What is Chi / Qi / Prana / Lifeforce? How does feng shui work? How environmental factors affect us, our biology, genes, and behaviour? If you’re still wondering about these questions watch this brilliant presentation by Dr Bruce Lipton (author of Biology of Belief). Bruce Lipton is an American developmental biologist best known for discovering that genes, DNA and behaviour can be manipulated by a person’s beliefs and environmental factors. More on Dr Bruce Lipton
Summary of the video
What is chi / qi / prana?
In one scientific word, it is charge and in layman’s term, it is life force or simply ambient and radiant energy.
Read more about what is chi / qi / prana
“Information is physical.” Rolf Randaur
How does feng shui work?
In short: because of epigenetics – ie our bodies and specifically our genes adapt every day to the changes in our environments, affecting our beliefs (placebo effect) and behaviours and every aspect of our lives, starting from our health.
More on how feng shui works and the placebo effect behind feng shui
How environmental factors affect us, our biology, genes, and behaviour?
Again, a short answer is epigenetics and a graph from the video shows how which confirms my feng shui formula, ie feng shui = intention + energy + ritual.
Feng shui ‘nudges’
Professor Richard Thaler who has won the 2017 Nobel prize in economics for his contributions to behavioural economics, confirms that environmental cues can shape people’s behaviours. He championed the concept of “nudging” people, for example, through subtle changes in government policy, to do things that are in their long-term self-interest, such as saving for a pension. Another application of his ‘nudge theory’ is positioning of healthy foods on eye level in supermarkets (therefore “nudge” people towards the purchase) which in Thaler’s opinion is a better way of influencing people to eat healthy as opposed to government health campaigns. Market research tests have shown that placing healthier foods on a higher shelf boosts sales. Nudge theory has many (feng shui) applications, even in public toilets where fake plastic houseflies were stuck on the men’s toilet urinals which was intended to “improve the aim”. A classic feng shui nudge ‘remedy’ that can alter our thinking and behaviour is to have a mirror in the kitchen or dining room with a confirmed research of 32% reduction in consumption of unhealthy food because one becomes self-conscious or self-reflective (no pan intended).
In short, nudge theory is based on a simple assumption that people will often choose what is easiest or easily accessible over what might be wisest. People don’t always make rational choices, which contradicts the classical economic theory. Thaler and Sunstein defined their concept as: “A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not.”
Further reading: How to Understand and Decode Feng Shui using Logic, Science, Intuition, Instinct and Common Sense