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A few months ago, Erica Langley set out to find the ``area of fortunate blessings'' in her Salt Lake City store. What she found hardly looked blessed.
The southeast corner of her store was dusty and cluttered -- a no-no according to the feng shui principles she was following. So Langley and partner Trevor Torreyson cleared, cleaned and decorated the area.
``The next day our sales tripled,'' said Langley, who has since employed feng shui in her apartment and other parts of the store, Fertile Ground, 274 E. 900 South.
Langley and Torreyson are among a growing number of Utahns who have discovered feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of placement. In the last few years, feng shui -- pronounced fung shway -- has guided the design of home interiors and business layouts throughout the United States.
Literally translated as ``wind'' and ``water,'' feng shui is the millennia-old Chinese belief that energy flows through all things.
Feng shui holds that people can enhance their lives by manipulating energy -- putting furniture, buildings and other constructs in their proper place. It incorporates philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese Taoist tradition.
Its devotees are not limited to new-age types like Langley and Torreyson. Donald Trump's billion-dollar Riverside South project in New York City was designed using feng shui principles. Many companies that do business with Asians routinely incorporate it into their buildings.
Feng shui contributes to prosperity, love, fertility, health and luck, according to its practitioners. It is not magic; it is viable science, said Tracey Edward Twarowski, a Berkeley consultant trained in feng shui.
Twarowski is one of only a few feng shui consultants working in Utah.
``We now know through modern physics that everything is energy,'' he said during an interview this week in Salt Lake, where he was leading a seminar on feng shui. ``Matter is...