwiched between two tall structures will make the occu-pants feel pressurized, like a child threatened by two bullies.

(Stay tuned for Part 2, CHANGE WHAT YOU CAN ABOUT AN ENVIRONMENT WHICH YOU CAN'T AVOID, in this feng shui series, in the next issue of MELT.)