WIND & Water- The surprising connection between Feng Shui & the weather

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 funu Chinese astrology all things Chinese metaphysics as well as the superstitions and myths that connect it all you'll enjoy learning fun with me Chi is dispersed by the wind and it gathers at the boundaries of water this is a quote from guo's burial book one of the first funu texts ever recorded and it's also where the name funu comes from literally translating to wind and water I'm Candice Berlanga I'm your host for the Learn Feng Shui podcast I'm also a fun practitioner and a red rib professional with the international fun Guild as well as a reluctant fun Master today I'm going to cover all all topics about wind and funu um something I never really considered until I started really researching and I started reading a very interesting book today I'm going to be covering wind in Chinese medicine how our ancient ancestors um oriented the streets with their local wind conditions using a compass very similar to the funu low pan I'm also going to cover local and wind lore and wind Traditions as well as a Superstition of Korean fand death so when we look at funu we tend to think of it as this um thing of you know aesthetically pleasing design decluttering and um Concepts like the elements right but but but but uh when we first developed funu um our ancient ancestors we didn't know we were doing funu we didn't have aesthetically pleasing caves right so um our funu it really came from our external environment and looking at which conditions would protect us the most and even to this modern day of funu we look at things like um protecting our our backs right we look at having a supportive back behind our home and we look at things like our headboard and putting our back against a solid wall when we're sleeping and putting our back to solid wall when we're working at a desk so this is where this this concept actually came from was the need to protect ourselves and feel safe and supported so when we started looking at how our ancient ancestors moved from the nomadic and hunter gatherer lifestyle into the Agricultural Society and building of later to towns and cities right um they really pick their locations based on what would keep them safe and so when they you know picked it they obviously natural resources was a big factor and keeping safe against harsh wind conditions um environment and of course predators and so really fast forwarding that concept into kind of a modern society we can look at the ancient Greek and Roman Builders of the time and look at how they actually oriented streets based on their local wind conditions so they would look at the wind conditions of the area and they would build streets and and buildings and whatnot to actually block these winds so they weren't getting the harsh winds in their in their cities in their homes um so let's take a look at what is called the vitrian Windrose so this is from the ancient Builder Vitruvius the ancient architect from Rome um we're going to talk about how he uh took into account local wind conditions and oriented streets to block the wind before we jump into wind direction let's kind of talk about the different geographical directions and so uh this does play into to account I promise so when looking at different like mythology and lore every society throughout history has had like a deity a guardian or um a characteristics that they've given the four different directions so you know north south east and west so um Funway is a perfect example of this you know if we think about the north we think of the element of water right It's associated with these characteristics or if we think of the South It's associated with the characteristics of fire and red and you know um right in in some traditions it's can be your reputation sector and right and so they have these different um associations with each Direction and in turn they also had different association with a different winds that came from that direction so and this is very prevalent in like Hindu Native American but even some kind of Hometown lore there's different weather lore associated with uh different winds blowing at different times of year and we're going to get into that in a minute but kind of going back to vrus the way he actually oriented the streets was based on the eight winds and so as opposed to having um just four different directions of the Winds came from he actually used you know the the intercardinal directions of Northeast and Southeast and Northwest and Southwest so thus leading to the eight directions so I am referencing the book called creating places of Power by Nel pinnick and I'll put a link in the show notes it's a really great book so it states here that vitrus used the standard 8 winds diagram as a means of orienting streets in the town he arrived at this not by direct observation of the wind itself but he drew a diagram on the ground and its or orientation was based on the erection of a sundial or what here is labeled aomen to measure opposing limbs of the sun and it says here that that was a traditional means of finding the north south what it's called the wind right so it was a north south wind but it was the geographical north and south and so he would then take that and then he would take into account local wind conditions and then he'd Orient the streets based on this this diagram looking at at the different compasses and the different orientations when we're looking at the directions and directional orientation of buildings and stuff um in this book it's really crazy because uh what I've discovered is almost every society throughout history has had some sort of way um of divining and finding the the best way to build homes for them based on their Geographic locations and so again this is the practice of geomancy and it's not you know exclusive to uh funu so uh but just very interesting the very very um specific connections and how similar it looks to the funu compasses and the orientation of buildings in funu I do think it is in man's just kind of innate nature you know in humankind's nature to want to harness the natural features and the natural um kind of elements from their environment and this does include wind if we think of buildings like windmills which I'll cover in just just a minute but I thought this was really interesting doing Wind research I did come across several um references to something called the wind Scoops or wind catchers and so here a reading from Arch daily which I'll link to below it says a wind catcher known as a Wind Tower or wind scoop was used as a traditional cooling architectural element for thousands of years in countries that had severely hot climate such as the Middle East and Africa so some historians and are archeologists credit Persians as the adventures of these wind catchers but um because after they discovered a 3,000 BC yearold Persian Fire temple that featured chimney like structures but had no traces of Ash in them and of course um I don't know how cold it actually gets there but I'm not sure they would use fireplaces but if you think of it as like a reverse fireplace um you know a a sort of um a chimney like structure on top of a building with a bunch of holes in it um to redirect the wind so yeah natural ventilation it does say here that as explained in our article about natural ventilation and it's used in different context air movement is created by the rising of warm air and lowering of cool air so as the air above gets warmer it rises and creates areas of low pressure and when the air continues to rise it cools and moves towards water surfaces interesting where it falls and creates areas of high pressure and pushes cold air towards the land and so this creates uh the wind and so I suppose that um these wind catchers act in a similar way it says a wind catcher is basically a chimney-like structure made of Clay Wood or bricks and it's constructed on the rooftop of HKS mosques or storage rooms to harness the Cool Breeze as it directs towards the Interior Space the way the towers work is by directing cool air as it circulating at higher levels downwards through these ventilations and of course cooling the air down as it comes in so we thought our ancient ancestors were not Advanced but I would beg to differ on this one once the cool air enters the space the warm air circulating inside the interior space is actually pushed out through these openings created on the opposite side of the wind catcher so in areas without a cool breeze a wind catcher acts as the chimney and pushes warm air upwards um and out through these openings and so it doesn't necessarily push it inside the building but it um it's like circulating the air which I thought was super interesting and again really looking at the way they built these and oriented them to catch their local wind I just think is amazing and kind of looking at the history of wind power I'm just going to link all my websites below because I'm using a lot of different resources today it talks about of the history kind of of windmills and how it used to progress society and so here it says people have been using wind energy to propel boats along the Nile River as early as 5,000 BC and by 200 BC simple wind power water pumps were used in ancient China and windmills with woven Reed blades were used for grinding grain in Persia and the Middle East new ways to use wind energy eventually spread around the world and by the 11th century people in the Middle East were using wind pumps and windmills extensively for food production merchants and Crusaders brought wind technology then to Europe and the Dutch developed large wind pumps to drain lakes and marshes in the Rin River delta immigrants from Europe eventually took the wind energy to the Western Hemisphere and American colonialists um use windmills to grind grain pump water and cut wood at Sawmills homesteaders and ranchers installed thousands of wind pumps as they settled along the western United States and by the late 1800s and early 1900s small wind electric generators and wind turbines were very widely used so um yeah I just think it's really interesting how of course again I think it's just in the nature of man to say hey there's this natural resource let's use it and see if we can um you know better our lives and you know work harder not uh work smarter not harder right not not work harder work smarter and not harder so I definitely think it's one of those things where they were able to look hey we can use this wind power to you know grind grain and and they just kind of got creative with it which I think is really amazing and um again I I live in one of the windiest cities in the United States and we actually have a wind power Museum that boasts about 180 windmills and I've been there and it's actually very interesting how they uh used it to in all sorts of agricultural production so very interesting uh history of wind power and wind utilization and again I linked the article below if you want to go take a look at it I highly suggest it's really interesting and it has a lot of detail because there is there was even different things like the size of different wind Scoops within the the you know the the towns or there would be things like um you know they would put the wind Scoops in certain uh ways in certain directions and also make them certain shapes to catch the wind a little bit better as well as locate um the wind tunnel so it would catch like the underground water supply for the homes so a lot of times the homes were built over like a sistern or like maybe like a flowing stream um I think we refer to them as like root sellers sometimes or like a you know the flowing stream underneath a home and so um yeah they would actually just situate and build these over the the water um in a certain way that way it would uh kind of catch and cool the air down as it came back up and before we stray from the topic of funu and talk about other things here um let's talk about the golden verse that states Yang House Hall wind is the one piercing shachi number one so what does that mean so this is actually from the golden verses the quote unquote rules of funu and what it is referring to is a house that has a really strong crosswind in it and usually the doors are facing each other directly and so this creates like a tunnel effect where the wind blows through really strongly um but it does have to meet some criteria to actually be a true piercing Hall wind Shaw and so this usually occurs when two doors that are the same size so you have a front door and a back door that are exactly the same size and they face each other directly with no walls in between so if there's a wall in between um then you're fine or if you even just see it or if it's off center a little bit you're okay but if it's two doors that face each other directly that means you could be receiving this sha qi um also the doors would have to be open all the time so if I mean who keeps her doors open 24 hours a day so um if you have two doors that are open all the time and the wind is really strong and you get a strong crosswind that blows all the way through that means you have a piercing Hall Shaw and so what this means is that you'll have trouble accumulating finances so remember earlier I stated that she is dispersed by the wind gathers at the boundaries of water and so this hold true for places that have a lot of high wind or if the wind blows through your house very quickly like that and that's why it's considered a sha qi and so it just means you can't gather chi in your home and you will have a TR trouble also accumulating finances um yeah so that is called a piercing Hall wind and when I first learned this one of the things that I I remembered is being a little girl and they had these um sort of outdoor markets and they would have like little vendors and shops and stuff set up right on the inside but there like these big tunnels with big arches and um and you could just see through Straight to the other side it was just opened and I remember um stepping in there as a little girl and having a very strong crosswind so it was nice and cool but now that I think back on that I always wonder if um the vendors were very successful so yeah that is called a piercing Hall wind Shaw all right I'm excited to get into the wind lore and weather lore um so this kind of really seg it nicely so we have to take into account also local wind traditions and local wind um you know uh literally how our regional weather is so um even here in Texas I mean you know so I live um you know probably Northwest Texas closer to the New Mexico border so if I go up a little bit north to Amarillo we're going to get you know cold it's a little bit cooler and the weather um we get more snow up there and so if we go further south they're already experiencing and a full swing of spring and they already have blooms everywhere so um even you know regionally um in in within the same state we can have different weather conditions right and so I think this is important to note um here again quoting from the creating places of power book it says although since fetus's time the best Architects have recognized that the fian wind rose is rooted in its place of origin so the less T have applied this wind reference unthinkingly to others inappropriate places so in this way they were used as far as England Russia and South America where where the real wind rose bore no resemblance to the local conditions that vrus was describing in his part of Italy so this is the same literalist thinking that bugs those who would transplant a metaphysical system from one place to another regardless of its suitability and he does argue here I'm not sure I agree 100% but this is his thoughts he says it is prevalent today with the literalist practitioners of funu where descriptions originating and tailored from one place to another uh sorry from one place to China is carried to another place without any modification and so I I I do think that he has a point there because um I know I've asked this question before to other fun practitioners and I'm like hey if we're experiencing spring here and we're basing our um activations and our adjustments and everything off of spring what about people in the Southern Hemisphere and I've been told that the chi is universal and um I know some um people that practice fun in like Brazil and stuff and um yeah and so and they've practiced just the same as I do and it's it works for them but um of course we know and I've covered before on the podcast the uh famous fun way Master Roger green um he developed a system of funu for the southern hemisphere um and so you know and I think that the more I think about it the more valid I think that um you know kind of Al altering and maybe even adjusting funu to where we're at especially when we're talking in terms of like uh literal geomancy and tapping into Che or energy spots uh that we really do have to take into account our local wind or not necessarily wind but local conditions um and also um I do think that the Segways us nicely into looking at local wind lore and different um cultur throughout history and what kind of uh wind lure they had so let's go into that so here it says that country Ora folor and Regional farmer calendars contain much relevant windlore there are numerous vacular Rhymes that recall the effect of various winds and I'm going to also be looking through um because here in the US we have the Farmers Almanac it's been around since what 1818 and they have a lot of different lore folklore and weather lore type of things in their website and in their on Almanac and so I'll kind of be covering some of that um so there's different types of of lore like there's some that kind of talks about um you know if the day is the day you're born if the wind's blowing a certain direction that gives you certain characteristics or if um the wind blows a certain way on New Year's night that means it's it's a tone for the year um so there's all kinds of different uh you know all kinds of different lore so let's kind of get into the specifics so an old Scottish rhyme it tells that the direction of the wind for New Year's actually sets a tone for the future year and it says here if on New Year's night the wind blows South if boken warm and growth if West much milk and fish in the sea if North much cold and snow there will be if East the trees will bear much fruit and Northeast fle it man and brute and I'm just continuing to read on here it says another Celtic poem The Winds of Fate is similar and it tells that the wind blowing at one's birth actually determines one's future life a parallel compliment to natal astrology the first first breath that a baby takes is the air of one of these winds and it will affect him or her throughout their life and another correlation and connection I find interesting to fun is that a lot of the um poets and writers of the time um actually attributed the winds with colors like they connected the winds to different colors which I thought was um pretty interesting and so um in this famous poem by Irish poet ethna Carberry and in parenthesis it says Anna mcmanis I'm not I guess guess she maybe had an alter you know ego for for writing I don't know it says she wrote about the quality of the Winds uh with their traditional colors and it says green Shears of Hope rise round like the grass Blaze after drought and there blows Red Wind from the East a white wind from the south a brown wind from the west but the black Black Wind from the Northern Hills how can you love it best and of course I did you know think that was pretty interesting of course we tribute the different directions and the different sectors and stuff to different colors with funu and of course black does represent that element of water in the north and it says here that in his Masterpiece the third policeman written in 1940 and published in 1967 the Irish humorist writer flan O'Brien um and then he had a different name too Brian o no o noin I don't know different describe the colors of the Four Wind similar in a similar manner O'Brien called the Northwind a hard black in the East was a deep purple The South was a shining silver and the West Was A in Amber so if you live in America you've probably heard of the Farmers Almanac so the Farmers Almanac is really pretty um popular for having a lot of different weather lore and being really pretty spe specifically accurate on their weather forecast for the entire year um I kid you not if you look through for your region it's usually pretty accurate but they have a lot of weather lore and they have a lot of things like um you know when to get a haircut or when to uh plant and when to go fishing and so they also of course the weather Lord does cover fishing but there is specific wind um directions that support fishing more so here's the poem it says when the wind is in the north the skillful Fisher goes not forth when the wind is in the East is good for neither man nor beast when the wind is in the South it blows the flies in the fish's mouth and when the wind is in the west there it be the very best so look for wind conditions to be blowing from the West to do your best fishing quickly shifting gears and looking at Chinese medicine I'm just going to touch on it real quick because it's just such a vast topic and I honestly don't know enough about it so for my understanding though um the the presence of wind in Chinese medicine causes illness and so before we kind of touch on that we're going to kind of look back through and look at the representation the very essence of the implication or the you know this trigram of looking at the eing and so let's take it back to the eing which is the very Foundation of Chinese metaphysics it's the um found Foundation of which you know fun and batza and all the other systems are built upon and so looking at the representation and what wood means or sorry it is the element of wood but what wind means um is a very fast action and so when we look at the eing and we're looking at a reading uh you may know that from you know different uh it's a different system of divination and so when we look at eing and we're doing a eing reading uh one of the things that we kind of look at is the elements of wood which are um uh the trigrams of thunder Thunder and wind um and represent also the East and Southeast so when we look at these um it really does represent a really fast action or something quickly changing um so that's what Thunder and wind represent in the Jing and so uh kind of Translating that and putting it into Chinese medicine um they really did believe that different winds and different attributes of the Winds could cause illness it wasn't really that you had wind inside your body literally but rather that these winds could cause illnesses and so they would um you know really look at you know if especially in the winter like so if you're in the winter time but the air is unseasonably warm you know that could be causing illness or if you're looking at the uh summertime and the air is unusually you know cold and moist or something like that then that could cause a certain illness and of course um we often hear that wind causes illness in your body and again not literally the wind but it's um more the wind more representing a fast action or a sudden illness occurring so um for my understanding that's what wind represents in Chinese medicine and I know there's a ton more but I'm going to leave it there we'll take a quick little sponsor break and come back with our folklore Friday segment Korean fth can sleeping with a fan on kill you so not much to do with funu but I thought it was a fun little folktale SL urban legend to include on the show today the topic of what is called sometimes Korean fan death or just fan death so here from how stuw works.com will sleeping with your fan on kill you sleeping with a gentle breeze on of a fan on a hot summer night is one of life's greatest Pleasures unless you subscribe to the belief of fand death that is where this pleasure will leave you dead by morning this Superstition has been passed down through generations and mostly in just Korean families it appears according to Folklore the only way to survive sleeping with a fan on is to open the window or use a fan that has an automatic shut off so it doesn't run all night the origin of the Killer story is murky but does it have any kernels of Truth first we'll look at all the ways that fans may be trying to murder you in your sleep one urban legend claims that the fans blades actually chop up oxygen into carbon dioxide making the air in your bedroom impossible to breathe and therefore a fatal source so that came from Snopes but not putting much um into that it says another says that a fan blowing on you all night can make your body temperature drop so low that it'll actually cause hypothermia and death or a fan constantly circulating very hot air won't actually cool you off but the hot air will just suffocate and dehydrate you to the point of death fan and cannot cause hypothermia though um they don't cool the air they just actually circulate it um unless you're talking about with them wind Scoops with the water bow right and because no house is airtight you can't suffocate from hot air or lack of oxygen the issue of fandi was a concern in 2005 and the Korean consumer protection board issued warnings entitled Beware Of Summer hazards One of These Warnings regarding Electric fans advise leaving doors open while using a fan while sleeping citing possible dehydration hypothermia and decreased oxygen the warning also attributed 20 deaths from these fans from the years of 2003 to 2005 however nobody has actually been able to confirm these deaths nonetheless the beliefs persist even today so how did the Superstition begin some people believe it grew from a 1970s campaign to conserve electricity or it can just be considered a coincidence someone found a dead body in a closing room with a running fan and made a hasty conclusion more likely that person died from natural causes such as a heart attack and in one case the man fell asleep in front of a fan after a night of heavy drinking so so it says here so interestingly enough however the Environmental Protection Agency states that excessive heat events guide book that people should not be in direct flow of portable electric fans toward yourself when the room temperature is hotter than 90° Fahrenheit or 32° C it says this warning came about during heat waves of the 80s and 90s when evidence suggests that fan and encloses rooms would actually evaporate moisture from the body faster in heat indexes that were over 90° fahren or 32° C so it was said that it was just circulating really hot air and so it was said to maybe DEH hydrate you a little bit so it says here so could your Korean grandmother be on to something after all and just to kind of round it out with a couple funu based uh tips for fans um it is said that when you sleep with a ceiling fan directly above your body at night that this is you know bad forms funu it actually puts too much uh energy over your body while it's sleeping um and you know is supposed to lead to some health issues I don't know I've slept with a fan over my bed for a 100 million years as long as I've been alive always had a ceiling fan in my room so not I'm not uh 100% sold in that idea I am however uh would like to caution against you know um some people have those air conditioning units um that are you know they're plugged in whatever and they're placed on on the wall like they're mounted into the wall and usually pretty high up in the room so it can circulate the air around so I would say I don't suggest sleeping underneath one of these air conditioning units because it could leave lead to a Restless night's sleep all right I'll catch you guys next week be sure to check the link in the show notes for all the sources lots of sources um were cited today and read off of so go ahead and check those out if any of those interested you and of course for free energy mapping of your space just message me directly for free energy mapping of your floor plan please check the link in the show notes to support today's podcast going to Learn Feng Shui s.com sign up for emails leave a review and share with your family and friends