Terah Kathryn Collins (continued)

…send each other flowers. No matter where we're going. Because just an arrangement of flowers in an otherwise yucko room is going to bring new chi into the room.

Crescent Blues: It brings in something natural and alive.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes, and I take my candles and incense. You know how some hotel rooms smell. And a photograph that I really love of my husband and myself -- things that make me feel good when I look at them. And I will make a little arrangement so that I have a place to cast my eye that feeds me.

Crescent Blues: That makes a lot of sense. I once checked out of a hotel just because for some reason I felt unsafe. I felt completely threatened there. No rational reason for it, I just didn't like the place.

Terah Kathryn Collins: I love it. Clearly you are so in sync with all of this. In a paper I wrote recently, I went into this whole long song and dance about how to deal with a hotel where you make an outrageous request -- and I make outrageous requests all the time. You have to be willing to hear "no." I don't want to be a Feng Shui brat. And there are Feng Shui brats: "Oh! This room! There's nothing about this room that works! It's just a disgusting room!"

Crescent Blues: At three in the morning they wake the people below them by moving the furniture.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Right! Another thing almost always I do, by the way, is move at least one piece of furniture. Because it helps to move the chi in the room. It's been sitting in the same place for a long time.

But I'll also make an outrageous request. I recently did this in a big hotel. They gave me a room with a terrible view. I called them and said, "I'm so disappointed; I would just love to have a better view." Next thing I know I'm on the top floor with a mountain view. And I thought, that's great. I was willing to hear "no" if they had no other rooms. I could deal with that, but at least I tried. Most of the time I meet with great success.

Crescent Blues: It sounds as if just being aware of your surroundings in a positive way and going with your instincts are the keys.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes, I've been known to go out and pick weeds off the side of the highway just to bring something green into the room. But that's about the time that I realized, "Oh, time to start sending flowers."

Crescent Blues: That's an excellent idea, yes.

Terah Kathryn Collins: So even in temporary quarters -- no matter how temporary they are -- our chi is being fed by our environment. Our inner space is being fed by our outer space -- or not -- all the time. So I sit in an airport and try to find someplace to look.

Crescent Blues: It makes a difference even in the short term.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Absolutely.

Crescent Blues: Is there one final thought you'd like to leave our readers -- one thing that everyone should consider doing?

Terah Kathryn Collins: Feng Shui is really the process of honoring ourselves. It's waking up to the idea that we deserve to live in a personal paradise. I say personal paradise because my paradise will look different than yours or anybody else's. It's our birthright, in my opinion.

It doesn't matter whether we have a lot of money or not, because even people who don't have a lot of money can bring things into their environment that feed their spirit every day. It can be as simple as the rose on the bureau, all the way up to whatever people are comfortable with and can afford.

[Feng Shui is about] honoring ourselves enough to surround ourselves with comfort, safety and beauty and creating a personal paradise. And what'll happen is, as each and every one of us does this, it will ripple out in exquisite ways. So when I have created an environment that feels exquisite to me, when my friends come over, they feel it too. Then they go home empowered to do the same thing for themselves. And the process continues until the end of life, continually making more and more of a personal paradise to surround us all the time.

Crescent Blues: I like this idea.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes. Aspiring toward that will continually nurture and feed us.

Crescent Blues: And the fact that the search for a "perfect environment" is a journey, not a goal that we can ever expect to reach.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Right. And so we take it on. We may want to have a Feng Shui practitioner come to our homes to start us off, to get the flavor of the philosophy and the flavor of what are we doing here. Then we are set free to continue the process, with little or no guidance.

There are some people who want to have a Feng Shui practitioner every time they want to do a big thing, like add to their house. Sometimes, sure, we want to bring a professional in to help us. But on a daily basis, we are perfectly capable of creating our own personal paradise, and that's what Feng Shui's all about.

(Confession time: your interviewer spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out her closets. And getting rid of those depressing dead houseplants. And taking a whole trunk full of stuff to the Salvation Army. And about that desk covered with papers; OK, I'm going to get to that really soon...)

Donna Andrews