The Yin & Yang of Love

by Hsu, Shan-Tung

• ISBN13: 9780738703473
• ISBN10: 0738703478
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd

Summary

Love is a process of dynamic balance of Yin and Yang energies. Love is the force that shapes the entire universe. The interaction of Yin and Yang is not an abstraction; it is the experience of love in all its forms. The Yin & Yang of Love is a fresh look at love and what we can do to attract love. Author Shan-Tung Hsu combines his knowledge of traditional Feng Shui and Taoist philosophy in this simple, direct guide to healthy and harmonious relationships. As Feng Shui gains popularity, many people have discovered that working with these ancient techniques manifests love and abundance in their lives. The principles of Yin and Yang represent the polarity, balance, and equilibrium found in nature. Practicing the philosophies and techniques presented in this unique book will help create this balance in your life. Once you attune yourself and your space to the flow of universal energies, you make room in your home and in your heart for the loving relationship you've been waiting for. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Love: A Natural Thing	p. 1
Human Beings and the Universe	p. 13
Your Place or Mine?	p. 37
Compatibility and Timing	p. 69
Love and Communication	p. 91
Body, Mind, and Qi	p. 109
Food and Love	p. 133
Desire and Unity	p. 153
The Miracle of Ordinary Life	p. 171
The Eternal Transformation	p. 183
Index	p. 195
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Preface

In the long period during which I’ve been teaching Feng
Shui and providing Feng Shui consultations, I have found
that one of the most frequent and important concerns
people have is about their relationships.
Many of my students, as well as my clients, have been
looking to Feng Shui for answers to their questions about
relationships. They ask if there might be some way that Feng
Shui could help them to improve an existing relationship, or
to find a lover.
Their intuition is right in pointing them to Feng Shui as a
factor in these difficulties. There often are space-related
issues involved: the spaces in which they are living are just
not adequate to nourish a loving relationship, or are even
likely to create conflict. At the same time, space itself is seldom
the only source of difficulties. Part of their problem
also has to do with misperceptions or misunderstandings,
which lead to awkward or inharmonious handling of energy.
In this book, I am trying to deal more comprehensively
with the situation: not just with issues of space, but with
issues of the energetics of relationships, and how the
energetic factors interact with the spatial factors.
I am very aware that love and relationships are complex
and delicate subjects. Throughout human history,
millions of books have tried to address these issues.
When I first thought of trying to write something on this
subject, I realized right away that it was an ambitious
task, but my students and friends kept urging me to
write—and my clients’ reactions to the consultations they
received also encouraged me.
I decided that it would be most useful to approach the
subject from the essence of Feng Shui. Feng Shui sees
human activities as part of nature, and in the context of
natural processes. It is a point of view that integrates
human beings and nature, and also integrates nature with
the whole process by which things come to be and pass
away. It is a holistic and complete point of view. It encompasses
all time and space—a knowledge that is “naturally”
in all of us, since our relationship to the cosmos is one of
similarity. In other words, the key to our relationship to
the cosmos is the fact that the essential structures of the
cosmos and of human existence are the same.
Feng Shui approaches spatial design from the point of
view of energetic relationships. In this book I approach
romantic relationships from the same kind of energetic
point of view—in terms of Yin and Yang, rather than in
terms of male and female. At first this perspective may
seem so abstract that it loses all the detail. But I hope it
will also give a more complete picture.
To present such a picture, I start with general energetic
issues, and go on to talk about space and time factors.
Since human beings are living, social organisms, it is also
necessary to deal with communication, interpersonal energetics,
food, and sexual activity. I have therefore devoted
one chapter to each of these subjects. Even in these chapters,
though, I have avoided getting too involved with
details, and tried to link everything back to the larger energetic
issues. It is this larger context that is so often missing
in modern life. For many people nowadays, life is very
specialized and very choppy because people spend so
much of their time focused on very narrow areas of their
worlds.
There are many books and workshops that deal with
relationships, that try to give people techniques for improving
their relationships. Some of these approaches tend to
present things from a purely spiritual point of view; others
present them from an intellectual point of view, or focus on
emotional responses. Such approaches can inspire people
for a while, but it is easy to go back to the way things were
before. The problem is that whatever changes they bring
about are only on the level of ideas and emotions, and do
not engage the more fundamental level of formative energy.
This is why it is so important to talk about the role of formative
energy in romance.
In a very real sense, there are no special ideas or
“secrets” to be found in this book: on an intellectual level,
everything presented here is pretty much common sense,
but everything in our approach aims to make changes at
the level of energy, not at the level of ideas.
This is not a big book, a comprehensive book, or a
complicated book—and I certainly hope it doesn’t seem
that way to anyone. I am not trying to come up with the
last word, or a brand-new word—just some helpful
words. If every reader finds a few sentences that resonate,
I will feel I have hit my mark.

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Excerpted from The Yin and Yang of Love: Feng Shui for Relationships by Shan-Tung Hsu
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.