The Beginner's Guide to Feng Shui

By: Ken Cohen

Narrated by: Ken Cohen

Feng Shui - the Chinese art that uses geography, design, and beauty to promote success, happiness, and health - is quickly becoming a custom in homes and businesses.

Dispensing with complex diagrams and formulas, The Beginner's Guide to Feng Shui teaches you the simplest and most powerful form of this ancient tradition: xing shi, the school best known throughout China. From your kitchen to your bedroom, from your garden to your office, Ken Cohen - a master of Chinese energy healing - shows you authentic practices to bring comfort, love and prosperity to any of the places you spend your life.

©2003 Ken Cohen (P)2003 Sounds True

The origins of Feng Shui

What I liked about this book is that it gave an easy to understand summary of the origins of Feng Shui and a clear description of the different types of Feng Shui practices (predictive and forms). This is obviously useful to know if you want to test the qualities of your Feng Shui consultant and to know what kind of practice he/her uses, if you require one. I found the tips to apply at home a bit dispersed, with no structure making it difficult to remember.

Skeletal Outline of Feng Shui

My wish was that it lasted longer. I have read and studied feng shui as a beginner on and off for 5 years. This book presents the clearest idea of what feng shui is--and isn't. As a Catholic, I want no dragons (ok, a nice dragon, perhaps one), and the 3-legged toad with a coin in its mouth makes me smile. But I have St Joseph guarding my front entrance and Our Lady reigns over the garden. The concepts are similar. The best is I better understand Qi, and how the chinese came to understand this concept, and then Yin and Yang, simply the balance of the Male/Female, Dark/Light in our lives. Due to this book, I finally grasp some of the basic foundations of this interesting technique for harmony. The book invites westerners to use their own thought processes in understanding the concept of feng shui, and to come to a realistic idea of what is and isn't achievable through this method.

The Beginner's Guide to Feng Shui (Unabridged)

a good book clearly spoken and expland

Definitely a guide for Beginners

A good introduction to what Feng Shui is about. It's not reasonable to expect to become a Feng Shui master from this book alone. I found this useful as a litmus test to see if the Feng Shui philosophy worked for me. Since it's such a short book, it skips practical applications of Feng Shui, and instead focuses on the story and philosophy.

impractical for beginners

While it may provide a good brief overview of the complexities of feng shui, I didn't find it practical for beginners. While the broader arena of feng shui includes things like a home's location, which direction the house faces, and construction layout, these are not the sorts of things a beginner will be able to address. And for me, he used too many Chinese terms without re-defining them occasionally. Since I'm rarely able to stop and write down new words and their meanings when listening, I found parts of it confusing, hard to follow. I was hoping for some basic principles of harmonic placement of furniture and other items for the home and office I already have. I'll have to look elsewhere.