Tuishou (push-hands) Photos

Below are some Tuishou photos taken in the last Taijiquan workshop in Nantes with Thierry Doctrinal (http://www.taoouest.net/), my French workshops organizer and the last picture is with Jerome Touzain (http://touzaintaichi.free.fr/topic/index.html), who met me years ago in Sydney. We have been together for close to 10 years now, on and off, so it is my pleasure to continue to train with these guys, who have become more like friends than students over the years.

Thanks Thierry and Jerome for being there with me every time I go to France, your continual presence is greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomson House

If you ever have a chance to visit Hong Kong and would like to look for “cures”, equipments and Chinese books related to Feng Shui, please do drop into our friend Ricky Than’s shop in Kowloon. Ricky is really knowledge, having designed and made most of the Luopan compasses for the different teachers all over the world, he knows just about all the workings of different Feng Shui schools.

Thomson House, 623 Shanghai Street, Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 2396 1944

Below is a picture we have taken in his shop with Mr and Mrs Than (sitting opposite to me next to Ricky), who is always helpful when it comes to looking for books on Chinese metaphysics.  

Lijing Old Town and Naxi Local Style Dwelling Houses

“Lijing Old Town and Naxi Local Style Dwelling Houses”, 離江古城輿納西民居 Edited by Zhu Liang-Wen 朱良文

Lijiang Naxi local dwellings have four basic layouts, these are:

1)   三坊一照璧  “San Fang Yi Zhao Bi” or a house “three buildings and one screen wall”, which has one main building with two side wings plus a screen wall opposite the main block, together they formed a u-shape San He Yuan, or a three sided enclosed courtyard with the fourth side being a screen wall  (1/Diag 1)

2)   四合五天井 “Si He Wu Tian Jiang” or a “four sided courtyard house with five sky-wells” , which has a main building at the back with two side wings and another block opposite the main building forming a four-sided courtyard house. Apart from the large central sky-well (the courtyard) there are four smaller corner sky-wells for ventilation called “Lou Jiao” 漏角 or “leaking corner” (2/Diag 1)

3)   前後院 “Qian Hou Yuan” or a house with a “front and back courtyard”,  which uses the central axis measured off the main building at the back of the house to layout out two courtyards. The main courtyard is in the form of “four sides with five sky-wells” and the front garden is in the form of “three buildings with one screen wall”. The room that separated the main and secondary courtyards is called a “Hua Ting” 花廳 or a “flower lounge” (3/Diag 1).

4)   一進兩院 “Yi Jin Liang Yuan” or a “one entry with two courtyards” house which is very similar to the “front and back courtyards” house mentioned previously, with the exception that the main building is now in the central block that separates the two courtyards. (4/Diag 1).  Diagram 1 is shown below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Yu Family Garden 余家花園 dwelling we visited in our last China Feng Shui study tour in Lijiang is a classic “front and back courtyards” layout, with the larger courtyard forming the heart of the arrangement.

One approaches the house and the main courtyard not through the street, but through a side gate and a passageway along one side of the house. At the end of the passageway is a blank wall and one has to turn 180 degrees to see the main door, which leads to the main courtyard of the house. When the door opens, one again faces another screen wall and the main courtyard is not visible until one turns left to see the garden fully with the main building across the courtyard.

The Yu Residence was built in 1925 with the main building facing east and all the wings are in two storeys. (Diagrams below showed Ground Floor and Upper Floor Plans and an Isometric view of the house):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At a first glance, the directionality of this house is not clear and that is because the front courtyard in the form of a “three buildings with a screen wall” layout faces the tall boundary wall of the Mufu 木府 (Mu’s Mansion) next door not able to see the open space beyond and the screen wall has not lost its function. This is because when the building was first built the Mufu was in a state of dilapidation and the present boundary wall was missing, giving the required Ming Tang at the front, which was the garden of the Mu’s Mansion.

All in all, there are four special features common to Lijiang Naxi local dwellings, these are:

1)   Use a large sky-well in the form of a courtyard as the centre/heart to organize the various components of a house, no matter what type of layout is used. This light-well has either 3 or 4 sides covered with rooms laid out along a central axis that faces either the east or the south. A screen wall or a lower building opposite the main sitting is often used to reinforce this axial layout.

2)   The main building or sitting is often two storeys high with the sides and opposite wing in either one or two storeys.

3)   Each house has a generous amount of covered balcony or outdoor terrace and walkway for protected family activities like eating, meeting guests, rest and exercise.

4)   The corners of the house are often left open to facilitate light and ventilation. Sometimes the corners are used for entry, kitchen or storage so these spaces are not wasted.

Teaching Bazhai Mingjing by Analogy

The last time I taught Bazhai (the Eight Houses Method) was with the Golden Gate School of Feng Shui just outside of San Francisco, and as usual, the students have difficulties in understanding how to resolve the contradictions when an East Four person is living in a West Four house or vice versa.

I thought of the following analogy to help them come to terms with the compass method as written up in the Bazhai Mingjing (the Bright mirror of Eight Houses), where the Zhai Gua (the Trigram of the house) is calculated based on the sitting direction of a house and the Ming Gua (the Trigram of a person’s life) is based on the years of birth of a person:

Imagine you are a traditional Chinese landscape painter and you have to find a place to exhibit your painting.

The most desirable place to do this would be an art gallery specialized in traditional Chinese painting and that would be like an East Four person living in an East Four house, where the Zhai Gua of the house matches the Ming Gua of a person, that is the house supports the person.

Imagine that you cannot get an art gallery no matter how hard you tried and all you can get is a restaurant, that would be like an East Four person living in a West Four house, where the Zhai Gua of the house do not support the Ming Gua of a person, because a restaurant is not a most supportive place to exhibit paintings.

But imagine the restaurant is a Chinese restaurant and the place has many large white walls to exhibit paintings, that would be like an East Four person living in a West Four house but the bedroom is located in the auspicious position for the person and the bed is located likewise.

Now imagine the restaurant is a Greek restaurant and the place is dim and dart, not suitable to exhibit paintings, be it Chinese or otherwise; that would be like an East Four person living in a West Four house with the bedroom located in an unfavourable position for the person and the bed is also orientated wrongly.

Now what can you do?

One cannot change the place but one can change one’s attitude to the place to take whatever advantage the place can offer.

For example, as an accomplished Chinese landscape painter, you can paint a series of Chinese paintings based on the Acropolis and you ask the owner to shine lights on them and use them as wall decorations for the restaurant. Now you get a chance to exhibit your painting and show how talented you are.

This would be like changing the bed to suit your personal direction, even though the location of the bedroom is not suitable and you are an East Four person living in a West Four housed. Depending on your skill and your attitude, you can still make a success of it, but you will need extra personal efforts and a nimble mind to understand the mutual effects of man and his environment and how to take advantage of what is available through the correlative contemplation of the symbolism of the Trigrams.

Mirror Reversed Later Heaven Bagua

One of the more strange things that we saw in the 2009 Feng Shui Study Tour of Southeast China was the reversed Houtian Bagua 後天 八卦 (Later Heaven Trigrams) picture painted on the ceiling of the Dabaoji Hall in Baisha, where the famous Baisha Murals in Lijiang (Yunan) were painted.

Baisha murals 白沙壁畫 are mostly from the Ming Dynasty (1366-1644), so this mirror reversed Bagua would have painted about the same time as well. Instead of having the usual Tijitu in the middle, it has a Tibetan prayer written there instead. The mix of Buddhism, Daoism and Lamaism may have changed the order of the Later Heaven Bagua, but as to why, we have no clue.

The picture is not very clear as it was forbidden to take photos inside, please let us know if you have a plausible explanation for this unusually laid out alternative Bagua.

On the other hand, maybe the explanation is a very simple one, instead of looking up at the ceiling, one can see the Later Heaven Bagua in its right order by looking down at a mirror!

A Word of Thanks

Gyda and I have just returned from travelling and teaching with 15 participants in our Feng Shui study tour of southeast China. The role of being a teacher/mentor, friend/travelling companion and husband/wife (there were three couples on tour) all merged together in a full on 24 hourly cycles.

In the end, everyone learned by implication that when we are teaching, “Do as we say and not as we do”. When we are not teaching, “Do as we do and not as we say” and when we are husband and wife, “Neither do as we say nor do as we do”!

It was a wonderful group because we understood, we respected and we tolerated each other. To learn is to know, to know is to tolerate and they are all part of being – the art of living.

Thank you everyone for the wonderful experience.

Direction and Location (Fang Wei) in Bazhai Mingjing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have heard from at least one well-known teacher referred to the Zhai Gua (the Trigram of a house) as dealing with the location in a house and the Ming Gua (the trigram of a person’s life) as dealing with the direction in a house. This is not quite correct when we read the classic “Baizhai Mingjing carefully.

For this reason, I have translated the following two sections in the book and made some commentaries to show that both the Zhai Gua and the Ming Gua deal with location and direction at the same time:

Section 31 – Room Allocation

“Room allocation concerns with finding a suitable room position for the grandparents, grand children, fathers and sons, uncles and brothers, whether they sometimes cook and eat together or not, (unless) they have a suitable room within the four cardinal and the four diagonal directions, otherwise it would be harmful, whether the house is a single building or has one or two, large or small, light wells, if (the allocation) matches the Ming (Gua) of a person, then it is auspicious. Therefore a younger brother with an East Ming should live in the east, and an older brother with a West Ming should live in the west, without exception they will be prosperous and live a long life, otherwise poverty and early death will be unavoidable, the same applied whether (the room) is on the ground or upper level.” 

In this section, one is advised to choose a room located in one of the eight directions according to a person’s Ming Gua and is not according to the favourable Zhai Gua direction of a house.

Section 32 – The Bed Position

“Of all the different concerns of a house, moving the bed is the easiest and there are four ways to establish (it’s position): (1) the most (desirable) is to match auspiciousness of the Ming, (2) also to match the auspiciousness of the room allocation, (3) also to match the auspiciousness of the Sitting Mountain, (4) also to match the auspiciousness of a room to the door as mentioned in (the book) “Zhao Shui Jing”. Obvious it is different to have all four, then matching according to the person’s auspiciousness will suffice, no matter which order comes first.  If one wants to be meticulous in arrangement, then move the bed according to the person, and have the others to assist, (then) it is as easy as turning one’s palm to have children and wealth.

If the Sitting Mountain of the main house does not match a person’s life, then one can match the Ming of a person in the adjacent room or an addition to the main house and arrange the bed accordingly. But if the main house and the rooms; match both the parent and the children, with the room and the bed arranged accordingly, then there is prosperity without any disaster for everyone.”

In this section, one is advised to arrange the bed in four ways: 1) the bed should match the four auspicious directions of a person. 2) The bed should be in a room that matches the Ming Gua of a person.  3) The bed should match the four auspicious directions of a house. 4) In the room, the door should match the bed according to the four auspicious stars for the person.

The ideal condition would be to have an East Four person living in an East Four house, with the bedroom located in the East Four direction and have the bed located in the room according to the East Four also have an East direction, plus the door to the room and the bed position Four relation; the same applies for a West Four person.