Feng Shui for Homebuyers: Joey Yap's Guide to Evaluating Energy

Hey guys welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast where you'll Learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view taking out the myth and Superstition so if you're interested in learning fun Chinese astrology all things Chinese metaphysics as well as the superstitions and myths that connect it all you'll enjoy learning funu with me hey guys welcome back to the Learn Feng Shui podcast where we explore the fascinating world of funu and how it impacts our everyday lives I'm kace sperlinga certified fun practitioner and red Ripper professional with the international Funway Guild and of course your host for the Learn Feng Shui podcast today we're discussing a topic that's actually pretty crucial for anybody thinking about buying a home or even if you're just curious about how the environment can shape or impact the energy around you did you know that about 70% of your funu is influenced by your external environment and when it comes to choosing a home what's around it like the landforms roads and even neighboring buildings can play a huge role in shaping the energy that actually flows into your space so that's why for today I chose Joey yap's funu for home buyers exterior Edition as this month's featured book it's an essential guide for anyone looking to assess their property funu before making one of the biggest Investments of their life in this episode we're going to explore key insights from the book and practical tips for evaluating the external surroundings of a potential home again today's book is funu for home buyers exterior Edition written by Joey Yap who is the founder of the Mastery Academy of Chinese metaphysics and chief consultant of the Joey Yap Consulting Group he is one of the world's foremost authorities in Chinese metaphysics and a prolific author of 186 books and Counting I think that's pretty amazing all right guys let's get into the book starting off with a little bit of overview and format of the book this function way for home buyers exterior Edition does focus on these fundamental funu principles of forms this does refer to the shape and structure inside and outside of a space that can influence the flow of energy or chi in this case we're looking at the outside this approach f under the category of what is called physiomesh isic and it is the assessment of the visual environment and it also falls into the category of like the face or palm reading and if you've been listening for a little while earlier this year I featured a gentleman that does Boo breeding that falls into the category of phom it's a visual assessment of something to understand how it can impact in energy although the book it doesn't emphasize that these forms are Universal to all styles of funu in fact he's very very classical and he will dispel anything that is not mentioned in the classic text it is actually accessible and it can be applied universally to all styles of fun last book month we featured the Karen rash Carter's book move your stuff change your life and even in that book in btb style function way you know they discuss the fact that your back is supposed to be against a solid wall or you're supposed to be able to see the door from your bed with your bed being against the solid wall you know not up against a window and things like that this falls under the category of forms so if you do practice btb style of fun and you want to step up your game a little bit and you want to be able to assess your external environment or maybe you're in the market for a home this could be the book for you and again it doesn't really clash with any other style of funu and where he does dispel some of these myths I'll get into it later on in the book but you can basically just kind of disregard it if you don't agree and it will still be able to be applied to any style of fun okay so Joey app's modern take on fun is really helpful also modern in a sense that he navigates today's more urban environments in the book where there's buildings and Roads and man-made structures that come into play so the shaper energy also something ancient funu could could it do because it focused on natural landforms we didn't have 5G towers and drains manmade ditches to Aid in storm water drain off right so it didn't address as much and in this book he does avoid a lot of complicated topics which makes it a little bit easier to follow and even those without like a formal funu training the purpose of the book is to guide home buyers in assessing the property's external fun by helping them narrow down their options and spot potential red flags and it can be a practical tool for anyone looking to make an informed decision When selecting a home with a focus on the modern external environment the format of the book is a little bit of a brief introduction and he kind of talks about how he breaks it down into five categories which are land Mountain Water roads and Open Spaces there's a lot of pictures and examples which I find pretty straightforward and there is a section at the end that dispels myth and talks about what is not classical funo and there is a bwa stencil in the back that you can like cut out of the book made out of Vell and paper to Overlay over your home again exterior funct way is often overlooked when home buying but it is crucial to evaluate your property's energy and it does help you pick out a home that can be enhanced rather than fixed which he does discuss here also he's very uh adamant on that you want to maybe even narrow it down to three or four choices and then pass it on to a fun consultant that way you've at least identified the best pieces of land and you can automatically sort out negative features that can negatively impact the energy of your home now looking at some of the key Concepts that are covered in this book he has a good intro and where introduces a lot of the concepts and kind of talks about how your home is your Castle it needs to be comfortable and create a harmonious environment for you he encourages you to look at it practically and take away Superstition so he talks about even if you don't really believe in funu or don't necessarily practice funu somebody would be hesitant to buy a home where there was an electric line you know directly in somebody's backyard right maybe there's a pylon there this would be something you would really consider before you would purchase a home what if there is a power plant really close by these are things that can impact your energy whether you believe in fun way or not you look at these things and they could be a red flag right away it'll give you a second thought about purchasing the property and he takes a very classical approach he talks about how to harness Chi how to identify features that collect Chi and how to avoid Shaw or cheese or negative Chi he kind of explained various types of funu and how they relate to time space and he talks about how these forms were actually used prior to formulas when we're talking about formulas we're talking about classical Concepts like the flying stars or even eight Mansions where you're looking at your best and worst directions these forms will actually supered any kind of formula so you have to look at these forms before before you look at the formula these things like mountains rivers buildings even Furniture can guide how the energy moves through your space and can determine how it affects your health Harmony and prosperity in relationships this concept of form is a lot of the basis of how funu was actually developed before using any kind of formula before compasses came around funu Masters would actually just walk the land and they would use these different formations to decide whether to build towns and houses and even cemeteries things like that and the fun Masters never consider directions and all these little formulas you know they they didn't have that it actually predates the formulas here in the book I like that it says most people can perceive a mountain or river or make out a shape of a building or determine whether or not it's sharp it doesn't take a lot to learn if something is pointing at your main door but learning formulas requires time and indeed a lot of basic knowledge and understanding there's an old saying in ancient class there's no fake forms and no real formulas essentially it means that what is in the environment in the land form must always be considered before any formulas are applied if you're looking at land form first you're already taken an important step toward checking your funu in a way that a professional classical funu consultant would forms will supersede a formula this is actually considered before you look at anything else and there is actually schools that only consider form and land form and they don't use any formula at all so just something to kind of consider there as long as you follow what are called these funu rules you can take out complicated formulas and honestly you're kind of on a fast track and just using that visual assessment and the skill of that physiomed on he talks about the concepts also of Heaven Earth and man and talks about how Destiny analysis will go hand in hand and that Destiny analysis is that natal or that bota chart you know the zodiac signs that I talk about each month so he talks about why the two go hand in hand he does also mention that you do have to know the House's facing and sitting Direction and he explains how to take a compass reading and how to find the front-facing facade of your home this is why I ask you to do this when I ask for uh this information in energy mapping when I do those for people sometimes people will just send to me with no context and I promise I'm not just trying to ask for your address to see where you live I can just easily look it up on Google Maps and very easily take that Compass direction of your home so it's it's just easier for me to do sometimes so I'm not being creepy and I don't save your information but it is important when taking the the reading of the home it's not absolutely essential and you could just look at the visuals if you'd like to and some of this information you can skip because it gets a little in-depth even though he says he doesn't go into formulas he gets into some information where he talks about the trigrams and the representations so if you'd like to layer that info in you can but he breaks down how each energy or like the facing Direction can affect the home and the occupants but I would rather encourage you to start slow and just look at that visual environment another thing he talks about is asking will this affect me the one thing that it differs from like last months when I looked at Karen RJ Carter's book he talks about avoiding buying these homes where they can't be fixed and more along the lines of enhancing a home that has good funct already rather than fixing a home that you purchase that you're like oh no it has these negative features because especially external features it's easier to again enhance and activate areas of the home rather than try to fix something that you could have avoided in the first place uh one thing I will say is if you already own a home and you look you read through this book and you're like oh no there's a specific sector I think that might be negative um you can try to bring in Concepts from other styles kind of like so as discussed in move your stuff change your life where she talks about adding heavy things with heavy energy such as a stone or uplifting energy such as light you can apply some of these Concepts but it might not fix it 100 per. sometimes things can be fixed with some Landscaping also which he does kind of discuss in the book especially things like tea Junctions and stuff like that he discusses funu in terms of harnessing the chi in your natural environment which is a lot of what I look at I will say that I'm very heavily inspired by Joey Yap and his books are the first ones I've read and his first the for courses I took that word true classical funu that I was just really hooked on and again this is kind of why I dispel a lot of myth too he does say here in this book we'll be looking at basic landform Concepts and principles and I'll be talking about how landform can be used to block redirect repel or collect Chi depending on whether it's a negative energy or a positive energy he discussed the concept of what he calls Chi collection and the concepts of direct and indirect Spirit which again I think might be a little bit of an intermediate concept to somebody new to funu I know that when I read this stuff if I was looking through this introduction part of the book and I had not previously learned some of this stuff I would have not known what to do with this information or I would have thought that it's too much information coming at me even though he frames it as a beginner book I will say with this intro it's a little bit more in depth than you think it might be just don't get confused and take the information that stands out to you getting into specifics here he talks about land Contour land forms and mountains in which he talks about hills slopes and surrounding natural features he does also discuss shapes Rocky Mountains Green Mountains mountains that are full of trees and things like that so not just necessarily the shape of the mountain itself but also is it a good mountain is it a healthy looking mountain um water elements he talks about the impacts of rivers lakes and ponds on the property about water as a container of chi and he also discusses things like drains and areas for water runoff manholes flowing and stagnant water and a clean versus dirty water and one thing that I think has always been interesting to me is that he does discuss the sound of water and he talks about if things are too loud and the same with streets in terms of roads and streets he talks about how Road positioning can influence the flow of energy things like T Junction sharp curved roads in being close to the side of the highway slopes Alleyways things like that and how that can impact you and of course like I mentioned the noise uh neighboring structures he talks about the influence of neighboring structures and buildings like schools hospitals and graveyards uh fences and Gates and driveways Open Spaces like parks golf courses but even the shape of things like roof lines like A-frame houses and L-shaped houses so the shape of your houses also a little bit of soil assessment and soil quality land shapes which is helpful in picking a lot so he talks about odd shape Lots missing sectors and lots and how that shape can impact you and then the celestial Guardians which are the green dragon white tiger black tortoise and red Phoenix and how those relate to your home some of the key takeaways that I would definitely look for in this book would be starting slow but one of the most important is the celestial Guardians okay so I just mentioned that so the concept of the celestial Guardians is that the it's this idea of like a land Embrace and the land supports you but you can look at this in terms of the modern environment in your home also in which he discusses in the book but more practically the left side is where energy comes in from and you want this to be a little bit higher as it represents the masculine energy of the fa the household and it's supposed to have an Embrace so maybe there's a higher house on that side or there's a hill on that side or the land you know is uh a little bit higher on that side maybe there's a little bit of a slope on the right side you want to have the white tiger which is a little bit lower of a land Contour maybe the house on that side is lower and that area needs to be more quiet the tortoise in the back talks about support in the back maybe that's a fence line maybe it's a little bit of a mountain or a hill or just a little bit higher area or a house that is bigger than yours in back of you and then you want the red Phoenix to be open in the front which is just really where you receive Chi and this little concept of a bright hole where it can gather and collect again it's about Chi your energy collection so that red phoenix is where it's supposed to be a little bit open in front of your home such as like a yard or a driveway or a little bit of a patio into your home where's the little space of CH can collect energy the celestial Guardians to me is one of the most impactful things you can look for and making sure that form is correct in your space the second is the lot shape because if you have an irregular lot shape or irregular even a home shape like a L-shaped home um if it the lot shape is triangular or if there's sectors missing that is going to impact a specific area of your life a certain energy maybe will be missing maybe a specific energy will be very dominant like if it's a a triangle shaped lot or a pointy shaped lot the fire energy will be very dominant and it might not impact you but you know assessing whether or not you want to risk that is up to you right so the lot shape is very important to consider another thing to consider like the most important thing to me is your front door and making sure that is not facing any Shaws which would be like a if you look directly across from when you look at your front door if there's things intersecting your front door um such as like a roof line like my sister used to live in an apartment where you open the door and there was a the roof line from the neighboring building was um like basically you looked out and it would be intersecting the door okay so that's receiving a negative energy you know maybe you can pick a unit that's next door to that instead of picking that unit it's it's can be as simple as pick the unit that's doesn't have the shachi facing the front door uh electric lines electric Towers things you would definitely consider in your vicinity like there's a water Tower or just something very close you know maybe that makes a lot of noise if there's a fire station close by that those are going to be red flags to you so just consider like these things that you can see in like right from your front door okay because those will impact you the most and he does give steps like one through six in the book at the end of the book he like walks you through steps one through six of evaluating property but it may be a little bit over complicated without the guidance of a person that has done fun or a person that has former knowledge of classical funu me and my husband we really do want a a little bit bigger of a home we want somewhere to retire to we're okay in a space we have now but our eyes are always open and there's been several times where I've stopped and looked at properties and I thought oh my gosh like this is a really good deal or it's a bank sale we get a real good deal in this house but I did not pursue because there were definitely red flags and and when I first purchased this book I had already been practicing for a couple years and I knew a little bit about the external environment but a lady I was doing a little bit of mentoring on for date selection she recommended I buy this book when I told her I was looking at at land and looking at houses and we did not put an offer in because we realized the back of the property was lower and that can affect your descendants obviously they're going to be in this home I don't want it to risk um not holding on to our wealth for our descendants right we don't want to risk that and having your property lower in the back can do that and also it had a pool that was not in line with what is called the direct indirect Spirit which is basically where you want to see mountains and water okay again a concept that Joey y he does uh outline in this book but it was it was in that area like that and it would actually impact our our sons and I thought okay well let's not buy this right let's not buy this and then I know there was another property I looked at and I really loved uh the the home it was a beautiful kind of classic looking home when you looked at the front door it was directly facing like this roundabout but that roundabout also had a big like kind of monolith type uh Stone just set in it um that was supposed to be the marker for this neighborhood so I was like I I don't think that uh that that's a a good property so it's actually stopped me from buying a couple different properties just again the concept of the uh Celestial Guardians and then just the concept of looking practically out your front door to see what you see these are things that I just looked at casually that you they're just red flags just as a further Testament to how important the the concept of celestial Guardians is me and my husband had H been having a lot of relationship issues again that's one of the reasons I started doing fun way um but it was a lot of it was caused by some mental health issues that he was himself was just experiencing and I again try to apply fun in many different ways it was really a thing where he was just very angry very angry all the time and I you can't fix that has to be something the person themsel goes through you know as introspection at one point I had had a reading done when I was taking a class on the art of chiman dja which is a divination system and I asked about my husband's mental health one of the things that came out in the reading was to look at the west side of my home our room is in the west side of the house and so I just thought maybe it's just the room maybe the room doesn't mesh with his energy and whatnot well some years later when I was having a little home assessment with my current Funway Master he had mentioned something about the right side of my home which is the white tiger side which is in the west of my home and so when we're look when we're talking this we're talking about looking outside and so from the facade of our home you know to the right and the left not looking inside our home looking to the outside he he told me something was wrong with thats side and it dawned on me that my little doggy was always on that side of the house because I think because it was shielded from the Sun and so whenever she would go outside she would would go sit underneath our bedroom window on that side of the house probably cuz she could hear us also he really emphasized you need to keep that part of the house quiet uh and he was just very perceptive in that and I honestly don't remember what the conversation was about but he told me you need to keep that side of the house quiet I thought hm okay but I blocked that side off I fenced it off and from then I do believe my husband's mental health has improved and quieted down remember that's the side of the house that represents the feminine and it needs to just be kept more quiet and the left side or the green dragon side is the side you want to be more active and it can make a huge impact on top of that we did build a little bit of a privacy fence because I do believe that there was another Shaw because you could see the top of the windows of the house behind us which is what is called a Peeping Tom Shaw which does also induce a little bit of like paranoia and you feel like somebody's watching you and these were all symptoms that my husband was having and he is doing a lot better now that with some inner work I think has made a tremendous difference so don't discount these really small kind of innocuous things that you would think again just looking at the celestial Guardians the lot shape looking and affecting your front door I think that that is a really good assessment if you get this book and it's a little bit confusing to you it's just because you you don't need to use everything just like I'm not going to use Mountain formulas because I don't have mountains near me right I might look for slopes and Contours but not a mountain formation I'm not going to see that in my area just like if I don't have a river in a certain specific location I'm not going to be able to tap into energy so it's just you know you have to look at what you're working with anyway so half these things probably won't apply to you anyways but yeah just using these few Concepts I think are the most important and the key takeway for any reader of this book so who do I recommend this book to it's good for someone looking to purchase a property whether it's a piece of land or a home I don't think that it's as easy to follow as Mr Yap thinks it is so it might be a little easier for somebody who's familiar with classical or again you can just take out the info and pick the information that makes the most sense to you I think that's one of the things too when we start looking at new Concepts it's easy to say you're confused or you don't understand but just know that if the only thing you took away was one thing so if the only thing you took away is that oh this property looks good because it has a nice view and it has water to the side of it oh perfect you know what if you feel like that's the property for you then take it so don't get too confused either one thing that I think is that he's a little bit too rigid in his approach sometimes sometimes he's a little bit Technical and he does thr random references to like flying stars and timeliness that I think a beginner wouldn't understand one thing that I do like is he will dispel myths and he shows that everything's not absolute and in chapter five he does have a whole section dedicated to what is not fun according to his views okay um as far far as uh use on the bwa scale remember one being the easiest one bwa being the easiest three being expert level I'd probably put it um between uh one to two so not necessarily beginner but not expert either I think an intermediate user would find this easy to use I think some of the main things that we got from this was how form can dictate the flow of energy the shapes and structures around the property like natural and me made ones do play a critical role in influencing the flow of energy and that is important to understand uh modern fun for today's environment unlike traditional funu which is focused more on natural land forms this does take a little bit of modern approach and talks about how to assess an urban and Suburban environments and where man-made structures are and things like highways and just other infrastructure that can have a significant impact on you uh it's supposed to be accessible for all level LS take out the information you don't understand he does talk about how he does avoid the complex charts honestly if you just follow the pictures I think you'll be fine so more about the visual assessment which I again you can look at from any school of fun so anybody from any school of Funway could use it of spotting the red flags one of the key purposes of this book is to help home buyers identify the red flags you know the things you definitely want to avoid and who it may impact so I think that's a good takeway way there and then practical decision-making tools so just simplifying the process of evaluating a property through a funct ey no the book can help readers narrow down their choices when it comes to house hunting and provide a little bit of a clearer and visual approach to assessing the energy without needing a you know proper Funway training so yeah these takeaways from the book make it a practical guide for those looking to make an informed home buying decision based on these funu principles it's an amazing book and um I highly recommend it highly highly recommend it all right guys this wraps up this month's book review Joey app Funway for home buyers exterior Edition link will be in the show notes if you'd like to purchase that again it just offers the simple practical tips for evaluating a property energy by focusing on external forms and your Moder environment so whether you're a beginner or Advanced this book will definitely offer you some insight to help you spot these red flags and and make a more informed decision when you choose your next home or even just look at your current home with a new funu eye all right I'll catch you guys not next week I I'm I'm struggling a little bit this month I suppose had just a lot going on not in a bad way but October is full of birthdays and my birthday is actually on October 30th the day before Halloween so next week honestly after my busy busy month I'm G to be relaxing a little bit and getting the newsletter ready and everything ready for the energy update which won't be out until November 8th but you know that energy shift never occurs at the beginning of the month anyway so it's okay all right guys well if you want me to take a look at your external environment need a little insight uh yeah I do offer that energy mapping and that does include looking at the surrounding environment also so we can take a look at that anyway shoot me a message and I'll catch you guys on November 8th for the energy update for the month of the pig for a free energy mapping of your floor plan please check the link in the show notes to support today's podcast going to learnfengshui.com sign up for emails leave a review and share with your family and friends