What are the various schools of Feng Shui?
Feng Shui has been around for thousands of years, and over many centuries different schools of Feng Shui have developed. Each school has a slightly different approach to the subject, although the basic principles are the same. The following sections outline the three main schools of Feng Shui:

Form School: This school focuses on the landscape contours, along with the shapes of hills and watercourses. It is concerned with the auspicious positioning of buildings and burial sites, which require the hills to provide protection from the wind (Feng), and for the provision of a good water (Shui) supply without flooding. It can also be considered the ancient Chinese version of surveying. The main concerns within the Form School are to find auspicious landforms, called the Tiger and the Dragon. These are found by looking at the contours of the hills surrounding a site, and determining whether their layout will bring good or bad luck.

Compass School: This style of Feng Shui uses the Eight Trigrams of the I-Ching and relates them to the eight points of the Compass. These are laid out to form the eight-sided Pa Kua which is used to interpret the Auspicious and Inauspicious locations for Buildings, House Floor Plans and Room Layouts.

Black Hat Sect School: This is a modern version of Feng Shui developed in the USA as a hybrid of the Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism and traditional Feng Shui. In this school, a Pa Kua (often called the Ba Gua) is used, but it is based on the direction of the Front Door, rather than the Compass directions. The House or Room is divided into eight sectors, each one having a bearing on an aspect of life that might need enhancing.

Whatever school one follows, the underlying principle of Feng Shui is to live in harmony with your environment so that the energy surrounding you works for you rather than against you…...After all, why swim against the tide?