Feng shui is the Chinese concept of organising a room to create harmony, relating to the flow of energy (chi). It is popular to use it in the home, but how about expanding the idea to the office also? After all, many people spend as long or longer in the office as they do at home, but don’t treat it with the same consideration as perhaps they would a home.
The Chinese art of feng shui has been used for more than three thousand years. Feng means wind and chi means water, which are associated with good health in Chinese culture. Feng Shui is used to harmonise and make the most of the natural flow and create balance and harmony in the building, which then translates into a person’s life becoming more balanced and harmonised.
So what simple things can you do to create a more ‘zen’ environment in which to work?
- Clean up! The first most important step is to make your workspace as clean and free of clutter as possible. Throw out anything that you don’t need or use, file away important documents and make the space as clean and clutter free as possible. This one step alone will make a huge improvement to how you work – like the saying goes, a tidy desk is a tidy mind!
- Learn about the elements used in feng shui – fire, wood, metal, earth and water are the five elements that are used in feng shui and it is important to get them all balanced in a room. For example, if you have a lot of wooden desks and metal filing cabinets you may want to introduce the earth element in the form of a plant and the fire element by improving the office lighting. If you want to update your office furniture, such as a selection of Reception Chairs sourced from sites like bestbuy-officechairs.co.uk/reception-chairs/ to balance out an office full of metal cabinets for example. Aquariums also work well as they introduce both the fire element in the form of lighting and the water element.
- Look at the seating arrangements of people in the office. It is said that the person with the most power in the office sits the furthest from the door. Nobody should, if possible have their back to each other or to the door as this is considered bad chi. If this is not possible, think about creating flowing lines rather than hard edges, to help with the natural flow of energy throughout the office, and try to avoid bright or harsh colours.
