 Yeah, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Stink Tech on a given Thursday. And we are talking with Clear Engelberg. He is an expert and an author on Feng Shui. And in fact, he's written a book recently about Feng Shui in real estate. We're going to talk about that today. Welcome back to the show, Clear. You've been on the show a number of times, but we have to keep current with you. And this is our effort to do so. Welcome. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be back. So, Feng Shui in real estate, of course, that would be a natural, wouldn't it? Because Feng Shui is about your home, your building, your space, and the way you live in it, the way you organize it, the way you find harmony with nature in your space. Can you talk about your book and what you attempted to cover in your book? It's directed for buyers as well as sellers, and there's a section for agents. Most of the book is for buyers because I'm very often called upon. People have their floor plans that they've found for a home, and they send me the floor plans and say, should we get this home? And I'll give them my opinion, the pros and cons on that particular floor plan. And then I'm often the agent will sometimes call me to help with selling a home that isn't moving, and I'll help in that case as well. But the most of this book is directed for buyers so that the home they get is one that doesn't have the worst Feng Shui problems, and that's how I wrote the book dealing with the worst problems first, and then working my way down so that there's certain problems in Feng Shui that are so onerous that it's best not to try to fix them. It's best to pass on that home and get a different one. Well, let's start with that. Let's start with what you can get if you don't attend to Feng Shui. If you don't think about it, don't look at the book. I don't care. What kind of problems could you have for the lack of Feng Shui? Well, the oldest kind of Feng Shui Jay is called landform, and it's about the form around the house, what the land is shaped like around the house. And what a person doesn't want is what's called bad landform. And that would be that behind the home, the property slopes down very severely, like a cliff, like the ocean side, that kind of view of the land sloping down should be in front of a house, not back behind the house. So that could be a mistake that someone could easily make is to get the big downhill view from the back windows. You want that downhill view from the front windows from behind the house. You want something that backs it up like a hill or a mountain, and that gives the home what's called a command position. This reminds me of a guy I used to know, and we would have lunch, and he would always take the seat with the wall behind him, always. He was Chinese, by the way, and I always thought there was a reason for that. Is there? It's the command position? It is the command position, and I've worked for a good many women whose husbands were first responders. And when I start talking to them about the command position, they'll look at me and they'll say, that's how my husband sits in a restaurant. He will never sit in a restaurant with his back to the door. And what I've just described about the landform is situating the home itself in a command position, not just the people within it, but the home itself. And that really is the oldest and most important thing in Feng Shui. Just for interest, I live in a home where the front door is on a hill. And if I walk out the front door, the hill goes down to my right and goes up to my left. So it's neither of the two options that you describe. Where do I fit? Am I violating Feng Shui by having the right go down and the left go up? No, you have what I would call interesting landform. And what the recommendation would be would be on the part of the property, on your lot, the part of the property that slopes down, I would have some evergreen shrubs. And what they will symbolize will be hills over on that part, sort of balancing, because proper landform isn't just a slope down in the front and a slope up behind. It's also small slope ups on each side of the home. It's referred to as the armchair position. So imagine that on each side of your home, there's something to rest your arms on. And that brings balance to the home. Well, it also brings the notion that you can change it. That if you're concerned about not conforming with Feng Shui, you can you can build those armchair pieces and you can change the formula. I mean, change the way the home works and good news. If you're selling, your agent is advising you or you clear are advising me, you can help me. I'm not a dead duck about this, right? Right. That's why I get called is when there are problems, I'm there to suggest solutions. And I've been doing this for over 30 years. And the clients I have that are the most problematic that say, oh, I couldn't do that. No, no, that's not my style. Oh, that's not feasible. Those are the clients that have made me a better Feng Shui consultant because the solution that I come up with has to work for them. Otherwise, I'm wasting their time in my time. So I need to come up with something that they will actually do. Now, in this book that I wrote, the first thing I cover is severe landform. And I just tell people pass on that home. But in addition to that, I also give remedies like I just gave to you about the shrubbery, just in case there are other reasons that somebody needs to get that home. Let's see another picture of that book just so I can clarify to everybody, is this book available on Amazon? Where do I find this book? It's Amazon and bookstores. And you've written a number of books on the subject. Are they all still in print and available on Amazon and bookstores? They are. This is my seventh book in my 70s. And I think that's cool. It's not a lie. It's not a lie, Claire. It's nice to have you on the show. Okay, so let me ask you a fundamental question. Suppose I violate this and other rules, which we will talk about. Feng Shui principles, if you don't mind. What happens to me? Does a lightning bolt come down from heaven and injure me? Is my family subjected to bad luck every day? What happens? Well, the important thing, and this is super important to understand about Feng Shui is that your life is like a circle, like a pie. And there are these wedges. Part of it is your education. Part of it is how you've treated people. Part of it is what kind of friends you've made. And part of it is the physical objects that you control on planet Earth. The things that are in your home, your home itself, those physical objects that you control. And the takeaway from that is that Feng Shui is not the whole picture. There's a lot more going on. With Feng Shui, you are working with that one wedge, that one piece of the pie that concerns the physical objects. And as far as I'm concerned, the main deal to even do Feng Shui is so that you are symbolically removing obstacles from your life so that you can achieve your goals more easily. And that's what I've very often seen with people who are in very problematic Feng Shui homes is that they are not achieving any of their goals. So but there's the chicken and the egg problem. If you started out being on the wrong side of things, then you might pick a home that didn't have Feng Shui. The other side of that is if you didn't have Feng Shui in your home, maybe you would not be able to capture these principles of life in general. So which one comes first? The chicken or the egg? Or are they both intertwined? Well, the way I've noticed in my practice is that if someone is in a very problematic a home that has very problematic Feng Shui, they are very likely when they move to pick a home that has Feng Shui that bad or worse. However, if somebody's in a home with great Feng Shui, they are more than likely to pick a home that also has great Feng Shui. They're already used to having that good energy. They're already used to having a home that supports them. And where this book fits in is very much for the people who are on this downward spiral of things aren't working out, the homes aren't working out so that they can know what to look for and what to avoid. The book has several checklists so that someone can take it to a walkthrough if they're contemplating buying the home. And they're checklists that you can download onto your smartphone so that you can just very easily have it with you. It's not a lot of questions, but it will quickly help somebody to rule out the biggest problems. And once you've got the biggest problems ruled out, well, you aren't going to find a home with absolutely perfect Feng Shui. So your compromises will be ones that can be worked with in a way that will agree with your style and your budget. So I suppose I can take the checklist and put it on a worksheet and assign values, say one through five or one through 10 as to whether I'm confirming with the requirements of the checklist. And I'm assuming that it's not just a yes-no binary thing, that there are gradations for the satisfaction of the points on the checklist. Am I right about that or is it just yes-no? It's definitely yes-no. And there are, there's only four checklists, a checklist for buyers of free standing homes and check, actually it's yeah, and a checklist for buyers of condominiums and apartments. And they're divided up between things you really shouldn't try to fix. If you've got that problem, just go to a different home. And then there are some severe problems that if someone is willing to spend the bucks to move a bathroom, because that can be a really big problem, if it's in the wrong place, then yes, it would be okay to get that home if that's the only big problem. Okay. I wanted to do a glossary of terms with you, but before I do that, I wanted to ask you if Feng Shui is different in different neighborhoods? Is Feng Shui different in different islands of this state? Is Feng Shui different in this state as opposed to other states, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Ohio? Is it different? Well, if you're simply referring to Feng Shui as the energy of the place, well, yes, of course. But the principles of Feng Shui aren't different. Okay. And that means globally? Yeah. So what about China these days? In China, nobody will argue China has changed since the classical days when Feng Shui was first identified and studied and developed, which I suppose was a very long time ago. Is Feng Shui still in play in China? I don't really know the Chinese situation. I don't have a good idea. My guess is that the common people of China probably don't use a lot of Feng Shui and that the main form of Feng Shui that probably is practiced in China is probably what's called compass school, where based on when a person is born, they are assigned a lucky number, a lucky direction, that sort of thing. And that's not the kind of Feng Shui I practice. It's the older kind that I practice, land form. And it doesn't really pay attention to north, south, east, west. It's looking at what is the home shape like? What is the land around the home shape like? What is the room shape like? Where is the person's desk in the room? So it's about the form, the shape of things. And this is a lot easier, I feel like, for Western people to grasp and to be willing to practice because if you're going to have to make that leap of faith into numerology and astrology, a lot of people, myself included, are not going to make that leap of faith. What about the possibility of consulting with someone at distance, effectively by remote, through, for example, a video tour of the property or photographs of the property, or something not physical, not personal, when you're not there, do you have to be there? Do you have to be in the room or can you find another way to evaluate the room, the space, the home, the land? Well, I definitely do a lot of remote consultations these days. The only in-person consultations I do are on the island of Hawaii because I can drive there. I don't, so far, I'm not using regular transportation other than just cars. I have to see a floor plan. Without a floor plan, I'm really guessing. But if someone can send me pictures, then I've got something to study. And if we can use, and I usually use Skype, to just go in and say, show me that corner. I want to see what that object is. I get an idea, but I'm not sure what it is. And then they'll use the video aspect of the remote consultation to show me that. And on my very first remote consultation, I was with a woman in Texas, and she had never done that before, and I'd never done that before. And she had it on her laptop, that's where her camera was. And she was kind of rushing from room to room. And I started to feel funny. And I didn't know what was going on. And finally, after a while, I just had to say, I got to go. And I ran to the toilet and threw up. And I didn't realize that I was getting motion sickness because I've never had motion sickness. But now I know to tell people that until they've got the camera, still, they need to keep their finger over it. And then once they've gotten to a place where we can talk about it, then they take their finger off. But I don't want to see all that motion because it's going to make me motion sick. Okay, it wasn't a reaction to the Feng Shui or the play stuff. I hope they didn't think that. So, clear, I wanted to ask you about some of the terms. And this is in the context of, say, you and me evaluating my house to buy or to sell. And I want to connect up these things to, you know, the basic principles of Feng Shui, the basic glossary. Okay, so one of them is Bagua. What does that mean? How does that enter into the analysis? A Bagua, the translation of that means eight spaces. Ba means eight and gua means spaces. And it's like a tic-tac-toe grid that gets placed over a person's home, the floor plan of the home. And that grid divides it the home into nine areas. It's called eight areas because there's eight areas around the outside and then there's one in the middle. So there's nine areas in the Bagua. And one thing I stress in the Feng Shui for real estate book is that there are certain areas of the Bagua that are very sensitive and you don't want to have them missing out of the home, out of the floor plan of the home, or you don't want to have a bathroom in that area of the Bagua. The Bagua originally came from a simple yin yang that's S-curve inside a circle. That's what the Bagua came from. And it was a division between fire and water. And as the study of Feng Shui grew more complicated over time, it grew to encompass all five elements that are used in Chinese traditional medicine. And that's fire, water, earth, metal, and wood. Okay, talk to me about those. That was my next question, Claire. What are those elements mean? It seems to me they are part of a world that has long passed. I mean, they are the definition of a world that has long passed, but they all have significant meaning, import, in any world and in a world today. If you say fire, I think of kitchen. Have you say water? I guess I think of the bathroom and so forth. I mean, what are their meanings in the context of the evaluation that you and I would do as we walk through my home to see if it comports with Feng Shui? Yeah. Well, what you just pointed out is one of the most basic uses of Feng Shui in a person's home because the bathroom is about water and it's about drains. The kitchen is not just about water, it's about fire and water because you have sinks and refrigerator, but you've also got range top and ovens, microwaves, so there's a balance in a kitchen. But in a bathroom, there is no balance. It's water, water, water, drain, drain, drain. And that makes that room, according to Feng Shui, be the most problematic room in the entire home. And on the checklist, one of the things for the inside of a home, and that's for either condos or freestanding homes or apartments, is not to have a bathroom that doesn't touch an outside wall, but would be called a center bathroom because that puts that unbalanced energy in the core of the home and that's very out of balance, according to Feng Shui. Energy. Another word, and maybe it's related to energy, I'm not sure, is Qi. So this is largely about energy and I think it's largely about Qi. Can you talk about those two terms and how they relate to each other? They're redundant. Qi means energy. Okay. And what does that mean to Feng Shui? Well, it can mean a lot of things, actually, because think about the shape of a canoe going through water and that canoe just passes easily through the water because the shape of it allows it to move. The energy of movement allows that movement to be easy. If the boat was shaped like a square, it wouldn't have that same ease of movement. It would be really awkward to maneuver through the water. So that's one way of thinking about energy, looking at an object and thinking about how it accomplishes what its purpose is. It is the form of the object helping with the purpose. And then we also use energy when we're saying things like we used to call vibrations. A person has good vibrations, a home has good vibrations. Well, that's energy. It's something we sense more with our instinct that a place feels good. It isn't too cluttered. It isn't too dirty. It isn't littered on the outside. So the energy simply feels better. It's more of a phrase we use than something that is necessarily measurable. It strikes me, and this is my term, not yours, that this is an attempt to achieve harmony, peace, avoid conflict. Am I right? And that's especially so in terms of being at home and having a home that will allow those things. Am I right? Jay, you just took those words right out of my mouth. Well, you know, this is really interesting. I'm sure you've never been faced with this. Somebody said, I want to build a neighborhood. And it's greenfield. There's nothing on it. I want to build a whole neighborhood, even a large, even a city. I want to build this neighborhood. And it's all greenfield. And clear, I'd like you to help me design everything. The residences, you know, the common spaces, the institutional buildings, the public spaces, all that, all the space in the place. And if you applied Feng Shui to everything, I would have a neighborhood, arguably, that is in harmony. I would have a neighborhood that avoids conflict. I wouldn't have a neighborhood that is peaceful. And it would affect the way the people who populate the neighborhood would live. Do you think that could be done? It would be helpful. It would definitely be helpful. But remember, Feng Shui is a piece of the pie. So every one of those families that are living in those houses, they've got their own, you could just say their own personal karma they're bringing with them. And that's going to be part of the picture, what kind of education they've got, whether they are a person who has treated people well, that sort of thing, that's part of it. You can't just say that if you get the physical part right, everything is going to be harmonious. What getting the physical part right is about is making sure that part doesn't trip you up. Yeah, so maybe I have to look inward first in making my decisions about Feng Shui, because it won't help me all that much if I'm not leading a good and harmonious life to begin with. You know, it's, if you think about your life as the complete circle, it isn't really a first, second, and third. It's just taking things into consideration when they come up, when it's time to decide where to put your desk, put your desk in a place that you've got a solid wall behind you, and you can see toward the door of the room. And that's putting your desk in a position that's called the commanding position. Yeah, and you've touched on something. It's not just the physical building and the floor plan. It's not just where the, you know, individual operating spaces are located within the floor plan. It's what I do with my furniture. It's what I do with, you know, how I face the furniture, how I face the wall. It's a lifestyle thing as well. How important is that it to achieve the benefits of feng shui? It's crucial because frankly, that's how people in condos and apartments, that's the only way they can practice feng shui is by where they locate their artwork according, and usually I'll suggest to do that according to the bagua. So the part of the bagua that's in the far left, that's the wealth corner. And there's where I will recommend that someone have a picture of water or growing plants. And the symbol then is that the person's wealth is growing. Water in feng shui is a symbol for wealth, for money. And that's one of the reasons that drains are a problem in feng shui because drains are where water leaves the home. I'm reminded of an old Chinese statement in Mandarin, it's a shui dao chu chong, which means the water will always find a way. So clear, I should have asked you this at the outset, but you know, maybe it's better that I ask you at sort of at the end of our show. And that is, I get the idea, I've always had the idea, the feng shui was a kind of philosophy, it's a kind of intuition, it may be slightly subjective, there is mysticism in it. And we don't know exactly what, you know, what science, if any, is involved in it. Could you comment on that? Where does it come from? Where does it fit in human thought, in human tradition, human history, human philosophy? Well, it sort of depends on the type of feng shui. There is a type of feng shui that I don't practice that that where it fits in is consumerism, that this particular little lucky object placed in this particular place during this particular year is going to be good for you. And I just don't subscribe to that at all. What I subscribe to is that a home itself should be physically strong, physically well constructed, and should have the kind of symbolism that the strength and harmony goes on throughout the home, the things that you were mentioning earlier, that harmony and that sort of thing, those things can be accomplished, sometimes as easy as instead of having a picture of one lonely person have a picture of several people or several flowers, and that starts to suggest that there is harmony in the home. You know, it also suggests to me, just within the four corners of this conversation, that we're talking about real estate, we're talking about a sustainable environment, which will envelop me and help my life and be beyond just a place where I lay my head. It will provide strength, it will provide support, it will provide comfort for me, and in that way it will help me. So I want something beyond just throwing the thing together. I want that kind of support. Am I close on that? You're spot on, you're absolutely spot on, and I couldn't agree more. Mayor, it's so nice to talk with you. You know, every time we talk, I feel I have a deeper understanding that I've never had before about this, and it has great value to know what you are doing, and I can only suggest that people ought to know about this. They ought to take a look about it when they have control over their surroundings, and in large part of society is better off if a society thinks along the lines that you suggest, and I only hope that the study of Feng Shui is increasing. There's a number of people who know about it, care about it directly or indirectly, including developers and architects and what have you, and decorators is increasing. Is that happening? Is this proliferating in our society? That's hard to say. Among some people, yes, and the way that I feel like it proliferates the best is where somebody tries it, has success, and they tell their friends and family, and that to me is a slow building up, but it's got a sure foundation, because the foundation is the truth of someone's words when they're talking to their friends and saying, I did this and next day here's what happened, because when I practice Feng Shui, I have no idea in the world what's going to happen to the person. What I know is simply the rules and I express to them what could be done in their space to make it better Feng Shui, and then when they reply back to me days or weeks later with these responses that say that wonderful things came their way pretty quickly, I had no idea that was going to happen. I don't know how Feng Shui works other than perhaps it's working with your angels. That's the only way I could possibly guess it. Feng Shui is not a science in the sense that we have like the science of biology, the science of meteorology, those kinds of things. It is more of an art. Yes, yes, but intrinsic in our life together on the planet. Thank you so much, Clear Anglebird, expert in Feng Shui and author of the book, Feng Shui in Real Estate. Jay, may I have a moment? I'm going to have a series of webinars that watermark publishing will present on this same topic early next year, and if someone would like to be notified about that, they should contact me by email. Thank you. You want to identify the email? It's clear at fengshui.com f-u-n-g-s-h-w-a-y.com. Thank you, Clear. It's always nice to talk to you. Aloha.