Feng Shui is the original form of environmental friendliness. Your home is the one space in the world where you are truly free to make choices, and those choices create an energy that you marinate in during the time you spend there. That is the energy that you take with you into a world, much like the shell that the tortoise carries with it.

If you wish to have a positive impact on the larger environment, there are many steps you can take at home to help you ground that approach in your reality. In addition to the standard suggestions often mentioned in the media (such as 'use non-chemical cleaners'), some Feng Shui-friendly tips are:

- Have plants in the home. Flowers and plants bring fresh air into the space and stimulate your being with natural beauty and balance. Having the products of nature in the home helps to restore balance to a space filled with man-made items.

- Have all five elements represented: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. These elements are found in varying degrees in all natural matter, and as such you need them all represented for your home to be essentially grounded.

- Balance the straight lines of modern architecture with gently curving shapes. Straight lines in Nature are a rarity, and when they do occur, the lines do not stay straight for long before they bend. Our bodies are not designed to be surrounded by the dynamics that straight lines create: corners and edges leave us feeling 'in a corner' and 'on edge'. Fill room corners with plants or lights, and soften the edges of pointy furniture with strategically placed objects or coverings where appropriate. While we do need the occasional straight line to provide a horizon to focus on, too many straight edges can bring about an overly linear way of processing information. Living in a space with a blend of shapes helps to put one in a more naturally flexible frame of mind.

- Use incandescent lights and soft lighting (dimmer switches are great). Candles give a natural, flickering glow and provide attractive mood lighting. The new supposedly environmentally friendly bulbs not only give off glaring light and limit depth perception in the same way as fluorescent lighting (because they cast no shadow), they also contain dangerous levels of Mercury! Don't use them.

- Eliminate clutter! If you are concerned about pollution in the outer world, eliminate the unnecessary from your home space. If you haven't used something in the past year, it is time to consider donating it to charity or disposing of it in a similarly beneficial way. Dispose in the most appropriate manner of old papers, magazines, and other printed material that no longer serves you. Being surrounded only by what you need and love will help you feel more connected to your surroundings.