Just what I need: Cellular Feng Shui!

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you’ve come to expect. This is one of those times. (Yes, it’s grant season.) So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from 2008 and be assured that I’ll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you’ve been reading less than four or five years, it’s almost certainly new to you, and, even if you have been reading that long or longer, it’s fun to see how posts like this have aged.

Balance.

It’s what the woo-meisters who believe in “Feng Shui” tell us that it will bring to those who use its principles to arrange the objects in their life, be they furniture, homes, the design of buildings, or even the layouts of whole cities. Indeed, Feng Shui tells us that the way we arrange objects in our environment, choose a place to live, or even choose burial plots can allow us to achieve “harmony” with our environment. Obviously, this is true in a trivial sense. If your house is full of crap piled everywhere in seemingly random distributions, it is going to have a negative impact on “harmony” and quality of life. But that’s not what advocates of Feng Shui claim for its powers. Rather, they claim that applying the principles of Feng Shui can result in wealth and even cure disease:

Whatever you desire in life: bags of money, the love of your life, the honor and respect of people who now doubt you, connection with friends, family and spouse, a crowd of new customers, a new home, a fresh start, almost anything you can think of, you can attain with Feng Shui.

Every day you create your life, be it at a job, business or caring for your family. You try to enter each day with the attitude of accomplishment and achievement. But in most cases the situations of life overcome it. A bounced check might send you into crisis mode to cover your obligations, where with Feng Shui your problems are solved with grace and ease.

So where do the principles that supposedly let you, the user of Feng Shui, to do all these fantastic things come from? As with only the finest woo, it’s a massive appeal to ancient knowledge of course. Even better than that, it’s an appeal to nature’s “balance” and somehow applying it to your life:

Feng Shui is an ancient oriental term that means “the way of wind and water”. It’s all about energy, the flow of energy and how it enhances or detracts from your life.

Feng Shui developed thousands of years ago in little villages of the Orient. It was called Folk Feng Shui because each village had there own guidelines on how to use it. Their livelihoods were dependent on it. They studied the formations of the land and ways of the wind & water to determine the best sitting for their survival. Over time Feng Shui developed and was used by emperors to ensure their success.

[…]

Feng Shui and associated disciplines comprise the study of these energy flows. It also deals with how you should arrange your environment to gain the best possible advantages in your life.

For example, the direction your house faces. If you are building a new house, and you can decide which direction it faces, it would be good to know which direction will benefit your life the most. And you can find out by using Feng Shui. If you were buying an existing house and find out the direction was not set in your best interest, you would need to know how to use Feng Shui techniques to counter the ailment.

How convenient. If you screw up the Feng Shui of your house, you need to use Feng Shui to fix the bad mojo. In any case, Feng Shui seems to be some unholy combination of various forms of “energy medicine” invoking qi and claiming to be based not only on the “forms” of nature but on the stars and the magnetic compass. Of course, you might wonder why I’m featuring woo as mundane and uninteresting as Feng Shui. Patience, my dear readers. Do you think I would choose something as pedestrian as this if there weren’t a twist that makes it worthy of an installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo?

Of course I wouldn’t.

You see, it’s not enough just to arrange the macroscopic objects in your life, the objects you can see with your own two eyes. Why on earth would you restrict yourself to just that? If I were into woo, I sure wouldn’t. Fortunately, Feng Shui expert Candace Czarny has my back (and yours). Even better, you don’t even have to do anything yourself, other than to lay down some cash, of course. But if you do you’ll be able to do something that was never before possible.

You’ll be able to apply the principles of Feng Shui to your cells using the Cell Balancers:

The Cell Balancers will help you:

• Clear blocked energy patterns from your body and mind
• Activate greater focus and clarity
• Enhance your energy flow
• Activate your Higher Potential
• Activate deeper wisdom and bypass years of learning
• Cultivate a felt-sense of peace, aliveness, spiritual awareness, well-being and integration
• Gently and effectively align your cells with your Future Self’s Positive blueprint

Not only that, but there are multiple versions of the Cell Balancer, including the Gentle Model and the Power Model. Both claim to provide you with:

Inner transformation you can feel…Use this precision-tuned miracle of cosmic technology to:

• Restore the true unique blueprint of your divine nature,
• Release layers of toxic and distorted energy vibrations,
• Remember your timeless wisdom, waiting within for its activation,
• Experience the joy of living that is your birthright.

Place your fingertips on the Cell-Balancer, as shown n the finger-position diagrams, to experience a Felt Sense of Cellular balance. You’re an “in circuit” with the transformational energies. Spiritual healing patterns of transformation flow through your energy pathways, directly into the spiritual cells of the body. The Cell-Balancer transmutes negative energy-patterns trapped in your energy-body that confine, limit or distort your true self. As you release the energy distortions, you are freed to access your true essence.

That’s not all, though. There are also other disks, including the the Activator Disk, the Neutral Space Plate, and the Portal. All of them are claimed to work this way:

These disks “speak” the language of vibration, via the disk’s intricately tuned copper energy antennas, and its special materials and layering. Vibration is also called sympathetic resonance, because one vibration encourages other vibrations to resonate “in sympathy”. They work like a tuning fork, spontaneously encouraging another tuning fork (you) to resonate with the divine source (Universe, God, Creator).

[…]

The Powerform products were created by Joel Bruce Wallach. Explorations in healing and consciousness found Joel practicing hypnotherapy in 1982, yet still seeking a more direct approach to spiritual awakening. By 1985, his energy balancing practice replaced the hypnotherapy. His first subtle energy healing tools were also developed in 1985, utilizing his aura-sensing skills, combined with his ability to hear, see, and sense subtle energy.

Joel’s newest energy-balancing methods using the Powerforms promise practical levels of transformation for novices and practitioners alike. They help us activate our potential, and bring our world into balance. He emphasizes that this is our lifetime of infinite opportunity to embody heaven on earth.

And let’s not forget:

The neutral space plate helps you have direct experiences that activate deeper wisdom. bypass years of conventional learning with the precision-tuned miracle of cosmic technology. The Neutral Space Plate helps you access essential qualities in these vibrantly evolving modern times: Wise Neutrality ~ Present Moment Awareness ~ Personal Truth ~ Universal Truth ~ Clarity ~ Divine Peace ~ & Spiritual Attunement~

The Neutral Space Plate transmutes negative energy-patterns trapped in you energy-body that confine, limit or distort your true self. As you release the energy distortions, you are freed to align with your essential truth. You can use the alignment to deepen your meditation, to enhance creativity or as a relaxing way to nurture yourself.

Wow, all that from a mere disk!. I wonder if any of these disks have ever been subjected to randomized, double-blinded studies to assess whether they can actually do what their makers claim the can do for them. Such powers ought to be obvious under controlled conditions, wouldn’t you think?

Yes, Orac made a joke, lame as it was. Of course, the beauty of the gobbledy-gook above is that it means nothing. Really. Try to derive a concrete claim that can be tested for success out of the deluge of verbiage on that webpage. It ain’t there. It ain’t meant to be there. If they made actual specific health claims, the FDA or FTC might become interested in just what it is these disks are, and we can’t have that. What we actually can have however, are testimonials:

• “I had my golfing partners put the Activator in their left shoe. They found, to their surprise, that they could drive the ball farther. Also, I found that when I put the Activator on the floor under my left shoe at work, I felt more alert and energized.” Tony C., Feng Shui Master.
• “I use my Powerforms at my office. I am surrounded by computers and laser printers. I sit within the beam of several Powerforms (place the Powerforms on small easels facing you to accomplish this). I find that I am less tired by the end of the day as well as more creative throughout the day. Since I have set up the Powerforms here, co-workers have mentioned that my office feels calmer and more peaceful. They sensed the change without knowing about the energy devices.” Michelle, Facilities Coordinator.
• “I was taking a nap and as an experiment I put the Portal on my forehead, with the Balancer behind my head. I had the most wonderful and beautiful energy flow through my body and I felt so good. I felt it pass through my body several times. I have come to think of the disks as some of my most prized possessions and value them very highly.” Barbara L., Designer.

I’m convinced. How about you?

So how much will this woo set me back if I want to balance my cells according to the principles of Feng Shui? Well, I could buy some of this stuff individually, but if I really want to go whole hog, I’d definitely have to buy the whole kit. It’s a bargain, too, at a mere $235.38 a whopping $77.97 off the price of all these separate items. Not only that, but they will even throw in the two DVD set of “Putting the Powerforms to Use.”

Man, I’d love to see the woo on those DVDs. It would be at least three or four hours of pure entertainment.

So what makes Feng Shui woo? After all, interior and exterior design can indeed make for a more “harmonious” environment in that good design is more visually pleasing and functional. If that’s all Feng Shui said, I wouldn’t consider it woo, but Feng Shui goes far, far beyond that. We have all this blather about alignment with magnetic fields, harmonizing energy fields, and even returning cellular “balance” through the various disks above. (As an aside, I wonder what those disks are made of. At least previous installments of YFDoW in which some sort of super-powered disks were lovingly “discussed” how they supposedly worked, whether it was through holograms or “energizing” your water à la Dr. Emoto.) After all, we’re looking at claims like these:

• Enhance the energy of water, remedies & Crystals: The disk re-patterns the liquid’s atoms into higher degree of coherence, so that the liquid transmits positive activation when you drink it.
• Spiritual Rejuvenation Chamber: Create a spiritually vibrant and protected energy chamber – a true sacred space.
• Deep Knowingness: The Activator Disk transcends liner verbal communication. It helps you experience a felt-sense of vitality, aliveness, higher potential and well-being. You learn to “wake yourself up”
• Re-Create Yourself: Affirmations enhance your Activator disk results. As you work with the Activator disk your negative patters transform gradually into positive energies.
• Help your life energy remember its essential nature.
• Unite your body, mind and soul.

If that ain’t woo, then I’ve learned nothing in the year and a half that I’ve been doing this little weekly foray into silliness. In fact, I’m impressed. These woo-meisters have seem to have gone beyond dualism and postulate not just the body and the mind, but the soul. Although the claims above are the usual New Age-sounding drivel, one of these claims actually did catch my attention: “Re-Create Yourself.” I wonder if the Activator Disk is like the transporter on Star Trek. I can see it now, it takes you apart, molecule by molecule, purges the “negative” energy patterns and then transforms them in to “positive energies.”

Now that’s something I’d pay money for…