The small tai chi is one of those feng shui concepts that practitioners often practice but don’t talk about.
Not because it’s a secret that needs to be guarded at all costs, but because it can be too tedious to explain to homeowners who really just want to have their homes feng shui-ed instead of learning how to do it themselves.
The small tai chi basically refers to the superimposition of a house’s feng shui energy chart (big tai chi) onto a particular space such as a room or living area.
This helps one to take on the art of placement with finesse.
The concept is also not always applied onto a house as a practitioner might deem that it’s not necessary.
This is because the small tai chi concept is usually used for refinement to either:
- Make the most of a good situation; or
- Minimize the adverse effects of a bad situation
For example, if a bedroom is deemed to be a in a bad location of a house according to the energy map of the entire house, then superimposing the same energy map onto the bedroom itself can help residents select the best placement for furniture like the bed and dresser.
The question would then be which energy map to use?
Flying stars and 8 mansions feng shui
As mentioned previously, the small tai chi is not something that would be practiced all the time. It’s all about whether there is a need to do so.
But when it is applied, then the most commonly practiced method is to incorporate either the natal chart of flying stars feng shui or the energy map of 8 mansions.
This also depends heavily on which school of thought a practitioner is practicing on the property in question.
Flying stars
Let’s say for example a house was built in 2010 facing N2. This would make it period 8 house and give it the below birth chart according to flying stars.
For simplicity, let’s just assume that this is a house that is built with 9 sectors that resemble the grid format above.
If a bedroom is located at the east sector, the household member sleeping in this space would be devastated with bad luck all around… in health, wealth, relationships, etc.
This is due to the presence of the 5 yellow and 2 black as mountain star and water star.
If there is no way to relocate the bedroom or re-designate a different area of the house as a bedroom, then we would have no choice but to work with the small taichi to find a best location for the bed in this particular room.
By applying the big tai chi into the room space as small tai chi, we get the below.
With this superimposition, it can be deduced that the south section of the bedroom would be the best place to place the bed.
Take note that this is without consideration for door locations, beams overhead, windows, etc.
8 mansions
This concept of small tai ji application can be used with 8 mansions feng shui as well.
Let’s take for example, a Tui house which has the below bagua map. It would therefore have the below chart.
If a kitchen is located in the west sector of this house, it would burn down the favorable Fu Wei sector. This because kitchens have a reverse effect in 8 mansions.
If it is impossible for the kitchen to be relocated, then we apply the small tai chi onto the west sector, which would give us the below.
Remember that the reason why we associate the kitchen with fire energy is because of the stove. So we can actually choose a location for the stove to minimize and limit the harm this fire energy can cause.
From the above small tai chi chart, the stove can be located at the south, southeast, east, or north indicated by 5G, 6K, JM, and HH respectively.
Be mindful that this is just an example to explain the concept. The basic rules of kitchen feng shui are not factored in.
When to use small tai chi of feng shui
With the above two examples of small tai chi applied to a house, it should be pretty simple to understand how this concept works.
The bigger question should be when should we put it into practice.
Well if you have feng shui OCD, then you can use it for your home as frequent as you want.
But most of the time, being so meticulous into feng shui is not necessary to reap the benefits of maximizing good luck or minimizing bad luck.
As mentioned earlier, small tai chi is most appropriate when living spaces like the living room or master bedroom end up in sectors of the house that are extremely inauspicious indicated by energy maps.
In such cases, when there is no definitive solution, then the small tai chi can be used to minimize the negative effects such layouts can cause on residents of the house.