Are beams really as harmful as people make out in Feng Shui?

I visited an old client a while ago who had just bought an old barn in the middle of nowhere to covert into a business and home. My first impression was wow, when I arrived it was beautiful, the views were stunning and the barn which is around 3000 square feet with two acres of land has so much potential along with hundreds of ceiling and wall beams, overall this barn was perfect in my eyes and from a Feng Shui point of view also pretty good. This was a big project for the both of us but I am always enthusiastic about this type of work.

On every consultation I go to, I always make sure that I take many photos so that I can build an electronic library to use when I speak to clients in the future. It also helps me when I am writing their report up, as sometimes you cannot see the woods for the trees and looking at the photos later may show up some points that I will address with the client in the report. Anyway, I was taking these photos thinking how great this place was and will be and thought of a great article for you all.

I receive an emails every week asking about the negative effects of beams as someone has read in a book or a website that if they sleep, work, eat or sit under a beam their head will fall off in the next six months; the last bit was slightly exaggerated but not that far off.

If I had read that 25 years ago I suppose, I would have panicked aswell but nowadays I have thousands of clients who have hundreds of beams in their home and they live very happy, healthy and wealthy lives. If you look at the photo below that I took a while ago, you will see some great examples. Think about the people you may know who have beams; all those large country homes with beams that would hold up a skyscraper, they really are not that bad.

The books and websites usually need something to fill the pages and they do tend to exaggerate problems, which is not fair in my opinion as it worries so many people. I have had people crying over the phone with worry that their child has been sleeping under a beam and they may have caused them misfortune or caused them to be bullied at school or similar trauma.

Let me tell you what is good and what is not good…

If you look at photo #1 and #3 below you will see a large beam that I have marked with a red arrow, these types of beam you should avoid sleeping, working or even just sitting under, this will cause you problems and it is like sleeping under a guillotine. Photo #2 is the more common beam, these are fine to sleep under and I have hundreds of clients who sleep under these and it causes them no problems at all, just avoid big intense low beams, it is common sense really.

I have visited so many homes where they had a Feng Shui Practitioner come along and advise the client to paint the beams the same colour as the wall which is normally a ceiling standard white colour, I don’t know about you but the attraction of beams to me is the fact that they are a dark or wood colour standing out from the ceiling, I think they look lovely and add character to the building, if they are in a modern home they do not have the same affect for me but we all have different tastes.

It is far more important to sleep, work and sit in a good magnetic compass direction which is calculated from your personal Min Gua (life Trigram). This is one of the reasons why we produced our Feng Shui software so people can instantly calculate their best four directions, colours, elements and so much more; this is real traditional Feng Shui not the Mickey Mouse Feng Shui that is so often written about. I will be doing an article on good and bad directions very soon or if you are impatient have a look at our software that calculates this and many many other valuable formulas for good Feng Shui.

I find myself continually looking at land formations and buildings; I was in a coffee shop in Bicester (UK) a few weeks ago called “Pret a manger” apparently they are a large chain, I am not sure if this was standard décor for them but this place was kitted out in great big shiny stainless steel beams and large old style ventilation pipes the types that most Feng Shui books and websites would be spitting blood over, this coffee shop was packed though and the quality of food and coffee was pretty good too, but if they had read the Feng Shui books about this type of décor they would have had condemned this business and according to my son Daniel they are extremely successful.

Try to think of all the homes you know with beams, they normally belong to manor style homes with fairly wealthy owners, how many old English successful pubs with beams? How many successful businesses do you know with beams all over the place? If you really think about it, they cannot be that bad, just think carefully where you would place your bed, chair or desk, do not let it sit right under a large heavy beam and if you are not sure about where you are sitting, sleeping etc hang a pair of bamboo flutes or crystal spheres to weaken some of the negative energy, it will not be the perfect cure but it will help.

If you are an author of a book or website and you have written about beams in a negative way please do not write to me condemning me with a “who do you think you are” type attitude, I have heard it all before and will not reply unless you can convince me of a case where you can prove it has caused a problem, believe me I have been proved wrong before, I only write what I think is true based on results I have personally experienced and can account for.

The reason for this article is so you do not get worried about small things as the power of the mind is exceptionally powerful and if you have something in your mind that is negative you can make small things grow into very large monsters.