Jenna Marie M. (jennarationx) reviewed Great starting point, highly recommended. on 3/27/2009 + 6 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

My version of this book says "Instant Feng Shui" instead of "Practical Feng Shui", but it's the same book. Perhaps a newer printing.

This is a really great book for Feng Shui beginners who want to grasp the basic concepts, get some overall ideas for improving their living space, and browse through some beautiful and inspiring photography. Unlike many other authors, Richard manages to explain the basic background of Feng Shui and make the Four Directions (and their animals), Five Elements, Eight Enrichments,Pah Kwa, and Walk of the Nine Palaces all make sense in relatively short order, with organized illustrations that simplify these somewhat daunting principles. He briefly covers how to select a property, the type of home you should look for based on these principles and your own Chinese astrological/zodiac sign, the eight remedies for poor Feng Shui areas, room-by-room advice and illustrative photos, and even chapters on Feng Shui for your garden/yard and work/office area.

What you won't find here are any really serious in-depth discussions about the philosophy or practice - this book is definitely for the beginner who wants to understand the broad strokes. But there are plenty of ideas that you can put to immediate use for improving your home environment.

One more note: the author uses the Vietnamese zodiac, which has slight variations on the traditional Chinese zodiac, so you may need to use wikipedia or another reference source to translate into the more familiar birth symbols and animals.

Overall, I highly recommend it. I'm definitely keeping my copy for ongoing reference.

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