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Medicine to metaphysics
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer
LAND O'LAKES -- Close your toilet seats. Unclutter your closet. Hang a crystal pendant from the ceiling. The health of your home or office -- even your love life and career success -- might depend on it. So says feng shui, or at least a couple of Land O'Lakes practitioners of the Chinese art that purports to cure what's ailing your architecture. Tom and Tina Dolsak are both licensed practical nurses by training. He's 31. She's 30. They both gave up the solidity of syringes and scalpels for the metaphysics of crystal power, meditation and wind chimes. Feng shui, pronounced "fung shway," is mostly concerned with capturing good energy and clearing the bad, or in Tom Dolsak's words, its purpose is "to harmonize the natural flow of energy in a room." Thus feng shui recommends placing throughout the house an assortment of crystal, mirrors, potted bamboo plants and red-tasseled bamboo flutes. "We knew we were meant to help people. This is just helping people on a grander scale and on a higher level," said Tom Dolsak, whose business is called Sacred Balance Feng Shui. "As nurses, we helped people who got sick. But why not help them before they get sick by creating harmony and peace in the home and workplace?" Joseph Rosado, who owns a New Age shop in Dunedin that sells such items as wands and goddess pendants, hired the Dolsaks to unclutter his business. Rosado specializes in Celtic lore but is open to feng shui as part of his "buffet" of philosophical consumption. Tom Dolsak moved a Buddha fountain so it faced inside the building instead of out. (Feng shui holds that water should always flow in.) He added wind chimes for harmony and softened hard corners with decorations. "I know it's hard to understand. But just the placement of items in the building . . . all of a sudden it just seemed like more customers were coming in. Things seemed livelier," Rosado said. At another recent consultation at an apartment in New Tampa, the Dolsaks entered the abode of Sonja and Rico Palomino through the "mouth of chi," otherwise known as the front door. The first order of business is the exchange of nine red envelopes, each filled with a fraction of the Dolsaks' consulting fee, which can reach $125 per hour. The red symbolically represents the shields of the ancient Chinese army, Tom Dolsak explains. The exchange protects the Dolsaks during the vulnerable period as they share their "sacred information." "It's to protect our karma," Tom Dolsak tells the Palominos. For starters, the Dolsaks "lay a bagua" over the apartment. That's a term for segmenting a home or office into rooms devoted to wealth, career, creativity and six other parts of life. The Palominos learn that their living room is the "helpful people" section that could stand to benefit from a feng shui cure. "How long have you had that dragonfly silver fountain?" Tina Dolsak asks upon spotting a piece of living room bric-a-brac. "Seven months," Sonja Palomino says. Tina informs her that by blessing the dragonfly feng shui-style, more "helpful people" will come into their lives. "Wow," Sonja Palomino says. Later they suggest other cures that could drive off bad vibes that might linger from the apartment's previous occupants and uncluttering the Palominos' closets with the aid of a bamboo flute. The Dolsaks' own house in the Sable Ridge neighborhood of Land O'Lakes is like a model home for their practice. A meditation altar -- a box filled with sand and speckled with figurines of Asian buildings -- dominates their front office. It's there that they bless the crystal bracelets they sell as energy channelers. Their dining room, the first room as you enter the house, stands nearly empty but for a treadmill. According to the Dolsaks, placing a dining table so close to the door encourages people to eat and run. In the adjoining living room, a bundle of dried sage sits in a bowl. They burn it as a smudging wand, and the smoke is used to clear bad emotions from a house, most recently when Tom Dolsak's mother-in-law visited. "The smoke kind of grabs the bad energy and carries it out," he said. On the breakfast counter between the kitchen and living room stands a lamp shaped like a martini glass with olive. A feng shui cocktail perhaps? Oh, no, the couple say. They just like it. In their bedroom hangs a silk grape vine. It covers a corner that points to the couple's bed. The Dolsaks call the corner a "poison arrow," one that shoots bad energy to a person, causing, in the case of a bedroom, trouble between the sheets. All their toilets seats are down. Little round mirrors are glued to the ceiling over the bowls. Sink drains are plugged. All of this is supposedly to stop the vital energy from whooshing out of the house. The Dolsaks say their results are measurable in increased harmony in the home and increased productivity in the office. Naysayers argue that feng shui -- which, like most New Age beliefs, penetrated the United States through California -- mixes pop psychology with superstition. Who wouldn't feel better throwing away years worth of old magazines cluttering the closet? And banning televisions from the bedroom -- another feng shui tenet -- is just good common sense. In the words of the California philosophy instructor Robert Carroll, author of the Skeptic's Dictionary: "Feng shui has become a kind of architectural acupuncture: Wizards and magi insert themselves into buildings or landscapes and use their metaphysical sensors." An Internet site called the Ultimate Feng Shui Resource is even more harsh about what it calls an overcommercialized "McFengshui" movement that harps on inadequacies of one's home decor. "Some of us think so little of ourselves that we fall for this, which is why sensitive New Age types pay complete strangers good money to hear the same verbal abuse their mom provides for free," the author of the Web site writes. The Dolsaks cringe at such talk. From their Land O'Lakes office, they describe how they studied five years, mostly through reading, to prepare for this high point in their lives, when they ditched secure careers for feng shui. "If it was called something American, it would be more popular," Tom Dolsak said. His wife adds, "That flag just goes up with most people -- it's feng shui." But not even they always agree about the effect of their household arrangement principles. Discussing their four children, Tom Dolsak attributes their good behavior to positive energy flow shaped by feng shui. Tina shakes her head in disagreement. "I think it's because we're so strict."
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From today's Pasco Times Letters |
