PLACEBO FENGSHUI

[Yulia]

As I wrote in   http://www.fivearts.net/index.php/topic,371.msg57074.html#msg57074  now I will try to write something about the Placebo Fengshui.

In the other forum there is the discussion about The Placebo Fengshui. After reading some current discussions in this forum,I suspect that this Placebo FS might be really occur in practice. I try to write something about Placebo FS here just to get some inputs from the forum,whether this kind of FS is really  applied in practice or it is just a humoristic idea of the initiator of the topic in that forum.

In the medical world,Placebo is a substance containing no medication and given to a patient just to arise a strong suggestion that he has been given a proper treatment for his symptoms of disturbances or illness. From this definition we could say that Placebo Fengshui is the practice of FS which need not concern with the real truth of the teaching. The main purpose of this practice is just to give rise the positive suggestion in the mind of the clients that they have got the Fengshui treatment for their problems.

In asking the services of the Fengshui man,the clients usually have something to hope. They usually have some unsolved problems and would try any means included Fengshui to overcome it. If the Fengshui man can show the convincing appearance and performance in doing the Fengshui Audit, some clients usually would get the suggestion that they have got a good Fengshui treatment for their problems. It is indeed a positive effect,irrespective of the truth of the practice.

Hence those who practice the Placebo Fengshui do not find it necessary to investigate the truth of the teaching. They usually just follow the popular teachings. So long there is no dangerous effects from following it,that's OK for them. What important is the arising of the positive suggestion in the mind of the clients. Whether the Fengshui techniques they applied would work or not,it is not their own concern. At least they have fancied or imagined that it works.

Many people who practice Fengshui often do not know the real truth of the teaching. They just fancy or imagine that it works. Sometimes there is the indication of the positive results. But we are not sure whether is it caused by the working of Fengshui or by their strong imagination or maybe by other causes like the influences of LP or AP etc.

Could we say that they have actually practiced the Placebo Fengshui ?
Have they really treated Fengshui only as the Placebo,irrespective of its real value ?

So long there is no formal board that supervise the practice of Fengshui as it did in the past, people are free to practice Fengshui as they like it. So long there are some clients who like to ask for their services and get the positive suggestion, many Fengshui men do not find it necessary to investigate the real truth of the teaching.

Is this the real condition of our Fengshui world today ?     

Opinions are welcome !

                         Yulia

[fsa]

Hi Yulia,

Here is my take on the subject:

Placebos are widely used in medicine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo [nofollow]

So it should not be surprising that it is widely used in Feng Shui as well, but it should not be the real condition for serious Feng Shui, where the physical improvement of Man's relationship to his environment is a prime concern.

Sometimes the end justifies the means, but it should not be an excuse to abuse Feng Shui or medicine for that matter.

fsa

[Yulia]

Hi fsa

Thanks for supplying the reference from Wikipdia. It gives more comprehensive background to understand the function of placebo in Fengshui practises.

     Yulia

[fsa]

Hi Yulia,

We need to be mindful of the Nocebo effects as well when we use fear in FS to get our clients to "toll the line". In folk Feng Shui this practice is quite common and should be deplored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo [nofollow]

fsa

[Manty]

Hi everyone:

It is good that finally we are talking about both "placebo" and "nocebo" effects via Fengshui.  I think we should all be aware of them.

In my own practice, many times, I try to elicit the "placebo" effect in order to get the confidence and due attention of my clients.  When they are in the right state of mind, they are more willing to listen and follow directions.  So for me, placebo Fengshui is, sometimes, a necessary prelude to real Fengshui.

I also like to share the unfortunate fact that sometimes I have encountered with the so called "hex pack" which among other things are strong generators of fear, the attavic kind of fear, which in turn generates the so called nocebo effect.  In fact I once found a hex pack and when I reported it to the house owner, he told me that he was afraid that someone used QMDJ in conjuction with a hex pack in order to psychologically damage him and his family.  I must confess that I had the hardest time helping them.  It was a long and tortuous process but we came out of it finally.  Since then, I never inform my clients when I find a hex pack and, this in turn, prevents the nocebo effect.

Manty

[Manty]

Hi FSA:

Placebos are widely used in medicine:

Indeed, but they are also used in all kinds of psychological related process as well and so its use has gone beyond the so called "placebo pill".

Sometimes the end justifies the means, but it should not be an excuse to abuse Feng Shui or medicine for that matter.

I think that the true lies somewhere in between your stance and mine.  For me, MOST of the situations I encounter do not merit full-fledged Fengshui strategies.  Sometimes people just need a tap of the shoulder, a head to lean on and so forth.  Hence the use of placebo like strategies to simply make them feel good is not an abuse.

Please remember the old chinese saying that in translation goes like this: "Sadist be kind to a masochist". 

Manty

[fsa]

Hi Manty,

You said the same thing better than I can, thanks.

fsa

[Manty]

Hi FSA

Hi Manty,

You said the same thing better than I can, thanks.

fsa

Gee... golly... with words like this 大哥, I kinda get religious all inside and an ancient and an almost forgotten semitic mantra inexorably begins to vibrate in my throat, comes up to my mouth and out through my fingers and moves me to type:

阿門 brother!... 阿門!
哈利路亞!

Manty
虔誠者

[fsa]

 

[T S]

As I wrote in   http://www.fivearts.net/index.php/topic,371.msg57074.html#msg57074  now I will try to write something about the Placebo Fengshui.

In the other forum there is the discussion about The Placebo Fengshui. After reading some current discussions in this forum,I suspect that this Placebo FS might be really occur in practice. I try to write something about Placebo FS here just to get some inputs from the forum,whether this kind of FS is really  applied in practice or it is just a humoristic idea of the initiator of the topic in that forum.

In the medical world,Placebo is a substance containing no medication and given to a patient just to arise a strong suggestion that he has been given a proper treatment for his symptoms of disturbances or illness. From this definition we could say that Placebo Fengshui is the practice of FS which need not concern with the real truth of the teaching. The main purpose of this practice is just to give rise the positive suggestion in the mind of the clients that they have got the Fengshui treatment for their problems.

In asking the services of the Fengshui man,the clients usually have something to hope. They usually have some unsolved problems and would try any means included Fengshui to overcome it. If the Fengshui man can show the convincing appearance and performance in doing the Fengshui Audit, some clients usually would get the suggestion that they have got a good Fengshui treatment for their problems. It is indeed a positive effect,irrespective of the truth of the practice.

Hence those who practice the Placebo Fengshui do not find it necessary to investigate the truth of the teaching. They usually just follow the popular teachings. So long there is no dangerous effects from following it,that's OK for them. What important is the arising of the positive suggestion in the mind of the clients. Whether the Fengshui techniques they applied would work or not,it is not their own concern. At least they have fancied or imagined that it works.

Many people who practice Fengshui often do not know the real truth of the teaching. They just fancy or imagine that it works. Sometimes there is the indication of the positive results. But we are not sure whether is it caused by the working of Fengshui or by their strong imagination or maybe by other causes like the influences of LP or AP etc.

Could we say that they have actually practiced the Placebo Fengshui ?
Have they really treated Fengshui only as the Placebo,irrespective of its real value ?

So long there is no formal board that supervise the practice of Fengshui as it did in the past, people are free to practice Fengshui as they like it. So long there are some clients who like to ask for their services and get the positive suggestion, many Fengshui men do not find it necessary to investigate the real truth of the teaching.

Is this the real condition of our Fengshui world today ?     

Opinions are welcome !

                         Yulia

Hi Yulia

You have presented an interesting informations about the practices of Fengshui. As a newbi in this teaching we do not pay much attention whether the teachings we study are the real FS or only the Placebo Fengshui. But I have ever seen that sometimes,the positive suggestion and the power of mind could give better results than any Fengshui techniques.

       Truthfully

         T S

[fsa]

Hi TS,

Using positive suggestions and the power of mind are part of the Feng Shui techniques; physically improving the environment is another, but the best is to combine the two, so the body and the mind can work together synergistically to give us the optimal results.

fsa

[T S]

Hi fsa

Besides improving environment which I assume as the part of form school FS,what is then the role of the directional school FS in the above system you mentioned ?    Just a question from a newbi!

       Truthfully

          T S

[fsa]

Hi TS,

I wrote this to Paivi earlier in  another post, you might find the answer to the role of the directional school there according to my experience:

Hi Paivi,

I agree with you, stars (Guaqi) are a way to describe natural energies by you and many others, but I am not sure if it is the stars or the feelings and the projections one has with the environment, that is actually affecting everybody, whether they know them or not.

What seems to me in describing them, what you are actually doing is objectifying your subjective feelings through your interpretations of the stars and that is why you can say even cats can react to the stars, when in fact what they are reacting to is the atmosphere of the environment (or the natural energy as you put it), objectified by you in the stars. I very much doubted that the cats would know the meanings of the stars and be affected by them.

Having said that, these feelings are real and they varied from person to person (also animal to animal I presumed), situation to situation and we never know for sure all the factors involved, so the Chinese invented the stars to allow us to explore these little mysteries of life and the way to balance our subjectivity is to be aware of the true nature and the use of the stars and not to take them literally.

"Curing" them do not change the stars, they change our attitude and perception to reality and in doing so, we made a difference to the outcome via the decisions and the actions we take, as a consequence of looking at the stars.

fsa

Directional schools or "looking at the stars" give us the means to objectify our subjective feelings to the environment, that is, we use the stars to make conscious of our worries and concerns hidden below the subconscious, and by bringing them into our conscious awareness, we can deal with them through improving the physical environment and associate our decisions and actions with the stars again, so it is not only functional efficient but ritually correct (that is having a feeling that heaven is on our side supporting the decisions and the actions undertaken).

Many others like the religious leaders and the politicians do this as well, they prepare for war (being functionally efficient) and then they say they are doing it for God, so the troops feel that heaven is on their side and they will win and they go to war and die for glory.

The mind is very powerful, so the directional schools can trick our mind into doing the right thing, but it can also be very dangerous when handled wrongly and that is why Feng Shui, having the directional schools component built into its practice, is a very difficult subject to be accepted outright by our society. It really is a powerful two-edged sword.

fsa

[T S]

Hi fsa

Truly speaking as a newbi I cannot understand some of your above explanations. I just got the impression that there is some expressions that the function of the directional school teaching is to encourage the arising of a certain suggestion  or a certain thought form in us ?  is that right ?

     T S

[fsa]

Hi TS,

That is correct and what the stars are meant to do - to stimulate our thoughts,  the trick is not to let it get out of hands.

fsa

[T S]

Hi fsa

If it is so,can we say that the directional Fengshui school is a kind or a branch of Placebo Fengshui as discussed above ?

          T S

[Paivi]

If it is so,can we say that the directional Fengshui school is a kind or a branch of Placebo Fengshui as discussed above ?

Absolutely NOT.

Päivi

[T S]

Any explanations please !


        T S

[Paivi]

Any explanations please !

I've got to run now, but I have spent a good part of today writing about this in the same discussion that fsa refers to above - and in some other discussions.

Päivi

[fsa]

Any explanations please !

T S

Hi TS,

Instead of giving you an explanation, I will give you an example.

My earlier "academic" suggestions to Xun in another post:

"Therefore I have 3 suggestions to make, the first is based on human action, the second in rearranging the earth qi and the third is a FS jiehua (cure).

1) Take up a taiji or qigong or yoga or anything-you-like exercise class at least once a week, and practice what you have learned for 15-20 minutes a day in the privacy of your bedroom.

2) Move the TV and your work desk downstairs and use the bedroom only for sleeping and exercise. I would make use of the south where the 6,1 is located for working at home.

3) Place a black prayer wheel at the sitting palace of the house next to the staircase and turn the wheel once a day, but only do so when you have done your exercise. I am using you selective movement of the black prayer wheel as activated water to neutralize the 4,7 wood/metal conflict, came about in the new period, affecting the health of the occupants. Your effort and your well-being will benefit the rest of the family."

If only this is suggested:

"Place a black prayer wheel next to the staircase and your health will improve."

then it is most likely to be a Feng Shui placebo.

fsa