Digital Feng Shui

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice that helps one create a balanced and harmonious space. It is the art of positioning objects in a way that promotes happiness, health, and wealth. But what the ancient Chinese did not predict is that by 2024 we'll be inhabiting two spaces: not only the physical one but also the digital one.

Originally, the practice of Feng Shui, which has been around since at least the year 4000 BC, was used for the design of settlements. Over the years, Chinese culture has incorporated it into home design and by now, it has become a mainstream technique for the organization of living spaces. Feng Shui developed from Taoism and one of the main ideas behind it is that objects carry an energy that has the power to significantly affect us. According to the practice, in order for a space to be harmonious, it needs to allow this energy to flow—only then will the individual inhabiting this space feel truly grounded. Some examples of how Feng Shui is incorporated into home decor include never hanging mirrors across from the front door, placing plants in dark halls or corners, or placing the bed in the middle of the wall and not in direct alignment with a door.

Now, whether you believe in Feng Shui and the idea of things possessing energy or not, your living space truly is a reflection of your interior world. Multiple studies have shown that people’s physical environment has a direct effect on their mental health and overall well-being. For example, one study found that a cluttered home stimulates the production of cortisol, the stress hormone, while another has shown that insufficient light levels not only negatively impact our circadian rhythm but also cause anxiety. Feng Shui has been providing guidelines for the creation of harmonious physical spaces for hundreds of centuries, but what do we do about our digital spaces?

Coach x Kiko Mizuhara in Numero Tokyo, July 2019. Photo by Monika Mogi. 3D artwork by Nathalie Ngyuen. Available via Y2K Aesthetic Institute. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Smartphones have been called a permanent extension of our hands countless times by now, but there’s more to it than that. They are not only extensions of our physical bodies but also extensions of space itself. Think about it! Half our lives have been transferred to a space that has no physical dimension, except for the little bright-screened device that we stare at for 4 hours a day. This space holds our memories; it’s where we go to unwind; it encompasses our work, social, and dating lives; it upholds parasocial relationships; even some day-to-day tasks have been transferred to this space (shopping, banking, etc.). The implications of this are complex and diverse, but what I’m interested in here is how this affects us on a mental/energetic level. Conversations regarding the effects of technology on our mental health usually revolve around the effects of doom scrolling or around social media as an addiction, but what about technology as a portal to a digital space that rivals the physical one?

Although spending too much time in the digital world is arguably the opposite of being grounded, we can at least make our time there as harmonious as possible. And that’s where digital Feng Shui comes in. One of the basic concepts of Feng Shui is decluttering, something that is essential when it comes to digital spaces. Delete those unnecessary apps and make your display neater in the process. Clear out your inbox—thousands of unopened emails won’t help with your stress levels. Sort through your contact list—you don’t need the number of that one person you met that one time. Be aware of the accounts you’re following—if it’s not friends and family, or if it doesn’t add positivity, then it just adds to the chaos of your digital space and it has to go.

All of these seem to be such small, obvious things and yet it’s so easy to forget about them and overlook their importance. We clean our living spaces weekly, and paying the same kind of attention to our digital ones should become just as important a habit. Occupying a space devoid of physical manifestations was never what humans were intended for in the first place, but now that we are faced with this fact, the least we can do is cultivate habits that won’t allow it to add to the stress of life in the modern world. In the end, the goal is to attain balance and keep the chaos to a minimum. And maybe digital Feng Shui is the answer to this.