A teacher of Chinese Metaphysics I once studied with said something that has become a guiding factor of my study and practice of Feng Shui: It’s all about me!
What she meant was that when your goal is to create the best balance of energy in a space you should orient everything based on your specific needs in that specific time in that specific situation. When you are the client, for your consultant it’s all about you and your relationship to the qi. There is no general rule to apply for every situation. For example, a bed in the master bedroom of a healthy 40-something CEO would probably not be placed properly in a corner but there are some adults who may benefit from placing the bed in the corner.
Each of us exists in a complex web of relationships with our environment and the people in our lives. It’s useless to try to make generalizations about someone’s situation. It does not happen that one consultation is exactly like another, although it is possible to apply something you learned to multiple situations. This is why when you describe a situation you may have encountered to your Feng Shui teacher and ask “Is that okay?” he or she will tell you “It depends…”. The question can’t be answered without knowing all of the specifics.
Even if you gave a thorough description of the audit including birth information, photos, a qi map, a report, etc. to a Feng Shui consultant, in reality he or she is not able to accurately assess a site without going there, looking around, and meeting the people or person who hired him or her. A consultant is like a CSI gathering evidence at a site to take back to the lab in order to study it and understand the story of the crime. Although there can be copycat crimes, there is some detail or characteristic that makes each crime unlike any other. The same is true of houses. If everyone on your block is facing the same direction and has the exact same house plan, the same lot size and shape, the same grade to the land, that doesn’t mean you will all lead identical lives.
I know Feng Shui works. You don’t need to believe in it. I want more people to be able to enjoy the benefits of it and feel like it was worth the price they paid their consultant. Don’t believe people who say they can do “remote consultations” or who practice some “one-size-fits-all” method they learned from a book. It’s simply not true.