Welcome to the Year of the Ox!

The Ox is the second sign in the zodiac. In contrast with the busy, Yang Rat, the Ox is a Yin animal: hard-working, enduring, patient, and slow-moving. The Rat year was eventful: the Szechuan earthquake, the Beijing Olympics, the deep freeze of the weather, and the economic tsunami that has flooded the world. In the year of the Ox, the initial shockwave has passed — but the consequences will continue to be worked out. The ox’s virtue of endurance will be especially suitable: Do as the ox does. Be patient, hard-working, down-to-earth.

Last year, Blue Mountain sponsored a successful Feng Shui gathering in July. We also had a dozen students from the Baltic countries here to study. But because of the events in China, we did not have a Feng Shui tour.

We have been working to upgrade our web site. Thanks to Sabrina Beidler, our web-master, we now have a web site that we can be proud of, and that we think you will enjoy.

In the New Year, we will be taking advantage of the Ox energy to reinforce and extend what our Institute has to offer. Among other things: We are launching a Feng Shui blog for which Dr. Hsu has promised to write at least two entries per week. We invite everyone to take a look (it will be on our Blue Mountain web site), and provide feedback. We hope to have good conversations through the blog and the blog comments.

Many of our graduates have been wishing for a forum for continued learning, and exchange of ideas and experiences. We have decided to have a monthly informal gathering. Please check website for the time.

In the late spring or summer we will have a field trip to a small country town to gain concrete experience with Feng Shui outside the urban setting.

After many years of students’ requests, Shan-Tung Hsu has agreed to teach another course -Feng Shui for Communication (FS340), with a focus on face and body reading. In Feng Shui, we say that form defines energy. The body, the demeanor, and the facial structure, are all aspects of form. Just as we can read the energy of the land from its form, we can also read the energy of a person from aspects of that person’s form.

In September, we will resume our China Feng Shui Tour program. Watch the web site for more information!

Dr. Hsu is still working on his next book, with the slow steadiness of an ox. This is the promised Form Defines Energy, the second book in the Fundamentals of Feng Shui series. He has also started working on a book on Yin-Yang theory as the foundation of natural law.

We hope the year of the Ox will be a year of stabilization and steady, helpful activity for everyone.