Feng Shui’s Potential Health Benefits

Maybe you’ve heard of feng shui, the ancient Chinese practice of harmonizing your home with nature. A quick Amazon search turns up 75 pages of English language books on the subject. Google holds 128 million feng shui results. Clearly, there’s strong interest in its potential to enhance your living space. Is there potential in this ancient practice to enhance your life and health too?

“My experience is that when people take action on making their homes and workspaces feel and look better to them, they have a sense of feeling stronger, happier and healthier,” says Ann Shippy, MD, a functional medicine doctor in Austin, Texas. “This could be through feng shui, ‘Marie Kondoing’, or other measures,” she adds. Is there any science behind the feelings? Possibly, Shippy says. “This isn’t generally covered in mainstream publications, but I have some theories based on my own professional observations and scientific readings on why feng shui works.”  

The Basics

First, what is feng shui (or Feng Shui, as some refer to it)? Not surprisingly, there’s a Feng Shui for Dummies book. In its first chapter, the authors share: “On the surface, Feng Shui is simply the interaction of humans and their environments. Taken a step further, Feng Shui allows you to strategically influence these interactions to achieve specific life improvements by positioning or designing your surroundings in harmony with principles of natural energy flow. As a result, you can achieve harmony with your surroundings.” The key words in that passage are positioning or designing your surroundings.

The practice includes guidance on room planning for those building a home, furniture placement, color choices, sounds, electronics, and inclusion of plants and other natural elements in your home. Its goal is to optimize those energy flows and harmony between your home, yourself, your family and guests. Shippy has some thoughts on whether the effect can also optimize your health.  

Stress Mitigation

“Creating an environmental sanctuary for the body to rest, relax and restore allows the limbic system to reset, as well as the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system to become balanced. Stress can cause the body to produce an excess amount of epinephrine (adrenaline), which then causes a  weakening of the immune system,” she explains. “The benefits of feeling safe and comfortable with a positive mindset about the environment may lower chronic stress, which can lead to better blood sugar balance, stronger immune system, lower depression and anxiety. Because stress can weaken the immune system, most design principles that minimize stress have a positive impact on the immune system. This is important because the impairment of the immune system can make people more vulnerable to various diseases, including, some scientists argue, cancer,” the physician notes.

Quantum Physics

In an article for NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Christina L Ross explains quantum physics and its connection to human health: “Quantum physics teaches us there is no difference between energy and matter. All systems in the human being, from the atomic to the molecular level, are constantly in motion-creating resonance. This resonance is important to understanding how subtle energy directs and maintains health and wellness in the human being.”

Shippy can see this having an impact: “Two of my favorite physicists,  Dean Radin and Konstantin Korotkov, have found ways to measure the minute changes in energy as it affects the body and the environment. Thus, it’s possible that the energy of a space can have positive effects on the inhabitants at a quantum physics level. This warrants further research.”

Placebo Effect

Placebos have gotten a bad rap over the years, but they can have a beneficial effect on human health, Shippy says. “We see the placebo effect at work in medicine on a daily basis. I think It applies to approaches like feng shui as well. An article published by Harvard Medical School provides that the human mind is a powerful healing tool and can help stimulate healing, and this explains why the placebo has been popular for millennia. As people implement feng shui , it can provide the inhabitants with a positive ‘placebo’ direction for the body to stimulate healing and improve a sense of well-being.”

Design Practice

Award-winning New York City-based interior designer Julie Schuster discovered feng shui while working on a show-house benefiting breast cancer research; the project’s founder was a breast cancer survivor Schuster found very inspiring, she recalls. “One of the designers working on the house was also a feng shui practitioner. I had never even heard the term before, but I was fascinated by the obvious link between creating beautiful spaces and positive energy spaces.” A few weeks after completing that project, Schuster received her own breast cancer diagnosis. “I committed to myself that once I defeated cancer, I would treat myself to pursuing feng shui studies.”

Wellness Design Connection

Schuster says feng shui is gaining popularity as people become more interested in the connections between their homes and their health. This is certainly a timely topic, as millions of Americans spend more hours indoors, helping to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Wellness design includes technology integration, better food preservation, improved lighting design, living in place design and better, more nurturing energy in our homes.” She sees feng shui playing a role too, especially in creating that nurturing energy.

Other Connections – And Misconceptions

Schuster sees feng shui also being connected to sustainability for its strong support of biophilia, the practice of incorporating elements of nature in design for their nontoxic and healing properties. It connects to other disciplines too, she notes. “I am continuously astounded whenever I am reminded of a principle in feng shui that I learned in high school physics, or in Jewish principles, or even my interior design training,” Schuster declares. “So much of what I have learned is readily applicable to our lives today. Is not emotional health a scientifically proven benefit? Is not the essence of the nature of the movement of energy science?”

The most common misconception Schuster encounters about feng shui is “that it is a religion. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I feel it works well with any type of religion.”